Ok, Now I'm Pissed

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

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

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

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

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!

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'

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"

... 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...

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...

... 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.