Marblehead Johnson's Misanthropy

And The People Have Spoken!

2008-06-06T15:09:00.001-07:00

Vox likes me! Vox really likes me!

Not enough to let me do any sort of customization to my page, but at least I got the color scheme to not suck to much. Please, by all means, please come see me.

Contest Time!

2008-06-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, people... contest time.

Contest The First - To Vox Or Not To Vox

Lostie has made a good case for me to move to Vox. Sure, my neighborhood there will be.... her, but it might be a start. maybe I can start blog-surfing and make some friends. There are downsides... extremely limited blogospherical customization. However, I had a look at it, and it's not actually that bad! I think they made some improvements. SO.... vote here! Vox, or not? (NOTE: I fully expect no-one to vote for this, so I might win 1 to 0 with my own ballot).

Contest The Second - A Marble By Any Other Name

During my time on the intertubes, I've gone by many names... Mighty Jalapeno, Wandering Wombat, Topper, Junkyard God, Catharsicide, Nega`Sonic, Zalgon 26 McGee, Whale Biologist, Marblehead Johnson, Mr O, Ominous Dominus, and others (I know Throkky is now running all these down on Google. Good luck with that.) On Vox, I'm already Mighty Jalapeno again, and I don't know if I want to go back to that MJ, or stay as Marblehead Johnson (IE, the new MJ), or go with something else altogether. Something new. Something me. Marblehead is just a rip-off from Bill Hicks, and Mighty Jalapeno seems to exemplify the young me (Yung Me was a hack compared to Mighty Jalapeno!) SO, I guess the choices are.... MJ #1, MJ #2, or something new?

And.... VOTE!

*crickets chirping*

Philharmonosophy (QotD)

2008-06-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

QotD: If you had to write your autobiography in 6 words,
what would you write?

"Global Extinction: The Marblehead Johnson Story"

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

I've been informed by one of my loyal readers (which makes him fully 33% of my audience) that my blog posts are better when I don't regurgitate news onto all of you. I guess people have news sites that they rely on, and don't need me vomiting knowledge onto their computer screens (the reverse-peristalstic emphasis is mine). So, fine. Let's talk about non-news related stuff. One caveat, however: anything Jack Thompson does is free game.

For starters, I'm going to start off every post with a Question of the Day from now in (or a QotD, for those of you who are in a hurrt). I'll still have my brilliant, brilliant quotes, but they'll be slightly farther down, requiring you to use your track-mouse finger briefly (for everyone using a Mac.... PWND!! BWahahaha...) I'll probably have to invent my own QotDs, so that I'm not ripping off Lostie.

"I feel that we are all philosophers,
and that those who describe themselves as a ‘philosopher’
simply do not have a day job to go to".

Very true, man.

So what do I babble about here now? I dunno. I got most of my useless crap out a month ago (and looking back... WTF was I on?) Everyone who reads this knows everything about me (or at least know everything publicly known about me, leading them to think they know everything about me), so all I had to prattle on about was stupid stuff in the news. For instance, a lady in Toronto was fired because she hsvaed her head for cancer, to support a friend of hers who HAS cancer. Thanks to the Slashdot effect, the restaraunt is now in SERIOUS business trouble, because people stopped going there. It's perhaps MORE impactful than the business they would have lost by, say, having a bald female employee. Smooth move, douchebags.

Dammit, I backslid into the news. Curses!

Last night I made REALLLLLY GOOD crispy garlic-ginger pork from the Farmers Market pork I got a few weeks ago. Seriously, this was really awesome. It was actually crispy, which I attribute to having the frying pan on hot enough, but it was tender and juicy and delicious thanks to this pork (I've never EVER had pork chops half as good as I've had with the ones I got from the Farmers Market, and I barely added any seasoning to them!) It's a little over-salty (my bad), but a bit of rice should fix that up. To sum up: YAY PORK!

Also, I'm back on the French Press at work... Cantebury speed-drip from a Mylar baggie just isn't as good as it used to be, you know?

Hee!

Ok, movie time.

Whatevah! I Do What I Want!

2008-06-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

"Censorship reflects a society's
lack of confidence in itself."

Jack Thompson walks out of his own disbarment hearing, metaphorically sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling "LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" Awesome, buddy. Awesome.

Personally, I'm hope he gets disbarred. Right now, he's quite vocally retarded, but should he lose his license to practice his own brand of justice, he'll have to be vocally BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, RETARDEDER! Just like the KKK being on Uncle Jimbo's "Save The Flag" side on South Park, Jack is doing more damage to his own cause than he could possibly know, and this is letting the "maybe games DON'T cause teh murderz!" argument gain ground.

Jack Thompson Forever! You go, girl.

So, the Vox Question of the Day will now be ripped off here. The question is: "Who was your worst teacher?" Now, some of the responses on Vox, linked from my friend Lostie's page, were pretty horrible, and Lostie's retelling of her mom's story was even worse (Communist China, 1950's.... female). By comparison, my teachers were either a collection of apathetic wage-monkeys or petty vengeful dickweeds. For instance: the math teacher who insisted I was cheating, because I was doing math in my head that he COULDN'T do. Or the English teacher who got mad at me because I got an A on the assignment she assigned to me, specifically, to be harder than all the other kids' assignments. Or the K7 teacher who got mad at me for reading books in class when I was supposed to be listening, and when he started asking me rapid-fire questions about the topic at hand, I got them all right, and he still took mny book away.

I know, I was petty, too. I was young, and I immodestly admit I was overbright for a large part of my childhood, and I was defensive about it (I got my comeuppance in college). Even so, I only had ONE teacher who said "Wow, you're right. Carry on," and it was the year and school after that where they got rid of the enrichment program for the A students. I NEED NURTURING! AND ENRICHMENT! And, uhm... more Aasimov books...

...

God, I'm lame.

Here's JACKY!!!

Do You Know About Judgement Day?

2008-06-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST...

Frank Zappa. Great man. Loves ice cream.

Ok, two news-y things today. One: Barack is in the house! He's far too socially responsible to say "hizzy", and I don't think he's caught up to the cutting edge of "fibbity fibbity foo" yet. Don't tell Chef. However, he does apparently have enough promise rings from his prospective super-delegate prom-dates to clinch the nomination in November, assuming that everyone votes the way they say they will (translation: no guarantee). One amusing thing about this is the INSTANT he was said to be "the winnar", everyone on the internets (the sections I frequent) immediately changed from pro-Barack to, if not pro-Clinton, at least anti-Barack. It was like the sound of their prayers being answered was the clarion call of doom.

Yes, Barack's middle name is "Hussein". Yes, his platform seems to be about staring into the distance with a slight, hopeful uptilt to his chin. Yes, he's about as inoffensive as damp white toast (which actually offends me, but I'm just trying to make a point). However, we need a Democrat in office, so that in four years, when the Republicans have finally had enough time to think on their apocalyptic ideals, they can put someone with two eyes, a conscience, a soul and balls into office. Barack lacks the balls, and Clinton lacks the conscience.

Good night, America... and good luck.

Also, I just want to mention the laughably retarded idea that has come around again only 5 years after it was deemed the Worst Technological Innovation: The DivX Disc. No, I don't mean the codec, I mean the DVD that you play once, and then it DESTROYS ITSELF.

Yeah, that's what people want to pay for. Want to know the punchline? The DVDs will be sold for 5 bucks, so they're like rentals. However, they can STILL BE RIPPED JUST LIKE A REGULAR DVD. Basically, whats going on is retailers are giving a HUGE PRICE BREAK to DVD pirates, by letting them rip DVDs for a fraction of the cost, while simultaneously creating a product that no non-pirate consumer with half a brain would buy.

Maybe you guys deserve Hilary down there...

Ok, enough of that. Here's my son's favorite song. Seriously, ask him sometime, it will either be "Judgement Day" or the following:

This Man Is A Genius

2008-06-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

Adults are just obsolete children,
and the hell with them.
~ Dr Theodore Seuss Geisel

The more I read about this man, the more I really, really like him. I say this because on the weekend, my son sat me down, and read the ENTIRE "Fox In Socks" to me, except for the last page of the Tweetle Beetle Battle, and I have to say that's pretty impressive, given that he's six, and was only on Level 0 books at Christmas.

You make 'em, I amuse 'em.
~ Dr Seuss, in regard to children

Right on, Ted. Right on.

In other news, I'm finally back on the good stuff: Valerian. Many of you know it as the medicinal root that was prescribed to Jack in "Fight Club" to combat his insomnia. Well, blow me down when I found out that it actually comes in pill form, that it's an addictive narcotic, that it's cheap and non-prescription, and that it actually works!

See, a lot of the time I take an IB or two before bed, in order to actually KEEP me asleep. This also does really amazing things to my dreams, taking me from some short vignettes into the realm of multi-sequence miniseries', complete with surprise characters, plot twists, and commercials. Unfortunately, with IBs, I don't get any rest, which sort of defeats the purpose (and depending on my dream, defeats the porpoise).

But I bought more Valerian, and although I'd hoped I was tired enough to sleep without it, I can't deny how much better I feel in the mornings. My dreams are epic in scope, emotionally confusing and morally ambiguous, which makes it REALLY hard to tell from real life, and even though I wake up feeling like there's lead weights attached to all my muscles, I feel a HELL of a lot better, post-shower, than I do sans medication, or with the IBs.

So thank you, Valerian the Wonderdrug!

"If you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, then go home and burn all your records, all your tapes, and all your CDs because every one of those artists who have made brilliant music and enhanced your lives? RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrEAL fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high, they let Ringo sing a few songs."

Amusingly enough, the drugs conversation fits remarkably well with the Dr Seuss conversation. Isn't that amusing?

Yes, We Have No Disease-Resistant Bananas

2008-06-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

On a traffic light green means go and yellow means yield,
but on a banana it's just the opposite.
Green means hold on, yellow means go ahead,
and red means where the fuck did you get that banana at...

Well, there goes the yellow phallic neighborhood. To sum up:

The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one — known as the Gros Michel — was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct. Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies — Chiquita and Dole — because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease... But now, Panama disease is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, which appeared two decades ago in Malaysia, spread slowly at first, but is now moving at a geometrically quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas, the primary source of nutrition for millions...

Now this is serious... but I can't be the only one who giggled a little bit at the idea of being an identified 'banana scientist'.

I can't believe I had that image on standby...

And on a completely unrelated topic, GOlgo 13 kicks everyone's ass.

Everyone's.

And The Lord Spake: OMGWTFXOR! N00BS!!

2008-05-30T15:09:00.000-07:00

God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.

For reals, yo. I mean.... holy fucking ass-crackers.

Beef #1 - Sweet, Delicious Jihad

Ok, let's sum this up: Dunkin' Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin complained that the scarf wrapped around her looked like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress. 'The kaffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,' Malkin wrote in her syndicated column.

...

I couldn't make up something this retarded if I stayed up all night watching American Idol. She wore a black and white scarf around her neck... which looks an awful lot like an Arab headdress. Ok, fine. Then there's the awesomefuckingtastic leap from that to "murderous Palestinian jihad".

NOTE: Miss Malkin has never expressed anger that the guns and bombs used by terrorists are being shown on cable television every night of the week.

My favorite comment on the story? "Why has no-one gotten mad that such an influential chef is pushing deep-fried sugar-bread on a population that is collapsing under the weight of it's own obesity?"

Beef #2 - Tiny, Elderly Asian Woman Lives In Stranger's Closet

For a YEAR. I mean, that's awesome. He didn't even notice until he started to realize his food was vanishing, so he set up cameras to catch the culprit while he was at work. She's been living in a storage closet, only coming out to eat and bathe and watch TV when he wasn't home.

That right there is almost cool enough to make up for the Jihadonut thing.

Almost.

Wade For President

2008-05-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

Deadpool: Uhm... a little help? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: So... what's new?
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: Yeah, not much by me either.
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: Been thinking about starting up a super hero porn site, whaddyou think?
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: Nothin' too rude, I mean. Tasteful naked shots of Sue Richards - when she's visable, right? 'Cos otherwise, duh...
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: You know, once the larynx goes, the scintillating conversation goes with it...
[Deadpool liquefies]

I seriously cannot wait for this movie.

Seriously.

Cyclops: Cable is out there -- up there -- fighting the Silver Surfer.
Deadpool: The Silver Surfer.
Cyclops: Yes.
Deadpool: Cosmic-powered alien from another planet.
Cyclops: Yes.
Deadpool: Herald of Galactus, the planet-eater, stranded on Earth when he betrayed his boss.
Cyclops: Yes.
Deadpool: Well, that was the coolest expository dialogue
I have ever had!

Hee.

Sequels and Remakes A-go-go!

2008-05-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

I had no idea her philosophy was that flawed. She goes, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a kid? To have this fresh, clean slate which we could fill. A little clean spirit, innocent, and to fill it with good ideas."

Yeah, yeah, how about this? If you're so fucking altruistic, why don't you leave the little clean spirit wherever it is right now? Okay? Horrible act, childbirth. Nightmare. Bringing … I would never bring a kid to this fucking planet.

To my diseased mind, this is a lot like how sequels should be treated. What sequel is ever as good as the imagination of it's existence? Well, obviously, some can be named... some genres lend themselves fully and completely to sequels, if their roots are already serialized. Spiderman --> Spiderman 2. Evil Dead --> Evil Dead 2. Star Trek --> Star Trek 4.

For the most part, though, sequels might as well just be called "We, the studios, are going to bet you $10 that you'll like this movie less than the original," and all the moviegoers take them up on that bet, expecting to be proven wrong. I don't know who to hate more. This goes for remakes (particularly international remakes) and prequels, too.

In the coming year or two, we have Cloverfield 2, live-action Akira, Boondock Saint 2, Rambo V (you heard me), Star Trek (the prequel one with Sylar), two X-Men prequels (one with DEADPOOL! WOO!), Spiderman 4, another Routh-y Superman film (which I liked a LOT more than I thought I would), Batman: The Heath Ledger One That No-one Will Ever Forget, and my personal favorite, Hamlet II.

Is this cool, or what? I can't tell.

Pee-sychology

2008-05-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

"I believe the cost of life is Death,
and we will all pay that in full.
Everything else should be a gift.
We paid the cover charge of life,
when we were born"

Ok, I just needed a good quote to go up there, since Wiki has NO QUOTES for psychology. That, I think, is an interesting take on psychology: the largest single repository of human-powered knowledge doesn't have anything to say about the science of the human mind.

But no, this post is about Bill Hicks' favorite psychological topic, advertising. In particular, psychological irrational pricing. I will explain... no, there is too much. I will sum up:

According to a 1997 study published in the Marketing Bulletin, approximately 60% of prices in advertising material ended in the digit 9, 30% ended in the digit 5, 7% ended in the digit 0 and the remaining seven digits combined accounted for only slightly over 3% of prices evaluated.[1] In the UK, before the withdrawal of the half penny coin in 1984, prices often ended in 99½. This is still seen today in petrol (gasoline) pricing ending in 9/10's of the local currency's smallest denomination, for example in the US the price of a gallon of gasoline almost always ending in US$0.009 (i.e. US$3.289).

You get it? All right, I'm sure everyone gets it.

What I don't get is, why does this still work? There's no psychological or economical reason for this anymore. Why is my gas $1.359 per litre? Why is my cereal $4.89? For that matter, why is the DeWalt kit I want $299.99? Does that extra penny saved by the retailer really mean that they sell 30,001 kits, instead of 30,000? Is there really one person out there who sees the $299.99 and thinks "Wow, that's a good deal! If it was a penny higher, I wouldn't buy it!"

If there is, can we find them and slap the fuck out of them?

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing,
kill yourself.

Advertising is the only productive field of psychology left today, and it's only productive because the average IQ of the nation is being forcefully kept low just so advertising will have someone to work on. The second people start thinking rationally, the moment people start really seeing the world around them, the instant mankind thinks there might be something bigger in the world than television, advertising would cease to be relevant.

Which is why advertising will never die.

Seriously, though. If you are, do. No, really. There's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No, this is not a joke, if you're going: "There's going to be a joke coming." There's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked, and you are fucking us. Kill yourself, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself.

Planting seeds.

I know all the marketing people are going: "He's doing a joke." There's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations.

I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too. "Oh, you know what Bill's doing? He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man. I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags!

"Oh, you know what Bill's doing now? He's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. Lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research. Huge market. He's doing a good thing." God damn it, I'm not doing that, you scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!

"Oh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.

"Oh, the trapped dollar. Big dollar, huge dollar. Good market, look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar …" How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?

"What did you do today, honey?"

"Oh, we made arsenic childhood food. Now, good night. Yeah, we just said, you know, is your baby really too loud? You know … yeah, the mums will love it, yeah." Sleep like fucking children, don't you? This is your world, isn't it?

YouTube it, motherfucker.

Fallacious? Outrageous!

2008-05-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks for coming, please stay for the end credits. If you're wondering who the best boy is, it's somebody's nephew, and, um, don't forget to validate your parking, and to all you good people in the Midwest, sorry we said fuck so much.

Go out, and rent this movie. No no, don't stop to argue, don't claim you don't have a DVD player, don't tell me you don't like violent movies. Shut the fuck up, go out, and rent this movie.

Then buy it.

Ok, we got a bunch to cover today. This might take a while to type out, I have to keep pausing to do real work as it rolls in, so if there's big pauses in the text, just sort of skip ahead and assume that it wasn't anything important.

Yeah, like that one just there.

"Work Gets Done In The Time Allotted"

Ok, this little gold-plated platitude is heard around my office every few minutes, spoken by a boss who assumes that if he keeps saying it often enough, it will somehow become true (sort of like the Bible). Unlike the Bible, this gets consistently proven wrong, but that never stops it, or even slows it down. It's got logic-proof armor-plating. It slams into the Walls of Reality, and just ploughs through. Yee-haw. It's like Disneyland.

"The Internet is a waste of time,
and that's exactly what's right about it."

William Gibson said that. The author of Neuromancer, Bladerunner, and pretty much the only decent technological prognosticator since Aasimov and Clarke. I finally think I agree with him, too. I'll sit down at my computer, and reflexively hit the ol' Mozilla icon. I'll bloink around on my Bookmark Bar buttons for a while, read Slashdot, do my Kingdom of Loathing turns, read xkcd and Garfield Minus Garfield... then I'll wonder what the hell I'm doing, shut OFF My laptop, and go do something else.

I'll do this six or seven times a day. I'll habitually sit down and try to waste time, but pretty soon my conscious mind says "And we're doing this, why?" I think I'm going through the DTs, because I actually put time into going to sites I HAVEN'T been to in a while, just to have something to do, then I'll shake my head, and go pick up clothes, or sweet the deck, or paint the cat, or something. Or sometimes, if I'm really at a loss, I'll use my computer for work.

I know!

They want to deliver vast amounts of information
over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not
something you just dump something on.

It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled,
and if they are filled, when you put your message in,
it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone
that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material,
enormous amounts of material.

But that? Still fuckin' funny. YouTube continues to entertain me, but only infrequently. I wait for people to send me the gems.

One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs.

Alfred Hitchcock, 1966. Man, was he on to something. A conversation at Throkette's 2nd birthday party (obviously not with HER) made me realize that I'm definitely not the only one bored with 99% of TV. Most of my friends rely entirely on DVDs to watch television programming, especially serial shows like Dexter or House. I watch them when they air mostly because I don't have time to rent a season and sit down to watch them, but if a show isn't on at a convenient time, I don't even try to watch it (Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, etc). SOMEDAY I'll get those on DVD, but since I have kids, it ain't anytime soon. I mean, we got Season 2 of The Muppets Tonight (OLD SCHOOL Muppets... ask your parents) and we've only seen Disc 1 of 4. The only show I've liked enough to watch ALL of via the power of the DVD is Farscape, and thats just because it's so good even good shows say "Damn, that's good."

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms. ~ Alan Coren

Hee.

Maybe I'm just getting old. Maybe I'm aware of my mortality, and I don't want to look back and admire the piles of timesink I created with my finite existence. Maybe I'm deluding myself into thinking I'm better than the mass media. Maybe the mass media is deluding itself into thinking it's good enough for me. Maybe I don't eat enough cheese. Look, that dog has a puffy tail! SHINY TRINKET!

Also, please watch the below trailer, and then go see this movie.

The Uniqueness Of Adequatulence

2008-05-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

Dave: "Bill McNeil is ...adequate...
I'm sorry Bill."

Bill: "Sorry? Sorry, you weren't
singled out and deemed adequate?"

"...After all adequacy is the hallmark of great journalism."

"What is adequate journalism if not great journalism?"

"We'll finish this later, after I fulfill my duties
with my customary adequaucivity."

"It's one thing, of course, to know you're adequate,
but to have a fellow member of the press stand up
and say 'Yes, you sir are adequate,'
Let me tell you it is a very special feeling."

"Well, I'm off to astonish the world with more
feats of adequataqaticism."

"Very adequately sir, I'm virtually
bursting with adequatulence."

If you Google nearly any of those words, you'll only get one thing... Bill MacNeil's review. That's the sort of uniqueness that is the aspiration of everyone in the literary arts (people in the visual arts often don't get Google'd enough to matter, or referenced in popular culture).

For most of my stories, if you Google the titles, you get a lot of unrelated stuff, but there's typically tons of it. It's hard to come up with anything unique anymore.

But I did it. A story I've been working on for a few days sprang up from the title, which just sort of wandered into my head sometime last week. I've still been sorting out the plot, and the setting (I haven't even started characterisation yet, which is rare for me!) but I've been afraid to punch in the title and see how many people have used it yet.

But I did. Wanna know how many Google hits I got?

Four.

And none were in English.

Now my brain is frantically trying to develop it. It is, without a doubt, the least violent story I've got going on right now (there might not even be bleeding ANYWHERE in the book), and I finally might have an outlet for all the 'funny' stuff I try to write that never fits into my more serious stuff. Whenever I try to write 'funny', it usually comes out as a weak attempt at Discworldian snark, perhaps more akin to Hugh Laurie's books. (I feel nervous even mentioning Discworld in comparison to myself, even to say I suck next to it).

So here goes... the first new story I've been happy with in about two years.

Yay!

NOW I'm Farting Pixie Dust...

2008-05-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

My wife was worried that I wouldn't. Well, she needn't worry, and here's why:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Now, this might not SEEM like a big deal, but let's run down a few key, important parts.

Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine - This is important, and a good thing.

Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed / Sabretooth - This is ridiculously awesome.

Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson / Deadpool - This is the single coolest thing that could happen in 2009.

Some of you may recall my review of Blade 3, which was "Holy crap, this movie was fantasically retarded, blah blah blah, holy snapping ass-cakes, except Ryan Reynolds was just awesome." And it's true... Reynolds is a great actor. He's dry, he's hilarious, he's snarky, and he never looks like he's over-reaching.

Some of you may ALSO recall my review of Phantoms, which was fairly glowing (despite what the critics say), but one part in particular should stand out: "Liev Schreiber completely makes this movie, shifting it from 'well-made horror' to 'creepy-assed awesomeness'."

Both of these guys will now be playing two of my favorite Marvel characters of all time.

For those of you who may not be 'in the know' with Deadpool, here's the short version: Weapon X project, same as Wolverine. Given Wolverine's regenerating ability. Has incredibly advanced cancer, which means tumors are constantly spreading and being healed, especially in his brain. Consequently, he is SO INSANE, he actually knows he's in a comic book, and takes advantage of that fact.

Here he is, happily reunited with his thought bubbles:

And here he is, performing Street Fighter II moves onto teenaged girls:

Fuck yeah.

We Now Return You To...

2008-05-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

... your regularly scheduled randomosity.

How's THAT?!

Also, I'm back all up in the Kingdom of Loathing. I've got a Seal Clubber, a Turtle Tamer and a Sauceror. So far, the Seal Clubber is BY FAR the deadliest one... for now. Then again, he drank four bottles of used vampire blood (which means it's actually third-hand blood, not second-hand) and that made him strong! STRONG! Strong, and gross.

Seriously, join this game. Fight Goblins at Cobb's Knob and collect Knob Gobblers... fight Grassy Gnolls at Degrassi Knoll... and kick Wolfmen in the nards. That's right. Wolfmen's got nards.

It's Just A Ride...

2008-05-08T15:28:00.001-07:00

The world is like a ride at an amusement park.
And when you choose to go on it, you think that it's real,
because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride
goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and
chills, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's very loud
and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride
for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real,
or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered,
and they come back to us. They say 'Hey! Don't worry,
don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.'

And we...kill those people. Ha ha ha.

'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP!
Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account,
and my family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride.
But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that,
you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it
doesn't matter because: it's just a ride. And we can change
it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work,
no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between
fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks
on your doors, buy guns, and close yourselves off.

The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what
you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.
Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence
each year, and instead we spend it feeding, clothing and
educating the poor of the world, which it would many times
over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space
together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.

I think I forgot something yesterday.

*looks down at yesterday's post, arches his eyebrows, and frowns ashamedly*

Yup, definitely forgot something.

See, this is what makes me think I AM bipolar. Right now, looking back a scant 24 hours, I can NOT truly recall how rough I felt yesterday. I can remember DESCRIBING how it felt, because I always take notes on that sort of thing, but it's a lot like the verbal description of REALLY good food... unless you experience it, it's just so much printed text, functional and useless.

Today? I feel good. I feel pretty good. I have to go try to explain to a complete stranger that he bought my car, and it's now his problem, which means being confrontational, and if any of my dear readers know me, they know I'm somewhere at the Newtonian opposite of confrontationalism. Then I have to go walk for an hour in a big circle with an open wound on the bottom of one foot and a gimped ankle on the other side. Then I have to go home and somehow get all my kids into bed before 8:30 so that I can uphold a promise to some friends to get some Stars turns out of the way, which means I have to be online about an hour and a half earlier than normal.

But I feel good.

Who knows, maybe I'll feel like putting my foot through someone tomorrow, and I'll feel like farting pixie-dust on Saturday.

Sleep tight.

I have been a comedian for a long time,
so forgive me while I plaster on a fake smile
and plough through this shit one more time.

The Sine Wave Of Happines

2008-05-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow
is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
~ L. M. Montgomery

There's the 'peak' sine optimism there... tomorrow is perfect, because it has no mistakes. Sadly, that fails to take into account the sum accumulation of all the mistakes in life up UNTIL that point. It's rather like sitting in a little rowboat, facing away from a tidal wave, and looking at the placid water and thinking "Boy, it's pretty."

See, the top of the sine wave can be considered "good", and the bottom of the sine wave can be considered "bad". As is the natural order of things, everything waffles back and forth between varying amplitudes of good and bad, happy and sad, happy and angry, happy and depressed. It's rather unfair that the top of the sine wave only has "happy", while the troughs have everything else conceivable. If you're happy, you're happy, but if you're NOT happy, there's LOTS of things you could be.

Now, there's nothing in math that says the baseline HAS to be equidistant from the peaks and troughs. y=0 might very well be A/4 below peak, or A/8, which means that the bulk of the system is well below baseline. I call this the "reality dip". It's composed of sour cream, garlic powder, lemon juice, basil, and blind hopelessness, and it goes well with Ruffles.

Unfortunately, it seems I have no picture for that.

Now, a friend of mine has suggested that I try to figure out the pattern, and then plan happy things for the peaks, to take advantage of them, since doing happy things in a trough doesn't even cancel out. Throwing happy into a trough is like throwing coins into a pond... it's the thought that counts.

Spongebob Squarepants - The Best Day Ever just came on Winamp.

Hee.

Now, you'd think that by adding more energy to the system, the application of stress and circumstance, would change the sine, and it does. However, it decreases the baseline for periodic sections of the curve, so even the peaks don't even broach the baseline (which is now about A/16 above peak). If the amplitude doesn't increase, the frequency decreases, so the peaks get farther apart. I know I spent a couple weeks in a trough a while ago. then I peaked for about four or five days (in time to go see a movie) and then troughed again, and peaked long enough to see Ironman, get a raise, and sell my car.

But the car came back, the very next day (ha ha ha, fucking funny, I know) and it's apparently broken. The guy's pissed, and might want his money back, which means I traded a fully functional 1991 Taurus for a BROKEN Taurus, which will go back to sitting idle on my front lawn. I've gotten a buddy of mine to agree to look at it tomorrow, after I go look at it today and get some information about what's wrong (battery, starter, ignition, or my personal theory, he'S FUCKING OUT OF GAS). Coupled with the loss of the desperately needed $900, two sick kids, and who knows that the fuck else, this trough looks big enough for me to actually move all of my stuff into, and maybe start paying rent. At least it's shady during the day.

EDITED TO ADD:

See, I don't think I'm bipolar or anything. Bipolarism, also known as 'manic-depression' or 'the wandering happy-sad whackies', is characterized by alternating periods of hypomania, or elevated moods (elevated good and bad ones). I know I'm not bipolar, because my doctor said I wasn't after ten seconds of me describing my symptoms. He must be a very good doctor, to know so quickly. I'm lucky to have him.

Irregardless, bipolarism is like ADD... often misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Perhaps I'm just overly reactive. Perhaps I'm too emotional for the world as it exists, or too unemotional for the world as it should exist. Perhaps the constant, unending thoughts of anger and violence are extremely common, and I'm just really bad at dealing with it (most guys I know like violent movies just as much as me, so that's actually pretty likely).

Metal ductility is a funny thing. A softer steel is better for construction, because of the stress/strain diagram.

There is very little strain for quite a large amount of stress, until it hits the first limit. Then the strain accumulates quite quickly. Strain actually decreases as the load is further increased, as the internal structure of the material fails. If I suddenly don't feel strained anymore, I'm going to seek medical help.

I was raised a very particular way. It was a sort of laissez-faire childhood, with neither post-divorce parents really regarding me as much more than someone who ate all the food and didn't do the laundry. Sometimes they'd speak to me. I remember those days. If I was hurt, I was told to walk it off. If I was upset, I was told to tough it out. If I was lonely, I was told to... well, I wasn't told anything, because I was lonely. Who the fuck was I going to tell? My mettle was tested, and my metal was tempered (man, I kick ass at puns). Instead of the soft, ductile, flexible, and ultimately useful steel that's most commonly used, I because quench-hardened steel. The stress-strain diagram is almost a perfectly vertical line, with a little 'tick' at the top, indicating where the steel does not bend, but in fact shatters in what is known as "catastrophic failure" in engineering circles. Look it up, kids... it's cool. It's why sometimes man's buildings say "No more!" and then lay down for a nap.

Still, that's just a metaphor. My brain isn't made of 350W beam-grade steel (if it was, I couldn't balance). And it certainly isn't made of 800T. For all I know, I'm still on the way up, the steel creaking but not deforming by any really measurable degree. Every steel building has steel somewhere on that first slope, enduring, maintaining.

After I wrote the above part, I went to get a bagel and a donut (someone brought them to the break room today), and I felt a little bit better. I don't know if it was from the catharsicide of typing out a bunch of random psychobabble bullshit or the promise of baked goods. I'm going to go get more baked goods and see if it happens again (though not the donuts... Tim Hortons uses some sort of frosting sugar that really REALLY hurts my teeth). Stupid Timmies.

This is probably my longest non-review blog post. I started writing this every couple of days for the past few months, then I realized that I was just whining, and I erased it. Then I'd post something happy. Then a few days later I'd post something deep and confession-y, then I'd erase it and talk about something else. Right now, I know I'm in a trough, so writing this seems perfectly reasonable. In a few hours, I might be in a post-lunch happy-plateau (which I call a hapeau) and this whole post will seem attention-getting and retarded, and maybe I'll be right. I think I'm right now. I'll think something else is right later. I'll think completely opposite things when I go to bed and when I wake up. Most of the time I go to bed happy and comforted that, when I wake up, whatever I was mad about suddenly won't matter.

That stopped happening about a month ago. Maybe I'm gaining better perspective, or maybe the things I worry about really ARE getting more important. Who knows?

I'll probably erase this this afternoon.

EDITED TO ADD EVEN FURTHER:

And here is, an hour later, and I hit the 'fear' stage. This is always the stage where I've calmed down a little bit, had a bite to eat, rinsed out some things, and have come full circle to 'thinking'. I have an overwhelming desire to erase this post, and just put something clever, like "See?" in it's place. I PARTICULARLY want to erase it before Throkky reads it, which is where most of the fear comes from. I run on fear. Fear, and unleaded Cheerios.

I did feel a little better when I went for my walk (that is to say, it felt like my insides were churning) and I tried some primal scream therapy in the privacy of my head (it's fairly soundproof in there). Then I went and bought a couple bucks worth of lunch from Shoppers Drug Mart (where some things are 50% off, and some are on sale for MORE THAN THEIR REGULAR PRICE! Math! It's what's for dinner!) Now I have my pink apple soda and my rice cakes, and I want to hit ctrl-A --> delete --> publish. I really, really do.

I'm not going to this time. Fuck YOU, Mr Brain Chemistry! Fuck YOU!

EDITED YET MORE: (I know, I know, stop it)

And the fear is gone. Throkky called, she's in town, so I have LOTS of time to erase this. I'm already rationalizing. I could do it, no-one would know, since very few people read this (and with the possible exception of Sleeping Kyle, none regularly). Even so.

I looked into it, and I'm not responsible for the car. He took it for a test drive, he pronounced it sound (and in fact talked me down because he suspected it might have problems). We both signed all the doccy-ments that say that it belongs to him now, and money has exchanged hands. The fact that I'm taking two damn days and calling in favors with mechanics is just proof that I'm a nice fucking guy.

So outside it's the rainy apocalypse. My fondest wish right now is to just go outside, and lay on the hood of my car with my iPod safely protected inside a plastic baggie, and just... enjoy the rain and the wind. Instead, I have to produce site plan drawings for a fictional development for our senile architect.

Life is sweet.

EDITED TO ADD:

There. Upbeat.

Not bipolar at all.

Well, I Think It's A Good Quote...

2008-05-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Architects know that some kinds of
design problems are more personal
than others. One of the cleanest,
most abstract design problems is
designing bridges. There your job
is largely a matter of spanning
a given distance with the least material.

The other end of the spectrum is
designing chairs. Chair designers
have to spend their time thinking
about your butt.

~ Paul Graham

I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen...

2008-05-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

Can you believe Christopher McQuarrie didn't win any awards for Way Of The Gun? That's just a fucking sick joke, to me. He won an Academy Award for The Usual Suspects, and then when he wants to do another movie with total creative control, he is told by every single studio "Hell, no." So, Benicio Del Toro convinces him to do a crime film again, because that way he'll have the most creative control it's possible to get, and he makes one of the only truly criminal crime films of the last two DECADES, and it just gets canned by critics who say it wasn't like The Usual Suspects.

NO SHIT!!

Morons...

...

Not money, 15 million dollars.
Fifteen million dollars is not money,
its a motive with a universal adaptor on it. ~ Sarno

To tell you the truth,
I don't think this is a brains type of operation. ~ Longbaugh

I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen. ~ Parker

Longbaugh: Why is that a big deal?
Employee: Because nobody brings up sex with dead people!
Longbaugh: Course they don't, it's sick.
Employee: You brought it up....
Longbaugh: To say I never did it.
Employee: I didn't ask that....
Longbaugh: You should.

This is probably why my wife thinks that my little mental health breaks on the weekend aren't good for me.

Ok, let's see, what's in the news today?

Why my wife doesn't let me buy bacon.

Cheer up, retard!

Inappropriate!

There, you happy now?

One last great conversation.

Longbaugh: Nightstick, flashlight, bulletproof vest.
Joe Sarno: Fuckin' utility belts, right?
Longbaugh: Fuckin' sign on his head reading "Why Bother?"
Joe Sarno: Hey, they love to say shit like "ascertain".
Longbaugh: "Surveillance."
Joe Sarno: "Affirmative."
Longbaugh: "I need backup."
Joe Sarno: "Adjudicate."
Longbaugh: "Adjudicate"?
Joe Sarno: Yeah, well...

Yippie Ki-Yay, Motherfunnngnggzzzgzgzgzerror

2008-04-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

.
Crap in a hat. Six consecutive Mondays, six consecutive seizures. Garfield ain't got nothin' on me.
.
"Your idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning knowing you haven't a single engagement for the entire week. You are cradled in a white paper cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon."
.
"God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday."
.

That's how I roll, too.
.

Birds Are Actually Quantum Birds! Run!

2008-04-18T09:03:00.001-07:00

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.

Or if you're observing a quantum event taking place on your own retina, your magical brainwaves make the reaction go so slow that it tells you where you are on Earth.

The wierd part is, I'm not making up the second one.

How birds use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate has puzzled researchers for decades. In recent years, a growing body of evidence has pointed to the possibility that a weak magnetic field can influence the outcome of a certain type of chemical reaction involving the recombination of pairs of ions in bird retinas. The trouble is that the ion recombination is known to happen too quickly for the Earth's weak magnetic field to have any effect. Now it looks as if the quantum Zeno effect explains all, says one researcher (abstract). This is the watched-pot-never-boils effect in which the act of observing a quantum system maintains it for longer than expected. That's extraordinary news because it means a quantum sensor is determining the macroscopic behavior of living birds.

Now this is really, really cool to me.

And also terrifying, because pigeons have a better grasp of quantum mathematics than humans.

Scary, n'est pas?

Also... giggle.

Eating Healthy Will Fucking Kill You Dead

2008-04-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

* "Doctors cure Nature’s mistakes
with mistakes of their own."
~ Leonid S. Sukhorukov

More specifically, scientists tracking over a hundred thousand people taking verying amounts of vitamins and minerals found that the people who took more DIED FASTER. In particular:

...

Beta-carotene was tested in 24 trials, vitamin A in 16 trials, vitamin C in 33, vitamin E in 54 and selenium in 21 trials. Researchers found that 17,880 of 136,023 study participants who took the supplements died (13.1 per cent), compared to 10,136 of 96,527 participants who did not take the supplements (10.5 per cent).

The antioxidants also appeared to offer no benefit to people with gastrointestinal, heart, neurological, eye, skin, rheumatoid, kidney and endocrine diseases, according to the authors. The authors believe that although low levels of antioxidants consumed in fruits and vegetables may be beneficial for health, they may act as "double-edged" swords, adversely affecting "key physiological processes." In the study, they link vitamin A to an increase in oxidative damage, while beta-carotene "may act as a co-carcinogen" or cancer-causing agent.

Awesome. Who feels healthy?

There, See? I Have A Topic

2008-04-15T09:20:00.001-07:00

.
I've done two posts in the past week, but I always discard them by the time I'm finished writing, for assorted reasons (ironically, the reasons I do that are covered by the posts that I deleted.) Now, however, I genuinely have something to talk about.

A while ago, someone in my office was in a car accident. She's fine now (and truth be told, she was fine THEN, but she didn't let that on). She's been back at work for about a week. The thing I want to talk about... why do people feel it is now their job to walk up to her and talk about car accidents they've witnessed recently? Our office manager had her cornered this morning, talking about a car accident she passed downtown.

To me, this is akin to someone getting out of the hospital after getting a tumor removed, and only having people talk to them about OTHER people with tumors, or someone getting out of a weight loss clinic and only having people talk to them about OTHER fat people. Yes, she was in a car accident, but I think I missed the leap of logic that instantly ascribes to her the property of "wants to hear about OTHER car accidents".

It confuses me. Arg.

As long as YouTube is teh unblock-ed, I'll try to add something here.

"Post More Often"

2008-04-09T13:16:00.001-07:00

.
Be ye serious?

I've told people many times, if you want me to blog more often, then leave me some evidence that you're READING any of this crap. Leave a comment down below, so I have something to show for my efforts other than trolling / phishing bots saying that my post was "excellent interesting", and would I please like to click these links without knowing what they are? (I wouldn't).

This blog has no theme. It has no goal. It has no purpose. It has no porpoise. It has no sports equipment or marine mammals whatsoever. It's just where I post random crap when I feel like it, as long as it's not controversial or offensive or any other long adjective. I haven't felt like it, lately. I haven't felt like ANYTHING lately. All I've wanted to do is just go off somewhere and be alone for a week, and sleep. Instead I'm back to working six days a week, and I have to get a whole shitload of stuff organized for the Energy Fair, and I have to do two complete sets of transfer drawings, CAD and Photoshopped, for the Kelson guys, and they want it fairly soon, plus all the family-man crap I do at home that keeps me busy until sometime after 9:30, or what I call "The Magical Southpark Freedom Time".

If you want to hear from me, if you want me to blog some stuff, then give me things to blog about. Drop me a comment, send me an article, do SOMETHING. I'm tired of feeding the void.

.

Happy Gowk-Hunting Day!

2008-03-31T09:07:00.001-07:00

I hope everyone's ready to get harvesting those spaghetti trees!

Well, ok, people have been on my ass to get me to blog more, even though these same people talk to me fairly frequently, and are often more up to date on the shennannigans and goings-on in my life than I am, mostly because my wife tells them everything, but that doesn't mean that they're going to STOP anytime soon, so Throkky, Michy, Grimmy, et al, this one's for you.

...

Let's see, what's in the news today...

Oh, yeah, I've been officially child-proofed. I'd go into detail about this, but it's much easier to just go watch the video!

Neat, huh?

So last night, it was announced at our monthly Earthsave Vegetarian Potluck that there would be no more Earthsave Vegetarian Potlucks. Wanna know why? I'll tell you. Earthsave, the organization, contacted the people in charge of the Kamloops Earthsave potluck, and told them that they had to be vegan, or they would be no longer be affiliated with the Earthsave organization. (Vegetarian = eggs and dairy allowed. Vegan = no fun.) Earthsave believes that by allowing vegetarian food, we are not really sincere in helping save the planet, and we can apparently just go fornicate ourselves with an egg noodle covered in cheese sauce. However, I, and almost everyone there, looks at it like this:

When the potluck WAS vegan, they had about... ten people show up. When it went to vegetarian, they've had from 40-60 people show up. So... they could either have ten people show up with vegan food, while everyone else stays home to eat meat, OR they could have ten people show up with vegan food, and a further thirty to fifty people show up with vegetarian food they likely wouldn't have been having anyways, thus promoting awareness and a sense of community with a larger group.

See, the big problem with policy makers in almost ANY field is that they have NO concept of how to pick battles.

The upshot of it is, the potlucks will go on as normal, but we will no longer be allowed to call ourselves Earthsave (which is fine, since they seem to be composed of dicks). We're thinking of calling ourselves Earthsafe, so we don't have to change the stationary too much.

Ok, that's all I got for today... I have to go design a two acre parkade now.

Also, please check out Blog Part The Second, Marble's Mass-anthropy.

It's worth it.

Bland Blah-Blahs, Blog Blocking, Blast!

2008-03-20T10:18:00.001-07:00

Alliteration is.... fun.

Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be oneself.

Thanks, Kierkegard, now I feel bad about myself. Dillhole.

Anyways, I'm just testing out more of the advanced features of the remote blog function. I started this e-mail an hour ago, but I got fucking run over by the seizure fairy and just spent a good chunk of my morning staring at my screen and watching myself sweat from several feet above my own body. It's fun. You should try it. My stomach has now settled down, so I figure I can keep going with this. Yippie skippy.

"Now, MJ, why are you feeling so bad," you may ask me. "You took several says off!" Well, I took several days off and spent them in a tiny room with my entire family, on a bed that was designed with a tiny person in mind... a tiny person with perfect posture and very narrow shoulders. Who doesn't breathe. When I tried to use this strange man's bed for three days, it resulted in almost zero sleep, which means, that's right, Al, which means I'm tired as fuck and imagining that I'm carrying a small child through a desert which is at the same time up a flight of wooden steps, while eyes follow me. I'm also wearing a hat in this one, which is different than the person in the hat following me. Hey, don't ask me, my brain makes up the hallucinations. I just try not to barf.

And we're back at work after an insane five-day hiatus the likes of which I haven't seen since Pippette was born. It's wierd. I feel out of place. People seem happy to see me, though, which flies in the face of all available logic.

I also bought a new(ish) car!

Awww, yeah.

Peace!

Dig Up, Stupid!

2008-03-14T14:31:00.001-07:00

More specifically, dig up here, stupid.

Did you go there? You did? Good.

Buffalo Finger Of Death

2008-03-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

Testing, Testing

2008-02-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

EIN! ZEWI! DREI! VIER!

You only love me when you're down....
You only love me when you're down....
You only love me when you're down....
You only love me when you're down....

Allrighty... it seems the office security was, for a while there, so tight that it choked some functionality to death. Let's hear it for paranoia!

My Angry Letter To Apple

2008-02-13T23:42:00.001-08:00

Dear Apple,

About two weeks ago (two Thursdays, to be exact), while getting out of my car in the afternoon at my office, I plucked my iPod Shuffle from the tape-deck converter cord and dropped it into my coat pocket, as I have done three or four times a day, every day, for several months. It is a well-practiced, well-rehearsed move. In spite of this, I missed this one time, and unbeknownst to me, my iPod fell between my shirt and coat, bounced off of my leg, or the edge of the car, and was swallowed by the snowy, muddy morass of our unplowed parking lot. I did not notice the iPod was missing for four hours, when it was NOT in my coat pocket upon getting back INTO the car.

Every day I checked the area near my desk, and the area around where I had parked that fateful day, to no avail. My iPod was nowhere to be seen, though to be fair, the snow and ice were very thick (parking lot not plowed, as I said) and I could have dropped an 80's style Sony Walkman in that snow, and never found it. I had given up all hope, and this very day, I started looking on ncix.com for a replacement, finding a Creative mp3 player that had twice the capacity, and almost half the price I had paid for your product. I left my office, feeling rather bouyant that I would soon have a replacement music player, and I could finally retire my Rocky Soundtrack tape to it's place in my basement.

But no... no, today, after the big thaw we've had over the past two days, I walked past that fateful parking spot, and there, perched on top of a chunk of brown ice, was my iPod Shuffle. I stopped, agape, turned, and picked it up. It was dirty, it was scratched, and it has little droplets of salty water dripping out of the speaker jack. I brought it home, dried it out over a heater vent, and then cleaned it with Q-tips and alcohol. The dirt revealed numerous scratches, and since it has been two weeks in a busy parking lot, this iPod has no doubt been run over many, many times.

My anger reached a peak when, upon tentatively placing the iPod headphones into the appropriate receptacle, and flicking the little button to "On", the green light appeared, signaling the product was working. I pressed "Play", and what should greet my ears, but the soothing sounds of Minerva by the Deftones. My iPod was in perfect working order.

I can contain my anger no longer. Why, despite the massive technological achievements of Man, has no product I have EVER bought been capable of withstanding this sort of abuse until now? Nothing I have ever owned, including objects with no moving parts and homogenous composition, such as a fork, would have been capable of withstanding that sort of abuse over a period of two weeks, ten to twenty vehicles parking on it, two freezes, two thaws, and thirteen days submerged in snow and ice and mud. No product I ever WILL own will survive this sort of abuse, save my trusty iPod Shuffle.

Damn you, Steve Jobs. Damn you, Apple. My expectations have forever been lifted on the wings of hope. I hope you're fucking happy.

Sincerely,

MJ The Happy Apple Owner

A $12,000,000,000 "Up Yours" From Russia, With Love

2008-02-11T10:21:00.001-08:00

Economics is, at root, the study of incentives:
how people get what they want, or need, especially
when other people want or need the same thing.

I am referring to this article hnyah. To sum up:

Russia has agreed to write off $12bn (£6bn) of Iraqi debt built up by the regime of former leader Saddam Hussein to buy military supplies. In return, Russian companies, including oil giant Lukoil, will be given access to invest up to $4bn in Iraq. Lukoil is expected to develop oilfields including West Qurna, one of the country's largest. Russia said the deal was meant to help rebuild Iraq's economy and infrastructure following the US-led invasion, which it opposed.

HAH! Oh, man, I wonder who's going to come out this looking better in terms of world opinion (which matters much more than reality).

The world operates not on reality,
but on the perception of reality.

Sneakers. Sweet movie, and they had a point. America basically busts down the door and shoots everyone, and then Russia comes in and patches everyone up, peacefully, with the only thing that really changes how the world works: money. Sure, violence and force change things for the present, but money is needed to change things for the future, and it all depends where that money comes from. The nukes dropped on Japan basically gave them the incentive to become the single densest powerhouse economy on the planet, because they realized that force was not the way to respond.

America, you just keep aiming missiles at Russia and protecting yourself from Russian missiles being aimed by people who probably don't care anymore. The world has moved on from the Biggest Kid On The Block mentality, and we're all waiting for you to catch up. Come on! Look, Canada will even slow down and wait for you. Want a candy bar?

DINGER: YouTube is blocked at work now. CURSE YOU!!!! *shakes fist*

It should be noted that BlogSpot became blocked at work while I was typing, this, too, so I had to wait until I got home. They are cracking down haa-aa-aard at work (I really want to know who is spending time on "mistresstraining.com" and "dominatrixtraining.com" in my office...)

I Don't Know What We're Yelling About!

2008-02-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

"The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves--the creature of habits and infirmities."

For the first time in quite a long time, I was struck by the inspiration fairy this morning, stemming, as always, from music. However, the creative rivulets of thought were particularly random this morning. The Rocky soundtrack (the old one) got me thinking about the old Rambo movie (Stallone, you know) and somehow carried over to the book Stardust by Neil Gaiman, and there was some sort of record-skip to 300, and then the Rocky sad song played while I thought about 300, and out of nowhere, the first few chapters of a story leapt into my head. Pretty much everything but character names, but I have the tropes almost fully fleshed out for the five major early players, and hints as to where the plot goes.

"After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity."

And while we're on the subject of creativity, I just want you all to realize that someone thought that the subject matter of the following video was a good idea (and I'm guilty of agreeing, I used to watch this show, mostly because Thuy Trang was hawt).

And The VHS Shall Inherit The Earth

2008-02-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.
~Book of Job

Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that amateurs built the Ark.
Professionals built the Titanic.

Sometimes it amazes me just how much Throkky knows about me. Here I go on, day by day, wondering how well she knows me, if at all, because I both know little about her and rarely speak of myself... and then she ups and gets me "Demon Knight" on VHS. See, that's love, right there.

Along movie lines, did you know that in the first Rambo movie (actually titled "First Blood"), there is only one death, and it's accidental? ONE DEATH. The character of John Rambo is created and cemented (and filmed in Hope, BC!) in a movie that has but one death. Yes, it's a violent movie, but it's a character piece more than anything, sort of like Rocky. Rocky has one fight, and no-one's even knocked out... the rest of the movie is a sobering, dramatic look at a small group of working-class Philadelphia schmucks (with a bloody beautiful soundtrack, too).

And what happens in the new Rambo? Slightly under 3 deaths per minute, if you average it out. Thats one death every 20 seconds. It would have been considerably less, per minute, if they hadn't edited out the damn plot, but the first half of that movie is very true to the Rambo character. I liked it a lot.

But watch "First Blood", and watch "Rocky", and tell me that movies need big budgets to be good anymore.

*sigh*

Thanks, Billy Zane.

And Billy Zane's best sequence ever.
(NOTE: Stop halfway if you're squeamish)

Ok, Now I'm Pissed

2008-02-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

War does not end strife - it sows it.
War does not end hatred - it feeds it.
For those who argue war is a necessary evil, I say you are half right.
War is evil, but it is not necessary. War cannot be a necessary evil,
because non-violence is a necessary good. The two cannot co-exist.

This article in particular just blew me away.

So many things about this article caused tremendous despair. Let's try to sort these suckers out.

1.) America believes that it somehow needs to protect itself from Russia.
2.) Poland believes it needs American help to protect it from Russia.
3.) This wasn't even 'front page news' on the BBC.

I would just like to grab all of the First World leaders by their necks, shake them swiftly and violently, and scream "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?" Does ANYONE, even in passing, believe we still live in a world where the superpowers might eventually get into a major nuke-throwing dust-up with eachother? What level of mental retardation is required for this sort of policy to get passed not by ONE country, but TWO COUNTRIES TOGETHER??

Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
~ Herman Göring, Nazi War Criminal, During His Trial

Does anyone think China is any sort of a physical threat on any field except informational and economic? Does anyone still think that Russia wants to wipe out 'The Western Way Of Life' and replace it with a big red flag and socialism? Do we, as a species, still need to place missile defense systems on foreign soil just in case some Communist heathen gets tetchy and starts pushing launch buttons? What was the purpose of the last few decades of global war and suffering if not to drive the fucking point home that there is a better way?

And there, my rage sort of petered out... until this.

The Strangulation Of Gaza

To quote my friend Belial, Is anyone else grimly amused by the irony of Israeli Jews sequestering, restricting, and starving an "unwanted population"? I do not know all of the specifics of this particular situation, but any time there is an article along these lines, or a news report, or a blog post, or ANYTHING which shows two groups, both utterly convinced of their righteousness, basically banging their fucking skulls together to see who's better, I can't help but pay for the swift, timely death of everyone involved, so the rest of humanity can go back to looking towards the future.

Peace is not the absence of anything. Real peace is the presence of something beautiful. Both peace and the thirst for it have been in the heart of every human being in every century and every civilization
~ Maharaji

They know that war is hell; but peace, peace is fucking boring.
~ Ray Elwood

And I guess that about sums it up.

...

It's hard to focus, but here's a movie.

The Devil You Sparkle & Bandaids

2008-02-01T10:20:00.000-08:00

Did you forget, Did you believe in it
Did all those things I promised come out empty in the end
In every breath, And the dreams I missed
Comes with complications, Serenity (yeah yeah)

You smiled and looked at me and said

You don't know what it's like
You don't know what it's like
I feel like nothing at all
You don't know what it's like

I forgot just how good live rock shows are, ESPECIALLY live Canadian rock shows.

I am hugely impressed with how well everything came together last night. The kids got picked up by Farm Grandma, Throkky took the bus into town, we met up at The Commodore on time. Enjoyed a nice meal, had a few drinks, picked up one friend and met up with another. Had a few more drinks while we waited for the doors to the Grotto down the street to open, and made it inside with a minimum of fuss. There was no lateness, there was no panickation... there was just speakers and booze and pure liquid awesome.

And now I'm tired, and my throat hurts from singing along / screaming along.

Awww, yeah.

Sleep Is A Symptom Of Caffeine Deprivation

2008-01-31T09:29:00.000-08:00

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world:
but each of them, when he is asleep,
is in a world of his own.

There are two types of people in this world, good and bad.
The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy
the waking hours much more.

When you say to a child 'Bedtime, it's bedtime now'
that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is
'Go and lie down in the dark. For hours.
And don't move. I'm locking the door now'

Znnrrggg?

So last night, I'm almost hitting the finish line for the damn Guide (yes, that's it's full name now... the damn Guide). Six, maybe eight, pages to go. I'm so close... and then Throkette wakes up. And not just a little bit, no, this is her "I'm going to lay here and talk to myself, and occasionally poke you and name off the body parts I poke... eyes, nose, cheek. Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes...." I could tell it was going to be a doozie, so with screaming daughter in tow, I got the bottles for Throkky and Newbie ready, did my pre-sleep routine, got a bottle for Throkette, grabbed a pillow, and headed into Throkette's room (she won't go back to sleep unless she's holding my hand).

She downs her bottle, and lays there for a while, poking me in the face and squeezing my thumb. I manage to drift off. I wake up an hour later, because she's standing at the closed door to her room, trying frantically to get out. I ask her what's wrong, she yells "DADDY!" and jumps back into bed, snuggling up and falling asleep.

She did this four more times throughout the night, sometimes finding time to turn herself sideways and kick me in the face.

She was sleeping like an angel when I left for work this morning, and I have grinding, stabbing pains in my right arm and shoulder, which I had to sleep on in order to have my left hand free for her to hold onto while she drifted off.

I need more coffee now.

Fun With Helium

2008-01-29T09:22:00.000-08:00

Adam: It amazes me that you still don't realize we're filming a television show.
Jamie: I'd think we would at least aspire to not be idiots?
Adam: And yet we would fail.

No, not that kind of helium... I got invited to write at Helium, which pays for articles with ad revenue. Now, not a LOT of money... my friend Rob says he's made about five bucks there in the past few months. Irregardless, it might be something to help me get back into writing, especially if I can go ten minutes without using irregardless.

It's the white, fluffy apocalypse outside today. A major section of road was closed, with traffic routing through a parking lot. There were cops directing traffic in a few spots. An Arrow truck almost ran me off the road, and my spedometer is still broken, making me think that I am travelling at 170 kph when I am actually doing about 90. All in all, it conspired to make me...

...

... ten minutes late for work.

DAMN YOU, SNOW DEMONS!

And we're back! I know you wondered why I stopped typing for about ten minutes there, but seizures wait for no blogger. This was a wierd one, too, it wasn't preceeded by the usual sense of withdrawing... it was very present, if that makes any sense (it doesn't). Ah well. I'm not hungry anymore, at least!

Movie time.

Douchebag Chic

2008-01-23T12:40:00.000-08:00

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable
that we have to alter it every six months. ~ Oscar Wilde

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful
with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things
which always become ugly with time. ~ Jean Cocteau

When his wife asked him to change clothes to meet
the German Ambassador: If they want to see me, here I am.
If they want to see my clothes, open my closet
and show them my suits. ~ Albert Einstein

It's the things that aren't accepted as conventionally beautiful
that I find more attractive. ~ Mark Jacobs

There's a heck of a starter, eh?

Now, this whole blog post started from an article: Bus Driver Kicks Off "Freaky" Goths. Pretty quickly, the discussion on my fora settled onto three things:

1.) The leash meant that the two goths were forcing their sexual fetish upon everyone who could see them.

2.) Being a goth is not a choice.

3.) It may or may not be a hate crime, depending how pedantic you can be.

Now, as someone who married a "freaky goth" (and then, sadly, domesticated her... sorry, sweetie!!) I am clearly on the side of "What the hell was the bus driver smoking?" I also very quickly became almost the ONLY person on that side, as everyone else proceeded to slam the goths for dressing like idiots, offending everyone's sensibilities, and engaging in sick fetish play in public.

It saddened me, because the entire forum is pretty much a shrine for geek culture, including what things geeks find sexy, how 'normal' people treat geeks, and even an entire section on how to purposefully 'wierd out' normal people, either by action or inaction. It's all right to do that as long as you wear the mantle of 'geek', but as soon as your outfit includes black leather and a collar, you become sick and irresponsible. I had to back out of the conversation simply because I was in danger of pulling a muscle with all the *facepalming* I was doing.

Amusingly, no-one else thought that belly-shirts, low-rise pants, or other naughty and overtly sexualized outfits were bad at all, despite the fact that they are worn in public and are WAY more forceful upon the eyes and sensibilities of the helpless public than, say, two people who are sitting quietly and happen to be attached to eachother by a thin metal chain.

This is the first really blatant act of hypocrisy on this forum, which I guess is pretty good, considering I've been there for eight months, but I guess goths are an easy target. "We may be geeks, and we may be wierd, but at least we're not as bad as THEM!!!" *fingerpointing ensues*

*sigh*

The best man at my wedding had green hair, for Gord's sake...

I need to go drink more coffee. Excuse me.

You Can Literally Cruise.... The Vista!

2008-01-22T15:06:00.000-08:00

The future, always so clear to me,
had become like a black highway at night.
We were in uncharted territory now,
making up history as we went along.

I will now give you a quick impression of the last thirty minutes:

Myself: Delete file
Vista: NO!!!! *crash*
Myself: Uhm... please delete file?
Vista: I FUCKING SAID NO!!! *doublecrash*
Myself: Pretty please?
Vista: Yes sir! Right away, sir!

That took thirty minutes.

In honor of MLK Day, I give you The Doctor Martin Luther King Affirmative Action Par-TAY!!!

Also... Heath Ledger died? Why is it always so disturbing when fundamentally NICE people die unexpectedly? The news reports ALL conflict on the details, so I'll give it a few days.

...

Here's a movie.

More 'Good Idea, Bad Idea'

2008-01-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

Taking a deep breath before jumping into a swimming pool.
Taking a deep breath after jumping into a swimming pool.

Playing the accordion at a polka festival.
Playing the accordion anywhere else.

Visiting picturesque McLean, Virginia.
Visiting picturesque McLean Stevenson.

Climbing a mountain.
Climbing a mountain lion.

Good idea: Last night, pretty much the entire Demon Hunter version 2 story, in which Xavious is a young girl, fell into place. Her family, the history, the plot, the finale, everything. Borrowing chunks from Origins, and a few loose thoughts I had floating around, it cameth together. Woo!

Bad idea: letting Alvin in my office convince me to buy the Village Hotel, and offer free beer to all strippers and engineers. (His bad idea, really, but if he loans me the money, it's OUR bad idea.)

So it seems we got a new washer delivered THAT DAY, hooked it up, and we have now done four loads of laundry. I am wearing a shirt laundered IN OUR OWN HOME! I know people think home machine laundering is a fad, but I could see this taking off, I really could.

I need to sleep.

...

COFFEE TIME!

AudioSurf visually represents a song :) Check this shit OUT!

"Brand New, Never Used"

2008-01-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

... and if it hadn't been for the water that was stick in the drain hose, I might have believed him.

So our brand new (and by brand new, I mean it was delivered to our house yesterday) washer apparently suffers from a case of the runs, and disgorged gallons of steaming hot water all over the top floor of our house last night, reaching almost from my daughter's room all the way to the kitchen. The Whirlpool 1-800 number apparently became Kentucky Voice Response, and this morning their call center was just down. At the moment, the fine people at City Furniture are checking their storerooms for some way to make it better, since they knowingly sold us defective merchandise.

And I can destroy that store with my bare hands.

...

Well, I want to...

...

My wife taught our older daughter to say "POOF! Pants are gone!" I feel marginally better.

I Got Them Shiny New-Office Blues...

2008-01-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

You have on black robes! How wonderful! Can I touch them? Oh, all right. You needn't glare at me like that. It's just that they look so soft. Say, does this mean you're truly bad now? Can you do something evil for me, so I can watch? I know! I saw a wizard summon a demon once. Could you do that? Just a small demon? You could send him right back. No?

I tried to find a quote for the Blues, but that didn't work... but I saw something about Dungeons n Dragons, so I searched for a quote there, and ended up with Dragonlance, and, well... there you go. Tasselhoff Burrfoot, at your service.

My new phone plays what sounds like the Wheel of Fortune music whenever I get a phone call, which is sort of neat. My window (I CAN HAS WINDOW!!!) overlooks the skeezy hotel and the North Shore hookers, and so far all I've seen pass by on the other side of the street are old people, and street kids. I have to park at the gas station next door and hope they don't tow me. Still, it's better than before! There's still insecticide on everything, and my skin is melting (only slightly, only slightly) but other than that, it's great to be in my new place. The best part, though, has to be my new computer, which is just about the second- or third-best machine money can buy. It loads AutoCAD Architecture 2008 in SIX SECONDS!!! I could go get COFFEE in the time it took my last machine to load! I've got dual 500 gig hard drives, a video card that has two heat sinks, and 3.5 gigs of addressed memory, and despite the fact that it's Vista, everything works slick and smooth.

Giggity. Giggity goo.

*zzzz*

Movie time!

With Apologies To...

2008-01-12T22:57:00.000-08:00

... Jim Henson.

It's not that easy being big
Having to spend each day the size of a small Jeep
When I think it could be nicer being small, or medium, or petite
Or something much more normal, like that.

It's not easy being big
It seems you blend in with so many stationary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Standing there like a building, or a recliner,
Or cars on the street.

It's not easy being big
It's so easy to crush people you don't always see
And people use you for shade, or for a bench,
Or they lock their bikes to you at lunchtime,
Or spray graffiti on you.

But big's the size of the world,
And big can be warm and friendly-like
And big can be wobbly like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree..

When big is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am big and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be.

Hehe.

So a conversation me and Throkky just had...

Throkky: You should update your blog.
Zalgon: Me?
Throkky: Yes you.
Zalgon: ... what's your blog?
Throkky: Shut up.

So, here I am. I am teh bloggar. Just to take part in the accidental xkcd Googlebombing, I'm going to post "accidentally blogging death" and "died in a blogging accident" a few times, in order to further increase the hits (in 24 hours, the hit response for "died in a blogging accident" increased more than 350,000%. Feel the power of stick figures! FEEL THEM!

That probably made no sense to most of you.

In what scientists are calling "pretty gay," I can't find my shoes.

Gravitational mass is identical to inertial mass. That is, the mount of inertia something has and the amount of gravity it has are effectively the same. What's interesting is that there doesn't seem to be any reason this should be true. One could imagine an extremely large object with lots of resistance to force and no gravity (or vice versa) but this is never observed. You know what? I'm just gonna skip the rest of the buildup and say it: Yo mama's fat.

Welcome to the text-only counterstrike.
You are in a dark, outdoor map.
>GO NORTH
You have been pwned by a grue.

Do you think I could mail a running chainsaw to someone? What about a baby's first word? Can you mail a blank stare? A dizzying height? Pi? Well, did you at least get that package of time I sent you? There was a lot of it, so it will probably take a while.

Related to moral relativism, it states that ethics become subjective only when you approach the speed of light. That is, it's OK to be self-serving, steal, and murder as long as you're going really, really fast. (Note: This is why rap sounds better on the highway at 90 mph).

Allrighty, that's deep enough for one night. Here's some Rocky. The best part of this movie.

Cerebral Oversight Committee

2008-01-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think.
~ Ambrose Bierce

Therefore, you are pondering what I'm pondering.
~ Brain

I missed a Christmas post, and a New Years post, but I'm not going to miss this one... January 3rd, the greatest day of the year thus far! January 3rd, the anniversary of the day Leonardo Da Vinci tried, and failed, to fly his flying machine. Hmmm, maybe not that one, then. January 3rd, 1868, the first day of the Meiji Restoration? Nah, too depressing. It's the 49th anniversary of the patriation of Alaska? Nahh, also depressing. NO! WAIT! I GOT IT!

J.R.R. Tolkien's Birthday. Happy Birthday, you old British coot!

I'm back at work full time, and this year promises to be terrifyingly promising. Why terrifying? Well, my boss basically wants to give me a huge promotion... more work, more responsibility, more yelling, and theoretically more pay (which is good, since in the past three years, my effective 'pay vs cost of living' has not changed). All I ever wanted was to just be the best damn CAD guy I could be, but it seems that it isn't allowed unless I also pick up the slack for everyone else in the office. I guess we'll see how I do!

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

ANOTHER cold is rampaging through the house, and my son sounds just like I did back when I had croup and bronchitis every few months. It's pretty scary for me to hear him be like that, but it's REALLY scary for him because he's never been sick like that before. It only gets bad late at night when he's breathing dry air and not drinking water. A cough hurts, so he cries a bit, and the crying strains his throat, which makes it hurt, so he coughs... it took a while to calm him down the other night enough to go back to sleep. Still, it's a lot better today, comparatively.

*sigh* Poor little guy...

Video time! This one is just a song, since too many people have been deriding Myles and the good parts of Creed lately.

Such A Strange Combination Of Pity And Indigestion

2007-12-18T12:51:00.000-08:00

You don't need a license to drive a sandwich.
~ Spongebob Squarepants

And the new diet started about two hours ago, and so far I don't feel the urge to grab a jagged knife and rob a KFC. That's a good thing, for me! I bought a 10lb bag of apples and 4lb bag of peanuts (they were half price!) at the store yesterday, and today have been dining on them quite extensively. Apples are good!!! Did you know that?!?

Sadly, neither one gets more than a 3/5 for weight loss, so I need to find something that's inexpensive, good for weight loss, and that I'll actually eat. Any suggestions> Also, www.nutritiondata.com is such an awesome website.

I Expected Singing And Dancing...

2007-12-17T10:13:00.000-08:00

Out-of-town shooters. That's what I said. I remember hearing myself saying, "Out-of-town shooters." You know what? You don't pay a ho to fuck you. You pay her to leave. What you pay out-of-town shooters to do? You pay them to get the hell back out of town. That's why I asked for out-of-town shooters. What'd I get? In-town shooters. Someone decided to hire in-town shooters. You know what else I got for my money? In-town police. In-town trouble. Who's got to get in the ring with me on this?

Ok, I'm not really sure why I went with that line, but it's a good line anyways, you know? Anyways, first day back at work. A few hellos, a 'your e-mail doesn't work, I'll fix it in a bit', and a coffee, and back to the grindstone. Hey diddle diddle hey, welcome back, now get to work. Oh, by the way, we rearranged the network, and we didn't respost the new files that you worked on while you were staying home with your newborn daughter and your wife recovering from major surgery, could you take care of that? Thanks.

Still, it's oddly comforting to be back. It's my desk (until we move and I get a new one), it's my computer (until we move and I get a new one), and it's my big honking warm headphones (which they will have to pry out of my cold, dead hands). I'm hoping we move in January on schedule, since we were supposed to move at the end of October, and as of yesterday the new building is still composed largely of rotting siding and new plywood. I'm sure it's nicer inside.

Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal!

2007-12-11T22:50:00.000-08:00

So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with
God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels
already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes
into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one.
Noah's ark is a problem. We'll have to call it "early quantum
state phenomenon". Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammals
on the same boat.

Hee. Firefly.

It's 11pm, and I have to put together a building in Nelson I'll never be able to afford to live in. My newborn baby girl is asleep and meeping a few feet away, and I still have to do some laundry tonight, and tomorrow do the bulk of my Ecksmass capitalist sacrificing. I'm all... bendy...

*stretch*

*pop*

*crackle*

Much better. I need a dark chocolate crackball, only $0.88 for three! What a bargain! What a deal! What a twist!

Make people answer their gorram e-mail.

Cold Diggitty Daffodil!

2007-12-08T16:06:00.000-08:00

Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
~Charles Kingsley

Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." ~Robert Byrne

It's like Hot Diggitty Daffodil, but instead it's cold. It's the sort of cold where you go outside, and your skin says "Hey, this isn't that bad!" because it takes a few seconds for your skin's protective cushion of air to bleed off. However, you look around, think it's all right, and you take a deep breath. Your gasp of shock is drowned out by the death cries of your nostril hairs, and the wintry gust moves into your lungs, freezes the deposits of tar and polyunsaturated fat, shatters your alveoli, grudgingly warms up, and exhales in a cloud of vapor which soon solidifies around your skull, smothering and killing you.

This is why I'm inside right now.

Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land
the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon
as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw
and become audible, so that words spoken in winter
go unheard until the next summer. ~Plutarch

Also, because of the cold, most of my other business ventures have ground to a halt. There's no more traffic at all over at ThinkTank Designs, which is my side job of creating environmentally housing for people who want an artistically distinct home that will keep them warm in the summer, cool in the winter, and last longer than any of the stick-built McMansions down the street. The Seniors Guide is also going very slowly, since it's too cold for the salesman to go out and actually get ads. He's old.

Right now, we're all huddled in our house, enjoying the Christmas lights hung from the crown moulding, and trying to teach our middle child that the new baby can't, in fact, withstand a full nelson, a throat punch, or a head-butt. Also, we have to teach ALL THREE kids that since my wife's C-section was apparently performed by a first-time resident, and five of the staples fell out on their own (while three just came loose and got snagged in her clothing, with agonizingly painful results), they should very VERY GENTLE with her. So far it isn't taking, and both kids keep trying to hug and tackle her with good intentions and painful results.

Enjoy the movie down below :) One of my favorite songs, and one of my favorite movies. MWAHAHAHAH!!!

Congratulations! It's A Baby!

2007-12-07T22:25:00.001-08:00

If you are like me, and you certainly must be,
you are appalled and shocked at the weird,
unnatural things going on tonight. ~ Sam the Eagle

More specifically, it's a baby girl. Say hello to Ophelia.

I'm sure she'd wave back, but right now all she can do is cry, eat, sleep, poop, and gnaw on her own hand. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was trying to escape. *sigh* Babies.

Ok, now to start the work that I couldn't do this week, since my office doesn't like to hire competent CAD people (I don't mean you, Sim... you rock.)

I'm bored. Have a video.

The Interblogosphere Tubes Are Clean

2007-11-30T08:55:00.000-08:00

Related to moral relativism, it states that ethics
become subjective only when you approach the
speed of light. That is, it's OK to be self-serving, steal,
and murder as long as you're going really, really fast.
(Note: This is why rap sounds better on the highway at 90 mph)

Hee. xkcd has a Wikiquote. Awesome.

Yeah, two weeks, I know. Everytime I think about blogging about something I came across on the tubes, I just think "You know, three people read this blog, and two of them don't care about the latest dust-up at NASA, or Gamespot, or Israel. All that's left is to talk about myself, and two of my readers don't care about that either (and given the third is there when stuff happens, I guess all three don't care to read about it.) I don't really hang out on YouTube so it's hard to find movies to wrap up my posts with, which might be for the best, because it also felt wierd trying to lure people to my blog with funny videos, only to ambush them with boring text first.

So, maybe I'll just try something new.

Newbie

Into December, you entered the world,
Small, squalling, pinkish and furious,
Ripped untimely, and into our lives hurled,
Pausing enough to be curious.

It's hard to say what to make of today,
You picked a lousy time to be born,
We got wars, genocide, DMCA,
You have good reason to be forlorn.

But I'm here to adore and protect you,
What fathers are supposed to do best,
I'm bigger than the problems in this zoo,
And you know that I will never rest.

Nothing will harm you while I am alive,
But I can't do anything until you arrive.

It's A Big... A Big Hard Sun...

2007-11-15T11:09:00.000-08:00

Once I dug an early grave, to find a better land
She just smiled and laughed at me, and took her rules back again

Once I stood to lose her, and I saw what I had done
Bowed down and threw away the hours of her garden and her sun

So I tried to want her, I turned to see her weep
40 days and 40 nights, and its still coming down on me

I continue to educate people that this song, the theme song from the movie "In The Wild" and sung by Eddie Vedder, is actually a Canadian song from 1989, from a man who calls himself Indio. The Eddie Vedder song is big on the radio, even satellite radio, and the YouTube videos are replete with posts saying "Eddie Vedder's best song ever!" I am against patriotism, but I nonetheless feel the need to tell people that it's not a Vedder song, but it's Canadian, which is why Vedder picked it for the movie. It just fits so well with nature.

Anyways...

Zalgite is, for better or for worse, off of his medicine now! His knees are doing good, his eyes are fine, and because the rashes present on his nose are actually indicative of a naproxen reaction, he's going off the meds. Yay! In 4-6 weeks, we should see how his body is doing, and we'll take him to the pediatrician here in town. I'm hoping it goes well!

Also also, my mom just had her 64th birthday, I had my 26th, and my friend Porkchop had his... uhm, 32nd? Crap, I need to check Facebook... I don't know how old anyone is. Newbie will be born Dec 4th, right on schedule, so that's good! Christmas is coming, and a new baby and a month off work at severely reduced pay can only make things go smoother. I need to bloggy-blog more.

EDIT: I need to add this. This is just disturbing. For those who think it's tl;dr, I'll sum it up. Two girls are good friends. Then they're not friends. The parents of girl A work with girl A to make a MySpace account, pretending to be a nice, cute guy. They befriend girl B on MySpace. They get to know eachother for weeks and weeks and weeks. They then start to say horrible things to girl B. Girl B then kills herself. She went upstairs, and hung herself in her closet while her parents cooked dinner. Girl A and her parents do not apologize, and are not being charged, since they say it can't be proved it was their fault. They live a block away from eachother.

I fucking hate humanity.

Video time! What's something I haven't done before...

I Blog! I Swear! I Think...

2007-11-08T22:09:00.000-08:00

No more gold lights for the queen earth
To keep you warm in your kingdoms
High on the waves you make for us
But not since you left have the waves come
The bar is dead and the rocket's rain
Is keeping you wet in your deathbed
So high on the waves you made for us
And not since you left have the waves come...
Have the waves come...

Good song.

Yay, wireless! Now I can blog while I pee!

...

Not that I would. No, right now, I'm just using it to sit on the couch, under a nice, tasty warm blanket, so I can play Stars!, watch Farscape, and talk to you, the tumultuous masses! And by masses, I mean Lostie and Sleeping Kyle.

My laptop needs a better battery, so I really hope that supercapacitors finally make that final price breakthrough, replacing the wildly inefficient chemical batteries forever. They charge faster, they last longer, and they have two ingredients, both of which are considerably cheaper on a global scale. Yayyy!

You have such limited mental capacity,
and yet you have such an abundant will to prevail.

Good line...

I don't have much to say. Work was hellish today. I almost put my fist through the monitor, and had one of my bosses been here today, I might have forever lost my boot within his unplumbed depths. I don't think either would have really endangered my job, but in the short term might have made my main boss angry, since he seemed to indicate that he thought of me as one of his kids (I'm not sure how to take that.)

Coffee time!

16, 10, 7, 6... What Up For November?

2007-11-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

FREEZE! You're under arrest! You have the right to the remains of a silent attorney! If you cannot afford one... tough noogies! You can make ONE phone call! I recommend Trixie: 976-Triple 5-LOVE. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?! Well do ya, PUNK? No? Then I can't arrest you!

Hee.

Well, NaNoWriMo is well underway, and my wordcount is up to a MIGHTY.... four (4) words. Fear me, Stephen King... I've got you in my sights! RAWR!

Now, a lot of my on-line time recently has been tied up arguing about the three epic sci-fi series of our time... Farscape, Firefly, Babylon 5. Which is better overall, which has better writing, which has better production values, which is more interesting, which has better characters, etc etc etc. Unfortunately, most people are of the incorrect opinion that Farscape isn't the best, and they won't listen to me when I try to correct them! Why would that be? I'm just trying to educate them, and they ignore me... *sigh* Now I know how high school teachers feel.

Ok, but seriously, Farscape only slightly edges out Firefly, and Firefly edges out Bab 5. They're all pretty close. Imaging, though, what Firefly could have done if it had been allowed to reach 88 episodes like Farscape, or over 100 like Bab5? As it was, it died at 13 episodes, and despite the truly GAWDLIKE feature film (Serenity), the story was not epic. It was character driven, and episodic, and the finale approached epicosity, but the story never had time to bloom. Bab 5 bloomed, and despite some dragging and irritation, was an excellent and incredible story. "Get the hell out of our Galaxy!" may be one of the best parting lines ever.

But they still can't touch Farscape... and I just hope someday to get someone to see it the way I do.

But, to all the people who never will, here's Wash, in all his goofy glory.

They Don't Make Straitjackets Like They Used To

2007-10-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

"One, two, one, two, and through and through the vorpal blade went snicker-snack. He left it dead, and with its head, he went galumphing back!"
- The Mad Hatter, Batman: The Animated Series

There will never be a cartoon as good as that, ever again. Now, I don't mean as FUNNY as that, since The Tick probably takes that trophy. I don't mean as VIOLENT as that, since Megas XLR clearly wins. I don't mean as INSANE, since Zim wins. I mean in every single regard, taken together... no cartoon will ever be as impressively perfect. The new Batman cartoons are pale shadows of... a shadow, ironically enough.

Sorry, random rant. I've got some things to say about Hallowe'en candy, and their relation to me birthday, but I'll get to that some other time.

I would like to share one awesomely misheard line from my son:

Son: The news is in porn.
Dad: It... what?
Son: The news is in porn.
Dad: What do you mean?
Son: It's in porn to know what happens in other countries.
Dad: OH! You mean IMPORTANT.
Son: Yeah. Watching the news is in porn.

Isn't he awesome?

Also, my friends have convinced me to get back into the world of Warhammer, so if anyone reading this is related to me... I need Plague Marines and Noise Marines, and generally anything from the Chaos Marines (but the first two in particular). Thank you!

Insurmountable Challenges Can Lick My Ass

2007-10-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

Since I left home, I’ve been hunted, beaten, locked up, shanghaied, shot at. I’ve had alien creatures in my face, up my nose, inside my brain, down my pants. This is the first time, the first place, where I’ve felt peace.

There is a moment of sadness I feel when I watch that movie (see below), and I feel the same way when I watch the episodes. It isn't the sadness resulting from seeing something truly beautiful put to visible media. It isn't the sadness you feel when a character who has become possibly more real to you than the people you see on the street every day dies. It isn't even the sadness you feel when you know the only new episodes of their lives will exist only in your head.

No, it's the sadness of knowing that you (and by you, I mean me) will never write something as touching and poignant and perfect as that. This is not made any easier by the fact that my Major Story, the story I've worked on for ten years, the story I know backwards and forwards, the story that I want everyone to read... is in so very, very many ways virtually identical to that, and even though I thought of mine first, they go theirs out first, and I will be the plagiarist.

I dwell on this a lot. I understand that all ideas for literature are recycled, and it's more about the writer's take on a subject and the way the writer creates the scenes and emotions and conflict that makes a story great. However, I'm not THAT great of a writer, and even though I will someday put pen to paper (or phalange to keyboard) and get my story out of my head, I will always have that Damocledian fear hanging above me.

*burp*

Well, that was deep for a Wednesday. I'm gearing up to write pulpy crap for NaNo (isn't that just a peachy image?) It's not a story I love, and it's barely a story I like, but I need something I can't over-think, and it's almost impossible to overthink this (if I try, I keep wanting to call myself Dean Koontz). For now, though, I'm going to finish my hot chocolate, get a bottle ready for when my daughter decides I've slept enough, and then go to bed. Since my sleeping pills backfire when I'm sick, I'm on ibuprophen in the hopes that I'll just be numb enough to stay asleep.

That sums up more than I'd like it to.

Awww, Muffin...

2007-10-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

"You're walking on gallows ground, and there's a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging."

No-one can fully say how awesome this book is... there will always be more to say.

Anyways, I've been meaning to write scads of stuff down here, but everytime I fire up the blog-in window, I either suffer from an attack of writer's block, or a case of the whities (MS Office users know what I mean), or some small human in my house wakes up, or I have to go for lunch, or... or, at that moment, I just don't care anymore. I swear, my brain is gearing up to make sure that I am full of fail for when NaNo rolls around. Stupid encephalon.

Anyways, the story is fleshed out in my mind, and I am looking forward to working on it, particularly since I'm not even sure how to do a lot of the middle of it. I've meant to work on it in the evenings, at least a basic outline / timeline, but for the past week, if it's not sleep, it's just killing time before sleep (sort of like now. MAKE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION FINISH DOWNLOADING, DAMMIT!)

Also also, some of you may know I'm a fan of xkcd. For those of you who might not be in the know, here's some of the best comics from the history of xkcd (it updates thrice weekly): Schrodinger, Names, and A Way So Familiar. I like the third one :) Anyways, xkcd has an annual meetup in Boston every year (I was invited, and even had my ticket paid for by people on the site, but I couldn't go), since the comic is unofficially based out of MIT, since the comic is drawn by a former NASA engineer (that's right... he IS a rocket scientist). I have been trying to organize a West Coast meetup, but I can only get about ten people. Then it hit me.

I can have a meetup for more than just xkcd! I need ideas for other meetups to have... I'm thinking NaNoWriMo for the region could do a meetup there, or maybe other webcomics, or... I dunno! I need ideas! Now, the reason more people is important is thus: I want the meetup to be in Field.

Field.

Field, BC.

The town has a population of 300, and is nestled right in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. it has unbefuckinglievable views of the mountains, and is walking distance from the Burgess Shale, but the major part is population: 300. With enough people, we could outnumber the locals. We could take every single hotel room, bed and breakfast nook, and camp site. We could OWN that town.

Feel the love, dammit.

Anyways, here's a movie. Don't be like Jon... love the song.

Me, Grimlock, Not Nice Dino! Me Bash Brains!

2007-10-13T22:29:00.000-07:00

# Stop, thief! No welcome-wagon "Hello Stranger" with that new coffee flavor for YOU! Offer expires while you wait. Operators are standing by. Don't look behind door number 2, Monty! It's time to play "End of the line, my valentine!" Ger-roni-do-ron-ron-roni-mo!!!

Ok, so I've now seen the new Transformers movie four times. Once with friends, once with my son, once legally on a legal website (with legality!), and once more with my son today as a twoonie matinee. Maybe it's because I was with him, or because I've let it percolate, but this time, I really liked it. I did.

What's WRONG with me?

However, nothing will quite match the epicosity of the first one. Ever.

It's Like Fighting A Gopher On Crank

2007-10-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

Weapons-Grade Stupidity: Tech-support slang for customer intelligence that is so low it poses a severe hazard to those who come in contact with it.

Oh, man, do I have a lot of shit to cover today...

First off, I'd like to talk about the economy, or more specifically, the American economy. Even more specifically, I'd like to talk about the people who are at the mercy of it and who have a poorer grasp of money than friggin' Rainman. There are some terrifying things in this here article, namely:

Consumers have boosted their borrowing at the fastest pace in three months, turning increasingly to their credit cards to replace home equity loans as a source of ready cash. The increase was led by an 8.1 per cent jump in revolving credit, the category that includes credit card loans. Consumer have been using their credit cards more to finance purchases now that home equity lines of credit are becoming harder to obtain.

Now, by itself, this isn't terribly frightening, right? Watch this.

Snl_dontbuystuff

Terrifying, no? Well, I may be over-reacting, but it seems to be one of the major hurdles with advancing a society is the perpetual desire of that society to be living just beyond their means, forever miring them in mediocrity.

A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world ~ no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.

* Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President

Smart man.

NEXT on my list... ok, to sum it all up. Bill to extend medical coverage in the states to 10 million kids who can't affording, by placing a $0.42 tax on a pack of smokes. Vetoed by Bush, because "it would cost the underprivileged too much", and because it's one step closer to socialism. In the discussion thereof, I am one of the few people on the side of "maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to extend medical coverage to 10 million kids by asking smokers to pitch in a little of their disposable income."

The conversation has become about two things: one, it's not the government's job to help poor people, and two, poor kids deserve to die if they can't afford insurance.

...

Yeah, you wish I was kidding, right?

Never argue with an idiot. They will only pull you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

I have to admit that is so very, very true. *sigh*

Ok, uplifting video time!

This Hour Has Seven Days

2007-10-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

Remember, remember the 5th of November.
The gunpowder, treason and plot.
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.

So very, very many of you are probably too young to understand the title to today's blog post. Any of you who do get it are probably to old to be on the internet anyways. However, all of you should know the quote above, and I love that Guy Fawkes picked my birthday to try to blow up the seat of corrupt power. Something poetic there.

However, the reason for the title of today's blog is... I've gone a week without pop. Pop of any kind. Sure, I've replaced it with a few hot chocolates at home, but I make the powder myself, and there's less sugar in that than in a Coke. Also, I picked the quote because I've watched V For Vendetta five times in the past week... and it just keeps getting better EVERY TIME I SEE IT!

Anarchy means “without leaders”; not “without order.”

I believe in few things as strongly as I believe in that. This movie is helping me to refine (my internal sandblasting process) my own opinions about government, governance, and the rule of mob. Sure, the movie has a few problems, but as a dramatic representation of a comic book by people better known for action movies and obtuse philosophy, you can hardly expect the celluloid Renaissance. Nevertheless, it's gotten me thinking. Oh, not enough to post here, now, yet... but ideas that will be refined further come this NaNoWriMo. I've picked my story, I've picked my dramatis personae, and I've picked the protagonist (hint: it's not who you think), and very little is as good for lengthy rambling exposition than two people trapped in a car, with one holding the other at gunpoint. Don't you think?

The management is terrible! We've had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact. But who elected them? It was you! You who appointed these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you! While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate. You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines. You could have stopped them. All you had to say was "No." You have no spine. You have no pride. You are no longer an asset to the company. I will, however, be generous. You will be granted two years to show me some improvement in your work. If at the end of that time you are still unwilling to make a go of it...You're fired. That will be all. You may return to your labours. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

It's fucking poetry.

Colon Blog Website For Interwebs

2007-09-26T11:15:00.001-07:00

It's OK, Shake, because whoever you decide that you are, I still gonna love you. But just not in a gay way, because God makes all people in different sizes and shapes and problems, but he only makes the people he hates gay. That's you. You it, boy. You gay!

There are no words to describe this...... well, describe what I saw. See? I can't even find a NOUN to describe it... "it" is the best I can do. Impersonal pronoun. Now, officially, "it" is called Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, but after watching it on Joox, I've decided that that name isn't even up to the challenge of describing it. It's even moved beyond "good" and "bad"... it just is, and it... is... ow. Truly, it is a marvel of modern technology that I can be paid to design fancy buildings and resort developments, and be able to watch it simultaneously, without detracting from either activity.

Either that, or am I finally acquiring a dual personality.

...

About fucking time, I wanted one years ago.

...

Moving on, this is my first of what will hopefully be many pop-free days. Yesterday, I enjoyed a coke, and two ginger ales (what? I was thirsty, and it was the House season premiere). Today? Even though I put a full tank of gas in the car, and I was at the Petro in Dallas, which has the nice selection of Jones.... I resisted. Shut up, that's a big step for me!

The walking yesterday, by the end of the night, took a lot out of my legs... which is really, really sad, since I used to walk double that, on a much steeper slope, every day when I was in college (before I got lazy and started taking the bus). Much like Rufus, the 13th Apostle, I used to walk everywhere, before the advent of money and convenience into my life. Now, I like my convenience, and in a lot of cases it's necessary for me to park this close to my office (emergencies, and whatnot).

However, I am going to be instituting a new policy in my life, wife-permitting (of course). I'm going to go to work half an hour early, and park in my usual spot at the back of the building. I am then going to take my new edible iPod shuffle and my headphones, and walk for half an hour at a good clip, and just... just see what's around here. I'm right next to the Heritage Hills area, which is chock full of wicked steep roads, old houses and beautiful landscaping. I'm right near all of the various riverside parks, including Riverside Park. I'm right near the train yards and the coliseum, and all sorts of fun downtown things I've never seen (at least when I wasn't drunk).

Averaging 1.33 steps per second, that's about 2400 steps, which will... almost double my current number of steps in the average day.

...

That's very depressing.

Enjoy the movie!

The Bother With Bloggers

2007-09-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

BEAUTY: An aesthetic radiance that delights the soul; a quality much admired in women, landscapes and tropical fish, but curiously out of favor in art throughout the modern era."

Like with everything in life, if I go long enough not doing something, it becomes easier to... not do it. I didn't blog for two days, so it was easier to say on the third day "Well, I haven't blogged in two days, three's OK." Then four... nine... thirteen... what's it up to now? I don't know, I'm too lazy to scroll up. Whatever the duration, I'm breaking it today. Go me.

I'm breaking it today because, well... ok, I'm not totally sure, but there was a few atypical events today, and I figured I'd talk about them here, to try and get back into the blogging.... thing. Everything's a thing, so it's just a matter of finding the things that make good things happen inside.

This morning, I had to drop CarCar off at Rapid Radiator, and then hoof it through the North Shore, accross the Overlander Bridge, and then downtown to my office. According to Google Maps, it's 2.5km, so doing that in 25 minutes isn't that bad for me. I love walking early in the morning, or late in the evening... in the middle of the day, the light is too bright, too harsh, and unflattering to everything except shade trees and deep caves. The sun is not beauty's friend, but the sun at 8:40am, rising between the slopes of a valley, sure is, and it's amazing what, seen for the first time, can be beautiful. (Boy, that was a lot of commas, huh?)

There was an old wood-tie retaining wall just past a closed down auto sales shop by the railroad tracks that was valiantly holding up the soil around a Russian olive tree, and it was beautiful. There was the space underneath the end of the bridge where a water pumphouse was located and being smothered by weeds , and the sunlight was coming from behind me and the cruddy gray large-aggregate concrete tilt-up slabs was dappled and golden, and it was beautiful.

"The moment one give close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Through light and joy is the world opened up, revealed for what it is: ineffable beauty, unending creation."

I know it probably seems silly, especially to the people who read this AND know me, but I just felt it was something worth saying.

I'm going to blog tomorrow, hopefully, about yet another reason for me to lose weight... while walking, I saw my profile reflect in the glass of the closed down auto shop, and reminded me that I saw a profile of me in the living room window last night, and it occurred to me that I actually didn't know that's how fat I was. To people who know me, that's probably even stupider, but I think it's a good thing that I know.

Now watch the fucking movie and shut up.

Giddy-Up Go!

2007-09-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

Well I don't want to be some puppet on a string
And I don't want to learn of things you can't explain
And I don't want to have your views on everything
I just want to scream

Fuckin-A! Thanks to my friend making me burn her a copy of MST3KTM, I found a CD I had been looking for for two years! See, I had to find her a case for the disc, so I open up the Irish Drinking Mix case, and pull out the Irish Drinking Mix CD... and there, underneath it, is this!

Now this album has TONS of great songs on it, particularly Shine and Sister Don't Cry, but I was so happy to find it because then I could listen, in high quality, to the song featured at the bottom of this post....

Enjoy!

The Raptors Of Penzance

2007-09-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

So, just on a wierd sort of a whim, I started editing the words to the Gilbert & Sullivan play, The Pirates of Penzance, when someone on the forums said "I am the very model of a Moderator General". It's a forum joke.

Anyways, this came out.

I am the very model of a Moderator General,
I've information intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I know the kings of forum, and I quote the flames historical
From General to Serious in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of forumites fantabulous,
In short, in matters intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I am the very model of a Moderator General.

I know our mythic history, Belial's and Randall Munroe's;
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for zombie toes,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of hellish Anfurny,
In conics I can floor peculiarities that are furry;
I can tell undoubted Jalapenos from SpitValves and Owijads,
I know the croaking chorus from the frogs of Aristophan-as!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music on iPod
And whistle all the airs from that infernal book all about God.

Then I can write a washing bill in COBOL or assemb-a-ly,
And tell you ev'ry detail of the Windows flaws security:
In short, in matters intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I am the very model of a Moderator General.

In fact, when I know what is meant by "Okita" and then "Meaux Pas",
When I can tell at sight a newbie from a seasoned great-grandpa.
When such affairs as meetups and get-togethers I’m wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gamery,
When I know more of tactics than most World of Warcraft lamery
In short, when I've a smattering of intertubal strategy—
You'll say a better Moderator General has never be.

For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
In short, in matters intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I am the very model of a Moderator General.

Some of the references might be a bit obscure if you're not a forumite, but the cadence follows. Even more incredible, I got these replies:

MightyJalapeno, I'm filing a lawsuit against you for an attempt to break my brain with AWESOME.

That is not just awesome. It is not even just awesome AWESOME. It is AWESOME awesome AWESOME.

It is, in fact, an awesomeburger pattie covered in awesomesauce and placed on a fresh sesawesome seed bun.

...Hopefully by this point the word "awesome" has lost all meaning to you after seeing it so many times.
Somebody definitely needs to record that. I wish I could sing so I could do it myself but alas, I can not. But if somebody records the vocals I could add instrumentals and polish.

*brain melts due to pure awesomeness*
You'll be the death of me!

It's official, MJ has won the internet. We bow before your peppery might.

ZOMG. That was awesome. I think if MJ isn't a General, he should at least be Major Kong or something. That guy rode a nuke! And had a cool hat.

I'll have mine with a side of win, and a 60-ounce Un-Frickin'-Believable.

If it's any consolation I thought it could've been a lot better.

The last guy's a jerk, though...

That's Wiggity Wiggity Whack!

2007-09-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

Excuse me, everybody. I have an announcement to make. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the Devil, and the Government is lyin' about 9-11. Thank you for your time, goodnight.

Thank you, White Jesus, for bringing this show back. New episodes of The Boondocks starts next month, and... and I'm just so damn happy. One of the greatest cartoons of the modern age, and despite the subject matter, more than transcends the apparent cultural barriers. People need to watch this cartoon. Most of the episodes deal with serious issues in a very frank manner, but some of them have to rely on amazing animation and tremendous hilarity to get by (I think they manage it.)

And the winner of the "Black Artist Most Likely to Commit a Sexual Offense Involving a Twelve-Year-Old" award is... y'know, it's bad enough we even have to have this award, but this year it's a tie!

Watch the damn cartoon. I had some other stuff to say, but.... but I don't have anything else to say.

Farmers Are SO 10,000 Years Ago....

2007-09-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.

This was a creepy article, I have to say. As reported widely in business and mainstream press, the ILO recently released world market employment statistics. Most outlets focused on US economic competitiveness vs. China and Europe. However, there was an important and often-overlooked bit of info in the report: for the first time since the invention of agriculture, farming is not the biggest sector of the global economy — services is. Workers are now moving directly from agriculture to services, bypassing the traditional route of manufacturing, since manufacturing is now directly a robotics process and indirectly a service industry.

"At a time when doom-sayers were hopping around saying everyone was going to starve, Norman was working. He moved to Mexico and lived among the people there until he figured out how to improve the output of the farmers. So that saved a million lives. Then he packed up his family and moved to India, where in spite of a war with Pakistan, he managed to introduce new wheat strains that quadrupled their food output. So that saved another million. You get it? But he wasn't done. He did the same thing with a new rice in China. He's doing the same thing in Afica -- as much of Africa as he's allowed to visit. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1970, they said he had saved a billion people. That's BILLION! BUH! That's Carl Sagan BILLION with a "B"! And most of them were a different race from him. Norman is the greatest human being, and you probably never heard of him."

I've learned a lot from my wife, and from her parents farm. With the current world population, did you know that it works out to 4.2 acres of land surface per person... that's man, woman, AND child? The average family would have 20 acres to themselves. A person can produce all the food they need for a whole year on less than once acre, CONSIDERABLY less if they work it well. Taking into account that roughly 50% of the world isn't arable (mountains, deserts, New Jersey), that still means that if everyone used half of their 2 arable acres for food, everyone would have all the food they could possibly eat, as well a 3 acre lot with excellent views of the family garden. It's simplistic, but it gets the point across.

I think we risk becoming the best informed society
that has ever died of ignorance.

Well, that's my global opinion for the day. We now return you to your regularly scheduled video.

Hell Of A Weekend

2007-09-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

Kazakhstan is the greatest country in the world!
All the other countries are run by little girls!
Kazakhstan is the number 1 exporter of potassium!
All other Central Asian countries have inferior potassium!
Kazakhstan is the greatest country in the world!
All other countries is the home of the gays!

I couldn't think of a quote to start this off with.

So, the weekend starts off with me wrangling both kids while the little woman goes to stay with her mom so they can go to the Farmer's Market early the next morning. No problemmo. Throkette, my lovely one-year-old daughter, however, elected to spend most of the night tossing, turning, and kicking me in the face after the 1am feeding (where we usually crash on the futon so she'll stay asleep). Not my best night for sleep.

Saturday, we head to the IPE... the Interior Provincial Exhibition. 20,000 people descend on a carrot-and-cheese town of less than 5,000 people. There's cows and horses and clowns and lumberjacks and baking and giant vegetables and ferris wheels (which my son is ONE INCH TOO SHORT TO GO ON, YARG!) and there's tractors and chuck-wagon races and food booths and lots and lots of people. I was almost dead by the time we headed home.

So Sunday, I head to work while the family heads to the farm. I work with my boss for hours and hours on Plans B, C and D for several projects which are in the process of being FUCKED, and then I head out to the farm. I'm not there for an hour when my father-in-law walks into the living room with a loaded shotgun and says to me "Hey, I got an idea, wanna come outside for a minute?" Now, he's had lot and lots of chances to kill me over the years, and during those first few years I wouldn't have blamed him for it, so I trusted him this time. He used me to flush out some starlings in the cornfield so he could shoot them (one round of birdshot, four dead starlings, THATS cool...) When I come back inside, my wife and mother-in-law are both laughing, and saying "I can't BELIEVE you went outside with him like that. 'I've got a gun, wanna come outside?'"

Then home, laundry and dishes, bed, midnight feeding, face-kicking, shower, and I'm back at work. A long weekend, and I work two of the three days. Yippie-ki-yay, motherfu*blam*! Had a great thing happen this morning... some sort of prefrontal burst of Soundgarden-induced creativity, but I finally wrote, in my brain, the end of Book 2 and nearly all of Book 3 of one of my stories, New World Samurai. Been trying to end Book 2 properly, and been trying to muddle through Book 3, and it all happened this morning.

YAY BRAIN!

Perfect Moments

2007-08-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

Happiness is a warm puppy. ~ Charles M. Schulz

Happiness is a warm gun. ~ The Beatles

Perfect moments are rare, but they happen more often than one might think. I don't mean a perfect day , or a perfect hour, or scarcely even a perfect minute... but a perfect moment. (Yes, I know I haven't blogged in a week, shut up.)

But perfect moments can happen often enough, if you're of a mind to notice them. Last night's perfect moment came in the kitchen. I was trying to cook dinner, managing to get everything on pretty much at once. I was getting some 'help' from my son to set the kitchen table, and trying to mitigate the 'help' from my daughter as she tried to un-set the table. I was enjoying the cold, burning sweaty chills of my delightful cold, which has now progressed to my throat, left nostril and frontal lobes. I was wondering why I was feeling so Monday on the Tuesday, since usually Tuesdays are reserved for feeling better than Monday.

As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway. ~ Calvin

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting on with it. Anyways, in the midst of all this muddled sickness and annoyance and stress and whatever, a cool breeze came in through the open kitchen window. The lacy drape, which really doesn't shield air or light, was blown partly aside. It was humid outside, almost rain, but not quite. The kitchen was dark, the yard was lit, and the moist gust of wind felt really good on my oven-and-germ-baked skin. I leaned forwards, put my hands on the cabinets, and levered my body over the sink, and just... looked out the window.

And that moment... the breeze, the hot, the cool, the trees, the yard... it sort of made the whole day. It was a moment I could have stayed in forever.

I'M SIGNIFICANT!

...screamed the dust speck.

It probably seems juvenile and silly, but I like my moments. I get a few of them a week, I enjoy them for the span of a breadth, and then it's done, and the pot boils over, or some child hits another child, or the light turns green, or I fall asleep, or I wake up. It's not even about a breeze, or a window... it can be anywhere, it can be anything, and it can strike and fade like a bolt of lightning.

I should keep track of them.

Maybe it means something.

Procrastination Is.... Eventual

2007-08-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

"Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait - The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don't count."

I'm fat.

"Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will--tomorrow!"

Hehe, yeah, I figured for the whole first paragraph, that one up there would sum it up pretty good. For THIS paragraph, I'm going to mooch a previous blog post. In truth, though... I've been diagnosed with a fatal disease. It has been kinda depressing me for the past few days. I mean, I always suspected I had it, but I've never been able to get a doctor to confirm my suspicions, mostly since doctors hate it when you think you know more than they do, which, in most cases, I am finding out is true. Ingravesconimis Morbus is a serious and dangerous disease, but fortunately, it is easily cured. Ingravesconimis Morbus is more commonly known as You're Too Fat Disease.

You're Too Fat Disease can strike anyone, even perfectly skinny people such as myself. My normally chiseled good looks have been obscured by puffy, fleshy growths. My ripped abdominal muscles are nearly completely encased in layers of adipose tissue, and their removal is a very costly medical procedure. The manual method of removal is a very long, often multi-year process, and it is very difficult for people who have been stricken with this disease for long periods of time. I myself have been living with for over nine years. I urge you, good people, who are reading this. Get yourself tested for Ingravesconimis Morbus, known on the street as Fat Bastarditis. You may be suffering from this horrible affliction, and not even know it, as it has been known to affect the brain and the vision, actually preventing itself from being discovered.

"To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed."

Did you see the humor there? Huh? Didja? If not, go back and check again. I'll wait.

You saw it? Good. Moving on. Weight bench, check. Bars and free weights, check. Resistance bands, check. Punching bag, check. Exercise bike, check. TV, VCR, and stereo within easy reach of all those things, check. Lots of room, check. Motivation to actually use ANY of them (other than the TV?)... not check. I've used several perfectly reasonable and excellent excuses and justifications to get out of exercising, most recently: Throkette won't sleep through the night, and I can't get up early enough to work out [b]/[/b] when she does sleep through the night, I want to sleep in sooo badly to catch up on sleep [b]/[/b] when I'm up early and she's sleeping through the night, I can't go downstairs because I won't hear her when she wakes up. At night, I'll vow to get up and work out, and in the morning, nothing, absolutely NOTHING, is more important than just getting a little more sleep.

"Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic suicidal depression to just cheer up."

The major drawback is that at 6am (or whatever), I'm not in the best mindset to make important decisions. The rest of the day, I wish I had gotten up early and done something with my life, but when the alarm goes off and my eyes blearily open like discount garage door openers, I don't care about the decisions made the previous day by my predecessor (the 'waking' Marble). Thusly, the waking Marble (me, now) needs to start making some stronger decisions, ones that carry some weight early in the morning. I need an alarm in Throkkette's room so that I can wake up if I had to crash in there due to a midnight feeding. I need a baby monitor so I can hear her from the basement. I need to find some time to work out at night, between putting the kids in bed and actually relaxing and checking my e-mail.

Hey.... it's worth a shot.

Anger vs Hate vs Violence

2007-08-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

Anyone can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not easy.

Yesterday's post left a few questions unanswered, but it didn't occur to me until I'd gone to bed and had time to think about it. Fighting can be positive, violence can be excellent, and anger is one of the primary driving forces behind humanity. Anger is responsible for nearly every positive (and negative) social change in history. What sloth hath wrought in slavery, anger doth take away. What disease hath wrought on the family of men, anger hath cured. Love and hate are the emotions, anger is the means to resolution.

When you are angry or frustrated, what comes out? Whatever it is, it's a good indication of what you're made of.

Now, there's a good chance I'm off my cracker with this, but if I am, I'm not off it very far. Anger's closest relative is passion, and passion is the link to love and hate. You can hate something, but to hate with passion leads to anger. You can love something, but to love passionately leads to anger, but it is the sort of anger that is directed at the world, the sort of anger that desires to fight off anything that could hurt that love, deprive that passion. With hate, however... the anger seeks to FUEL the hate, INCREASE the passion, until fervor overrides thought, and actions are merely responses to an emotional impetus that one does not understand anymore.

Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.

Because anger is linked so strongly to passion and love, anger's good neighbor is our friend, Mr Humor. Hatred fears humor, precisely because humor robs hatred of it's passion, leaving it baseless. Humor can harm hatred, but hatred can only be defeated by understanding, and understanding stems from a DESIRE to learn.

The Native American grandfather tells his grandson that there are two wolves inside of him, fighting for control. One wolf, is the wolf of love, peace, and kindness. The other wolf is a wolf of greed, hatred, and corruption. The grandson asks "Which wolf will win?" The grandfather replies "Whichever wolf I feed."

People think that anger is something that needs to be suppressed, needs to be controlled, but any psychologist (and indeed any well-adjusted adult) with the slightest sense of reality will tell you that suppression is not good... suppression is fear. If you fear your anger, you hide it away, bury it down, and hope it will suffocate and die. No matter how deep you bury something, though, it's still somewhere inside you, and it can draw nourishment from anything. Anger should not be buried, not be killed, but be cultivated, be allowed to grow, but now grow wild and out of control. Any gardener will tell you that many plants can suffocate and choke out all the plants around it.

A guy says, "I hate Jews," and I said, "Why?" He goes, "Because they killed my God." They believe that. If I believed that the Jews killed my God, I'd worship the Jews, 'cause shit, there's some badasses on that team, man. I haven't seen God ever, I see Jews all the time – go figure!

Monday Morning Melancholia

2007-08-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it into a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard. Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely — lay your life before him.

It has to be some sort of cosmic Monday rule that I have to be all wishy-washy and irritated. Maybe it's a lunar thing, maybe it's from sleeping on the futon, maybe I had too many drinks on the weekend (four!), but I was all fighty and punchy this morning. It's been a long time since I've really thought about why I like to fight, why I like violence so much, and since I can't find my Hippo-Jutsu notes, I'll just have to sort of improvise this.

I like fighting. I like to hit things. I got a few minutes to whale on my punching bag yesterday (after hearing about a certain nephew who bit my one-year-old daughter) and despite the twinge in my wrist that hasn't gone away, I felt really, really good for about twenty minutes after that. Now, if you Wikiquote "Violence" or "Fighting", all you get are "Fighting is bad! Violence is hate!" quotes, which, on a general, societal level, I agree with. Now there's also the great Heinlein quote of "Naked force has resolved more issues than anything else in history, and thinking anything else is wishful thinking of the worst sort". This is also true... violence sucks, but it works, for a number of reasons.

Now, I don't want to fight another country for any issue of mine or theirs, and I don't want to fight anyone on the street for any issue of mine or theirs... but I want to fight someone else who wants to fight me, for the sake of fighting, so that we can fight, and still be friends, and nothing more. Maybe it's hard-wired into humans, maybe it's something wrong with my brain, but I like to fight, I like to hit things, and I feel no animosity for anyone, because of or in spite of this.

People need to differentiate fighting, differentiate VIOLENCE, with hostility. They are separate things. Fighting is destruction and creation at it's most base level, whereas hostility is a developed, evolved concept that is solely about destruction.

Langstrom's Viral Joy

2007-08-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

You don't think there's anything amiss? I'm sitting here wearing a red and white checked gingham dress... and army boots... and you think that's un-amiss? I was just doing a little test... a little test to see if you'd gone crazy... If there's one thing I can't stand, it's crazy people. So... let me get this straight. You want to fly on a magic carpet, to see the king of the potato people and plead with him for your freedom, and you're telling me you're completely sane?

I think I've made a huge psychological breakthrough... this is the sort of thing that should be in all the papers. Psychiatrists all over the world need to know this, and I feel that it could save millions of people... but you can read about it here first. You ready?

...

Talking about problems helps.

Today has been one of the best days in all of recent memory. It was a good day at work, I got to go for lunch with my buddy at the KICKASS Mexican place downtown, I had more of a good day at work, I picked up my family and went to the farm, and I picked corn with my son, actually hung out with my father in law (who called me "buddy" three times, bringing the sum total through all time to... three), cooked dinner on the barbecue, watched football with my son and father-in-law, had a tasty dessert, drove the kids home (where they fell asleep instantly), and then got to chill in front of the TV for a little bit. Nothing individually amazing, but I've just felt... really great.

Ever since my post this morning. (See below). I still feel dissatisfied with the world, full of rage and anxiety, but now they're stuck between Smirnoff and corn and donuts, and that's all right with me.

You Have To Fight

2007-08-10T09:12:00.000-07:00

If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned .......

Now, except for the "quit your job" part there, my Fight Club kick is messing with my head again. Like many dissatisfied and disenfranchised men (and I suppose a few hormonal and confused women), Fight Club strikes a chord with us, but like all truly disenfranchised men, we can't do anything about it. It's sort of like being trapped at the bottom of a well, and if you don't get out of the well, you'll die. Now, there's a ladder which leads out of the well, but it has a little sign on it saying "Do Not Climb The Ladder", which may be the last thing that we see when our eyes close for the final time.

Now, I know my wife is reading this and thinking bad thoughts at me (yes, I can hear them, no, put the knife down), but no dear, this isn't about you or the kids or anything like that. Well, it is, but in the same way that me cracking a can of Coke is causing global warming. EVERYTHING contributes, but you and the kids are the things that keep me sane in a crazy world (and, ironically, make me crazy the rest of the time. Throkette, get off the kitchen table.) I work these many jobs and sleep these crazy hours to keep you all safe and give you the life you want.

But the fact that I have to almost kill myself to do that is one of my central issues with the world. The fact that ANYONE has to do that proves that the world is not right. I have tried, and tried, and tried to understand economics and the forces that control the ebb and flow of money, and no matter how many times it's explained to me, it's all just a solid wave of white noise and fiction.

This is probably just the lack of sleep and highway-driving seizure talking, combined with a YouTube inspired re-watching of Fight Club (see below!), but I know that, for the past week, I've been trying to find a way to take some time off work. Like... six months, preferably somewhere near a year. I have a new baby on the way soon, I have a ton of house renovations to do, and I know that the time is slipping away for me to ever write anything important to me. I have two kids, soon to be three, that I almost never get to see, and all I remember from my childhood is that on those rare occasions I ever saw my dad, he made me wish he wasn't there, and I know that I'm ending up the same way. I want to be there for them, be there for my wife. I can barely make it through the days now with enough spare time to play a little Stars! or Diablo, something just to give my day some solitude and amusement, and even that's not enough to get everything done that I need to do just to maintain my life the way it is, let alone improve it.

I'm picking up thoughtwaves... can't make it out, but "whiny bitch" seems pretty prevalent...

Anyways, it's back to work, where I watch incompetent but better-educated men get paid more for doing less work.

I Need To Stop Looking Like Me

2007-08-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no, uh, conscience, no understanding and even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil...He's been here once tonight. I think he'll come back. I'm gonna wait for him.

More specifically, I need ideas for a Hallowe'en costume. Some friends of mine are going as Transformers, and my son is mad at me for not having a costume for the past two years. So far the suggestions are:

Captain Planet

and

Jason Voorhees

I rather think the second one is more likely...

The Unreality Of Reality

2007-08-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

Reality is a term for people who refuse to see things as they can be,
so that they might be, instead seeing things as they are,
and lazily assuming that's how they'll always be.

~ Walter White

The persistent illusion of the Universe is finally starting to push me over the edge. Hmm, those words don't quite adequately capture the force of feeling I experience... ah, I know how to fix that.

The persistent illusion of the Universe is finally starting to push me over the god-damned Christ-punching edge. There we go, much better. The above quote sums it all up, really, but I feel I should go into some stuff, just so that the people who think they know me whill have something to do on their coffee breaks (or, if they forgot to make coffee, they can read it while waiting for Mothering to load.)

On my fora, there are several discussions about the American political 'system', and organized religion. Against all reason and logic, these threads have gone for hundreds of posts without degenerating, which makes me as happy as a little girl. I feel so... so at home on that board, and kin to many of the people there, what with all their little nooks and crannies (I'm not not licking toads). However, I am reminded of a little essay I wrote years ago, eloquently titled "Why It Sucks To Be A Writer."

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of everyone to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want - everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear - anywhere in the world.

* Franklin D. Roosevelt, America's Last President

The jist of the little essay, which was written while I was stoned and recovering from a seizure, is that literature exists to show people other worlds, worlds of future potential and wasted past chances, entire galaxies of what might have been and what could be. People lose themselves in the literature, in the stories, and if we've done our job right, they've thought thoughts they would not have otherwise come across, and their lives have been bettered. This is the goal of the writer. The world of the writer, though, is to see the whole of reality, and then pretend that somewhere better, or even somewhere worse, exists. The reader's life is improved, whereas the writer is, by their very existence, continually reminded of the shortcomings and insurmountable problems and infinite futility of the world of reality.

And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong.

* Edward R. Murrow

But that quote doesn't go all the way, does it? There's one further step, the step that we in the Western world took twenty years ago. The validity of so many things that we have long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging is a false validity. We have long since taken for granted the true ineffectiveness of government, the indifference of humanity, the casual hatred of those around you for those not around you. The fear I feel is that the decline of the world will not be stopped, since the decline has been happening for so long no-one even notices anymore. Imagine a bacterium on the Titanic. Bacterium A, for the whole of his existence, has known that his world was half underwater. Bacterium B, for the whole of his existence, has known that his world was two-third underwater, despite what his progenitor may have said. Bacterium C, for the whole of his existence, has known that his world was nine-tenths underwater, whereas his child, Bacterium D, is born into a world that he can watch vanish with his own eyes, because no-one before him had the slightest clue that it was changing. Clearly I am referring to human attention-spans, not life-spans, but the results are the same. I can only hope that the ship sinks slow enough that my grandchildren can grow up enough to hate me for what I didn't do.

God Is Dei-licious!

2007-08-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

This is a fictional conversation between Thematic, a guy on my forum, and Belial, another guy on my forum, and writer of the conversation. Behold!

Thematic: There is an alligator in that room to the north.
Belial: Is there?
T: Yes.
B: How do you know?
T: I just know.
B: Have you been in that room?
T: No.
B: Have you spoken to someone previously about the room?
T: No.
B: Have you read something about the room?
T: Yup, I found a really old scrap of paper saying "Alligator in there".
B: Huh.
T: Yup.
B: Is there some way of seeing into the room that I'm unaware of?
T: No.
B: Can you hear the alligator?
T: No. Do alligators even make noise?
B: They bark sometimes. Or hiss, if they're angry.
T: Huh.
B: Yeah.
T: Learn something new every day.....
B: So you didn't hear any of....
T: Nope.
B: Do they maybe have a specific sme-
T: Listen, Belial, Shut the fuck up. We could do this all day. I don't have any way of gathering information from that room, either. I just know.
B: Uhh...huh. Okay.
T: You don't believe me.
B: Nope.
T: You think I'm lying
B: That's the long and the short of it, yes.
T: Well, that's not fair.
B: You just admitted you have no way of knowing there's an alligator, and then you're telling me there's an alligator. You're lying.
T: You can't prove that. You have no way of knowing there *isn't* an alligator in the room.
B: Even if there *is* an alligator in that room, and I severely doubt it, you'd still be lying.
T: Wait...so even if I'm telling the truth, I'm lying?
B: Pretty much. Because you have no way of knowing you're telling the truth. Even if there's an alligator, you just got lucky. You told me something with full knowledge that it may very well be, nay, that it was probably a lie, and you just happened to be wrong.
T: But I *do* believe there's an alligator in that room.
B: If that's true, it's an interesting experiment in self-delusion, but it doesn't change the fact that you have no way of knowing you're telling the truth. You don't even have a good reason to *think* you're telling the truth. So even if that door opens *right now*, and there's a goddamn alligator sitting there, you were still lying.
T: Hmpf.
B: Whatever.

I love these guys.

ZOMG! Stress != Good?!

2007-08-01T09:33:00.001-07:00

That's what some researchers in the UK think!

Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.

The super-Einsteins behind the study determined, all on their own, that 45% of new cases of depression and anxiety were attributable to stressful work. They defined a highly demanding job as involving a lack of control, long hours, non-negotiable deadlines, and a high volume of work... which is to say every white collar job out there, pretty much.

Now, I had a conversation about this last night, with a friend of mine (over several vodka-based drinks). He owns his own business now, he sets his own hours, and he makes all the profit. Now, I consider his job just fantastically easy compared to mine... I design the buildings, and he cleans them. We discussed stress of jobs, and pay's effect on stress. Years ago, I worked a CAD job, but it was so MIND-NUMBINGLY DULL that I decided to quit. I then got a really busy, high-stress job, and I loved it for two and a half years, but now it's really, really grinding me down, despite my much improved pay. Had I been given THIS pay amount, with the BORING job, I wouldn't have quit, whereas I would need a LOT more money now to ease the stress and keep me doing this.

Stress and depression is not so much a byproduct of work, so much as stress is a by-product of improperly-rewarded work. But that's just my opinion, and I'll bet there's about 9,000 CEOs who disagree with me (and 9,000,000 workers who agree whole-heartedly).

Ok, back to work...

Hell Of A Day...

2007-07-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt.

Hell of a day today, doctor... hell of a day. Starts off in the usual manner... trying to get my son ready and out the door, with his constant heel-dragging and teeth-gnashing, and I almost expected him to actually dig his nails into the door jamb and make me pull him out while he tried to watch some random minutes of George Shrinks. I got him to gymnastics on time, no problem.

Long-assed day at work. Very long. Very busy. I'm necessary.

Then I brought the family home, and since my son had has his television privileges taken away today for his (lately, typical) behavior (he got into a fistfight because some kid was screwing with him and giving him wedgies), he sat on the recliner and pouted for two solid hours, ate his dinner, had a nice bath, and went to bed with no fuss at all. Half an hour later, he comes out and says he isn't tired. Well, ok, I go to put him back into bed...

... and he bursts into tears, crying that he doesn't want to have any more birthdays, because if he does, he's going to die.

...

This isn't the first time he's done this...

Son: When my fish die, I can get new fish?
Me: Probably, yeah.
Son: When my dad dies, me and mom will get a new one.
Me: Uhm... your dad?
Son: Yeah, when you die, we'll get a new one.
Me: Oh.

Or...

Son: When did she get sick?
Me: Well, a while ago. She was very old.
Son: Old people are sick?
Me: Some of them.
Son: When did she stop being sick?
Me: Uhm... when she died, I guess.
Son: When will we see her again?
Me: Uhm... we won't.
Son: When is she coming back?
Me: Uhm... she's not.
Son: Oh. That's not nice.
Me: I know.
Son: I can get new fish, from the Pet Store.
Me: Yes. Yes you can.

Or my favorite...

Son: We'll go straight home?
Me: That's right.
Son: We'll go in a straight line?
Me: Almost.
Son: We won't turn left or right?
Me: No, we'll have to turn.
Son: Why?
Me: Well, because we'd crash.
Son: Then we'd have to go to the hospital!
Me: That's right.
Son: Then we'd have to go to the church!
Me: Well.... yeah, I suppose that's true.
Son: No, we wouldn't go to the church.
Me: We wouldn't?
Son: No, other people would go to the church, people who wanted to see us one more time.
Me: ..... Yeah. Yeah, they would.

These are excerpts from my previous blog over the past year, where my son explores the wonder that is death. Tonight, though, was a sobbing breakdown in bed, crying that he'd have to learn how to get along without us when we died, that he'd have to get a new family and a new dad and a new mom and a new baby sister when we died, and if he kept having birthdays, then he'd die and he didn't want to die. I tried to reassure him as best I could, explaining that there was nothing on the planet that was going to hurt him as long as I was alive, because there's nothing on this planet that's scarier than me when it comes to my son.

Eventually he got calmed down, and chuckled when he told me a knock-knock joke. Now, two hours later, he's just finally fallen asleep.

...

Try as I might, and my son is turning out just like me.

I couldn't find anything funny tonight.

Think Of The Fucking Children!

2007-07-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

"The Internet treats censorship as a defect and routes around it." ~ John Gilmore

US Senators call for universal Internet filtering. Outstanding. You know, it always bugs me when the people the least mentally equipped to deal with the ramifications of modern social technology are in charge of controlling said social technology. From the article: "Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children." This is the same Ted Stevens who has been forever immortalized in the following movie:

"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed." ~ Former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower

It's utterly sick and ridiculous to think that they can actually censor and regulate "the Internet"... the Internet is no longer an object. It is no longer a single entity. It is no longer something that can be accurately described in terms of physical nouns, any more than love or literature can be described. The Internet is, and it simply will not be censored.

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure way against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is freedom." ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold

I hope this has been fucking enlightening.

I Have No Strong Opinions!

2007-07-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

I can't live the button-down life like you. I want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles. Sure, I might offend a few of the bluenoses with my cocky stride and musky odors - oh, I'll never be the darling of the so-called city fathers, who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about what's to be done with this Homer Simpson?!

Man, I post fourteen times this month, and what do I get? Three comments. Dammit, you people are all up in my grill about me not blogging, and when I do, what happens? NOTHING! Yarg! You're just lucky I feel so high and mighty about myself that I've deluded parts of my brain into thinking that, someday, this will be important text, possibly the basis for a religious work. My God BLOGS!

It's late, and I'm trying to think of baby names. ME! BABY NAMES! Everything I think of gets shot down by my internal censor, and if it somehow makes it past that, it gets shot down by Throkky's censor. That's too much censoring! The beeping is driving me insane!

On the advice of my lawyer (Throkky), I will now blog about her being pregnant. SAVE ME, JEEBUS!!

WATCH THE MOVIE! It's Rumsfield, their best work since Whale Tears.

God-dammit, I Just Swore!

2007-07-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

What's the big fucking deal bitch? It doesn't hurt anybody..... fuck fuckety fuck fuck fuck!

You know, I spend a lot of time on my blog ranting about the news, so I'm going to start this one off with something that is, unfortunately, real, and then I'll try and unwind everyone with hilarity, and if you don't fucking laugh, don't come crying to me.

US Senate Commerce Committee today passed a bill that would allow the FCC to fine broadcasters for slip of the tongue expletives, negating a ruling by federal appeals court in New York that commission's policy on 'fleeting expletives' is arbitrary and capricious. 'A mandate by Congress that a "fleeting expletive" can now be found indecent will create a vast chilling effect on broadcast speech, the advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology claims. CDT points out that prior to this bill and the FCC's policy change, the FCC exercised discretion in determining which utterances were indecent, and consistently found that one-time uses of curse words were not indecent.'

Now, the accidental curse on the radio can be fined by up to $10,000. The accidental, 'incidental' obscenity has always, when found to be truly accidental, been allowed to slide. Now, not so much. At the reason? You guessed it... "think of the children".

Some comments from Slash echoed my beliefs: See, it's not the inappropriate words that are the problem, it's the inappropriate behaviour. There's no difference between your seven year old telling to the teacher to 'fuck off' and the seven year old telling the teacher rudely to 'go away'. Until people see that it's rude and inappropriate behaviour that is the problem, not words, we'll always be stuck in the 1950s. This is entirely a matter of parenting. Period, the end, thank you! Most parents swear inappropriately and so their children learn to do so as well. And most parents use fear, not respect, to keep children in line. They use an appeal to authority, not one to respect, to guide their behavior. On the other hand, kids might think it is okay to swear, and think of the chaos if the curse word is accompanied by a nipple. Surely we can't have this as it will lead to all kinds of promiscuity, etc. Apocalyptic. Catastrophe! Better the kids see people getting their legs etc blown off. It's good clean wholesome fun that will prepare them for living in the modern world.

F***ing Americans, I... aww, DAMMIT! Who bleeped me?!

BEAN CUP!

Allrighty, that was one distraction... here comes another..

BABIES!!!

5th Amendment Repealed, Americans Don't Notice

2007-07-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The information below has been garnered from Slashdot, UK's Guardian, and CNN.

Tuesday, there wasn't even a fuss. Wednesday, the world was a little different. By executive order, the Secretary of the Treasury may now seize the property of any person who undermines efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq. The Secretary may make his determination in secret and after the fact. The new authority will only be used to go after terrorists.

The order gives the Secretary of the Treasury the right to immediately and without notice freeze all assets of anyone suspected of either directly or indirectly attempting to undermine the Iraqi government as well as anyone who has financial dealings, directly or indirectly, with such people. The language is ridiculously broad and does appear to violate the 5th amendment. It appears that if you, say, donate to a charity that the Bush administration determines is trying to undermine the Iraqi government, all of your assets can be frozen. The language is very broad and open to interpretation by the Secretary of the Treasury, who serves at the pleasure of the President. This is absolutely begging to be abused.

I love you guys. American reality is better than American television.

I'm Literally Angry With Rage

2007-07-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

When a man lies he murders some part of the world/
These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives
All this I cannot bear to witness any longer
Cannot the kingdom of salvation take me home

This quote was brought to you by Cliff Burton.

So, I know I can't talk about much online, for various legal and ethical reasons, so I shall resort to hypotheticals. Let's assume that there was a worker somewhere, a very highly-paid and qualified worker. Now, every payday, he'd vanish for a couple days, not answer his phone, and not answer his door. Two days, three days, sometimes an entire week. He would always eventually return to work, and claim he never heard the phone, never heard the door, and was gone for a perfectly reasonable excuse... he was sick, or he cut his thumb, or... or he was sick. He never explained anything properly, especially why he was never home. After seven months of this happening every two weeks (except for a few instances where he'd actually show up), after seven months of shoddy work that other employees have to fix, after seven months of seriously overcharging his boss by overestimating his work hours, after seven months of him shirking responsibility by claiming not to understand English, it is finally implied by managment that he is being shown the door.

Seven months.

But it turns out today that he is not being shown the door. No action is being taken. In fact, he has been invited over to managements house to meet some other French-speaking local people, and he is being assigned other work. Seven months of this. I've now decided that this worker must have incriminating evidence, or perhaps an antidote to a poison he administered to management, or something, because I just can't exist in a world where someone is paid this much to make my life harder.

I almost smashed his face a flat-screen monitor today. Er.... whoever he is. Hypothetically.

We've got two videos today, in honor of my son. My son Zalgite was heartbroken to find out that he can't go see Big Sugar in concert, Big Sugar being pretty much his favorite band ever, because they play his favorite song ever. So, in honor of him, you will find below some Big Sugar. Now, unfortunately, Judgement Day / Joe Louis does not exist in a YouTube-able format, except for this overamped segment from the intro, but I will follow it up below with Ride Like Hell (1993, motherfuckers...) and then our national anthem, performed only as Gordie "God" Johnson can do. (Once I find out how to make videos to go with an mp3, I am so putting up Judgement Day).

Word.

2007-07-16T14:25:00.001-07:00

I am trying to win the free ticket to the xkcd Meetup 2007 at MIT, in Boston, Massachussets. Here was my entry:

This September, the fine folks at xkcd.com are holding a little get-together; a shindig, a doo-wop, a bunfight, a celebration, and yours truly wants to attend... which brings us to tonight's word.

Mighty Jalapeno! Now, a party of nerds, geeks, dorks, eccentrics, oddballs, whackos, fruitcakes, and fascinating physical and intellectual anomalies just wouldn't be complete without someone to remind them that they could all be much, much worse off, and that's imporant for so many reasons.

It's true that Mighty Jalapeno hasn't been on the forums very long, and despite his excellent grammar and skillful posting, he is still just a newbie.

He may not know as much about math and science as some of the elder xkcdians either, since he spent most of his time in college learning more realistically important and career-minded things.

But there is one thing that Mighty Jalapeno has that few other forumites possess...

... and that is life experience. He has a pregnant wife, two kids, a mortgage, and an ulcer, and those are things you can't get while studying to be a mathematician
or a rocket scientist.

Mighty Jalapeno needs this trip. The farthest he's ever travelled is Mississauga, scenic gateway to Guelph, and that was spent stuck in the back of an Aerostar reading Xanth novels.

He's going to bring a buttload of kickass stuff, too, assuming he can bring it on the airplane! He's got a nice bass / amp / pedal setup, and a pretty little Dell laptop loaded to the gills with music and movies. He might not be able to bring beer on an airplane, but he can bring smoked salmon, buffalo steaks, Carribbean red peppers, and, of course, his personal stash of win.

He'll also be holding lectures on a variety of interesting topics in his field of expertise, namely green architecture, sustainable development, personal organic food gardening, and other subjects for the individual home.

His wife will also be coming, if the supplied air-miles can supplement all the air-miles that they've built up over the years. This would be their first vacation together without kids in the history of the Universe, and whenever there's a first like that, you know you wanna be there. She enjoys knitting Klein bottles, Sid Meier games, and chubby nerdy geeks.

So the choice is clear, ladies and gentlemen. You can go with the dweeb with the stormtroopers, or the tempermental actress, or any of the other mediocre forumites who didn't care enough to fire up Photoshop and go to town with copyrighted material... or you can think about what you really need to spice up a good party.

And that's The Word.

Weak-End Weekend

2007-07-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hey angel, consider your position
Framed to be consumed
Savory... savoring your sympathy
Hey angel, fly over
And bless me, see you feign surprise
I'm all eyes
You're all you need to be.

Well, I got my car back. Doodly-doo!

I also managed to survive Throkky's family reunion, now with MORE people I don't know! I exchanged pleasantries with several of them, the usual "How are you, whats new, hows work", and typically they wandered off before I was done talking. The most I ever talked about anything was locally-grown food with my wife's uncle, and that was because he sort of had me cornered. Otherwise, the most I talked with anyone was with a three-year old girl who seemed to see me as her burly protector for the weekend.

Had a few drinks, ate too much food... typical family reunion. Zalgite got locked in a bathroom for about half an hour (everyone else was outside), and when I went to look for him, I was confused he didn't seem to be ANYWHERE... until I heard pounding, and turned to see him sobbing and screaming and pounding on the glass of the window right next to me. I got him loose, and he couldn't even talk, he was sobbing so hard. He'd demolished the bathroom, and got mad at me for not hearing him screaming for so long. On the inside it was funny, but he was really, really upset.

He's ok now, though, and assured me that he was going to make Grandpa install "a button that opens the door when it won't open".

Damn straight.

Fugging Manifolds

2007-07-13T13:11:00.000-07:00

Those are things I never felt I needed. I haven’t had time to cry if I felt like crying. I haven’t had time to stop myself from being this robot who is really running away from everything. You think that success or even good work will take care of everything, but part of you starts to rot if you leave it unattended. I want to enjoy some degree of the ride that I am on, and I do.

Well, the car, now officially named Car-Car, is in the shop, getting both exhaust manifolds replaced. This is important, because without the ability to fold the mani, my car is louder than a dozen exploding elephants, and smells fairly similar, too. It is also costing me a weeks wages, and they can't even guarantee if I'll have my car back before.... Sunday. Yup, you guys really did well in school, huh?

I asked them how fast they could swap out the pads and rotors on my car, they said that would just take two hours. Two hours, really? Huh... I can do it in ONE, and I know sweet fuck all about cars. My manifolds are probably already fixed, and they're just sitting around going through the pictures in the camera in my car.

Yarg.

Well, YouTube embedding has made my blog prettier... no more painful links for people to click, now it's just a little triangle! Yay! Let's roll this puppy out again, see what happens.

Flyleaf.... my new favorite band.

Hail Draco, King of the Dragonmen!

2007-07-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

I fashioned my crown from Quetzlcoatl's quills
Built my palace in the jungles of Brazil
In the summertime come my children
"For I hail Draco, King of Dragonmen!"

That's right, bitches... I'm going to Clutch!

I'M FINALLY GOING TO CLUTCH!!!

There is a God, and will be seeing his chosen ones on stage August 14th at the Commodore. Awww, yeah... I'm leaking from so many orifices at the thought!

...

That sounded less dirty in my mind.

Catharsis Tastes Good!

2007-07-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

I am a comedian and poet, so anything that doesn't get a laugh …
is a poem.

Ok, folks, confession time. Now, a lot of you (and by a lot of you, I mean Throkky and Sleeping Kyle) read my post on Monday, and half of you (meaning not Sleeping Kyle) apparently became quite infatuated with it. Or possibly infuriated with it. Possibly infected with it. Whatever "i" word I'm supposed to be using, just imagine it's up there, ok? Run with it. I've got a point, and I'm heading towards the end of it. I will not be stopped!

Now, the point I had been trying, very poorly, to make on Monday was that it's hard to have a blog where I CAN'T talk about personal stuff, because the people I talk about read my blog, or at least know people who read my blog. Really, all that does is limit me to talking about stuff that is mildly amusing but, on the whole, not important, and just serves to further highlight how much stuff in my life is being internalized to the point where I'm finding it hard to cope. Oh, wah wah wah, bitch bitch bitch, Marble's being mopey... boo hoo...

Now, in terms of confessions, this probably isn't going to sound like a great one, and I hope judgement will be reserved for the end of the blog (the part before the music videos, because that's sort of off-topic.) Even so, I feel it's an important place for me to start.

This is the first morning in a long time that I've driven to work without being mad at Throkky, and the world in general.

Now, that might seem to be "I confess I'm a jerk most of the time!", but I hope that I can explain. In a normal day, anywhere between thirty and eight thousand things make me mad, make me clench my fists, make my grind my teeth, make my eye twitch, and generally make me want to yell and/or hit something. However, I've become expert at suppressing all of that. Most mornings, Throkky does something to make me mad. Now, given perspective, I know that she needs her coffee in the morning and whatever she's done to irritate me is exceedingly minor. It may have been something she did the previous night, or it might just be me being cranky at the kids. It might be something Throkky did last year, or three years ago. It doesn't matter... I always end up driving to work mad. Depending on how my day AT work goes, I also usually drive home mad.

Now, when I come home and see her, all that anger dissipates. Really, it does. I come home, and realizing that, once again, I've just been dwelling on the negative, and most of the negative is the result of how I handle the events around me (read: badly).

Today, I woke up in a good mood. Zalgite was being a fussy little drama-queen (he has an owie in his mouth, so once again I had to throw out his breakfast), and Throkette was eating toothpaste again. I had my breakfast, made some coffee, gathered up my stuff (lost my shades), and headed to work, and all the way in to work, all I could think about was last night.

For the first time in a long time, me and Throkky talked about more than just idleness. I don't talk much, since one of the things I've picked up for the years is that talking to other people about serious subjects just brings more pain, and that's one of those things that's more my fault than anyone else's, just because of my mad skills at dwelling, and my complete inability to talk properly and honestly about things that are disturbing me.

Now, as you can see, in typically Marble fashion, I am over-reacting to a single event, and now baring my soul and other vestigal organs to the world, the intertubes, the blagosphere, and Throkky herself. I'm not saying I'm cured of all my myriad, nay, legion mental issues, but I feel like I'm starting down a good road here.

I love you, Throkky, even if I don't always show it.

....

Well, that was deep, huh?

Black Light Burns - Lie This is what happens when someone realizes they have godlike talent, and they're stuck in Limp Bizkit.

Spammity Spam!

2007-07-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

Do people actually take American Medical Association e-mails seriously, when they come from "rpointer@girl-photos.com"? I mean.... what the hell?

Bursting With Adequatulence

2007-07-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out. We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.

So I have run into the ethical and moral dilemma that my old blog had, which was one of the reasons that I didn't post there often. Well, there's a lot of moral and ethical dilemmas to the intertubes and the blagosphere, but most of them don't mean shit to me, so I'm spared having to worry about those. No no, the one I am referring to today is just this:

At what point am I freed, spiritually and emotionally and all that hippie crap-ally, to be able to talk truthfully and from my heart? At what stage in the directed evolution of Marblehead (nee Mighty Jalapeno, et al) does Marblehead do the directing? I suppose it's pretty obvious what I'm talking about here, but for all three of my white-knuckle readers who might be watching this, I'll spell it out:

Cable television.

...

I hope the irony is not lost on everyone. Linky time!

Chevelle - Comfortable Liar - Yes, it's to a DBZ video, but that's the best I can do.

Exactly What Meets The Eye

2007-07-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

Movie Review - Transformers

It would be far, far too easy for me to spend the entire review criticizing Michael Bay, or the producer's opinions of the intelligence of the average viewer, or the kill count in this movie based on a child's toy line (and really, I can't say too much there, since there's more graphic killing in the original movie than in this one!) Therefore, I will do it briefly and get it out of the way.

Michael Bay - Learn how to compose a scene. Please.
Producers - The people who like these movies don't necessarily like Can't Hardly Wait.
Kill Count - The end of the movie took place in a crowded city.... why?

Ok, that's better. This movie was, I have to admit, much better than I thought it would be, but like every movie based on my childhood and created almost entirely by people who were already adults at the time, it completely missed the spirit of the original, not to mention all the of the subtle, salient points that made the original series so much better. The fundamental plot for the movie was pulled out of someone's ass, deviating from the original cartoon, the original movie, and the comics themselves, and instead forging new, inexplicable paths into uncharted randomness. While I am actually relieved the film had LESS pointless exposition than expected, it had less plot to even attempt to expound upon.

Now, the special effects were, with the exception of one scene, top-freaking-notch, but that is also the source of one of my greatest annoyances with the movie. The robots were convolutedly detailed that, really, the fight scenes were little more than fast-forwarded rendering test-scenes. You weren't sure which robots were fighting, what they were doing, and who won (until the next scene, where you counted which color was missing). It may have been 'hyper-realistic', but as we've learned from Star Wars, that does not translate to good.

Now, most of the good, memorable scenes were the ones where Michael Bay wasn't present (nothing was blowing up), but a collection of good scenes strung together with motion-sickness-inducing high-speed fly-throughs of robots trashing the Empire of Man does not a good film make.

For making something a 12 year old will LOVE, and thus making a successful movie, I have to give this movie a solid 6 out of 10. It could have been MUCH better..... but it could have been catastrophically worse.

Remote Post - Activate!

2007-07-06T09:18:00.001-07:00

Folks: It's time to evolve ideas. You know, evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right? Didn't end there. We're at the point, now, where we're going to have to evolve ideas. The reason the world is so fucked up is we're undergoing evolution. And the reason our institutions, our traditional religions, are all crumbling, is because … they're no longer relevant. They're no longer relevant. So it's time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion, you see. And that's okay 'cause that's our right, 'cause we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything, and that's kind of our role.

Does anyone out there see a problem with, not where the world is headed, but where the world appears to be heading? See, those are two separate ideas (one evolved, one not...), and I only mention it because some associates of mine are ranting about Fox News (Or, as they are now called, Faux News...). Specifically, Space Commander Bill O'Reilly's latest tirade against pink-pistol-packing lesbian gangs terrorizing America which is just so epically awesome, and fundamentally ridiculous, that it doesn't even sound odd coming out of his lips, especially since he accused the American 82nd Airborne unit of committing Nazi war atrocities. Quite the fluffy bunny this guy is, eh?

But those are merely specifics of the whole. If I may use a pollution metaphor, those are merely infected, pus-filled whale-corpses floating on the top of the colossal toxic-waste-dump settling pool that is mass media perception. I flicked through CNN and MSNBC last night while waiting for Throkette to fall asleep (hint: she finally passed out during the Futurama intro at 11pm), and they were either screeching about Paris Hilton, or yelling about Chris Benoit and the "pill-popping morons" who turned him to murder, or some lady who's been stabbed to death (ignoring the other 400 women who were stabbed to death in the past week), or other equally frivolous stuff. Whenever anyone takes the time to talk about global issues, they do it in such a way that the people who are there to speak cogently and coherently are made to look like idiots, or at the very least attempted to. Personally, anytime the media pundits try to make someone look stupid, the 'victim' is more than capable of handling themselves (see: pill-popping moron wrestlers, idiot revisionist generals, or Tommy Chong.)

I've got another Bill Hicks quote that would be more than apt here, but I've already used my quote for the day, so I'll simply end this by saying: What the hell is wrong with you people?! These channels wouldn't exist if people weren't watching, which is wholly more depressing than the subject matter. The people are drinking from the settling pond, despite the infinite ocean of clean water all around them.... but it's a short walk away, whereas the settling pond is here NOW.

Okie dokie! I can't seem to directly post funny pictures to this yet, so I guess we'll just try a little bit of linking. Bigger Than Jesus!

Video of the day? Totally that Tommy Chong video. Watch it.

Let's Kick This Bitch Back In

2007-07-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

They say rock n' roll is the devil's music. Well, let's say that it is; I've got news for you. Let's say that rock n' roll is the devil's music and we know it for a fact to be the absolutely, unequivocally true. Boy, at least he fucking jams!

Well, I'm back. It's a new blog (I like the layout better, though I had to Photoshop the backgrounds a little so it wasn't all happy-sunny and shit), it's a new me (though, really, I've been online as Marble longer than any of my other personas, Zalgon and Mighty Jalapeno included.) I'm hoping that starting from scratch will make it easier for me to blog here regularly, since I seem to be all disillusioned with my previous one, although reading back through my old posts, I was really on a roll in some spots. Why can't I write like that all the time?

Nothing I can think of right now to be all controversial with. I have some suggestions and articles backed up on the old laptop (hereafter named Roger), and I'll be getting to those soon enough, believe you me. For the nonce, though, I'll just leave you with some clever audio-visual stuff, and the hopes that my faithful readers will somehow leave the realm of the imaginary and the delusional, and post their support.

Ta!

Clutch - Oregon. Hail, Draco, King of the Dragon Men!