Life Is A Game For Grown-Ups. It's A Game You Play For Keeps.

So says a bizarre online quiz on MSN. I can't really comment -- what the fuck does "Play For Keeps" even mean? Does it mean you die if you lose? I mean, you die if you win, too. Everything is so stupid.

Fuck Thanksgiving and fuck you, too.

I got a margin of work done on OpenRPG this weekend. The common library now lets you generate a "message" object in XML. Now I have to finish the code that lets you validate a received message and parse it into a hash. The wheels of creation are not being lubricated by libxml2, which has, in my opinion, a real spaghetti API. I shudder to think what the GNOME source tree looks like if that's what their whole base system is built around. Still, it's the only show in town, I think, if you want to do XML in C. I find that I spend most of my time on this project just thinking about how it should work and then writing code very carefully. I'm hoping I'll hit a watershed at some point when all of the dependent functions have been set up, but it may be slow going forever.

Yo, guy: When were you at an MIT CS ball? And how do NFAs help you do anything with natural language? I mean, you know me, I don't really know anything about anything, but if your language is powered by any kind of finite automaton, you probably don't have anything terribly interesting to say. (Though you may be prone to vicious epsilon-driven mood swings.)

I just got a flu shot. The RN who gave it to me said that giving flu shots is pretty much a freelance thing for her. She said, "Most of my regular patients can't say anything to me." Then she said, "Most of my regular patients can't say anything to me because they have their hearts open in front of me." That must be embarrassing, to have your heart open. And you can't even zip it up surreptitiously.

For Christmas I have to go visit my grandmother and Mer's grandparents. I don't mind telling you that I absolutely fucking hate old people. Go read a book, old people. Stop begging to see me!

Peep this. Quote:

"You know China is not friends with us," Skelton said, speculating about the explanation for what she fears is a subliminal message hidden in the toy. "They're trying to get back at us. What's the best way? Teach kids when they're young to hate. It's scary."

That is scary. Also scary? This little piece of prophecy, scooped from the pages of Cigar Aficionado by the good people at IndyMedia.

I Hate My Fucking Job

So I had to come back to Crooklyn today at 11:30 to let the DSL guys in, and I told the other support guys where I was going and how long I'd be gone, and I even called in from home to make sure everything was okay, but when I get back to my desk I've got an e-mail from the fucking CTO that says, "Why have you been gone for 2 hours?" What. The. Fuck. It reminded me of working at Personnel Express, where you were supposed to check with someone before going to the bathroom because somone might fucking call your idiot "banker" and have to talk to his fucking voicemail, godforbid. FUCK!

This makes me crazy, too. Good thing the whole "slave" / "master" metaphor is the last piece of jargon on earth that might be confusing to people who don't know what they're talking about. Great job, fucking idiots, you've got everything covered. That article reminded of this, which was delightful.

Also:

Bug Review: i always thought [Tetris] was just a game
Nintendo Julian: it is a game
Nintendo Julian: but if you lose
Nintendo Julian: some russian guy dies
Bug Review: he'll die anyway

Blogger fucking deleted this post the last time I tried to make it so I copied it to the clipboard this time. Fuck you, Internet.

Everyone's Got A Blog Now

Okay, I have a lot of things to blog about, but I couldn't blog them over the weekend because my DSL was down. I called the DSL people, and they said they would send someone on Wednesday, and then my DSL was working again so I called them and told them not to come but they said my upstream rate was not so good so they were still gonna come, so I went out and bought some short pieces of modular cable because the modem and the answering machine were currently attached to industrial-sized spindles of it, but when I was doing that, I broke the DSL again but I fixed it this morning but they are still coming on Wednesday.

Someone besides this guy has mentioned Cavalcade of Assholes, says Google. Unfortunately, my new friend seems to be slightly on the hysterical side.

Mer and I went games-shopping yesterday at GameStop. We'd gone in to reserve a copy of Final Fantasy X-2, but it turned out it was already out, so we bought it. We also got Super Bust-A-Move 2, Tetris Worlds, and a second PS2 controller. Unfortunately, X-2 seems to be pretty much a dancing simulation with serious Barbie's dream-house undertones. I guess that's not a problem -- Mer really likes it. For my part, I'm getting pretty into Super-BAM, but it comes with this Story Mode which is pretty fucking awful. This is what the venerable GameSpot has to say about it:

While each character theoretically has his or her own story, you'll notice they share many of the same story elements, often recycling the same video clips. The clips themselves are almost embarrassing to watch. While the PS2 could render these sequences in real time with ease, all the cutscenes are prerendered, and bad MPEG compression is constantly visible. The script itself seems like it was translated from Japanese in a bit of a hurry, with lines like "I am scared! I should be brave!" delivered by voice actors who apparently had no previous voice-acting experience.

FYI, that "I am scared" line is delivered right before Puzzle-Master Weepy transforms into Puzzle-Master Smiley. Tetris Worlds is shit.

Over the weekend we rented Raising Victor Vargas and Owning Mahowny. Quite a pair of gerunds. We haven't watched "Owning" yet, but "Raising" was pretty wonderful. I thought I had a good story to write about meeting girls in the city, but it looks like they've got it covered.

Fuck, I had this link to peep to Tom, but now I can't remember what it was.

So I'm pretty sure the Right thing to do with OpenRPG is to make it validate XML config and game files using an XML Schema to specify types, ranges, and defaults for values, but libxml2 doesn't currently support Schemas, only DTDs, and it's currently the most sophisticated XML-parsing library for C. So I'm currently a little cheesed-off on that front. I'm thinking of using libdbi for database independence, but it's really only for doing SQL abstraction. I'm pretty sure I still want to provide a flat-file option, so I might have to write a second abstraction layer. Also, users should be able to log in to the administrative console over the Internet; and maybe there should be a chat area, too? That sounds like it might be feature-creep.

On Sunday I went to go see Master and Commander with Emma and Mags. It's pretty good; very accurate boat sounds. Some guy almost invents the theory of evolution before Darwin, but is thwarted by some tricksy French privateers. There is a part where this albatross starts flying around the ship and the sailors are using it for target practice. Maggie and I were like, "No!" They didn't hit the albatross, but they did get the ship's doctor by accident.

I finished reading Red Mars this morning. Hermione Chalmers dies -- sorry, kids. I have not done one shitting thing at work today.

Back On The Late Shift

Yeah? Wow, okay. Hey, thanks a lot.

So I don't have to come in to work early for the next two weeks. Having that extra hour and a half in the morning is great! Today I woke up before my alarm went off, fed the cat, vacuumed up about 10 lbs. of litter from behind the cat box, and then sat on the futon staring at a blank screen on the TV for 20 minutes.

I've been spending most of my free time working on OpenRPG. It's going to be a meta-server for massively-multiplayer online role-playing games -- so clients will log in to OpenRPG, log in to a game, and they'll get to play it, and it's great. What I'm trying to do though, is support dynamically-loaded client-side code among heterogeneous clients, so that the first time you connect, you download the client component to the game as compressed XML, and it's going to different depending on the capabilities of your client. Like, if you just wanna play using a text-base console, and whoever designed the game has written in support for that, you'll download a bunch of text descriptions instead of a whole bunch of 3D models. This 'client code' is really just going to be mappings between user-input and outgoing messages to the server and mappings between incoming server messages and client display actions. So you might type 'go n' and your client sends a request to move your avatar north in the server's model of the world. What's going to be difficult is maintaining the 'model-world' on the server side of the things. That's probably going to be where I get sick of this project. I've just finished writing the parsing system for the server console. Now I just have to make it do something. Oh yeah, and the whole thing has to be i18n-compliant.

Man, Tom's blog raises some VERY INTERESTING points. Like, heroism: What is it? What does it take to be a hero? If you're a firefighter and you save a bunch of people, you're a hero, right? What if you're some scumbag businessman who worships at the idol of Greed all day making sure that rich white people stay rich so that you can send your kids to expensive prep schools and renovate your kitchen? What if you're the same scumbag, but you read to old people on the weekends or some bullshit like that? Does that make you a hero? Or are you only a hero when someone crashes a plane into you? What if you're so pious and religious that you're willing to do anything to serve your fictional space-fairy of choice? Surely, that must make you a hero. This is my other favorite Get Your War On:



When I'm not worshipping at the idol of Greed or the idol of Hypocrisy myself, I'm getting all worked up over Final Fantasy X-2. That game looks like it's going to be great. Hey all you New York Hero Urban Professionals! Which do you prefer, Gawker.com or Gothamist? That was a trick question. It turns out you're all catty little homos!

Mild props again to SomethingAwful, the unofficial Jessica Lynch fan club:

A True American Heroâ„¢, she is always accompanied by a crying eagle that sits on her shoulder draped in an American flag while the Stars and Stripes plays solemnly in the background. During her appearances [on a forthcoming sitcom called Cabbage Farm] viewers are reminded that although it is OK to laugh sometimes, we should never forget the great sacrifices made by great patriots that make the country what it is today and that freedom comes at an immense cost.

Mike is definitely a hero for posting these videos of an adorable kitten.

Mer bought this Best of REM album, and it doesn't have It's The End Of The World As We Know It on it. I mean. come on, I think REM's as full of shit as much as the next guy, but that's a pretty good song, right? Tonight I definitely want to go drink beer at Tom's house. I was going to go over there last night, but I thought I might be getting sick like every fucking person at my office is right now. For those of you who are fans of the asshole businessman-speak that goes on on the other half of the cube farm, try this on for size:

So when I called insurance company to send someone over to give the flu shots, I was like, "Hey, don't send us any ugly nurses over here! We only want your hottest nurses!" Ha ha! They're probably going to send the ugliest nurse they got, now. It's gonna be like some Russian bitch with a mustache!

The Strokes Are Fucking Depressing

I'm serious. Kill me or something.

Tom's blog is like a cross between Jackie Harvey's The Outside Scoop and Get Your War On. Speaking of the latter, here is my very favorite strip:



Last night when I got home, I found the bathroom door shut and some plastic bag sticking out from underneath. I went to open it, since the cat can't go to the bathroom if the door is shut, and I found her in there, in the dark, clutching some pieces of bag. She had apparently dragged the bag from the living room into the bathroom so she could be with the bag and her litter box at the same time, but it most have hooked on the door and pulled it shut. She sulked when I took it away from her. There were pieces of plastic in the throw-up I'd found that morning, so it's not like she was doing anything good with it, anyway. She sulked more when I had to move the furniture around to change all the lightbulbs in the house, replacing them with low-wattage bulbs. She sat in her litter box and hissed.

I tried to make fish last night but failed miserably. I wanted to broil it, so I set the oven temperature to "Broil" and put the fish in the drawer underneath the main drawer. That is the broiler, no? Well, it didn't get hot. at. all. It was awful. Maybe I'll try again tonight.

When I got into bed with Mer, we had the following conversation.

"Did you staple the thing? The staple... is it okay?"
"What thing? You want me to staple something?"
"No... is the staple okay?"
"Yeah, it's fine."
"It's fine? What do you mean it's fine?"
"Hey, hey. Calm down, you're dreaming. You're asleep."
"No, I'm not. Why did you staple it?"
"Woah, I didn't. I didn't staple anything!"
"Bastard! That's so annoying!"
"Don't call me bastard!"
"Okay, sorry."

Is it a party foul to link to Blogger.com on your blog? They know what to do when your mom finds out about your blog.

From the New York Times Arts section:

One might expect that a woman with a privileged background who was educated at the Chapin School in Manhattan and Princeton University would have been sheltered from many of the hardships that "The Moonlight Room" unflinchingly explores --- the street drug Special K, buying guns, a teenager locked out of his own home blah blah blah

Yo, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't all that stuff NYC private school to a tee? Except for the part about getting locked out -- I mean maybe if the doorman on duty was busy helping someone with a suitcase and you forgot your keys or something, then it makes sense. Those kids from Collegiate used to steal my lunch money and use it to buy Advil!

I don't feel like writing anything else in the blog now. I don't know. It's very difficult for me to get motivated to do anything creative once I get home. Like every creepy young man out there, I have an idea in my head for a book that I may not ever write. I mean, there are lots of ideas every day that you get where you're like, "Hey, that's interesting. I'd like to write a novel or a story or design a game about that," but there's this one plot or ambient feeling that I've had for a long time that I want to work on, and I never do. I'm walking home from work or from Tom's place or wherever and I'm a little bit drunk, maybe, and there are dead leaves all over the sidewalk and I'm walking past the deserted basketball courts on Sterling St. or wherever and I think to myself, "hey, that would be fun to work on when you get home." But all I do is program the Christing box all night. Want to make your code i18n-compliant? Try GNU gettext.

I've Got You To Let... Me Down

Had a happy weekend, did you? I sure did. Mer and I found a slightly soot-stained loveseat at The Salvation Army -- it only cost $99.99. I make that much in about... okay, just made it... wait... wait... shit, I'm earning money too fast to show you. Here's one thing about money, though. I just bought some plane tickets to go down to visit my remaining grandparent in Florida (and Mer's papa and li'l gam'ma, too), and that is ex-spense-sieve. I don't even feel like paying that much to do this stupid thing which is visit old people. I just don't care, I'm sorry. It's four fucking days I could be doing stuff that is more fun. Christ, I hate old people like God hates the dinosaurs.

The new The Strokes album is pretty the good. Actually, I only really like a couple of songs: They are called "What Ever Happened" and "12:51". And yeah, they're the most likeable songs on the album, so that fact that I like them will come as a mindfuck to those of you who think I only like stuff that no one else likes and to those of you who think I'm not mature enough to like a song that isn't catchy. Listen, none of that's important. The important thing is: "The Strokes are the new Beatles." I just made that up.

I just found out that there is some open source project already called OpenRPG. I should'a seen that one coming, really. Mine's a better idea, though, anyway.

Did I mention that I beat Eternal Darkness: Ulyaoth's Electric Boogaloo? Well, I did. It's not as satisfying a game as it could have been, but it's great fodder for the upcoming movie Blue Stuff vs. Red Stuff vs. Green Stuff vs. Blue Stuff.

Tom has a blog now. Hey Tom, if you edit your "Template" on Blogger.com, you can add a link to mine. That way all the girls that think you're funny but not mean and he has a beard will read my web-page as well. Having people you don't know read your online diary is what makes the internet's cogs rotate. That and fixed-income securities.

Didn't something funny happen recently? I can't remember. The cat threw up on something write before I had to leave for work and I just left it because there wasn't enough time.

The Tonight Show

This morning's entry was stupid.

I forgot to mention -- the other day, I stopped by Golden Deli on my way to work. Alex made characteristic small-talk about hot water in private houses as if he hadn't practically fucking killed a guy the last time I was in there. Then this guy comes in and he gets a coffee, he's wearing a trenchcoat and a pretty nice suit under it, and he goes, "Do you sell any sex magazines?" Alex is like, "No, we don't." So the guy goes outside and I can see he's sort of peekin' at the newspaper racks and the awning, and he's got a little pad that he's scribbling on. A few minutes later, he comes back in and hands the top sheet to Alex, and he's like, "Okay, give me these numbers." He was picking lottery numbers, somehow using the paper and the deli storefront, but he'd rather have used porn. Sick.

I'm on the Edward Roivas stage of Eternal Darkness. Anyone got any tips on how to beat the invisible thing in the basement? Like Mantorok's little brother, I'm all ears.

How bad does everyone want to see The Triplets of Belleville?

Left my fucking work in my home directory at work. Can't work on that tonight. More links:

• Linux Is For Bitches
• The Memory Hole
• These comics made from forum posts
• Krakow Studios - I'm sorry and embarrassed, but I think the demon-girl in this is somehow pretty attractive, and the worse the guy draws her and the shittier he writes the comic, the hotter she gets.

The Christ-Fucking Early Shift Again

That's right. It's very early and it goes until very late. What a nightmare. Last night we rented Chinatown, which is always great, and Wonder Boys, which I hadn't seen. It is okay. I mean, I pretty much liked it, but there are some parts with the Robert Downey Jr. character that are a bit too silly for me. Maybe they could have cut him out and replaced him with more scenes with Katie Holmes, who was doing a pretty okay job in the movie, believe it or not. She kept the mouth-scrunching to a minimum, at least. Okay, here is something I was proud of noticing: You guys know that T.V. miniseries IT? (Is there any other version of Stephen King's IT? It's the only one I've ever seen at the video store.) You know how all the actors in it are just so depressed-looking and ugly that it looks like they're all amateur porn stars? Well, the blonde guy with the pony tail from IT, the main character pretty much, he plays Frances McDormand's husband in Wonder Boys. He looked like he had some serious suicide action coming to him after wrapping up IT, but I guess instead he's jus' chillin'.

The name Jonathan / Johnathan -- is it merely a contraction of the names Joseph and Nathan?

I'm planning and working on a game server similar to Arianne (I've given up on them -- they can't seem to get their act together). Surprise, surprise, it's pretty difficult. Especially since I'm doing it entirely in C. ROCK.

SomethingAwful++:

That night when the doctor got home he took his secret telephone out of the closet. In Iraq that had to have two telephones because of the secret police. One telephone was the one they normally used and it could only call certain numbers and there were always secret police listening. The other telephone was kept hidden and it could dial any number and the secret police would just hear a conversation about women's hats if they listened in. The doctor used his secret phone to call President George W. Bush in the White House and the doctor told him about Jessica Lynch. The President immediately rushed to Air Force Eight - the presidential attack helicopter - but was dissuaded from attempting to rescue Lynch by Robert Rumsfeld (Donald Rumsfeld's identical twin brother who is a commando). Robert Rumsfeld agreed to lead his ultra elite commando team "Special Ops Omega" into Iraq to rescue Private Lynch.

Okay, I just checked that ponytail guy out on IMDB. His name is Richard Thomas, which is not really much of a porno name. The name of his character in IT, though is William 'Stuttering Bill' Denbrough: 100% porn.

Everything That Has A Beginning Has An Ent

Man I've felt shitty this week. I think I got a bad breakfast sandwich or something at Golden on Monday -- I've had the fire-squirts ever since. Now let me tell you all of the fascinating things that happened to me:

I had made an appointment to see a dermatologist because fucking Christ and everyone is always telling me to get all these awful things that are growing on me checked out. So Monday was when my appointment was, so I walked over to Beth Israel on 14th St. at lunchtime. I'd never been there. It's really nice! You should go the next time you have an ambulatory disability or are dying of cancer. I liked my doctor well enough. He was very direct -- as soon as I took my shirt off, he saw the dry skin on the backs of my arms and was like, "Just so you know, that's blah-blah-blah. You'll never get rid of that, but you can put moisturizer on it if you like." He didn't think any of the moles on my chest were significant, but when I went to show him the one under my scrote, he said, "Woah, that's a wart." I'm like, "A wart? No way, I've had that since I was 7. It's a mole." He was like, "I'm pretty sure it's a wart. I'm going to shave it off." Why not, right? So he gave me a little shot and just... shaved it off, I guess -- I didn't really see, but I could feel him picking at it, which was a little weird. He also had to cauterize it. "It won't stop bleeding!" he said. The thing he used to cauterize it looked like a water pic, but apparently it squirted fire because all this smoke was floating up from my taint. I didn't feel any of it. Anyway, so now I've got this little star-shaped scar down there, and it still kind of hurts, but not very much at all. Don't get any ideas, by the way -- I don't have goddamn genital warts or something. This is the wart that you get when you are a little kid and have a wart on your hand and you play with your fucking dick all the time.

That night, when I was walking home from the subway, I thought I'd stop at the Golden Deli for some cider for Mer. They didn't have any, but what they did have was a big fucking fight between Alex and some guy who maybe works one of the night shifts there. Alex was like, "You come into my shop and say that to me? You want to hit me? Go ahead, hit me! I'll fucking kill you, motherfucker!" And the guy he was yelling at was saying to Alex's wife, "Your husband is very stupid. He is drunk. You see how stupid?" At first they were yelling at each other over by the gambling video game that doesn't give you any money, but then Alex started chasing the guy around the store while his wife tried to hold him back by his undershirt. He was like some kind of Bangladeshi Stanley Kowalski

Okay, so I saw this Matrix: Revolutions movie, and guess what -- I didn't hate it that bad. I mean, look, the cache of these movies is founded on the premise that you think the idea, "What if what I think is real isn't, like, real," is really groundbreaking. Come on -- I was already over that one before I even knew what a matrix was. There's even some proof that I read in Ethics about how it doesn't really matter whether the world actually exists the way you perceive it or not. My point is, if you are really disappointed about these movies, you are an idiot. But there are some pretty incredible images in this one, like horrifying clouds of those squiddy terrors just coming right at you like your worst Captain Eo nightmare. These guys know art direction. Oh yeah, and Hermione dies. Sorry, kids.

Links, links. Fuck, I can't remember now. Try this and this and, uh... this. My e-mail tried to send me that last one.

Oh yeah, and if you think my blog is racist, consider this: I am watching some PBS special about Muslim preacher-singers and there is some Arab guy wailing like a baby that came out of a hyena mating with a toucan while about a billion guys in white robes twitch and bow like the worst kind of retard, and I'm lovin' it. Just keep them the hell away from me and my kids.

Good thing Christianity is so dignified.

Eat A Teat

I love The God-Damn Onion. Peep this week's story about the Pope, titled Pope John Paul II: 25 Years of Laughs. Best quote:

"I can still remember seeing him do his classic 'Galileo' bit in the early '90s," said fellow comedian George Carlin, referring to the pope's 1992 declaration that the church erred in condemning Galileo. "Here was this man, appearing on televisions around the world, making a proclamation that the sun does not move around the earth. I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks."

Delightful. What a hateful fascist that man is.

Today's paper had an article about this Norse woman who wrote this book that's apparently unfavorable towards this Afghan family she'd been living with. From the purportedly tyrannical patriarch who's suing her and the publisher:

There were lots of misrepresentations about me, my family and my country.

Let me tell you something that country: Afghanistan's a luddite cesspool of misogyny and Islamo-fascism. The whole country should be paved over and turned into a big Planned Parenthood clinic. Culture is a farce, tradition is a farce; when you're stuck between culture and human rights, guess which one's gotta give. I mean, I know which one does tend to give, but you know...

The 1.10 Patch for Diablo II came out yesterday. It's alright. I guess my interest in the game has kind of waned. I'd been watching the official Forums, and most of the posts seemed to either praise Blizzard for funneling resources into a game that's getting pretty long in the profit-tooth or take them to task for not being supportive enough of a fan base that they were courting for the purchase their Christmas offering, World of Warcraft. Pretty characteristic of the dilemmas surrounding capitalism in general. I don't know which side of the line I fall on; probably the gratitude side -- I'm just happy to have some new items for my little one-inch high projection of masculine agency. However, the NYTimes had a piece on Monday about the work attitude of Generation Y (that's me). Apparently, we don't trust the Company to provide for us the same way Mom and Dad did. Well thank Chaturr'gha for that -- how humiliating. I'm just saving up to get my MS, anyway.

Speaking of games, though, I've been thinking about the kind of game I'd like to make if I had the wherewithal to make one. You guys remember those games called Manhole and Spelunx by Cyan? They weren't so much games (as far as I remember) as much as they were complicated objects that you could explore. You could click on different parts of a scene and sometimes it would take you to a new scene and sometimes there would be a little animation or sound effect. I was explaining that to Tom, and he was like, "That's not a game I'd really wanna play." Yeah, I know, it's not much of a game -- it's more of something like a novel or a Faberge egg or something. The only game-like example of this I can find is the Inform game Aisle, by Sam Barlow (review here). I've played it, it's really pretty interesting. So that's what I want to make.

Howdy Doody In The Woodshed

His hair is red, his eyes are green
He's like a person that you've never seen
He'll sing and dance, he's been to France
But now he doesn't seem to stand a chance

Mimi (fat enough to be known as "Muffin," we think) did not like going to the Vet. When we took out the cat carrier, she hid under the computer desk and wedged her head behind the printer. But Mer managed to pull her out and stuff her into the box, and I carried it across the street to the Park Slope Animal Hospital. There was a lady there with her cat, and she said that the place was not the best place when it came to veterinary medicine, but you know what? It was pretty good, so she was clearly an hysteric. The Vet was a big fat dude -- he explained that he and Mimi, probably, both had a problem with liking to eat. He also showed me a trick that many of you may already know -- if you grab a cat by the scruff of the neck, it gets real calm, a lot like when you put your computer into software-suspend mode. So try it.

The 1.10 patch for Dia-blow 2 is supposed to come out today.

I hear RedHat is phasing out their SOHO edition. What?!

We (Mer) rented the complete first season of Smallville, as well as The Eye, which is a good film but not terribly scary. Think "The Sixth Sense," plus that movie Blink with Madeleine Stowe. Okay, so Smallville, right? The emblem of the series, kind of, is this image of Clark Kent strapped to some cross-like scarecrow rigging in the middle of a cornfield with the a big red 'S' painted on his chest. How edgy is that -- Superman, crucified? But the series doesn't ever really get that contraversial again -- after the pilot, that is (or is it the first episode? Do they even air pilots?).

Speaking of scary, I've been over at a certain best-friends-club's apartment playing a lot of this game Eternal Darkness for the GameCube, and I've gotta say, it's really IA! IA! TIER ARETAK PARGON CHATTUR'GHA PARGON!!!

Blow It Out Your Blow-Hole

These eight-to-six crank shifts have me dead tired, but I managed to upload the missing CoA strips this morning.

Mer and I rented Dreamcatcher last night. Well, Mer rented it. I'm not going to take credit for doing anything but watching it, and I was playing with the cat for most of it, anyway. You know, some people have been able to make decent movies out of Stephen King books, but this Larry Kasdan guy seems to have a slavish devotion to the original text, which is, you know, a mistake when it comes to this stuff. Look, I'm not going to lie and say I read the whole book, but the first few chapters had everything that King fans seem to hunger for insatiably: A rag-tag bunch of kids who have a mystical experience and grow up into a rag-tag bunch of white trash with shitty jobs; white trash insistently spitting out awkward and improbable catch-phrases like "Fuck Me Freddy" and "Same Shit, Different Day"; a fucked up little boy with psychic powers; and white trash dying perverse and violent deaths. Oh yeah, the movie's got all of that, except they left out the part where any of the stupid story ever gets properly explained. And way to mis-cast Morgan Freeman, clods. I guess I'm saying I didn't like it.

Blog on, Christian soldier. Peep it. Best quote (re: Partial-birth abortion):

Good, I say. Even if a women is raped or incested, and even then I dont think they should be allowed to get them, she shouldn't be allowed to kill it so late into the pregnancy because it has a soul.

Good old fucking fake ridiculous soul bullshit.

Hey Jeb Bush, I've got one of those fake rubber rat toys with a battery in it that makes it writhe around and squeak -- you wanna come over and put a feeding tube in it for me? kthx bye.

Comeuppance in Spades

I kind of got chewed out by the CTO today. But you know what, if you want me to come in at 8:00 fucking AM, don't expect me to do a good job.

This guy on the Q train met a friend who got on at Atlantic Ave., and showed him a book called something like, "Alice In Wonderland And The Truth Behind 9/11." Apparently you shouldn't bother looking for it on Amazon.com, 'cuz it's packed with stuff the national media companies don't want you to know, like:

• You got to have the bloodline, negro! It don't matter what race you be; if you don't got the bloodline, you ain't goin' nowhere!
• I already knew all that shit about the dollar bills, the eye in the pyramid and all that shit, but what about how's there's 13 arrows for 13 Indians; and those is wheat arrows!
• You know about the microchips? Man, they been doin' that shit to dogs for years, but there's this family where they all got microchips
• The media tryin' to blame all this shit on the Islam, but it ain't Islam! It's the Jews! The Jews and um... them dudes with the bloodline!

According the first guy, he'd just started to read the book, but it had already changed his worldview completely. His friend was saying, "Yeah, man, that must be some heavy shit in that book. You look all shook up!" The guy was like, "Yeah, it's the real shit. It's vicious."

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy:

• Mimi the cat
• The apartment

I uploaded most of my award-winning comic strip, Cavalcade of Assholes. Peep it here.

Oh Jesus Fuck

Man, I felt terrible yesterday. Jason and I wandered around the West Village for half an hour looking for a place to get food, and we finally settled on Sammy's Asian Gourmet at 6th and Bleecker -- apparently a spin-off of the Noodlehaus, up on 11th St. Anyway, it wasn't very good, and like 15 minutes after I started eating my body started screaming at me that I was going to have to throw up. I managed to keep it in check, but I had to go downstairs and walk around the block a few times before I was feeling well enough to sit down at my desk. And then the feces explosion.

That morning, the Q had been super-slow; I could've gotten to work faster by walking. I was standing next to this old guy on the subway, and whenever the conductor apologized for the delay, the guy would murmur quietly, "thas' okay," or, "hey, that's cool," or, "don't worry about it."

I'm reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I don't get it, though! Earth people: "I was born on Jupiter!"

The Daily News

The last time I sat down to write a post, I wanted to tell the Interweb how I was praying for the death of this guy who runs the American Family Research Council or whatever. I mean, what an awful organization -- they deserve nothing short of obliteration. But then I started thinking about how I kind of get all wrapped up in hating this stuff and it's not very good for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm still hoping these guys and everyone like them take the big dirt nap right fucking now, neatly demonstrating the irony of their positions -- if only their consciousness existed to realize it -- but I guess it's sort of a waste of time to talk and write about it, and it's bad for my emotional health.

Mer and I went to the Beacon Theater on 74th on Saturday night for the Comedy Central Live tour, featuring Dave Attell and Lewis Black. Of course, we were really there to see Mitch Hedberg, but it turned out that Lewis Black ain't half bad. I mean, I don't have cable or anything, so I don't watch comedy all day long like some of you, so he was sort of a surprise for me. Dave Attell is 100% not funny, though. He is just deadly. He is like the "funny guy" for every bunch of asshole friends out there, and you could tell because the audience was packed with assholes. Mitch was pretty good, except that the sound was way too loud, 'cause the opening guy was too quiet, and he was holding the mic way too close to his mouth. He was doing this line about how he knew he was going to be a stand-up comic because he's real good at holding an ice-cream cone, but apparently he doesn't really know how to do that at all. That's okay, though. A bunch of people in the audience were yelling at him to get off the stage, and he was sort of responding in a funny way. I couldn't tell whether they were fans or not; I'd like to think that they were.

After the show, Mer was trying to find a pot to piss in, and all of a sudden I ran into Kim and this guy Brian from high school -- they'd gone to see the show together. Kim was real intent on having me return this phone call she'd made to me like a month ago. I mean, I don't really have anything to say to her. She's fucking awful. Brian is nice enough, I guess, but he's kind of a stoner jerk-off who's gotta say everything in this real low, terse voice. I couldn't remember his name, so I just referred to him as "guy" -- Billy and I used to joke that he looked like his name might be "Jesse," and that's all I could think of until Mer pointedly introduced herself. Maybe they were on a date. I bet he's just her type. That's always weird, when you find out that your friends just have these weird, inexplicable sexual tastes that they'd never reveal to you explicitly.

I played some whiffle-ball with the Degraw ladies today in Prospect Park. It was only seven of us, so we played it like there were 7 teams, each with one batter and a bunch of "ghost runners." I got 1 point, which puts me in third place -- Tom, infuratingly, got 6 points, and Devin, little power-house that he is, got 2. And I fucking beat Ted in a push-up contest; first thing like that I've ever won. And I am mad sore, son.

Before we went to the park, we "ate a feast" at the local Mickey D's. Man that place is awful. The more hospital-like and efficient it is, the more "Fear and Loathing" it feels. Just all these overweight little kids packin' they faces with fat shit. I got the two-cheeseburgers meal, but I gave one of the things to Devin and I couldn't even finish my fried. The really creepy thing is how they don't even try to advertise to white people any more.

Coming home from Tom's place on my bike, I saw this guy with a fat little bulldog-like dog, which was sort of snuffling around the base of this tree. The guy must have seen me looking at his dog, because he said, "Yeah. He's gonna be sick." And then, true enough, the dog pukes up some greenish gunk. For dinner, I made 'tato quesadillas. Yeah, it's my specialty, and yeah, it's awesome. The cat's ass is pretty much clean enough now to sleep on the bed with us.

For Tom:

(21:17:20) Nintendo Julian: tell me, sir
(21:17:25) Nintendo Julian: do you *ever* read my web-log?
(21:20:14) TEWogglebug:Yeah. But usually when you tell me to.
(21:20:26) Nintendo Julian: I want you guys to read my web-log ALL THE TIME
(21:20:33) Nintendo Julian: and I want you guys to have web-logs
(21:20:36) TEWogglebug: Well, say that in the web-log.

I'm sayin' it -- now do it.

Fuck you, Gary L.

Maybe you long-term scumbags can back me up on this one -- I've only been working the .com nightmare for a few months -- but am I right or not that the business half of the business / brains duo is just awful? I mean, one might naturally suspect this, but is this choice evidence or what:

(regarding the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade) I mean, back in the 80's it was just a bunch of guys butt-fuckin' each other. Now they've got sponsorship from, like, a dish detergent company. Corporations! Man, they'll sponsor anything, even gays...

Or, try this on for size:

Man, what is this stuff? "Pad thai"? Heh heh, they should call it "dog vomit," 'cause that's what it looks like!

Proof once again that if you major in a shitty subject -- finance -- at a shitty school -- anything ending with "SU" -- then you are an asshole.

Mer and I got a cat named Mimi at Bide-A-Wee. Mer went in looking for a kitten, but they clearly wanted to sell us on one of the older cats, and, you know, that is cool. So our cat is big and fat and five years old, like a guest on Maury Povich, maybe. She had some kind of skin problem from being depressed and sleeping in her litter box in her cage, but apparently that is all cleared up now. She is very sweet but she has a pretty dirty asshole from not cleaning herself at the shelter, and she clearly wants to scratch our furniture to pieces. The very first night she came into bed with us, but during the day she is always hiding under tables and pretending not to notice us. It's a little weird, but hopefully she'll adjust to our apartment soon.

As another part of Mer's B-day celebration, we went to go see Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Now look, this Quentin Tarantino guy, right? He knows how to make a movie, you know, with all the camera work and editing and pacing and stuff, but can he write a line of dialogue that doesn't make you want to punch him? "I put a bullet in her head, but her heart just kept on beatin'?" Come on. Don't jerk me around, shithead. I mean, everyone is always off on this guy's dick because he taught himself everything, but he didn't teach himself how to make a movie that a person should want to watch. It's really pretty low material. I don't know, I guess Resevoir Dogs is an okay movie. Then we rented May, which was pointlessly excruciating, but probably a better movie than Kill Bill in many ways. We also rented White Oleander, which I didn't watch.

Finally, The Stars Are Right -- for my Call of Cthulhu campaign, that is!

Go Fuck A Cactus

I just saw Bruce Campbell's latest ouvre, Bubba Ho-Tep. Well, pretty good, and even kind of touching, but I don't know... Don't get me wrong, it doesn't jerk you around, but it's a bit rough. And it's a little too short. But I liked it. You should see it, you.

Okay, I'm going to list some headlines from the great Satan, CNN.com, and then I'll say something about each one.

• Tiger mauls Siegfried and Roy Illusionist: So... which of the Siegfried and Roy illusionists? Siegfried? Or Roy? Right.
• Pope offers warning over gay clergy: Oh sweet dead putrescent Christ how I pray for the death of this awful fascist. The day his consciousness thankfully ceases to be, I will be masturbating into a kleenex to the most deviant porno I can find before going to work to program a computer.
• Marlins kill off Giants to reach NLCS: If this weren't a stupid sports story it would be so, so exciting. Except what is NLCS.

Okay that was three headlines. I don't know.

Some lady who used to board dogs upstairs moved out, and now she's getting all these debt collection notices, including some honest-to-god subpoenas. But she also gets all these classy magazines, like National Geographic and Smithsonian and some other magazines I've never even heard of. So: Is she a villainous faker living beyond her means? Or just a hapless idiot living who needs to update her forwarding address? Idiot. More on this later.

Hate The Player, Not The Game

You know what? I don't like losers. Shamefully enough, I keep reading this guy from Yale's online journal and all he talks about is how he wants to get an investment banking job and an apartment in Manhattan so that he can go to all the hip clubs and meet lame, materialistic gay men like himself and generally be a fucking asshole. You know what? If everyone in New York acted like you, it wouldn't be a place you wanted to live in in the first place. Go down to Panama City Beach or back to God-forsaken Long Island, you creep. Thanks for ruining the world. You'll always be a fucking loser from Long Island, no matter how many guest lists you get your name on.

And another thing: I was reading the Times the other day, and there was this story about some guy in some New Jersey suburb or something or killed his son and then jumped in front of a train. And the mayor of the town goes:

"The community is obviously shocked because this doesn't happen in a community like ours," said Mayor McDermott.

Oh -- you mean it only happens in the big city because of all the blacks and the hispanics and the poor people. Guess what, dickhead, some guy might get shot in a liquor store or something in New York City, but the really sick shit happens when people have more money than they deserve or know what to do with and there's nowhere to go and nothing to fucking do all day. Fuck you, scumbag. I'd like to shoot you and your little gated "community" into fucking outer space.

Chris came over for dinner the other night, spilling Budweiser all over the hall in the process, and I made us some 'tato quesadillas, but Mer was feeling sick so I kind of had to give him the bum's rush after an hour or so. Those fucking creeps are looking into a new drummer, which, I suppose was inevitable, but Chris dropped off a CD of stuff they'd recorded recently, and some of it sounded pretty good -- particularly this one song called "Dinosaur Bones." That song is very good.

I went over to 81 Degraw last night to help Tom roll a character for our game, but he and Emma were still at a movie. So I hung out with Devin for a while, 'cuz he was locked out. By the time Tom got back I was succumbing to my gross mucus-filled cold, so I kind of had to hit the road. Sorry, guy. Maybe we'll try again tonight.

What else? Oh yeah, we might be adopting a kitten. Shut up.

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.

Home Alone

Well, I am home alone. Mer went to go work on classroom materials with her friend Annie. They went to a bar, too. I bought a quesadilla at Yummy Taco and rented Chicago. Tom and Emma came over on Saturday; Tom had an interview for a job at Kaplan. We watched

• The Kid Stays In The Picture: I don't know if it was good or not I didn't really pay attention
• Bringing Down Da House: Embarrassing / Unfortunate
• NARC: Embarrassing / Moustaches

Now I'm trying to get PHP + Apache + MySQL working for my implementation of Fiendster.

I had drinks with Billy and Ruby Lien on Friday. Billy's doing okay, I guess. It made me want to start working on my stories again, whatever that means. It's always nice to open up a word processor and just type things up. I was thinking about publishing a book of short stories in the shower this morning. Not publishing the books in the shower, mind you. On the way home, I picked up a copy of PSM Magazine at a newsstand. That thing is a piece of shit. Here are some quotes:

While the story is somewhat cliche, the gameplay is tried and true

What?

Jak's ability to transform into an unstoppable dark version of himself, his gun-wielding capability, and the fact that he can whip out a nimble hoverboard at any point automatically makes the gameplay much deeper and more unique.

Yeah, I bet it's real great. Thanks, shills.

I went for a bike ride today. It was beautiful. Maybe I'll ride my bike to work tomorrow. Maybe.

The Dickies Roadshow

Yesterday a guy who was sure some gigantic wizard in outer space was granting him wishes blew up a bus full of people who were sure that some gigantic wizard in outer space was granting them wishes. Also a bunch of still-anonymous individuals who, presumably, were sure that some gigantic wizard in outer space is granting them wishes blew up the office of a guy who put helping other human beings ahead of whatever stupid beliefs he may or may not have had about the special rewards he'd receive when he went to the fairy cupcake kingdom after he died.

The Fiend Fest was okay. I met Mer there around 7:45 -- it took me a long, long time to get up there, because I had to buy earplugs and then run back to the office to take a horrible shit -- and the show hadn't started yet, though they had said to be there at 6:00. At 8:00 they let people in and the bands started going on at 8:15. So the bands, in chronological order, were D.I., Balzac, Agnostic Front, The Dickies, The Damned, and The Misfits. D.I. and Agnostic Front were terrible -- an embarrassment to themselves and hopefully their fans, though I don't know if their fans are capable of being embarrassed. Balzac was okay. The Misfits web site describes them as "horror punks from japan," which apparently means dressing up in spooky costumes and singing like The Misfits.

The Dickies were just great. It's just Leonard and Stan now, of course, but they seem to have tamed the three frosted-tip jerk-offs (who're playing drums, bass, and rhythm) pretty well, because every song sounded like the album version. Leonard made some characteristic stage small-talk, which sounded, as usual, gratingly rehearsed. Among the gems:

• He referred to Stan as "the best bisexual Muslim guitar player in all of punk rock." Stan leaned awkwardly toward his mic and said, "Well, first of all, I'm not religious." "Second of all," he said haltingly, as if he resented having to participate, "you're the one wearing the snakeskin stretch pants."
• Leonard presented literally 5 or 6 variations on a proposal for a new reality-TV show he'd like to shoot called "Who Wants To Suck My Dick?"
• Leonard mentioned that the new album came out on Fat Wreck, which meant that Fat Mike from NOFX was his boss. "How'd that happen?" he asked. After a moment's reflection, he said, "Oh yeah! Heroin!"

So anyway, I danced around a little, but I don't have the energy for it I had when I was 16.

The Damned played a boring set that took too long to set up and too long to play. Then The Misfits took even longer to set up. I'd never seen them live before, and they're probably better than their Tour Edition ("Dez" from Black Flag on guitar and Marky on drums). They played the songs really fast and there was some kind of buzz problem with one of the PAs and the vocals were too low. The band was also kind of ticked off because not enough people were dancing around. I am sorry guys, but I woke up at 7:00 AM, and your roadies spent 45 minutes dicking around trying to hang black sheets in front of Marky Ramone's drum kit. Jerry Only kept trying to get people excited with good old working-class crowd-pleasers like, "Hey New York, are you ready to have a good time?" Some article somewhere once described him as "the hardest working guy in punk rock." I'm no expert, but I think it is definitely not punk to be the hardest working guy in punk rock.

I'm starting to feel pretty healthy again, which means it's probably time for life to fuck my ass. Thanks for everything, God, you great merciful faggot!

Cracked-out Blackout

So there was this blackout on Thursday, right? Big frickin' deal. When the power went out at my office, my boss made sure everyone had a way to get home, and then we all walked across the Manhattan Bridge together. It took about 2 hours door to door and I was pretty beat. Mer and I hung out on the steps of our building with our neighbors Jamie and Tony, and then we went in and ate stuff out of the fridge and drank some beers. When it got dark, I lit some candles that these kids outside Flatbush Hardware had been selling, and then read to Mer out of the Diamond Age (she liked it so much that she stole it from me over the weekend and read the whole thing). The exciting part was that our friend Ted had been planning on staying with us that evening -- he had an early flight to catch -- and we figured, since he'd've been taking Metro North, that there was no way he'd make it. Well, at around 11:30, Jamie knocked on our door to tell us that this guy was wandering around outside our building calling our names. Ted had driven all the way down from Hartford on a dark highway and somehow found his way across the bridge and into our neighborhood. He had to get up at 4:45 to catch his flight, and when I got up to wake him up, the power was back.

Unfortunately, so was my sinus/throat infection. That was awesome. Not.

Here are some movies we watched over the weekend:

• About A Boy: Quite charming
• Bowling For Columbine: Characteristically excellent and hate-filled, though it looks like Michael Moore needs to take better care of his teeth
• Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: I mean, it's quite good, but the battle of Helm's Deep is a little boring.

By the way, shut the fuck up, Sean Astin, you fat corporate mouthpiece piece of exploitative shit. Doesn't it cost enough to see a movie these days? Some people need to get paid a bit less, I think, if some schmuck set painter is gonna lose his job. I probably do, at least.

Appreciated, IBFT-style from some Ain't It Cool News message board:

You stoner fuckwads destroyed the world with that crap. Of all the cloying stupid bullshit catchphrases going, those are the worst. How about FORGETING everything you learned in kindergarden and seeing how things turn out? Stop sharing, stop waiting your turn, and STOP THINKING IT'S OK FOR ANYONE TO HAVE A FUCKING LAME ASS OPINION. News flash: if you sit at home and watch "My Little Pony" tapes and enjoy them, it isn't an example of the beauty of pluralism in action. It's an example of a reason why you should be in the fucking gulag. I for one think movies, like everything else I can think of, would be a lot better if everyone STOPPED deferring to every mongoloid's right to have an opinion, and instead decided to scream and hate and fight each other over their differences of taste and viewpoint like fucking Palestinians after a funeral.

Dickies tonight!

Well Today Is Just Turning Out Great

I just took my second burning, capsaicin-flavored dump of the morning. Chicken Dansak Curry and Burrito, you are delicious: Why do you want to hurt me? I gave the "Enchilada" menu to one of the marketing people, and she says she might order some for lunch on Friday. What else happened that was bad? Oh yeah, a little spider crawled down my shirt today on the subway. I don't know where it came from. And then when I got to work and was looking over my boss's shoulder at this bug report, I spilled coffee all over myself.

Yesterday wasn't fantastic either, mind you -- I had to stay at work until practically 9:00 PM, and then on the way home, a hot piece of melty tar from the Canal St. Station ceiling fell near me, almost splattering the book I was reading (Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, which I thought I'd read before but don't remember any of it).

The day before that was pretty good, though. Mer'd told me that the guys at the Golden Deli had a very affectionate cat, so I went over there to see. I couldn't find the cat, so I asked the morning guy and he said, "Abdul! Take him to see the cat." So Abdul grudgingly takes me down to the basement to see the cat, a skinny calico that seems perfectly friendly but clearly isn't interested in me, despite Abdul's repeated attempts to pick it up and put it on me. That evening I visited another cat at the Haifa Deli across the street. It thought I had food when I called it over and walked away when it found out I didn't. The guy at Mike's pizza let me pick up my take-out food even though I didn't have the cash on me. I paid him later.

I just got some spam that said I could buy an acre of moon land. Don't want it, thanks.

The AniMatrix on DVD was strictly okay. I mean, the animation was, in most cases, pretty interesting, but the stories were pretty lame. They were just too short to be good. It was 9 stories, each one about 5 minutes long.

The Enchilada

Man, I was feeling kind of down last night, but Mer made me one of the best dinners I think I've ever had. I kind of helped -- no, I shouldn't even say that because my contribution was miniscule. The food was pasta with red pesto, green beans, mushrooms, and onions, with chicken on the side. Totally delicious. Then we had smoothies and wine. We also watched The Business of Strangers, with Julia Stiles and Stockard Channing: Julia Stiles, as usual, all wrong for her part, but Stockard Channing was good. It could have been a little punchier.

So I just walked over to (what used to be) The Big Enchilada. Now it is just "The Enchilada." What?! I asked at the counter and they said it was because they were under new management -- the girl pointed at this frat-boy type in an Oxford shirt with an asshole haircut sitting at one of the tables. He definitely looked like an asshole. The food was as good as ever, though. Let me tell you.

When I get paid in a few days, I was thinking about buying Call of Cthulhu to play with Tom and Ted et al. come September. I think we should all get dressed up in period clothes and drink gin and tonics while we play. They are in for the gin and tonics, they say. I, as the Dungeon Master, will wear robes and a silver pendant.

Sclar Tabotage!

That is what some junk mail just told me. My sty went away.

I bought a couple of tickets to the Fiend Fest show at Club Exit NYC. They were very expensive, but I was worried that Leonard might die or The Dickies might break up before I saw them again.

Okay, so people were talking about this guy who wrote a paper that says there's no such thing as a fundamental unit of time -- as evidenced because of Zeno's so-called "paradox," that says it's impossible to move anywhere because in order to have moved x units of distance, we need to first have moved half of x units of distance and so on, until we use up infinite time going nowhere. It's a paradox because motion is clearly possible. Anyway, some other people are saying that the paper doesn't make sense, and that the guy who wrote the paper doesn't understand infinite series. Now, I haven't read the paper in question, nor do I really understand math that well, but I don't see what the problem is. The opposing side's argument is that you can have a sum with an infinite number of addends, and it'll come out to a non-infinite value (like when you sum 1 + (1/2) + (1/4) + ... and get 2). The thing is, numbers can be infinitely subdivided, but the understanding of time that the author is arguing against says that time can't be. So if you've got a minimum unit of time that it takes to move any distance, no matter how small, and you've got an infinite sum of these fixed units of time (corresponding to the infinite sum of the distances), then Zeno's right and it takes forever to go somewhere. The guy who wrote the paper is saying that time is continuous, and thus can be infinitely subdivided -- to the extent that time even exists, anyway. So he does understand infinite series, right?

Here are some movies I want to rent:

• Spider
• Crash
• The Devil's Backbone
• I don't know

Seymour Fattenstein

Hello. I have a big sty, like one of those eye-pimples, you know? It is right on the cusp of my lower eyelid. I look like I got punched.

Man, is it ever going to stop raining? I wanted to ride my bike today. This reminds me of this Ray Bradbury story called... well, I don't remember what it was called, but it was about this people exploring Venus, and apparently it rains all the time on Venus and they are looking for this place called the Sun Dome, I think. Man, are they excited about that Dome. But when they get there, it turns out the place is all broken down and deserted. That's where the story ends. Serves 'em right for wanting something real bad. The rain woke me up this morning, so I got up and shaved and showered and made myself a breakfast sandwich to take to work. Now it's raining again.

Emma, Tom et. al. found a place really really near our apartment. It's just awesome -- that they're moving in nearby, that is. I haven't seen the place. We had dinner last night with Emma at the Chat 'n' Chew on 15th. Mer has a new cell phone.

How bad do I wanna go to the fucking Misifts show? Very badly. As soon as tickets are available, I am going to buy them. It's on a tuesday, I think. Wait. Yes.

Feverish, Fake Christ On A Shitting Cross

Okay, this nonsense about gay marriage has got to stop. Reading all these speeches from the president and the pope (the president of the unicorn-worshippers) is really starting to shit me off. "Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law?" Way to go, all you degenerates. Give me a fucking break. You know what, let them keep their stupid heterosexual-only, God-says-you-can-throw-acid-in-your-wife's-face marriage, but make it legally meaningless, and replace it with a domestic partnership structure that doesn't discriminate against human beings. Maybe already-married people could be grandfathered in, but I'd just as soon say, "fuck 'em." Living on this planet can be pretty frustrating. Suck a fatty, God.

Angelina Jolie Is Tomb Raider

You know what? Work is exhausting. But who cares? So what did I do when I got home today? I realized that I hadn't mailed the bills that Mer asked me to mail this morning. So I hopped on my bike and pedaled down 7th Avenue 'til I found a mailbox. The weather was perfect, and I love my bike. I love 7th Avenue, too. It is a place where you want to hang out on the street because there are benches and trees and pretty storefronts all over the place. It is like a city planner's dream: All different races of people hanging out, chatting, and eating overpriced sorbet. It kind of reminds me of Wellfleet, except with fewer white people.

I forgot to mention that I saw Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Sucks on Saturday. What an awful movie. Just boring. So boring. I couldn't even follow what was going on, and it didn't look like anyone was having fun. To make matters worse, at the beginning of the movie there was this anti-piracy ad featuring this ridiculous-looking set-painter -- he was like 50 years old and had died the tip of his goatee purple -- urging us not to steal movies, since it wasn't the rich executives who lost money when movies got pirated, it was guys like him. Good, get fucked, jerk. Lose your job and keep sucking the MPAA's cock while they tell you it was because of all the sinful movie pirates; they really care what happens to you, honest. And then the worst movie I'd seen all year. Jesus Christ.

This show on Fox on gross bugs is pretty cool, but it would send my Forensic Entomology professor into anaphylactic shock it's so sensational. What am I gonna do for dinner? Tsing Tao makes some ill-good food, but I feel like I should make something.

Mer is afraid that we're going to get bronchitis.

I'm Not The Girl You Thought I Was

Blogger just erased the post I made. It wasn't interesting -- my job is nice, but the people stay too late. I also said:

The leaves of the trees outside our place up by the streetlight looked like a beautiful green spiderweb. The stoop smelled forbodingly like a horse.

I Got A Job

Yeah, so it looks like my references checked out okay, and I'll be going down to 634 B'way (or whatever the address is) tomorrow to sign some papers. I am now officially richer than all of you and own more stock options. It turned out that the Non-Compete Agreement, which prevents me from working at a competing company (as determined by DataSynapse management) for up to a year after I leave, was not negotiable. That kind of irked me, but I did a little research, and it sounds like it's probably non-enforceable in New York, as per this ruling.

And not a moment too soon, since CSFB is starting to get on my nerves. The asshole-nice guy ration among the bankers is roughly 50-50; the women in the assistant pool are insufferable -- all they do all day is talk on the phone, giving advice to friends with chronic health problems; they keyboard gets confused when I try to type a tilde (~) or a double-quote; and I have to wear a stupid "visitor" sticker on my shirt so I can get into and out of the building.

There was this creepy guy on the bus today with a voice not unlike that of the guy from the candy bar commercial who rewards an altruistic motorist with "a big hug," and he wanted to know what my sticker meant. "Are you a visitor?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm a temp."

"You work for Tim?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm a temporary employee in an office building."

"How did you get that job?" he asked. Good question.
...
Last night, Mer and I watched Spirited Away; the night before that we peeped Catch Me If You Can. Both well-reviewed by The Onion A.V. Club, who have a hilarious review of DVD commentary tracks for a round-up of terrible movies, both good. Coincedence? I think not. Thank you, snivelling, back-biting Nathan Rabin!

Man, Did It Just Rain Or What.

I am serious. It was just pouring. And now, nothing.

That fire at the top of the Eiffel Tower: Don't worry about it.

Good news! I got an offer from that company; actually, the more I read about it, the more interesting it sounds. I actually got a couple of books out of the B&S library to bring myself (more) up to speed. I don't think I should say more about it until I work out a few things with my Non-Compete Agreement, but hopefully I will have a full-time job.

On about the same level of cool, I stopped at this exotic bird store on the way to the library. It was on like 33rd Street and Lex, I think; they have this really awesome display of zebra finches in front -- it takes up the whole window, practically. And inside there were all these different birds, all doing different things: There was a big green parrot that seemed like it was responding to me talking to it, only it was making dog-like "woof" noises; there was a tucan that kept hopping from one perch to another and back again; there were a couple of African gray parrots that were each balancing on one foot -- lifting the other high in the air -- like dancers stretching; there was another parrot just kind of blowing spit bubbles; and there was a mynah bird making a noise like a fog horn. I considered as I was leaving that I might have contracted some rare kind of jungle disease from talking to all those birds, but it'd be almost worth if I did.

Oops, there goes the rain again. Sorry.

Happy birthday, creep-job

Mer and I rode our bikes around Prospect Park today, this time without stopping. It was beautiful; not late in the evening enough to see fireflies like last time, though.

I spent last night with Tom, Emma, Ted, and Maya. We watched Bad Boys II -- now that's a creepy movie. The first part is an awkward and demeaning buddy comedy that purposefully reverses the natural order of Martin Lawrence as a sloppy asshole and Will Smith as a pretty nice guy; the second part is a paean to U.S. arrogance and a demonstration of the inexplicable affection all ethnic and economic groups seem to feel towards our military, as the two titular police officers stage a small-scale invasion of Cuba to rescue Martin Lawrence's sister. Sorry if I spoiled it for you, creeps.

We had Chinese food tonight: Chicken w/ Garlic & Shrimp w/ Broccoli & Boiled Pork Dumplings. Tsing Tao!

I hope I get that DataSynapse job; it's looking like I'll have to take more money out of my savings account to pay the rent this month.

Cadillac grills

Don't look at the date -- I'm posting this from an old, un-published entry. To-day is my birth-day, and I am still a little sick from this weekend. My stomach was upset all last week, and then on Thursday I developed a bad sore throat and a fever. But what made it almost okay is that Mer fed me and rented movies for me and we spent the weekend just been lying on the couch and drinking soup. I hope she doesn't get sick. Here's what we watched:

Yesterday:

• Haiku Tunnel: Good, albeit with a protagonist who inspires about zero sympathy
• Smoke: Also good, though it's clearly not a comedy (as it's billed -- "Where there's smoke, there's laughter!" What?!)

Today:

• Gangs of New York: Good but long
• Blade: Okay
• Blade II: Okay

My interview with DataSynapse went okay; predictably bland explanation of what the company does from the head guy, followed by a bad-attitude tech grilling from the jerky head tech guy who thinks he's too busy to have to deal with me, followed by an explanation of the position from the young, tired-looking guy who had it last year. At least there were no brainteasers. I have another interview with them tomorrow at 2:00 PM. It took a while for me to get what they do, because their web site is so circumlocutory, but this article in the Science Times made it clear. Apparently, grid computing is going to do for computation what the web did for data. Who knows.

This woman whose computer I fixed put me in contact with the director of I.T. for the Environmental Defense Fund, who said there's a helpdesk position available. Employment is so close I can taste it.

Here are some of the presents I got so far:

• Promethea, Book II
• Shirts, button-down
• NYT, subscription to

All delightful!

Here's a poem that my Heroes of Might & Poetry teacher read us this year:

This is your birthday, Tom, and I rejoice
That thus it passes smoothly, quietly:
Many such eves of gently whispering noise
May we together pass, and calmly try
What are this world's true joys, -ere the great Voice
From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly.

He cried a bit when he read it; it's a bit of a sad trip. s/Tom/Julian/, and s/All that shit about dying/Stuff about getting presents/. Alright! Let's do this thing!

2002 New York Yankees

Man it took a long time to get my computer set up at CSFB this morning; I don't mean my heavy little laptop, neutron-star. I mean this big stupid thing I'm not supposed to play with. The guy from IT had to connect to it and move the mouse around from downstairs before I could look up the name of this book store for my "principal," who was getting very impatient.

Speaking of principals, Mer and I got bikes at a store called "On The Move." The woman who sold them to us made it very clear that they have to be locked up or they will be stolen. "You could be reaching into your pocket for 25 cents to buy a hot dog," she said, "and you turn around -- boom! They're gone." We will be very careful. The geniuses over at Prospect Heights Realty have yet to cash my rent check, meaning that I must hurry and deposit my Personnel Express money as soon as I can take lunch. Thank Christ for Fleet overdraft protection.

Okay, I am not ready to publish this thing, but here are some good links. Slashdot justly noted that these little diary entries from Dr. Ed Lu, the current on-board ISS Science Officer are both well-written and really interesting. NASA has also made available this Q&A stuff with him, which is also quite good. Wow, and just now they linked to the NORFANZ deep sea exploration mission; it has plenty of pictures of new sea animals.

The young scumbag with a degree in Finance in the cubicle next to me just said, "What. The fuck."

[Time passes...]

Okay, I am back from lunch now. I had some chicken thing. So I got my check from Personnel Express, and it is only like $320. That's great. I still owe Mer for my bike. What a pain. I better get a fucking job soon. I am learning shell-scripting now; maybe that will make my resume more attractive. But we are going to have to cut some fucking costs, that is for sure. It's kind of depressing, even. Okay, time to publish.

"I obscenity in the milk of my shame."

Happy independence day, sheep.

The fireworks were pretty incredible. Emma and I watched them from a roof in Brooklyn Heights; it was the closest I'd ever been. I think my favorite ones were the little gold and white ones that kind of make a small cloud of glitter in the air -- like little bouquets of flowers, even. We tried to figure out which one was the "Path of Gold" or "Golden Shower" or whatever NPR was calling it. I think I know which one it was, and it was a pretty sweet piece of work: Two or three typical big exploding rockets that left an unusual number of long-lasting, glittery streamers as they went down. Before doing that, though, I went to a little party at Katie's house in Pelham and ate burgers and stromboli and drank Corona beers while Katie's brother Andrew set off garage-type fireworks. There was this one that they had like 10 of that would spin around really fast and make this steam whistle noise as it shot out sparks, and then all of a sudden about 20 little flashes and pops would go off in the air within a five-foot radius of it: The thing spits out smaller, invisible fireworks as it spins. It's like a particularly cruel, sparkly mine.

I have a job interview at a company called DataSynapse. I hate this company because it is one of those ones where you can't tell what they do. I think they host distributed computing clusters for researchers, but they don't seem to have that many contracts -- like, they only mention three people they've worked for, and they have a special "Awards" section on their web site, but they've only won one award. They have a big irritating corporate web site with all these stupid pictures but they are clearly not a big deal. And the job is like testing database efficiency. That sounds real fun. I guess I'm kind of dreading it because they're going to ask me more of those fucking think-on-your-feet brainteasers. Maybe I will just say, "Look, I'm a good programmer, I have a college degree (a B.S., mind you), let's just talk about something else." I also applied for the SparkNotes position. My dad called and said I got a letter from CUNY -- probably a Dear John; they would have called if they wanted to interview.

I got something posted on matrixessays.blogspot.com. That may not be terribly difficult, I don't know.

I watched these:

• How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days: Predictable. Bad
• The Truth About Tully: Slow, but good. And it comes with a short film at the beginning (instead of previews) that stars Nina and George from 24, as well as Sandra Bernhard

Here's hoping I can get into 28 Days Later... tomorrow when it's going to be 92 and feel like 95.

I'm re-writing the autoconf schemas for Arianne so that they check versions and so that Arianne supports the new stable version of the Lua scripting language (apparently, most of the Lua functionality that Arianne uses got altered / removed in Lua 5.0). Autoconf is behaving in a typical, hair-pulling fashion; apparently AC_DEFINE doesn't work within a user-defined autoconf macro -- you have to pass it as an argument, like the action to be taken if x is true. I won't even go into how long it took me to figure out that you can't put whitespace before the macro name and the open-parenth. Chalk it up to not being willing to read the manual. Suck balls.

West of the East and East of the West

Well, we finally got our DSL hooked up. I guess that means we have enlisted in the thick-framed glasses hipster gentrification army, but so be it. I still have to run the cable through the wall the way I want it: I think I'm going to drill a couple of holes with this big masonry bit I got at wonderful, wonderful Flatbush Hardware and then run a little RJ11/12 through one and some RJ45 through the other and attach the appropriate face-plates to either side. So when you plug a cable into both sides, it'll be like there's a line through the wall. Inspired, I know. Look, it's just going to be neater, okay?

Speaking of gentrification, the New York Times is running a story titled "Still Positively Fourth Street," about the way that street's changed over the years. Surprise surprise everybody turned into a rich asshole. From the article:

"Every neighborhood that gets famous gets commercialized,'' said Mr. Shapiro of Social Tees. "It's the nature of capitalism."

Forget the fact that Social Tees, for all its low-budget charm, is not quite a member of the old guard of home-brew Village mercantilism that the author of the article seems to love so much; the guy's pretty much right. So what can we do about it? It's simple: Boycott stuff you like. No, I'm serious. Too much enjoyment is what's ruined The Public's Shakespeare in the Park, Saturday Night Live, and the Internet, and it stands poised, at this very moment, to ruin Credit Seuss Foist Boston.

Okay, so one of the secretaries just came by and warned me that the banker for whom I am working, who was out in Chicago yesterday, has "a very big personality." I think that means she's an asshole, but maybe she means that part of this woman's brain, say, the social hippocampus, is bulging out of the front of her skull, a la Total Recall or Fist of the North Star. Or maybe she's just fat.

To help me remember, here are the jobs I think I'll apply for today:

• WNET Production Assistant & PHP Guy
• SparkNotes Lead Programmer