As the sun began to subside behind the horizon, I thought I would try out some of the manual settings on my digital camera in the low light. These two are pretty straight-forward. Some of them turned out pretty crazy. Let me just add, I love sitting out on my balcony at night and watching the stars, and the lights, and the quiet. It may, in fact, be the best thing ever. Really.
Beware the ides of eucalyptus eyes, and the crunch of hearts dropped beneath the eaves of your indifference.
Kisses dropped on my lips by idle loves, women who would have me but would not cherish me, perhaps. I know nothing of it. Lately lying late in the arms of conversation, mild parties of wine and whimsy, poetry and flimsy excuses to brush against each and every other.
Sleep is brief, waking early to breakfast or to go to the airport, or because the light sifting through the leaves strikes my closed lids and pries them apart, coaxing my pupils to wax like black moons as I rub lingering dreams from my lashes.
Today, two LARGE drip coffees, before 8 am. Only three hours of sleep, and two hours of driving as I bid my friend adieu on his journey to China. My skin, like butter over too much bread, stretched taut over jittery muscles and bones infused now with the tar of too many cigarettes.
Last night, conversation for hours with a strange girl who gazed at me while she spoke. Drinks over an open mike, and a late ride home as she and her friend sifted through books I needed rid of, as if they were the only copies ever printed. As she left the car she leaned toward me, looked at me, waited …
… the car filled with a pregnant hesitation …
… and then she wished me a safe drive to the airport in the morning. And then she was gone. As I drove home, I marvelled that we’re all so disparate, so unknown to each other and fascinating, though each normal in their own way, each perfect and unique and mad like Alice and her chesire cat.
Three hours of sleep on a night following a night of three hours of sleep, and momentarily alert I notice the quiet of 3 am, that even the gulls are still. As we merge onto the freeway at 3:45, I turn to my friend, who had not slept at all, and say, “So, last night was pretty crazy, huh?”
He looks at me, confused. “Wait, you mean tonight?” These hours of the day are ambiguous, secretive creatures, subject to miscalculations and shifts in perspective.
As I get home, the sun has begun to diffuse its light into the fog, and the gulls are screaming.
Hank eyed the lump of metal warily, as though it were prize cock, defeated but not yet dead, ready to lash out one last time before the rattle. Held together by rust, duct tape, and the sheer conviction of its own durability, the car stood stalwart, defiant; its front bumper, long since turned gray from the sun and elements, lay crooked across its face like a wry smile.
Finally, he nodded stoically, lifted his finger to the car, cocked his thumb, and shot, a symbol that the beast, at last, was dead. The sun just began to peek its light over the distant hills as the truck roared to life and towed the old heap to its final grave.
-Ahniwa Ferrari
8/18/05
Today offers some witty and/or simply odd repartee:
I ate a frog with a spork once.
Like when you used to call my penis ‘the best thing since sliced beer.’
I’ll just take this melted drive and rub it on my dick until our files grow back!
I’ve just got a little bit of backfired plan caught in my eyes.
Theo found a new comic yesterday, called Hous’d, which I’m gonna check out. Then maybe I’ll check out some of the other comics from this list. Because you can never have too many comics.
When you think of the instant message, generally your thoughts only go back a few years. If you’re positively archaic, like me, that may even mean ICQ. For most, it means AOL and MSN Messenger. In reality, the IM was born as long ago as 1960 with the creation of PLATO, which was funded by a shared Army-Navy-Air Force pool and housed at the University of Illinois. By 1967, it would also be funded by the NSF.
PLATO began as an education tool, designed in a drill-based fashion that would allow students to bypass lessons they already understood. Though the first application only supported one user, and PLATO II only allowed two, by PLATO III (1966), it could support twenty. PLATO IV, in 1972, was the first to support “Term Talk”, which allowed user to share information via electronic chat. By 1975, PLATO IV served almost 150 different locations.
A man named William Norris, CEO of CDC, became very interested in PLATO as it evolved. He thought that it would be a learning platform that could level out educational inequalities by offering higher education to people who would not otherwise be able to afford university. In 1976, CDC purchased the commercial rights to PLATO, and through aggressive advertising hoped to sell it as a universal teaching tool, more effective than a human teacher and never susceptible to sick days or strikes. Reviews in the ’80s tended to agree that while PLATO was perhaps as effective as a human teacher, it was not more effective, and at $50 per student per hour, it tended to less cost effective than a traditional classroom.
In 1986, Norris stepped down as CEO, and the PLATO service was slowly killed off. Though designed for computer education, PLATO’s real legacy is in its online communication features. PLATO Notes was introduced in 1973 and was among the world’s first online message boards and was the direct progenitor of Lotus Notes. By 1976, PLATO had sprouted a variety of novel tools for online communication, including Personal Notes (email), Talkomatic (chat rooms), and Term-Talk (instant messaging and remote screen sharing).
PLATO’s architecture also made it an ideal platform for online gaming. Many extremely popular games were developed on PLATO during the 1970s and 1980s, such as Empire (a massively multiplayer game based on Star Trek), Airfight (a precursor to Microsoft Flight Simulator), the original Freecell, and several “dungeons and dragons” games that presaged MUDs and MOOs as well as popular shoot-em-up games like Doom and Quake.
Though PLATO had a loyal fan-base, the first general instant messenger introduced to the internet was ICQ, in 1996. ICQ, a play on “I Seek You” was created by Mirabilis, an Israeli start-up company based in Tel Aviv. ICQ was known for its simple UI, ease of use, file transfer capabilities, and for the “ICQ Number”. The ICQ Number is, in my opinion, the easiest way to add someone to your IM list. People would list their number on the internet, and with a simple cut&paste, you had added them to your ICQ friends list. Easy as pie. In 1998, Mirabilis and ICQ were purchased by AOL, and not too surprisingly the program quickly went to shit.
Despite buying ICQ, AOL has its own IM program, called AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), which came out in 1997. Though this program was usable for a brief period of time, it too fell prey to the AOL curse, which is highly regarded by people who only know enough about their computers to be able to turn them on (maybe) and surf the web, but only if a searchbar is automatically included in their home page. Everyone else, with reason, hates AOL with a fiery passion. Not that I’m biased or anything. AOL may just be on to something, though, as they prepare to replace AIM with Triton. Triton highlights tabbed chatting, and is being completely rebuilt from the ground up to support VoIP technology. It is currently in beta.
Microsoft, the big boo daddy of the computing world, hopped on board the IM wagon with MSN Messenger in 1999. When it first came out, MSN Messenger could be used on both its own network as well as the AIM network, making it a handy little chat-tool indeed. AOL, after trying for a long period of time, finally blocked MSN Messenger from using their network, isolating it to its own .NET messenger service. In their attempt to take over the world, Microsoft created a browser-based version of the Messenger client, which could be used on any computer with internet access, without having to download the program. Of course, this became a big security hole, and a big pain in the ass, and sucked in general. They also created MSN Mobile, which allowed users to send IMs via their cell phones. Welcome to the Microsoft Galaxy.
Yahoo! also has its own IM service, which supports VoIP already, and alerts you when you have new Yahoo! email. But I don’t really care, and I’m not going to tell you about it.
User Info:
AIM – Active: unknown; total registered: 195 mil (Jan ’03)
ICQ – Active: 6 mil; total registered: 140 mil (June ’03)
MSN – Active: 100 mil; total registered: 155 mil (April ’05)
You can see a big table comparing these services here.
I apologize if this post was horribly boring. If you’d like to complain, IM me. I use MSN Messenger through my Hotmail account, dragon_bebop (at) hotmail (dot) com. And really, you should IM me anyway, because it would be fun to chat with some of you. Just don’t expect me to join AIM. I won’t give in to the dark side!
Last night, having decided that sometimes the courageous thing to do is to NOT call someone to go out, I stayed in, by myself, and watched a couple movies.
I think the theme for the night would be touching, as in, both movies were very much so, even though I’d seem them both before.
Sideways follows two men as they travel in the California wine country for a week before one of them gets married that weekend. The thing I like about the film is that neither character starts out to be particularly likable. Miles almost immediately steals money from his mom, and flashes toothy smiles between depressed sighs so often that you’re made to feel like the whole world may be bipolar and you’re just missing out. Jack, on the other hand, is more laid-back, but also more fake towards people.
In any case, the movie moves me because by the end, I like both characters. No matter what shitty thing they’ve done, or who they’ve hurt, I’ve spent hours getting to know them, and somehow they already feel like old friends.
Chocolat is a modern fairy tale that could be set in any age, and it’s that quality that moves me. Once again, the characters progress slowly from cold and implacable to joyful and vivant, or more simply from unlikable to likable, though this time through the exertions of the main character, who is herself something of an angel sent to show the town the way.
In either movie, it’s the triumphs that captivate. The love for life that polks its head through, and the idea that everything rarely is perfect, but sometimes things can turn out that way.
Last Thursday I went up to PT to borrow my mom’s truck, which is a ’63 GMC, and quite rocktacular. I needed said vehicle to move the whole of my possessions into a storage unit, which was accomplished with no lack of effort over the weekend. It’s strange to see all your stuff packed into an 8’x10′ room. Granted, it’s just stuff, but it’s MY stuff. And actually, I’m fairly happy to have little enough stuff, for now, to be able to stuff it into an oversized locker and forget about it.
If only I could.
Instead, I’ll most likely be moving all the stuff OUT of this obese pantry and into a tiny apartment sometime around the end of this week. Granted, the tiny apartment is cool, and it will be solely my own. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about that.
On the flipside, between cleaning costs, carpet repair, and a general sense of “we-can-charge-you-whatever-we-want-for-anything”, our previous land rental agency, and for purposes of confidentiality I’ll hereby just refer to them as the Rants Group, has estimated we’ll owe them around $1000. After depleting the entirety of our deposit, we’ll still owe like $200. Yippee-fucking-tra-la-la.
So we didn’t clean, and I was prepared to buckle down and pay their $15/hour cleaning costs. The woman they hire evidently takes about 8 hours to clean an entire house, which I think is perfectly reasonable. That they think they have to replace carpet on the stairs, and that they want to charge like a gazillion dollars to do so, seems more unwarranted. Bear in mind that to live in this house for a month, for three of us, was $950. So they want to charge more than a month’s rent to clean the place, which I think is more than slightly absurd.
The man is keeping me down, man! Damn the man!
But you know, whatever. I’ll be happy when it’s all over, and I’ll laugh about it as I sip scotch on the balcony of my new apartment, with my furniture in it, which will be clean, and watch the sun set behind the distant mountains.
I be mad chillin’, yo.
But anyway, I’ve been reticent about personal stuff, and y’all have missed a lot. Most importantly, I suppose, is the fact that I have a new job. Yes, that’s right, a solid year of applications enough to decimate an old-growth forest, and lots of finger-crossing, and finally a pay-off. SMU hired me for a second half-time position, which they then spliced into my current position, to create a new breed of super-position, which will allow me to take over the world. At the least, it means I’m full-time now, with good benefits, and working in one place. As for taking over the world, I’d settle for taking over the University first. If you know anyone who is cool, and would like to work at an academic institution, send them over. We hire for new positions fairly often. One day, I figure, Theo will run the business department, I’ll run the Library, and Emily will be the VPAA or something. Then we’ll mold the school to our will, and use it as our base to subvert the dominant paradigm. Join us now or we’ll throw pygmy monkeys at your head.
MONKEY. HEAD. NOW.
As for the links:
Tweep is what I read when I want to read Tweep. It kind of reminds me of QC, but the guy and girl actually date a bit, thus relieving some of the romantic agony in which QC excels.
Flipside is an entertaining and original fantasy/adventure comic, with good art and some amazingly beautiful covers. Make sure you go back and read Book 0, which is the bulk of what he has published so far.
Buy Olympia is a local business without a local outlet, but you can purchase all sorts of cool stuff from them on their website. I particularly like the “Reading is Sexy” t-shirts.
Brennx0r is the blog of Brenna, who is cool, and lives up Seattle country, and works on library software. I met her my freshman year at Evergreen, and she takes good photos.
Hurricane Prairie is the appropriately-named live journal of a gal named Prairie, who was my first girlfriend, like, ever. Now she lives in freakin’ Alabama, but she’s still cool. I guess. Alabama!?
I’ve been lurking on Friendster and MySpace a little, tiny bit lately, despairing over the fact that I have so few friends, at least as far as these two services are concerned. So if you get the urge, add me. I’m listed on both with my gmail address, which is bavaenfin … you know the rest.
Kung-Fu Hustle on DVD, August 9th.
Sin City on DVD, August 16th.
Layer Cake on DVD, August 23rd.
I picked the wrong friggin’ month to spend all my money on moving…
[WATCHOUTFORFLYINGPYGMYMONKEYS!]
Her voice graces my car-speakers, timid lilts that end on notes higher than birdsong, and I remember how innocent love can feel.
“And I suppose I could tell you how I feel
But I’d rather play it cool and keep it real”
The last two weekends I’ve spent at the beach. A week ago, I went down to the Oregon Coast to hang out with family in a house we rented in Lincoln City. I got to see my brother, sister, sister-in-law, mom, two nieces and a nephew. It was an awesome time. This picture is from that trip.
Yesterday, I went out to Westport, and read the new Harry Potter book while laying on a towel in the sun. I applied lotion, and thought I was doing okay, but my legs definately got a lot more burnt than I would have liked.
Still, there’s something about having been in the sun that makes me feel more full of energy, as though I might be solar-powered. This only heightens my suspicions that I may in fact be plantlife, masquerading as a human, and somewhere along the way the trauma of the human existence made me forget what I really am. I wonder if I should be plotting your downfall, or just studying you closely …
… I like my coffee.
In a paper cup.
Follow-up story from Gamespot about GTA:SA “Hot Coffee Mod”.
Honestly, I’m getting really tired of video game controversy involving Grand Theft Auto almost implicitly. I even had a debate with my family about it over the weekend, which was odd. I was the sole vanguard of the first amendment. I fully agree it’s a complicated issue, but really feel like it boils down to looking for someone to blame for societal problems. Years ago, Rock n’ Roll was responsible for all sex, vandalism, and delinquency. Now it’s video games. In either case, I don’t think they could be farther from the mark.
Aperitif: a light follow-up on the palindrome post.
Entree: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Like, when you’re short on materials and you need to make a scarf, you use your “desperate measuring tape” to make you feel like it will be long enough, when actually it’s neither thick, long, nor wide enough (remember, we’re talking about a scarf here). So I posted a personal ad on craigslist – which you can read here for another couples weeks if you like – which I’d like to think is less desperate than it is modern. I am a man of the times. Here is my internet personal ad, hear me roar. It’s a good ad. I put a lot of thought into it. I’m a decent writer. It contains a lot of who I am, and if you get my sense of humor, it’s even pretty funny. I sat back and waited for the replies to roll in. Soon, I knew, I’d be fighting girls off with a stick, and Keira would be calling me to have coffee with her while she was in town for some red-carpet event or another.
Well, so far it hasn’t gone quite as planned. I have gotten multiple responses. By multiple, I mean two. I understand that the tone of my ad is fairly intellectual, so I immediately scared away all the vacuous rain-bunnies that the soggy northwest has to offer. Still, are there only two girls out there who read Craigslist, have an odd sense of humor, and are looking for a nice guy? The funny thing is, both responses I received were in response to my speaking French. I’d pretty much ruled out my French skills as a way to meet girls since, oh, High School when I met Helena Teddergreen in French class my freshman year but was entirely too flustered (and too much of a dork) to talk to her. Besides which, she was like two grades ahead of me and in High School that’s a super-big deal. That and the fact that during my stay in France there were no French girls who fell immediately for my moody and sophisticated American demeanor pretty much ruled out French as a valid method of seduction. Maybe I shouldn’t have crossed it off my list so soon.
One of the respondent lives in Tacoma, and did nothing more than invite me to the TacomaCityFrenchUp! picnic on July 20th. Not with her, just in general. I emailed her back, but she hasn’t yet responded. The other respondent lives in Seattle, and so far has been mostly restrained and reticent in our correspondence. It’s hard to get excited about meeting someone when getting them to tell you about themselves is like pulling teeth. Granted, we are strangers, but there’s a certain social contract involved with placing personal ads, and with answering them, that implies a level of voluntary information sharing. Perhaps La Francaise from Tacoma will email me again, and I’ll go to that picnic. Perhaps I’ll drive to Seattle and meet Ms. Taciturn. In either case, my expectation for true love via internet personal ad is greatly diminished.
Though I’m still waiting for Keira to call.
Digestif: In the meantime, I went to the swing dance last night after playing swing hookie for a couple weeks. My friend Lee was in town DJing, and I had a blast dancing and chatting with people. I did meet someone new, who seems very nice. We even exchanged phone numbers. It just goes to show that the best way to meet people is, and probably always will be, to go out and do things you enjoy. The rest will follow.
Linguistics are fun!
Answers.com presents: palindromes!
This part blows my mind:
The Latin palindrome “Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas” (roughly “The farmer by his labour keeps the wheels to the plough”) is remarkable for the fact that it reproduces itself also if one forms a word from the first letters, then the second letters and so forth. Hence it can also be arranged into a square which can be read either horizontally or vertically:
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
Isn’t that just too cool for words!?
Well, evidently not. *snicker*
Some of my other favorites, listed:
Able was I, ere I saw Elba. (the famous Napoleon’s Lament, source unknown)
I nam’d am devil Eros; a sore-livéd madman, I.
Name now one man’s sensuousness. Name now one man.
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era? (Bill Bryson)
“Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel.” (John Taylor, the Water Poet)
Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver.”
Aias sadas saia: “It rains white bread in the garden.” (Estonian)
“Esope reste ici et se repose”: “Aesop is resting here and relaxing” (French)
“Et la marine va, papa, venir à Malte”: “And the navy, father, is coming to Malta” (French)
Eh, ça va la vache?: “Hey, how you doing, cow ?” (French)
Rám német nem lel, elmentem én már: “The Germans won’t find me, I’m already gone.” (1943) (Hungarian)
È Dio, lo gnomo mongoloide?: Is the mongoloid gnome God? (Italian)
Sum summus mus. (“I am the mightiest mouse.”) (Latin)
God apa gavs galna anlag, svag apa dog: Meaning “Good monkey was given crazy genetic disposition, weak monkey died.” — note that all the spaces match, which is rare for longer palindromes. (Swedish)
anropa aporna!: Meaning “Call the monkeys!”. (Swedish)
Woo, Swedish monkey palindromes! Life rocks. 
But first, a treat for fans of Final Fantasy.
What is Second Life?
I first read about Second Life here, and I thought, “Hey, that sounds pretty neat.” Since they were giving away basic accounts for free through July 13th (normally costs $10), I thought I’d give it a go. The install was easy, only 17MB, and though I was nervous about giving away my CC info, nothing was charged to my account. On firsting logging in, you choose a gender (which you can change at will as often as you want), and walk through a small, introductory island that introduces you to the basic commands and movements the game has to offer. At the second informational post on the island, I spent a good hour customizing my character’s appearance, which gives you some idea of how many options you have in this regard. After I was satisfied with little Enzo’s appearance, I continued down the island hill, where I learned how to manipulate objects, zoom in and out on objects (and around them) without moving, and fly. Yes, fly. Everyone in Second Life can do it, which is great, because nobody knows how to run. Funny, that.
Learning to fly graduated me from the island, and I was left on my own in a cold, wide world. Humming Cat Stevens, I flew around for awhile, until I got annoyed with how low my clip plane was set, how choppy the graphics still were, anyway, and how I had to click on objects and then wait 10 seconds for them to come into focus. Eventually, I found a sign that offered something of an introductory game, a treasure hunt, which would not only garner valuable prizes (such as my character’s very own pair of converse), but would also help me explore the world and get a sense of what all was out there. Using the teleport command (yes, everyone can fly, and teleport … but still can’t run), I hopped around the world looking for fame and glory – and sneakers. What I found was that half the game was broken and yielded no prize (though I did get a blue inner tube of my very own!), and the other half was dull as hell. I also got tired of trying to fly through walls I couldn’t see, only to be balked, realize there was, indeed, a wall there, and have to wait a good 20 seconds before it would load and I could actually see it.
Having realized rather quickly that this wasn’t a game to offer a challenging “adventure”, I decided to see what the social aspects were like. I went to where the people were, mostly strip joints, casinos, and VIP clubs, and rather than converse with people, I stood around and tried to get a sense of what people who had spent way too much time in this game already did for fun. Mostly, it would seem, they stand in a club, turn on a dance animation, and chat about random shit. So, basically, it’s MSN Messenger with a pole dancer as your background. How exciting. Feeling voyeuristic, I peeked into various “orgy” and “private” rooms, where there were plenty of scripts that, when clicked, would move your character into nasty positions, but I didn’t run across anyone actually using said rooms. Still, I could see it being an ideal spot for an online tryst between Kandie (a hot, 17-year-old blonde cheerleader who is actually a fat middle-aged man), and Kyle (a high-powered CEO with a gun who is actually a horny middle-schooler who doesn’t get enough sun). I sincerely apologize for the visual.
The main drive of Second Life, aside from the social aspect, is building, and in this sense I could see why people might be interested. With a premium account ($10 a month) your character can own his or her own land. Using powerful tools, scripts, textures, and your imagination you can pretty much build any damned thing you want. You can create your dream house, complete with a lake outside, actual paintings inside, a television that will actually play video in-game, streaming music for anyone than enters your property, and so on and so forth. Of course, land, and buildings, and furniture, all cost money. Your premium account character makes $500 in-game a week, and though I’m not entirely sure what that gets you, I doubt it buys you an acre. And so your Second Life, much like your first, is largely preoccupied with ways to make money. There is gambling, there are rote chores than can be completed for paltry sums, and there are sales. Sales are, by far, the biggest market in Second Life. Create a nice outfit using Second Life tools, photoshop textures, etc, and then offer it up for sale on your property. Anyone who thinks it’s haut couture can pay whatever your asking price is, and the outfit goes to their inventory read to wear. Your stock in unlimited, so the only challenge is to design something people will want. From what I saw, the current fashion trends are largely s&m with some schoolgirl fantasy looks thrown in for the “innocent” types. Fantasy looks are also hip, and there is a complete island devoted to animal and furry avatars and culture. Yeah, scary.
The fact that the game was created by a group called “Linden Research, Inc.” makes me suspicious that it’s just a big experiment created to see who people would be if they could be anyone, what they would do if they could do anything, and where they would live if they could live anywhere. Of course, the type of people that will get into this sort of thing are fairly specific, so it’s not very good research if you’d like to learn the inner thoughts of your general person. Still, I’d much rather be on the research end, postulating theories on why so many people build mansions and put Da Vinci prints in them instead of living in suburban houses with a hot tub in the back; than on the player side, being studied. I wonder what they hope to learn.
In the end, I’ve got my first life to think about. I’m moving at the end of the month, and I don’t get to build a mansion to live in. Instead I get to pay rent for a little 1-BR apartment, and I’m fine with that. I’ve got to put in significant hours during to day at work to make money, to pay rent, to buy food, and with a little cash left over to go talk to real people, in the real world, and do some fun things that actually make my blood circulate. If you’re going to offer me a game, offer me escapism, let me slay orcs, play chess with dragons, and wield high magicks on the open sea; but don’t give me a variation on what I already do every day, because honestly, the first life is more than enough.
I always find these stories vaguely amusing, if also a little infuriating.
Also interesting, from The Guardian. Honestly, some of his lingo eludes me, but I get the cut of his gib. The bit about New York at the bottom, and the Olympic games, I found the most interesting.
P.S. Has anyone had any personal experience with Second Life?
I find the idea intriguing.
My ring broke.
In the same fashion as all the previous ones have, with a perfectly horizontal crack, like a fault-line in a once infinite loop.
I don’t wear a lot of jewelery. At one point in 1999 I had two rings and a bracelet, all silver. I gave the smaller ring away, which I had worn on my left pinky, to a girl I had just met. I didn’t have any romantic intentions at the time, it just felt like she should have it. Just before I went to France I gave the bracelet to my girlfriend at the time, that she would have something to remind her of me. That she broke up with me while I was in France (and she in India), means either it didn’t work, or it worked all too well.
Since then, I’ve constantly had one ring on the ring finger of my right hand. Stupid people ask me constantly if I’m married. Wrong hand. Okay, some of them weren’t stupid, they were Japanese. I have no idea what, if any, customs they have surrounding rings and marriage, and don’t expect them to know ours. But other people have asked, and they were, in fact, dumb.
Now that we’ve cleared that up.
Rings have always had a lot of symbolism for me. They’re both small and go on forever. By themselves, they’re empty. Worn, they’re a part of you. I’ve always thought that silver, too, was a very neat metal. So yes, they’re very symbolic, and when they break, it usually portents change. Usually, I suspect it implies a breaking free of residual attachments that are holding me back. This, in turn, implies a heightened ability and chance to move on to something new and good. Sometimes, it means I’d better shape up and change some of my bad habits, because even things which seemed to go on forever can all of a sudden have an abrupt end. Once that crack is there, you can still hold the ring together for awhile, but you can never really get rid of it. I used to wear cracked rings until they completely broke in two. Now I’m much more ready to let go of them when they say it’s time. Holding on until the bitter end has never really done anyone much good.
Who knows, maybe I attach way too much meaning to a piece of metal. But I think they’re cool, and it never hurts to have a little impetus to create some revolution. Besides, my necklace broke pretty recently as well, so it’s obviously like, a sign from the heavens or something. Yes, that’s right. God broke my ring.
*FREEDOMCOSTSABUCK-O-FIVE*
Most of the gamers of my generation are aware of something that newer and older generations both might be missing out on. Video games help develop intelligence. They aren’t all about mindless violence or senseless escapism. They are, in fact, about solving puzzles, fixing problems, and completing objectives. Sound like a job? It is, and now Discover Magazine has released an article, involving numerous studies, that states that not only are video games good exercise for your mind (the brain’s equivalent to a healthy jog), but help sharpen skills that are of actual use in the real world. Gasp! But then, any gamer in their mid-twenties could have told you that. People just tend to ignore us … and mock us … and occasionally throw things at us.
The article is interesting. You can read it here. You can read the first two paragraphs for free (lucky you), and then use my login information to continue.
email: bava-track01 (at) mailblocks (dot) com
password: 9f6f50c0
They raise a good point that video games as development tools for children are much more effective if used within a parenting framework that encourages the learning aspects. When used as passive babysitters, they aren’t quite as edifying. Still, I long for the era when parents encourage their children to play video games for an hour a day, just as they would encourage them to eat their vegetables, or go outside and get some exercise.
I was going to move to Tacoma.
I was going to work at the Tacoma Library.
It was going to be full-time, and I could have afforded to buy a kitten, eat two meals a day, and walk in the park.
But NO! My band of pirate lizards will make you pay, Tacoma Library!
In related news, I’ve noticed a trend, more and more, towards impersonal and graded interview techniques. No longer does it matter if you have a winning personality, or, frankly, what your interviewer thinks of you. First, before anything, you take a test which will determine your eligability to even get an interview. If you score in the top 16, of about 80 people, you will be interviewed. I scored 7, good enough, considering I forgot a calculator and had to do about 30 long math problems on paper. During the interview, they write down, nearly verbatim, all your answers. Later, this is run through an algorithm that will pull out certain “buzzwords”: welcoming, relate, cornucopia, etc …. These words will help in determining how precisely you answered the question like they wanted you to answer it. Each answer will then be given a score, and the talley will be the final score for your interview. Personality and desire, as long as they are not clearly unacceptable, are not scored. The score for your interview, indifferent to what your interviewers thought of you or how much you’d really, really, really like the job, will solely determine your success.
Soon enough, a robot will interview you, and record your voice. It will run the algorithm, determine eligibility and based on employment and interview history, the likelihood of any of the following interviewees doing better than you, and will tell you if you got the job on the spot.
“Thank you for interviewing with HAL 9000, your friendly interview-bot. You’re fired.”
On being freshly single, meditations:
The first week, nearly every member of the opposite sex appears physically unattractive. Those that are physicially good-looking are obviously either very shallow, completely vacuous, or outrageously mean-spirited. The newly single despairs over ever again meeting someone who contains that perfect mix of inner and outer beauty that their recent ex somehow maintained.
The second week, nearly every member of the opposite sex seems to be a sex god(dess). Those not physically attractive obviously radiate an inner beauty, have perfect smiles, nice laughs, and save puppies from burning buildings. The universe seems to be mocking the newly single, who believes themselves unworthy of any of these avatars of sex and goodness. The newly single despairs that they will never again be desired as they have been desired, for the past was but a fluke which will surely never reoccur.
The third week, I suspect, involves drinking, swearing, and a general attitude of waving the middle finger at the dating scene and the opposite sex. This loud display will fool no-one, particularly not the newly single, who needs another shot of tequila.
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And that’s about as far as I’ve thought that through, so far. If you’d like to buy me a drink in week 3, I’ll take a rum and coke. Stroh 80 if you’ve got it, light on the coke.
It’s a strange, new little thing, the blogosphere. Michael Gorman, the president of the American Library Association, made some general and negative comments about blogs and “the blog people”. He pissed a lot of people off, to the point that some librarians have revoked their membership to the ALA for as long as he is president. Blogs can be a good way to share professional information, especially for a group as concerned with information sharing as libraries are. However, whenever I write on my blog I always keep in mind that it could be read by anyone. ANYONE. And I assume the worst, that if I write something that a certain person shouldn’t read, then I shouldn’t write it, because they probably will. If people don’t follow those guidelines, then to some extent I believe they deserve what they get. Though as far as legality goes, I don’t know how strong the cases of those companies can be, at least without a written policy in effect.
Some people I know think blogs, and bloggers, are crazy. I think as a technology, it’s interesting, and that it will change (and already is changing) the way the internet works and the way information is transferred. It’s not always to the good, i.e. who the hell cares about the angsty problems of every 14-year-old in the world, but it’s not going anywhere, so we might as well get used to it.
