The Turtle Book

Comedy. Everybody love comedy these day. Mmm mmm. Here's some material from these two guys named Derek and Clive, though you might know them better as him and him, respectively. Yes, Tom, this is the kind of thing I would listen to wif' my friend Razor before we'd go out to roll punchies down at the club. No! No, that didn't happen! I never had that friend! Anyway:

CLIVE: Fff-uck. Dudley, are you not, is...? Fucking, fucking alcoholic! You're so drunk! You must ha' be on something else, you know.

DEREK: Oh, hold on, let's get this rhyme right:

My Mum came into the room and sucked my fucking knob, oh!
She put her mouth right, her mouth right round it and then she done a gob
On the end of it to make it smooth and make it nice and soft
And then she tossed me right off with her, er, Mrs. Mopp
Who came into the... (starts laughing)

CLIVE: Oh yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you very much indeed, thank you very much indeed, it is awfully good but it's not quite what we're looking for, erm, some of our...

We finally put the fucking Elizabethan Collar on Mimi, and boy did she hate it. She was very depressed for several days, she wouldn't eat, she wouldn't drink, we had to force feed and drink her. Now she's a bit happier and her gross little rash has basically entirely cleared up, and it's only been a few days. I want to leave the thing on until all the hair grows back, though. So fuck you, cat.

Guess who's getting reading glasses! Yeah, that's right -- ME. I went to the eye doctor a few days ago because it was one of those things that, you know, I'd been promising myself I'd do eventually, and it turns out I've got pseudo-myopia from staring at a stupid screen all day. So I get to have reading glasses that will hopefully relax my eyes a bit and make me more productive in the late afternoon and evening. Sick. The eye doctor was a real big fat dude who I think was cracking jokes about how much he hates exercise. He put a bunch of yellow shit in my eyes at one point to check me for glaucoma, and it felt rilly gross. He also gave me these exercises to do at work in which I have to focus on a pencil and move it to and away from my nose. Totally retarded. The frames cost a lot of money, too, but I'm pretty excited about looking hot and studious instead of hot and squinty.

DEREK & CLIVE: Oh! My old man's a dustman, he wears a dustman's hat

DEREK: (continues with farting noise in tune)

CLIVE: He's got fucking cancer, now what d'you think of that?!

DEREK: Oh... (falls into helpless laughter)

CLIVE: My old man's a dustman, he's got cancer too
Silly fucking arsehole, he's got it up the flue
He's got so much of fucking cancer it drives him fucking mad
He says, "I've got fucking cancer," and he's my fucking Dad
Oh, what a fucking boring cunt, he goes on and on all day
He's got this fucking cancer and he's too gone on the way

For his birthday or something I guess Tom got the DVD of the first season of The Office, and it is pretty funny. We've been watching episodes of it for the past three nights, but I have to say that the first episode is probably my favorite. Ricky Gervais is so manic and hideous, he's great to watch. I especially like it when he's in an awkward situation with another character and starts shooting little sidelong glances at the camera -- there's this implied camera crew that's making some kind of anthropological documentary about this office of a paper company. I also like it when he's in a one-on-one interview bit with the camera and makes this self-righteous grimace where he bears his revolting sharp little teeth. For his birthday I got Tom the Todd Barry album and Mitch Hedberg's album Strategic Grill Locations, which I kind of want to peep from him, since, as Mitch says in this clip I heard, "These are the jokes for the CD."

I finished The Iceman Cometh, and I guess I liked it. O'Neill uses the pat characterization that sort of irked me at the beginning of the play to make the end of the play even more humiliating for everyone, and that was pretty satisfying. Now I'm reading House of Leaves by Poe's brother, Mark Danielewski, and that's a lot of fun, if a bit, you know, pretentious. The centerpiece of the story of is a house that changes its shape, spawning hidden rooms and hallways that couldn't possibly fit inside the bounds given by its external dimensions and eventually a giant staircase leading down to somewhere else. I don't know where, I haven't gotten there yet. But it reminds of the terrible city Alex Roivas discovers beneath her family's ancestral manor in the Pulitzer-prize winning television drama "Eternal Grarkness."

And that, for some reason, reminds me of this funny site I just found again for the first time, Book-A-Minute. Particularly worthy is their summary of Slaughterhouse Five, greatest cause of death of junior high school readers after Catcher in the Rye.

DEREK: (more laughter) He's got cancer of the arsehole, he's got cancer of the bum

CLIVE: Cancer of the knob...

DEREK: Cancer in his eyeballs, he's got cancer on the gob
He's got cancer in his fingernails and cancer in his palm
Cancer up his bumhole where the...

CLIVE: ...half way up his arm!

DEREK: (laughs)

CLIVE: Oh, he's got fucking cancer, cancer everywhere
He's got cancer of the bumhole, 'cause he's a fucking queer...

DEREK: Oh...

CLIVE: He takes his fucking knobs up, he shoves 'em up his arse
And everybody knows it! HE'S FUCKING WORKING CLASS!!!

Okay, computer time: I got around the threading problems in Guile 1.6.4 by consolidating the Guile stuff into a single thread and writing a work queue-ing system for it, routing all requests for Guile service to a thread that reads them, launches Scheme threads to handle them, and then notifies the caller once the evaluation is complete. That was looking promising until I found out that there's no way to cancel a Guile Scheme thread in either Scheme or C, which kind of sucks the fatty, since I need to be able to prevent threads from chewing up system resources indefinitely. The Guile team has been very helpful -- they've promised some improvements in 1.7 / 1.8, but given that this is GNU project, I expect that will not be for a while. I've decided to focus on some of the more trivial and enjoyable aspects of the whole thing, such as replacing my logging system with stuff from syslog.h and potentially replacing libxml2 with libSXML, which is a GNU project. For the sake of perversity, it might be fun to try to build this using only GNU libraries.

Why am I doing any of this again? To get into grad school? I don't know. I'm getting pretty interested in stuff like genetic compiler optimization and similar stuff that I always told myself was masturbatory and stupid; maybe that means I'm ready to hit the books again, I don't know. Speaking of which: Guy, you should post your solution to that problem. Me, I'm just proud of myself for remembering that that big pi thing means set product.

Thank You, MSN

0-4 Correct Ouch! You totally pulled a Monica. As Chandler told Joey, you have to stop the Q-Tip when there's resistance. We suggest you spend ever spare minute between now and the finale watching the "Friends" DVD box sets.

5-8 Correct How you doin'? Not bad, but just like paleontologist Ross, you need to dig a little deeper.

9-12 Correct Could you be a bigger "Friends" fan? You could try... but you would not be successful.

Robert Moses A-Go-Go

I just got back from running around Prospect Park with Tom. It still killed me this time, but it killed me less. I actually ran, I think, about a mile without stopping, but then my shoelaces started getting untied and I had to burp so I had to stop. And after you stop, it's hard to get the momentum back. My leg started hurting pretty bad like two thirds of the way, so I just walked the rest, because last time I pushed it and I couldn't walk the next day. But the park was totally beautiful, really, really green, like the Parks Department's Special Purpose: The country in the city. Except it's not really the country, it's more like a golf course. But it's still totally fantastic looking, and seeing those nice apartment buildings around Grand Army Plaza reminded me of my old friends who lived near Central Park, like Chris and Sophie Pinkham. I even got kind of wistful, and depressed about coming back to my shabby little apartment building. Three. Point. Three. Five. Miles.

I started reading the novel the tech writer at work wrote online. I'm reading it online, he didn't write it online. Maybe he did. It's actually sort of okay, so far, even though he's a creep. He's funny and fun to talk to, but he's got this very immature and selfish reactionary political philosophy and this very indie-rock attitude about heavy metal even though he hates indie rock because people have indie-rock atttitude about it.

I can't work on gzochi any more until I find out this thing about Guile and pthreads -- I sent a message to the Guile mailing list about it, it sounded kind of bitchy, I don't know. It might be one of those messages that nobody replies to because it sounds ungrateful.

So this guy Ben Holtzman, I went to high school with him, and he's got this livejournal, which I read, and he doesn't know that I read it. Which is a little creepy, but you know, I love reading journals. I think he's kind of an idiot, which is ironic, because he certainly doesn't think he's an idiot, but, you know... I mean, he's not an idiot-idiot, but his priorities are all messed up. Anyway, he wrote the following description of what it's like to be obsessed with someone:

It's like finding an incredible sale at a store with only one item left in stock, rushing out to the ATM to get the necessary money together to make your purchase, and seeing it advertised on every corner between the shop and the bank. How could anybody not love her knowing how she laughs and what she laughs at?

Pretty accurate, right? The rest of the journal is about applying to graduate school and trying to say witty things to make inferior people in his Philosophy section laugh and admire him.

Sam Sedar on Majority Report just suggested that NYC liberals volunteer for the G.O.P. convention and be "nice." I'm pretty sure the implication was that we should sign up and then just be the worst possible volunteer. Like, take out-of-town republicans into the deepest, most angry part of Brooklyn and then just leave them there. If I can find a way to do it that minimizes personal risk (por supuesto), maybe I'll do it. You guys wanna do it, too? Come on. Come. On.

Morning Sedition Shift

Well, I don't want to disclose any agreement that I've agreed to non-disclose, but let's just say I make a great sissy and that Tom's got the voice of a big fat dude. Thanks, Devlin!

Okay, so I am not so good about publishing these updates after I write them.

Yesterday I did some manual labor with Tetley, helping him clean up the stick apocalypse that is their "back yard." In the process we found about a trillion snails, nice big ones with yellow shells, and we started thinking, what about a TERRARIUM? So I got a cheapo plastic box from the pet store and put some dirt and sticks and worms in it, along with a banana peel and a couple of baby carrots, and just like that we started to reap the benefits of a real, working terrarium. Like, for one, Emma and Katie didn't want it in their house, but I was like, it's Ted's, not mine, so it stays here. That was one benefit. Later on, we all went out to get burgers at Parkside, and I took all the gross gigantic chunks of iceberg lettuce and stuffed them in my pocket so I could give them to the snails. That was gross.

We watched Neil Simon's Murder By Death, which is more like Murder By Sucks if you ask me.

Mmm... Almond-Poppy Muffin and coffee. No combo is better.

A To Z Maintenance finally but also totally fixed the plumbing, so I can now sleep through the night completely -- the downside to this is that I've been having rilly weird dreams. Last night I dreamed I was rescuing a bunch of HIV-positive vampire hobos from some kind of government research facility. We were all running around in a big hedge maze, kind of like the one in the Alice in Wonderland cartoon, and I had a special tuxedo that would let me walk through these laser fences that were totally out of the video game Beyond Good And Evil -- or, as I like to call it, Beyond Good And Sucks.

Guy, how bad do you want to go to this thing?

I'm actually getting gzochi pretty close to being useful. I've written the code that sets up all the object-set relationships, now all I have to do is

• Finish the game file parsing code, including adding suppor for strict / non-strict error checking
• Write the event-queue loop code, that, you know, makes the games "go"
• Learn more about Guile environments / modules so that I can make sure the bindings from one game don't bleed into other ones
• Write the Guile API for the game designers

Long-term goals include

• Making a nice GUI for game / resource editing
• Making a "standard" reference client for each of the major tiers of graphical resource capabilities
• Making a real good sample game to illustrate how good the software is (if it is, in fact, good)

No sweat.

Oh yeah, one more thing: I fucking did not win anything in Adam Cadre's Lyttle-Lytton contest. My entries:

• Worse first sentence in a novel: The carrot mouldered; the rabbit stank.
• Worst opening line in a political speech: Folks, I'm from a simpler time, when a boy from a humble circus family could shoot himself straight outta a cannon and into the Presidency.

Given the constraints set forth in the rules, I think those were pretty good.

Resource Enumeration

The DSL is acting the fuck up, so I might lose the stuff in this entry. I already lost it once. I don't know.

A To Z Maintenance "Up Graded" the plumbing in our building on Monday, which naturally led to the ceiling in the bedroom starting to leak. I put a bucket under it and now the bucket is, you know, not full by any means, but very heavy with water. Pregnant or, say, fat, with water. Like a person with edema. I picture edema-water to be sort of milky / yeasty. The water in the bucket is brown.

I went running around Prospect Park with ol' Murder on th' Wind on Saturday. I didn't think I was going to make it at all, but I did, though I only actually ran ran like less than 50% of it. Well, I guess I'm in kind of lousy shape, because I must have pulled a bunch of real secret muscles -- I could barely walk on Sunday, no joke, and was literally unable to do things like lift my left knee to put on a shoe, say. I'm mostly better now, but my back still hurt -- what's up with that? You don't run with your back.

(22:48:36) [My Sister]: bobo would oyu be my friend if i looked like jack osbourne?
(22:48:46) Nintendo Julian: I guess
(22:48:48) Nintendo Julian: why not
(22:49:05) [My Sister]: thats a good additude

Tedious progress on gzochi. I'm still in the middle of writing the code that parses the game files. Once I've done that, it's on to the event queue and some code for the API, and that should yield an actual, usable system. I'm kind of depressed over how much time I've been spending on it and how it's not done yet. It just eats me up, really. Just having to be at work takes up so much of my time, and since the code I write at work is tedious as a rule, I don't always have the spirit to do more of it when I get home. I don't know if I could pull off doing the Master's part-time. The degree, not the golf thing.

I had some food from Tsing Tao tonight, though, and it was good.

Reading Myla Goldberg's Bee Season, which is good and deeply creepy.

The Onion -- not that funny any more, right? But you know who is kind of funny? I'm embarrassed to say so, but I really enjoyed this episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live that I saw last night on ABC. It seems like it's sort of a different flavor from his usual work -- he talks about how he hates the FCC, doesn't care much for Jesus, and, you know, that's all it takes to win me over. I've gotten to the point where I enjoy comedy if and only if it appeals to my sense of political propriety. It's stupid, I know, but it's my little way of fighting the War on Terror. I blame Air America.

The Horses Keep Her Up At Night

Turn the fucking heat off, A to Z! Fuck damn it! Agggh!!! Turn it off! The fucking banging is driving me nuts! Shut it off, for Christ's sake! Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang!!!

Oh yeah, so I spilled some water on my laptop the other day and some of the keys stopped working. But I hunted down the actual manufacturer and ordered a new keyboard. It should be here tomorrow. Also, I grabbed the Microsoft Natural Keyboard from my desktop and plugged it into one of the USB ports on the 'aptop, and it just worked -- no configuration, no monkey business, no nothing. And they say Linux isn't ready for the desktop.

Word to the wise -- [:digit:] != [[:digit:]]

Look, has anyone else besides me and Big Baby O'Donnell noticed that Ted Rall is a whiny little shit? I for one love the man for being unlovable, nay, loathsome, even, but I can imagine that he might be alienating people by

• Claiming that Air America sucks and that he wouldn't be on it even if he were asked // complaining that no one's asked him to host a show on Air America even though he's such a great radio guy
• Coming up with unfunny, weepy, Very Special-style comics like this one.

M-biddy was regaling me with tales of this super-enthusiastic Networks professor we've both had and that he's got now:

ekiMlleB: the other day in class he said that every CS major should try to break at least one NP-complete problem
ekiMlleB: "because maybe you get lucky"

Dismantle Me

Yo, I'm still sick. I even had a mild fever tonight, but I wasn't gonna let that stop me from going to the Distillers show that I walked all across town to get tickets to. So I just got back, and, you know, it was okay. They'd rigged up this ill-conceived set involving red fairy lights and dangling mannequin body parts that I guess was supposed to echo the concept behind their new album, but, you know, any kind of mannequin art ends up looking pretty stupid. They seemed to be pretty proud of it, though. Brody looked like a hotter version of Barbara Ramone -- hot. Their set was pretty okay. They sounded almost exactly like they do on the album, which is lame -- it's always cooler when the band plays their set a lot faster or the singer sings it different or something. Definitely a lot of steakheads in the audience, also a lot of young girls with they moms. About 10 people got pulled onto the stage and herded out of the place for crowd-surfing.

Courtney Love showed up halfway through their set, a couple of thirteen-year-old girls scraming "Courtney!" in tow, and walked right by me up the stairs. She's actually not too hard on the eyes. And I thought I saw my friend Chris pushing through the crowd in front of me at one point, but it turned out to be some hipster doofus with the same haircut he used to have. I kind of miss that guy.

When I first got to the place, I had to pee real bad, so I went straight to the Men's room even though The 'stillers were already on and playing my favorite song. I pissed a real long time and I kind of had to fart, too, so I farted a long, low fart in the empty bathroom.

Tetley got us tickets to see Match today, so we saw that. Ray Liotta's in it, and he tells a faggot that toenails don't have nuclei. I need this!

Computer thing going okay; GNU regex library making itself frustrating. I'm reading the new William Gibson book. The main character is physically allergic to trademarks, which is a bit pretentious, premise-wise, but it's sort of an interesting story.