A Journey of Self-Discovery

I took the IKEA-bus to IKEA today. Kind of a fluke -- the last one leaves at 2:30, and I showed up at 3:00, grimly determined to get to Elizabeth, NJ somehow, someway, and by God there was a fucking bus waiting for me. Ill. I had been hoping that those creeps at 81 Degraw would help me get there, but the one with the car said, "Oh, not today." Just goes to show, if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. The Elizabeth IKEA didn't have much of the stuff I wanted, but I got an office chair and a little box for some of Mer's bathroom things. My arms are killing me.

And now, a musical interlude:

Well, they'll stone you when you're walking down the street
Yeah, they'll stone you while you're looking at you're feet
They'll stone you while you're excavating Crete
Yeah, they'll stone you while you're welcoming the fleet!

You know, I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned!

I've more or less finished the first version of my Fuckfuck to C converter. Here's the link.

I Feel Like A Turd Burger

I do. I woke up before Mer today with a tummy full of gas and I made all these really long farts, but I didn't feel better. I think it was the taquitos I had last night, but who can say for sure? I've been having some strange dreams lately. A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that Mer and I had these gigantic fish tanks installed in our house (or maybe we were living at the Coney Island Aquarium -- the decor was definitely a Beach/Granite kind of affair), and we had all kinds of fish. We even had a 1950s Norman Rockwell dad type of human who could only breathe water living in one of the tanks. He had a pipe and a newspaper and everything. Whenever you would walk up to one of the tanks, the fish would get really excited and press their weird little faces up against the glass. But whatever company was supposed to be cleaning all of it was doing a bad job, because the water was really murky. In the dream, I think we were having an argument about switching tank-cleaners.

This morning as I was on line at the breakfast cart, this guy asked if he could see the front page of my paper because Kofi Annan was on it. I told him he could have it, because I'd already read it. I do like Kofi Annan a whole lot, though. He is one hell of a guy. No, seriously. I really like him.

I've been playing around with ChilliWilli's F*ckf*ck language. I've even written a simple piece of software to convert 'feckfeck' code to C. Maybe I'll post it on the main page once I polish it up.

There was this article on CNN's site the other day about a fossil specimen of the earliest known human:

Although we call them 'modern humans,' they were not fully modern in the sense that we think of living people," [some scientist] added.

"They are all dirty and smelly and all that sort of stuff."

What?!

Just Wonderful

Today was really very nice. The weather, I mean -- I know we are going to have this big stupid hurricane but it's not really going to come here, and it just seemed like a very nice fall day on Broadway today. Everyone was going about his or her business, and I really felt like I was a part of the everyday goings-on of the world again. You know that feeling, right? It's very nice. Plus, it's "Fashion Week" in the city, so you can imagine the height and virtue of the women walking down the street. I had some sushi and dumplings for lunch.

But I am a terrible employee. I mean, I am always goldbricking and making stupid mistakes. I spent a couple hours today trying to get the sound to work on my computer so I could listen to MP3s on peoples' Windows shares, and it didn't work out. The only thing I was supposed to do today was rename some variables in a few test files and I could barely do that. I'm still trying to get it done. I'm awful.

I posted a comment on Slashdot that earned me 5 "Funny" points. The thing is, I'm not that funny and neither was my comment. You know who's funny? David Rees.

Eat A Fat Salad

Well, I decided that most of the things I had to say about September 11th wouldn't do me or anyone else any good to post, so I won't post 'em. Suffice it to say, it's very sad that all those police and firefighters and EMTs and whatever all got killed. And that if it's open-karma-season on Western civilization / whitey, we really better watch out, because we've got it coming to us in a major way. And all those neo-nationalist creeps like Wil Wheaton can eat a fat dick -- Liberal? Conservative? American? Shut the fuck up.

Last night when I joined Mer in bed, I tried to take some of the blankets away from her and she said "Mmf... no." When I tried again, she started punching my hand, hard. "Some people need to learn to keep their hands to themselves," she said irritably. I figured out she was asleep and said, "Jesus Christ, it's me in the bed with you." "Try to set a better example, then," she said, and turned towards the wall. When I told her about it this morning, she cracked up. "Oh, I knew it was you," she said. "I just thought something else was going on." What?!

I got some cool but overpriced d6 and d10 from Blatt's Billiards -- they're all black with white numbers on them, and the d6 have little skulls instead of ones. I'll be going to the library at lunch today to pick up a book about historical Boston. Or should I say... hysterical Boston?

I Feel Like The Bottom Of A Taxi Cab

No, I do. I was carrying heavy things all weekend and now I feel like the acid-deuce. I didn't even feel like writing in my stupid 'blog today, but that's the thing about having a web-log. You have to write in it, even when you don't want to and don't have anything to say. Mer's got her first day of teaching today. She's doing it right now, I think. Actually, the kids are probably at lunch right now. But she was doing it recently. It's probably going to go fine, though she has been experiencing some slight trepidation.

I bought Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role playing game. I got the one with the original rules system instead of the new "d20" rules. See, when you play role playing games, you have to role dice and someone has to do a little math to figure out whether or not certain things happen in the game world. The set of dice rolls and calculations is what makes up the rules of a game -- the part that is not just sitting around talking and drinking vodka tonics. Wizards of the Coast, the company that bought TSR, is trying to come up with a ruleset standard so that people will be able to learn new games quickly and maybe have more genre-fluid campaigns, and their work so far is referred to as "d20," because it involves a lot of 20-sided dice. Anyway, I bought the version with the non-d20 rules; this one is called the "BRP" version. I think it's going to be fun. We'll all dress up in funny costumes and light candles and eat chicken wings.

News Flask:
(Reactions to Bush's Address to the Nation)

"In 15 minutes, he attempted to make up for 15 months of misleading the American people and 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction," [Howard Dean] said.

In his speech, Bush called Iraq the "central front" in the war on terrorism and said foreign terrorists were to blame for recent violence there. But Dean said the security vacuum caused by the war itself is to blame for that situation.

No duh, right? (From the New York Times front page)

Twenty-seven percent, or $144 million, of the $539 million World Trade Center Business Recovery Grant program went to traders who work on the floors of the financial district's stock and commodities exchanges, to brokerage firms and to investment banks, according to an analysis by The New York Times. An additional $53 million, or 10 percent of the total, went to law firms, some of which employ hundreds of attorneys and generate yearly revenues of tens of millions of dollars, and few of which faced dire threats to their survival.

Johnny Rotten asks "Ah hah hah! Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Get on board the hell-bus, jerks.

I had a funny dream last nigh: I developed this way of shimmying around and slipping away from people that made me an excellent football quarterback. Naturally, this talent made me very attractive to the admissions department at Wesleyan University, to which, for some reason, I was really eager to return.

I really want to do this. Yo Degraw snivlets -- want to help?

Welcome To The Diamond Mine

Actually, now that I write that title, I wanna hear that song real bad, but I brought all my CDs home from work so that Mer could put them into this big binder we bought.

Ted et. al. moved into their new apartment, finally, on Wednesday. They want to go to a bar tonight, which is kind of disappointing. When it comes to that kind of thing, my point is this: Single people with an appetite for shit can go off to a bar all they want, but to try to sell it as a fun activity for your friends is insulting. Because it's not a fun activity when there's no prospect of scoring new and different pussy (if you're a dude) or of having some greasy meatball in a tight shirt tell your hair looks "beautiful" (if you're a woman). It's a shitty, boring time. So I don't know what I'm gonna do tonight. I'm out of the closet and I feel alright, though I am out of Carbona.

My sister's birthday was yesterday; as per her wishes, I made her a Ramones mix CD. My parents got her a computer to replace the e-Machine that just conked out. I had tacos and cake.

I put on this shirt this morning and I was out of the house before I realized it had a big stain on from the laser chicken I ate last week.

Stupid, Awful Shit

Fucking blogger just erased my post.

Well, today is Labor Day. Tom, Emma, Ted, Devin, and Katie were supposed to move into their new house yesterday, but they couldn't find the landlord, so they just cooled their heels in Pelham instead. It sucks because we waited around to help them all day, and we'll probably end up doing the same today, because it's raining and there's nothing else to do, and they are probably not going to find their guy.

Mer was telling me about this big dumb woman she saw buying lottery tickets at the deli. The woman bought like ten lottery tickets and made a net profit of a dollar. As she was leaving, Mer heard her say to herself, "As long as I stay one step ahead..." You fucking idiot. She (Mer) also described how most of the women who shop there aren't very good at doing math, so they go get the most crucial item first and bring it to the counter with their twenty, and then when they see how much change they have left, they start going after less necessary items, like donuts and Big-Gulps, and they say "gimme 'dat" to the cashier.

I was on line at Wholesale Distributors, the big department store underneath my office, and there's this guy on line behind me on a cell phone who's ordering some food for himself from his friend who is on line at some fast food place (it sounded like Wendy's). So he orders some happy meals or something for his girlfriend and a chicken sandwich for himself, and then he's like, completely serious, "Yo, make sure that chicken sandwich is fresh." What?! You have an Associate's Degree in Office Technology and wear khakis to work, so you are clearly a connoisseur of rubbery fast food chicken, able to tell the difference between the pap we serve to customers and the tender morsels we save for ourselves, the Wendy's Illuminati. Welcome to our inner circle, you fucking dumbass.

Movies:

• Spider: Good, but not very talky, and not very Cronenbergian, though I don't think I know what that means.
• Heavy: Very good, very sad
• Royale-wit'-Cheese Video Exchange also gave us Wild Cherries by "accident." That is one boring porn.

The asshole upstairs is playing his music far too loud again. At least it's "cool jazz" this time and not sex-you-up-girl music. I have never spoken to this guy, but I get the feeling is the kind of guy who says things like, "Music is my life." Anyone who tells you that music is his life is the fucking death idiot.