It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
It's time. After 7 years, I'm leaving Germany. I'll be flying to England tomorrow for a new job, a new life, and a whole new type of paperwork. Living in a country, you learn the language, the culture, and the people a bit. In England, I don't even know what you call the water works. I'm sure I'll learn, but there's something daunting about moving somewhere, getting an apartment, a driver's license, a library card, and all the other little things we take for granted. They don't even have bakeries over there; what am I going to do for bread?
But what am I doing in Germany, anyway? It's a fair question. So now, I present a little timeline of my years in Germany:
December 1997 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, America, I move to Europe with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in Atlanta.
February 1998 - Not speaking the language, not knowing any better, I go for the full-on European experience by buying a Citroen and working as a network support tech for a company in Düsseldorf.
May 1998 OK, now I speak the language. Man, do Citroens suck.
July 1998 - I decide that Germany was waaay too cold for me, and decided to move back. Also, Citroens suck. Hard.
December 1998 - I am convinced by my girlfriend to take a long-term backpacking trip (Weltreise) around Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia
August 1999 - Returned safely from my world trip, I decide to stay in Atlanta and get to know my family again.
December 1999 - Having been reminded that my family is a bunch of toothless, moonshine-chugging waterheads, I decide to move back to Germany with my ex-/re-/new-girlfriend
New Year 2000 - After celebrating the millennium in Augsburg, we are stalked by a pimply little Italian guy on the way home. My brother, who is visiting, attempts to reason with him, until he pulls out a gun. At which point, my brother takes it out of his hand and beats the fuck out of him with it. The Italian went home with a black eye, a broken foot, and a new respect for Americans. I was, and still am, extremely impressed.
April 2000 - I start my first job as an immigrant in Augsburg, Germany. My boss is 6'2", has orange-tinted sunglasses, is wearing a pith helmet, and whips out an Apple Newton during our interview. I'm not sure which of these things scares me most.
June 2000 Working 'round the clock in the German countryside, I drink 4 cases of Bavarian beer with my co-workers. As the clock tolls 12 on my 30th birthday, I tell them all that Germany is a banana republic full of Nazis and everybody can kiss my ass. And I'm stoned on my boss's weed.
September 2001 - Sitting in my office, I stare at CNN at 3:00 in the afternoon as the Twin Towers collapse. Everybody in the office avoids me for a week. Especially the little Turkish guy from the graphics department.
October, 2001 - My girlfriend walks out after an argument, leaving me alone in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm not sure if this means I'm supposed to move back home now.
November 2001 - Depressed, feeling fat and unattractive, I start my first blog.
December 2001 - An attractive young German girl comes home with me after a party, then proceeds to kick my ass at a LAN game of StarCraft and leaves. But first, she drinks all my beer. Love is in the air.
February 2002 - Germany switches to the Euro. My company moves from an attractive office space in the middle of Augsburg to a dank old warehouse in the countryside. My blogging reaches an all-time high.
June 2002 - I take my first real vacation, alone. I spend a week in Paris in a 1-star hotel; a week in Aachen; a week in Brussels. I come back weighing 140 lbs. Everyone's worried, but nobody says anything.
September 2002 - The company, having shrunk from 40 co-workers to six, is informed that everyone, from the lowest cleaning lady to the highest-paid employee (me), will receive the same monthly wages from this point forward. Rube thinks of the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation.
September 2002 - Opening my pay stub, I notice that the boss followed through with his threat/promise. I walk out the door without saying goodbye, and never speak to him again.
December 2002 - The attractive German girl throws a snowball against my window at three in the morning. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional Bavarian courting ritual. Love is in the air.
March 2003 - I get a roommate, a skinny little architect who rearranges everything in my enormous apartment into perfect little rows.
May 2003 - Mom visits and spends a week. The roommate convinces her I'm gay.
October 2003 - My grandfather dies. On 12 hours notice, I book a flight and drink an entire bottle of Jack. Granddaddy would've wanted it that way.
November 2003 - Being the fast-mover that I am, I finally make a formal offer of togetherness to the cute Bavarian girl. Offer accepted; there was much rejoicing.
January 2004 - I get tired of looking for work, and become self-employed.
March 2004 - Flush with cash from government subsidies, I buy my first Macintosh: A PowerBook G4.
June 2004 - First quarter of self-employedness over, I realize that taxes in Germany are in-fucking-sane!
November 2004 - The German version of the IRS shuts down all my accounts. My heat gets shut off. I actually use my oven to heat big plates of metal to 250°C, which I stick under my blankets before I go to bed. A low point.
December 2004 - Landlady kicks me out of my apartment; I move in with the snowball/starcraft girl. It's probably more than she bargained for.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to America, hoping that the land of my provenance will distract her from the fact that we are living together in a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment.
April 2005 - I bring the StarCraft girl to the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. Inexplicably, she doesn't call the police.
July 2005 - I find a great customer who'll give me a steady income. Almost like having a job again.
November 2005 - Having lots of money again, we move into a new apartment.
December 2005 - Mom visits again. Hopefully, bizarre noises from bedroom help to convince her that architect roommate was full of shit.
May 2006 - My visa for Germany expires. I am somewhat lax about renewing it.
June 2006 - Acidman dies of internal bleeding due to stomach ulcers. Fuck.
October 2006 - My mentor, Ken, dies of internal bleeding from a car accident. Fuck.
December 2006 - Large international Linux firm calls from England, and offers me a job.
February 2007 - Having decided to take the job, I inform my friends and customers they can, starting 1. April 2007, kiss my ass. I think Ken would be proud.
March 2007 - Realizing that I can't move to England without renewing my German visa, I decide to (finally) do just that.
April 2007 - Selling my shit and saying kiss my ass, Germany, I move to England with my girlfriend, a German lassie whom I met in a Dot-Com startup in Augsburg, Germany.
A new phase begins tomorrow. I'm as anxious as anyone to see how it turns out.
Heh. It seems as if someone is trying to nudge me out of the limelight, once again. And it seems she has a special little screen shot, eh? Well, let's see what she thinks about this:
Two can play that game, sister. I'm sure you'll notice the beautiful little "200,000" button on the right side, there. Should seem familiar. And as long as you don't have this:
...erm. Wait a minute – that's 200,001? Actually, Lovely Augsburg Anna was 200,000, as you can see by her poor choice of operating system:
That's right: We were sitting in adjoining rooms, and she was 200,000, and I was 200,001. So, she gets the purdy from Elisson.
Unfortunately, there's no snail-mail available, since we're in the process of moving to the UK. But, I'll be sure the Big E gets an address, as soon as one becomes available.
Oddly, I thought I was the only one that experienced that Ghostly Vibrating Leg, but apparently Dilbert author Scott Adams has it, too:
Lately I’ve been experiencing a bad case of Phantom BlackBerrry Vibration Syndrome, or PBVS. With this condition I am positive that my BlackBerry is vibrating in my pocket, only to discover that it is my imagination. About ten times per day I feel the vibration and think “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!” So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s okay because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.
I've reached for my cell phone many times, thinking that it was vibrating, only to be left wondering, 'did I really just imagine that something was vibrating in my pocket?' I mean, how can you be mistaken about something like that? Either something in your pocket is vibrating, or it isn't. There is no in-between.
Other things with similar, reality-bending effects include:
Changing my ringtone leaves me in abject confusion whenever anyone's phone rings
Any innocuous ping! sound makes me think, just for an instant, that I have email
Blue or underlined text, on paper, makes me instinctively poke it with my finger like a hyperlink1
Habit is the hobgoblin of tiny minds – My mind is tiny as they come, therefore my pants are full of hobgoblins.
Yes, in a word, badassitude. I don't know much about history, or anything for that matter, but let's face it: If you're a dude wrestling naked with a bunch of other naked dudes, you'd better be Badass Cubed, or you're costarring in prison films for the rest of your life. And these dudes are badasses.
I can only imagine how the casting for this masterpiece of blood, gore, and birth defects went: "Lemme see, I'd be co-starring with that dandy from Phantom of the Opera and that long-haired nancy boy Faramir, and we'll all be naked and hitting each other with sticks? Sounds badass!" Color me skeptical, but I would rather be in a musical. On paper, anyway.
On the screen, however, it's a different story. It's two straight hours of testosterone-filled, pumped-up skull-bashing badness, replete with mutants, war elephants, and hot naked chicks lolling about on drugs, determining the fates of civilizations, as they so often do.
Nevertheless, there are some moments that raise an eyebrow. I noticed a rather troubling tendency of the leading men, and their relationships with their womenfolk. For example:
And later...
Leave it to Spartans to know how to treat a lady. What a bunch of mutants.
And that big fella with the chains and the filed down teeth?... get outta town…. He reminded me of Velociman at a blogmeet after we’d ran out of vodka….
Since I respect SWG's judgement without question, I've been looking at the pictures. Truth be told, I don't really see the similarites. Here's the big waterhead from the movie:
Well, there might be a superficial family resemblance there, but I think Eric's imagination is running away with him.
All in all, a fine movie to see with a date. For the ladies, there's men in loincloths, and more six-packs than a 4th of July NASCAR race. For the men, well, there's naked chicks and the bodies, they do pile high (literally!).
The state is apparently facing a budget crisis--to the tune of $1 billion. On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player. The plan also included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services, among other things, to raise funds.
...
But, The Detroit News' editorial makes an astute point wondering "how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod."
In all fairness, the word 'iPod' wasn't mentioned; still, I have to wonder about state mandates like this. Much like "universal health care" actually means "mandatory health care that costs 3 times as much", this proposally probably actually proscribes "mandatory ownership of a knockoff MP3 player that is indirectly linked somehow to a Michigan lobbyist named Chang".
The Socialists are giving away the store, that they may pat themselves on the back with good warm fuzzy feelings all 'round. But wait a minute; mandating things like digital music player ownership would have certain, erm, multicultural implications, wouldn't it? Case in point, those Michiganders of the Islamic variety. Music is haram. Wouldn't mandating iPod ownership, as well as levying taxes to pay for it, violate their religious rights?
Most multi-cultists forget: Your average moderate Muslim is just beyond Lithgow in Footloose on the wack-o-meter.
Jimbo ponders the big questions, as usual. To wrap, or not to wrap? That is, hygienically speaking, the big question. I personally might put a wafer-thing sheaf of paper between my rosy cheeks and the seat, should it come to that. It's more out of habit than from any hope of erecting a sort of magical barrier, blocking diseases. It is, after all, merely a micrometer-thin sheet of tissue, and not a Trojan.
But it's important a) not to overdo it, and b) clean up after yourself. We had a mystery in our dorm, back in college days. Two or three times a week, somebody would take a dump in the same men's room stall, and leave a protective ring of toilet paper on the seat that was at least 4 inches deep; hundreds of layers of toilet paper, probably weighing 5 pounds. The day or time was unpredictable, there being no obvious pattern other than it always in the same stall.
We pondered often whence the infamous ass-gasket came, and who the builder could be. We were often convinced it was somebody we knew, someone in the clique, and no one was above suspicion. Eventually, every one was cleared with an airtight alibi; Easter vacation, for example, or having failed out of school. Yet the ass-gasket persisted; nay, flourished.
We never found out who had built it, or for what reasons it was piled so high. It remains a mystery to this day, part of the lore of Georgia Tech's Towers Hall for Young Men.
So, the little lady says to me, "Rube, let's go see 300!" And I think, right on! But wha-? She didn't want to go see that last week? Why the change in heart? And then I think, oh yeah:
Oh, and I bet the Spartans did a LOT of sit-ups… I mean, like a LOT of sit-ups…. Like probably a full metric shitload or something….. either that, or their wives woke up sore every morning from being slammed like a screen-door all night long…
The imagery, that is sheer poetry. Well, I know better than look a gift-horse in the mouth. We're off to see 300!
I just got this from my mom, about the Darwin Awards from long, long ago.
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, DC appeared to be the robber's first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
The shop was full of customers - firearms customers.
To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.
The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also drew and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
AND THE WINNER...
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
Spring has sprung early here in the old country. The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing, and the tight t-shirts are adorning the co-eds once again. It's one of the perks of living in a college town, I dare say. Temperatures have once again broken the magical 60-degree marker, and a young man' thoughts and all that.
Spring is also the annual renewin' o' the residence permit time. Even though I'm theoretically moving to England in couple of days, I figured I'd take one last shot at the Permanent Resident Alien status. It's a regular tug of war between me and the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner's office). So far, there have been a few hurdles:
Expired German residency prevented entry permit to Great Britain (that's why I'm still here in Germany, actually)
Renewal of German residency denied because my passport expires in August (6 month minimum)
German residency permit renewal granted because I went to a different person at the same office
Passport sent off to British Consulate, where it may or may not be at this very minute
Permanent alien status pondered by new officer at Ausländerbehörde, but doubtful because I don't earn enough money1
Both entry permit to Great Britain and German permanent resident status endangered because my passport is now full
Yes, after traveling to every corner of the globe for 10 straight years, my trusty old passport is finally full. And since visas are physically stuck to a full page of your passport, sometimes 2 pages even, the poor government employee who can't find an empty page will probably reject your application outright. There are spaces here and there for a quarter-page stamp; if I could defrag that bastard I might have a shot.
Apparently, to gain a permanent residential visa in German you need to earn a surplus of 1158,€ per month after income taxes, rent, health insurance, etc. etc. I don't know anybody living here who earns that much money. ↩
Getting to know people is one of the great things about blogging. With the magic of the Intertubes, you can meet bloggers from all over the world, exchange ideas, and tips about drinking, and revel in the greater human comedy in which we all play a part. Reading someone's thoughts and feelings day after day brings you closer to them on a special level, allowing you to build a bond of trust and friendship with people you've know only a short period of time, or perhaps never even met at all.
But how well do you know these people? I mean, really know them. Despite the friendly, outgoing appearance, how can you be sure that the dude writing about cats and whisky is the person he purports to be, and not the motherloving pigeon of all psychopaths? The easiest way, of course, is to let the Internets do the work for you!
Step One, get a sample of their handwriting. This won't always be easy, but some people slip up and let a copy of it get out where potential victims can find them.
Now, you can't really get much done with this, owing to the skewed angle, which is also coincidentally a tactic associated with drunkards and weed freaks. Luckily, with a little work, you can get rid of the skew, so's you have a clean sample to work with.
Ok, now we have a full-page sample of this (possible) psychopath's handwriting. It's on to step 2!
Second, run it through our trusted ally, the Handwriting Analysis Wizard. This trusty little doodad will tell you where, how, and why this (potentially) murderous ne'er-do-well will strip your flesh from the bones with a rusty awl and dump your carcass by the side of the road in an old yellow Hefty bag. Let's have a look!
Document Spacing
The first test is how the text is fitted on the page. We've found a pretty good match here, so let's see what the Wizard has to say about it:
The right side of the page represents the future and S------- W---- G-- (name obscured to protect identity. -ed) seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. S------- W---- G-- seems to be clinging to past events and spending lots of time thinking about what happened. It would be best to leave the past behind and move on. Stop crowding that left margin.
Hmm...I believe you'll find that Ted Bundy also had a problem with the right margin. Anyhoo, the next step is the letter 'y'. Believe it or not, you can tell an awful lot about a person just by how they write this letter.
The Letter Y
The Wizard tells us:
S------- W---- G-- exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. S------- W---- G-- allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. S------- W---- G-- has a vivid imagination.
There's the rub. Good story tellers usually have good alibis, no? On to the next point, the slant of the letter t.
The Letter T
S------- W---- G-- has a need to be in control of his own life. He is a strong individual that can control situations to his advantage. This person can take control of a situation. He likes control and has the ability to control people without getting them offended.
The second aspect of the letter t, is whether it has a knife point or is rounded off on the ends. Anybody who knows S------- W---- G-- knows what's coming next:
The Letter T Crossbar
A knife point there is no surprise. Survey says:
S------- W---- G-- is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny.
That's putting it mildly. Up next on the agenda are the 'humps' on the letters m and n.
The Letters M and N
Here's a perfect match. And what grisly details does the Wizard give us?
Diplomacy is one of S------- W---- G--'s best attributes. He has the ability to say what others want to hear. He can have tact with others. He has the ability to state things in such a way as to not offend someone else. S------- W---- G-- can disagree without being disagreeable.
Oh, well, jeez, let's just elect him as the first serial murder president, why don't we?! Well, this thing's obviously broken, so I guess we'll have to err on the side of abandon and make a genuine effort to actually show up at a blog meet again sometime soon. Let's just leaves the bullwhips and pigstickers at home this time, shall we?
Now that I've got a gallery, I'm giddy with power! I've put up some pictures of the Wreckyll in Jeckyll, which are suitable for framing. Or blackmail, pick your poison.
Hey, there, folks! As you might have noticed, You Bitch! got a new coat of paint. I've been cobbling together a new blogging system in my spare time, using Python and the Django web development framework. If you like, you can see a few technical details over on the Impressum.
It's not quite finished, but it can already do several things that I was hoping for:
Full metaWeblog, Movable Type, and Blogger APIs implemented, for use in desktop blogging clients like Ecto
Gallery2's Gallery Remote protocol1, for uploading image galleries out of iPhoto or another program with a Gallery2 plugin
Podcasting stuff, which you may have noticed doesn't work
Some online services, like to-do list and calendar, for internal use
Monthly newsstand-style editions in PDF format, mainly for a lark
This is my second big Django project. The first project was an online software activation and license management server for a customer of mine. Even though I don't really know much about programming, I was able to pack actual functionality in to a few hundred lines of code. I'll probably put the source up, as soon as I've taken the cuss words out of it.
I'm amazed again and again at how easy Python makes it for a talentless hack like me to make things that don't suck.
Gallery 2 has to have the Worst API documentation ever ↩
I'm still not sure how that goes with the pingbacks though. That might not even be possible. ↩
A female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is busy at the moment taking the final exams for her master's degree. For the past two weeks, she's been running to the university and back, making copies of her study materials at about 5 cents per page. Check out the pile of tree pelts that's accumulated on my beloved colonial dining table:
There are probably hundreds of students over at the university right now who are doing the exact same thing. All told, that's about 5000 pages, at a cost of over $100 in processing and copying fees, for each student taking the exams. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell an institution of higher learning that they're full of shit, but I can't help think that it might have been a better use of their resources to distribute electronic versions of these materials. I mean, as long as they're letting people copy them, why not try to keep the rainforest from getting chopped and cleared at the same time? Note the USB stick at the bottom left of that picture, which would hold 200 times as much information as the stack of folders it's leaning on.
For purely scientific purposes, I combed a few BitTorrent sites to see if any of the textbooks my anonymous girlie was copying were available in E-Book format. Almost all of them were.
Everybody from Elisson to Michael Heilemann is memeing this list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books. Not being above using other people's ideas as my own, I'll be posting it as well. I'll spare the 50 lines, and just leave in the ones that I've actually read.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
I like lists like these, but I think this one's misnamed. Tolkien's books, for example, are not within the 50-year time span any more (the original list is from 2002), and shouldn't be there. And although I'm sure they're all good, I don't know if I'd consider some of them all that influential. Electric Sheep, for example, is nowhere near as good or influential as Dick's paranoium opus Vulcan's Hammer. The only reason anybody still knows about it is because of Blade Runner's hat tip.
Some I'd add to the list:
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, both of whose successes inspired, in their times, a return to 'hard' science fiction (although its science wasn't quite as hard as Crichton made it out to be).
Dungeons and Dragons first edition by Gary Gygax, as long as being a 'novel' isn't a prerequisite–I mean, how many people derived works from that? It completely redefined the way people thought about the fantasy genre. And bathing.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It's still Heinlein's best book, in my estimation, and hey, it gave us TANSTAAFL. Better than Starship Troopers, which is probably fightin' words with a lot of people, and number two on my Why the Hell Ain't They Made it a Movie list, right after Satanic Verses.
Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite Vonnegut book; it's basically the same as Slaughterhouse-5, just a bit more screwy. I think it's a pretty good bet that drugs played a wee part in the making of this one.
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. Although ripped root and branch right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ass, this book had more sequels than most of the other books on this list had imitators.
Some I'd remove from the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I like this book; I've read it at least a dozen times; but it's kind of cheesy. And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it had a lot of influence in the sci-fi/fantasy world. There's about a million books out there that left a bigger crater than this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I'll give them The Man in the High Castle, but Electric Sheep is crap, and all that Mercerism mumbo-jumbo can kiss my ass. Sounds like somebody thinks it's still hip to over-represent Philip K. Dick. His stuff wasn't bad, but give it a rest already.
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I remember reading the Shannarah books as a fat, lonely teenager. Even then, it seemed derivative.
Software Update for 10.4.9 happened to me today while I was busy making other plans. Usually, I trust Steve implicitly, and consider him my spiritual guide and cult leader. Today, out of pure chance, I actually looked at the update:
The 10.4.9 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.8 and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
RAW camera support
Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes
Image capture performance
Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts
Font handling
Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player
USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat
Bluetooth devices
Browsing AFP servers
Apple USB Modem
Windows-created digital certificates
Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs
Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007
Security updates
Doesn't that sound entertaining. I'll have to check that out, at the expense of my three-week uptime.
Libertarians, and especially the likes of Neal Boortz, like to short-circuit arguments relying on the tenets of democracy as irrelevant in American politics. The reasoning behind this, according to Boortz, is that the United States is not a democracy, seeing as democracy implies the rule of the majority at the expense of the minority rights. This has become a popular meme among Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists alike. According to Boortz' own take on President Bush's State of the Union address in January:
Democracy: Four references to democracy. In one passage he referred to the United States as "a great democracy." Our founding fathers warned us against the establishment of a democracy They were very clear in their fear of democracy. Historians of that era loudly warned against the creation of a democracy after the Revolutionary War ... but here we are in 2007 listening to the President of the United States referring to us as "a great democracy." I know that, thanks to government education, not one one hundred people in this country have a clue why our founding fathers abhorred the idea of democracy ... and that is no accident.
This is obviously more of a pet peeve than an intellectual argument, and it's typical among those who define democracy strictly as "majority rule". Many Libertarian and anarchist sites, for example, harp on an old U.S. Army document that supposedly listed democratic governments among the enemies of liberty and freedom, describing them as "a government of the masses". I say 'supposedly' because I've yet to see a citation to an official source of this document, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that somebody, at some point in time, actually saw a copy of this document, and the information has been preserved through its numerous retellings. Not to mention the fact that the Army withdrew that document, and in my opinion never should have released such a thing in the first place. The Army should not be in the business of defining American political philosophy, any more than policemen should write the laws they enforce.
This definition of democracy as "a government of the masses" is a redefinition of a) the prefix demo-/dema- to mean 'masses', as in demagoguery or demography, when it actually means "the people"; b) the people as "the masses", which is a rhetorical trick to negatively transform constituencies into monolithic systems; and c) government into law. The problem with using old texts as scripture, especially ones that have been retracted, is that they eventually become anachronistic in their language, their symbols, or both. The fact is that democracy, as a system of government, is not defined as "majority rule" any more, if indeed it ever was. For example, the current Oxford Dictionary1 defines democracy thusly:
democracy |di?mäkr?s?| noun ( pl. -cies)
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.
a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.
the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy
America fits snugly into the first definition. By most modern definitions of the word, democracy covers systems such as republics, representative republics, and the bizarre, three-tiered social oligarchy that exists over here in Germany, and also in most Western European governments, in conjunction with the hinky, dysconstitutional spectre of the European Union. As much as I enjoy listening to Neal, his argumentativeness over the word democracy as meaning "mob rule" is intellectually dishonest, because it redefines the agreed terms of discussion in the middle of the debate. He will also slip up every now and then, describing the goal of the Iraq War as the building of a democracy in Iraq, which is supposedly the last thing we'd want to see happen. It reeks of desperation and defeat, distracting as it is from the real point of Libertarianism, that the protection of individual rights and freedoms should be the major role and purpose of government. And that is an argument that doesn't need to hide itself behind pedantic word-play.
As of OS X 10.4.9, which includes the Oxford English Dictionary. ↩
Since I finally cleaned up my desk, in my preparations for the selling thereof, I get to see what it actually looks like. Once you get the old coffee cups, whiskey bottles, condom wrappers, and used hypodermic needles off, it closely resembles a healthy, productive environment. So let's see what's on Rube's desk!
Dax is a Linux guy now? Good luck, man, I'll be right there with you in a couple of weeks, at least at the office. But at home? I'd rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than run Linux as my day-in, day-out desktop. But the price is right, and the licensing terms are more than agreeable, so if you have the time, and hate playing MP3s and games, Linux might just be for you. Naturally, my first instinct as a smug Apple Fanboi is to rip out my hair and say, "DAX, MAN, WHY YOU HATE YOU'RE FAMILY GET A MAC! OMG!". But he knows about Macs, and still decided on Linux. His reasoning, however, piques my interest:
Not that I’m going to become one of those freaky Apple people, mind you. After all, I like to actually run more than a handful of programs. However, I have downloaded Red Hat Linux. Let the learning begin!
"Handful of programs," I thought to myself, and hit the F9 key on my keyboard, bringing up Exposé:
Doing! That's gotta be like, 500 windows there. Has that crap really been running in the background all this time? I need to close a program every now and then, methinks. I know that document window in the bottom left, with the red header, has been open at least a week. That's when we printed the flyers for our apartment. It gets away from you sometimes, that desktop management thingy.
Then, of course, there's all that Dashboard crapola that's running in the background:
Is that really a modern impression of the Macintosh, that you can't run a lot of stuff at once? I guess that was the case back in the Multifinder days, but take a look at what ps ax spits out on my laptop:
[75 lines of meaningless code deleted]
I would say that's more than a handful. Or maybe Dax is talking about program availability. Like the ability to walk into a store and pick out shrink-wrapped software to take home with him. That would make sense, seeing as the acceptance of the Macintosh doesn't compare at all with that of Windows, especially in the retail space. But then, he's switching to Linux. If he thinks he's going to find software for Linux at Best Buy, well.... BWWWAAAAHAHHHAAAHAAAAHAAA!!! Talk about a rude surprise in the waiting.
Oddly, I just spent an hour trying to figure out why the sidebar of this blog disappears when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. There's apparently a missing tag, or a bad HTML element somewhere, or whatever it is today that causes IE6 to get the vapors.
I say 'oddly' because I really don't give a fuck how any of my pages look in IE. If you're still using Microsoft's abortion of a browser after all suffering and human misery that it's caused, you are a traitor and a Communist. Which is unfortunate, because look what you assholes are using?
Browsers
Unique Visitors
MSIE 6
88229
62.16%
Netscape 7
46143
32.51%
Netscape 4
3038
2.14%
MSIE 5
2873
2.02%
Other
1096
0.77%
Netscape 3
249
0.17%
MSIE 4
247
0.17%
WebTV 1
12
0.00%
Opera 6
5
0.00%
AOL 4
4
0.00%
MSIE 3
4
0.00%
Opera 5
1
0.00%
Netscape 34.82% - MSIE 64.36% - Other 0.78%
I mean, what's up with you dickheads, anyway? This table tells me that at least 64.36% of my visitors are slobbering, knuckle-dragging waterheads. Did you ever wonder why 90% of email nowadays is spam? It's because dickheads like you surf porn sites using Internet Explorer, get viruses, and your computer uses your cable modem to send spam to people who should hate you, 24/7.
Is it really just beyond you people to go out and download Firefox? Do you really not understand that using IE is like going to prison with a naked Angelina Jolie tattooed on your back?
I was playing around with the Mac OS X dictionary applet today. It's that cool bit where, if you hit Control-Alt-D, you'll be given the Oxford English Dictionary definition for whatever word you happen to have the mouse cursor over at the moment. I ran it over a blog entry I wrote a few days ago, and got the following:
An "unsophisticated country person", you say? Sounds like a fairly P.C. definition of a hillbilly. I'm sure that hillbillies everywhere are pleased with the objectivity of that entry, at least the ones that own the Oxford English Dictionary. Or a Mac, for that matter, which I'm sure is the preferred computing platform for hillbillies everywhere.
Well, let's see what they say about Rube:
What the...? Well, that seems a little dismissive to me. Do I need to point out the fact that hillbillies got a six-syllable Scrabble-buster to describe them? And really: Bumpkin? Is that even a word? Dang, dudes, at least try to temper your contempt for a second.
My optimism for a warm welcome from the British folk isn't really stoked by this. "Hello, Mr. Bumpkin, welcome to England. Please be aware that chewin' on wheat stalks is restricted to designated areas. Enjoy your stay."
It looks like I'm moving to England. My papers have gone through, so now instead of sitting around griping about the Huns, I'll be bitching about the redcoats. In about two weeks, the beer will be warm, the sausages weak and flabby, and the teeth around me like rotted tree-stumps in a putrid bog. They happen quickly, these changes in context.
Over the last few weeks I've been swapping emails with the high-powered London lawyering firm that's taking care of my visa application. You got to know when to cover your redneck past when dealing with certain types of people. I try to keep the y'alls in the closet where they belong. And I really have to bite my tongue whenever I start to bring up all those tales about Pappy getting put on the peanut farm a short trick for moonshining. You've got to pick your audience when you're bringing out the really good stories, you know. I mean, I can't even put a picture of my family on my desk. My cover would be blown:
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
I just hope my future employers don't discover that they're getting billed $400 an hour to import some backwoods north Georgia hillbilly. At least not until the office Christmas party, when I break out the banjo and give 'em a little Foggy Mountain. Then it'll be:
RUBE: "Oh, your uncle's named Earl, too? Wow, that's interesting!"
LIMEY GUY: "No, he is an Earl. "
RUBE: "I'm outta scotch, be right back."
Playing it close to the vest; that's the new Rube.
Although I'm not much of a guitar player, every now and then I learn a tune enough to enjoy playing it. I remember commercials from my youth, hawking a crash course in learning the three or four chords on a guitar which would turn you into the envy of all your friends and the object of desire for cheerleaders and candystripers everywhere. Well, I've learned at least that many chords now, and a few songs to go with them; everything I need to be the hit of parties and campfires, as laid out by those Urban General hucksters. Unfortunately, I always seem to choose songs that a) no one wants to hear, or b) nobody can sing.
A short list of songs I can play on guitar, none of which are suitable for campfires and/or parties:
- Rowboat, by Johnny Cash. It's written by Beck, and sung by Johnny, so you can rest assured that no man born of woman can hit that first note.
- Back to the Old House, by The Smiths. Campfire + Smiths = Maudlin Loser.
- Black Gold, by Soul Asylum. It loses a bit of umph when played on creaky old acoustic guitar with plastic strings; also, no rhythm section.
- Superman, by R.E.M. Bursting into shameful tears at the line, "You don't really love that guy you make it with, now do you..." is no way to impress the ladies.
- Jane Says, by Jane's Addiction. Imagine your mom with a pint of bourbon in her, belting out "I want 'em if they waaaant meeeeee!" in her best Perry Farrel screech.
- House Above Tina's Grocery, by Kevn Kinney. "Kevn who? Play Free Bird, dumbass!"
- Norwegian Wood and/or Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles. The last four guys who had the guitar already played it, and they were better than you anyway, so put a sock in it.
- Marie's the Name, by Elvis Presley. Although this sounds like it would work, it's important to keep one thing in mind: You are not Elvis.
So, what is a good song to learn for campfires, which requires but meagre skills? I, too, would like to be the hit of the party someday.
Since Agent Bedhead seems obsessed with this knowledge, I've decided to tell the world the complete story. I present, rather un-proudly, ashamedly, actually, The Marmoset Movie.
May God have mercy on our souls. Y'know, if there was ever a reason to learn how to put little black bars over people's eyes in iMovie, this is probably it.
People who've never been to Germany fail to realize just how bad the radio is over here. Germans are notorious cheapskates, and their penny-pinching habits extend to paying for their music. Even in well-established bars over here, you'll see stacks of clumsily-labelled CDROMs sitting next to the stereo system, or a broken down old computer playing downloaded MP3s from a Winamp playlist. That's something you hardly ever see anywhere else in Europe. In Amsterdam, for example, the bars all have a standardized, computer-based music system, displayed prouldy, that gives confidence that these are indeed Legally Purchased Tunes we're listening to. Comforting, despite the fact that they only seem to have Phish and Cold Play.
But a tiger can't change his stripes. Germans simply refuse to pony up the Euros for quality music, and nowhere is this more evident than on the radio. In contrast to the loose-cannon BitTorrent-using bar owners, the radio stations in Germany don't have the stones to play pirated music. GEMA rules the airwaves with an iron fist over here, and would swiftly visit upon such transgressions great justice. In that light, it's a perfect control group, since you can be sure that the music is legal and paid for. And when given the choice of expensive music performed by known artists or discount hootenanny doggerel fit only for a drunken choir of railway hobos, you can be sure that a German will choose the latter.
An example is in order. As I was exiting the shower this morning, I noticed a familiar melody playing from the transistor radio hanging next to the door. I stopped my vigorous towelling for a moment, and bent my ear towards the wafting notes. Something was familiar in them, yet I was convinced that it was wrong somehow. I presently recognized the tune, it being the unforgettable paean to European optimism, The Final Countdown, from the rock and roll band which, in a most rascally fit of cheekiness, decided to name itself Europe, despite the curse of naming your band after a continent . Having reminded myself of this, it suddenly occurred to me that, despite having a deceptively similar tonal and lyrical structure to that much-despised song of my youth, what I was hearing was merely a facsimile thereof. It was, in jazz parlance, a cover. At the risk of being vulgar, I feel it necessary to lay stress upon the fact that not only did some fucking band fucking cover the Final fucking Countdown, somebody fucking bought it and fucking played it on the fucking radio! Imagine, if you will, my discomfort.
I can only imagine that this decision was made in order to save money on the licensing fees. I can't for the life me think of another reason to actually buy a cover of The Final Countdown. This is typical Big Picture stuff, as I see it: The song you want costs too much, but it sucks, so you buy a cover of that song, thinking that nobody will care, because it sucks anyway. This is the optimistic view of this transaction, I might add; the pessimistic view being that whoever decided to buy it figured that the listeners were too stupid to know the difference and probably like The Final Countdown on its merits, no matter who sings it. But accepting that is tantamount to accepting the end of civilization as we know it, so I'll take the high road. So what we're left with is that somebody decided that a woefully serious cover of The Final Countdown, which means one not in the vein of Dread Zeppelin or the Pressure Boys, was preferable to four minutes and thirty seconds of dead air. This is wrong.
I woke up this morning, grabbed myself a steamin' hot cup of joe, and took a look out my frontside fourth-floor window. Instead of dully staring at the insanity of my neighborhood, which is my usual morning routine, I noticed that there were police in riot gear milling about. This isn't something you see every day, despite being a good idea, especially around here.
Thinking maybe the Beatles were coming through, I feigned interest and stared out over my windowsill. Maybe the excruciating monotony of my existence was about to be broken, if only for a few short, sweet minutes. Then, at my most vulnerable moment, my girlfriend reminded me that today is Nazi day here in Augsburg. And the troglodytes of the Ancient Order of People Who Got Their Asses Kicked Last Century But Good would be slipping out of their caves for a short march, passing right past our windows. Super, I thought, more weirdos. I considered hanging my American flag out the window, along with a poster of the Red Army capturing the Reichstag, but only for a moment.
Marching for or against Nazis is about as pointless as marching for or against foot fungus. Little fungi just love being between your toes; people hate having them there; and you're not going to change either one's opinion about the matter. But some people are attention whores, and can't pass up the chance at making asses of themselves as long as it's in front of crowds. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
But I don't want to take sides, lest I be seen as unfair. So here's a little something for our Nazi brethren, on their special day:
"Um...honey, you know I don't like telling you how to run your computer, even though that's the profession I've been in since the late 80s. You now I respect your work habits, and trust you to do the right thing with your data. But do you think it might be time to clean out your Email inbox?"
That's Pappy in the dark jacket, just right of center in the front row. He wore shoes because it was Picture Day. How do explain that to an scone-eatin' Englishman?
