you're unusually tired for this time of year..
so, yes, i said. yes. to myself, that is. yes, you will smile and this will be so beyond difficult. but you will smile and there will be no reason to hide, anymore.
Which is worse -- drinking alone or carving alone?
We set fire to a cuecat a while ago (if you'd like to see, /msg me and I'll give you the URL for the video). I'm thinking that soaking a pumpkin in lighter fluid might not be the most boring thing to do on a Sunday afternoon. If you don't hear from me again, you'll know just how exciting it was.
Things I could possibly get done:
Morning...
Well, the day has started sort of well.
Yesterday... well, day before yesterday I got MULE to work properly. Ето очень хороший пакет!!! =) Well, my Russian is horribly rusted... =)
I wrote some stuff in Russian to my home page (Dammit, the only way to learn a language better is to use it! I studied Russian for 9 years and learned virtually nothing - because I didn't bother to use it... at least I know the basics better than some others... =)
Yesterday, I had another Language Crisis: Java doesn't have any way to set up the raw mode for tty, which is kind of sad, because writing a Curses clone is impossible without using native type methods. So much for "write once, splut anywhere" - this from the language that has an implementation for hash tables in standard library...
Ah, Perl, how I miss thee. Why people don't let me write programs in real languages? =(
Today's Futurama episode: A Head In The Polls (2ACV03)... I'll give you a candy if you can guess why I liked the end of the episode! =)
The rest of the day: I drew stuff (finished sketching a new glorious work of art, apparently), and did some 3D stuff ("3D representation" of y.t. now has a nose, made of S-Mesh... "smell-detection mesh"? =)...
I'm... full of... hope. Somehow.
nighthowl:~$ whois microsoft.com Whois Server Version 1.3 Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SECRETLY.RUN.BY.ILLUMINATI.TERRORISTS.NET MICROSOFT.COM To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record. >>>Last update of whois database: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 10:04:50 EDT <<< The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and Registrars.
See Memepool for more stuff.
This is weird - how the hell was that record created? It exists in InterNIC database, and is listed as Network Solutions domain, but NSI's whois server has no idea about it, nor does my DNS say anything about that domain...
Other day logs o' mine...
Noded today by y.t.: MULE whois How To Dial Out Reprint what you like Belatedly noted: Commodore Executive 64 Updated: Nicholas Kerensky (This update note had been sitting in my calendar for a looooong time!)
I was tired of fighting to catch up on the work I was missing. I thought I was a good student but I wasn't getting the grades anymore. Taking five highers was possibly too much but my poor attendance didn't help.
Think today is going to be for contemplation. I'm going to go do homework for my national certificate Graphic Design class. I think my portfolio is getting better so I'll maybe eventually get into Art School, my main problem is that I need to get my writing skills up to standard.
Today I'm very sad to find that an e2 editor had zapped one of my latest E2 Suggestions/Wishes nodes, something about bookmarks by creation dates.
For some time it has been my practice to create a suggestion/wish node detailing in full my suggestions, normally about a screen or more in length. Then, I would hard link that E2 Suggestions/Wishes node into my writeup in that enormous Suggestions for E2. I believe that is eminently sensible way of doing things. Wouldn't you agree, dannye?
Update October 26, 2000. I must have been too sad to remember that node heaven stores all users writeup that have been deleted.
Today is also my younger daughter, Fadhleen's third birthday. She was very excited all day, especially when all 15 (almost) of her cousins came over for the small party.
I went to the Megamall and got myself the weeks copy of The Edge as well as November's copy of Wired. That should cheer me for a few hours. ;-}
Last night's concert kicked ass, especially since i was with pigpoo... I've not shouted that loud since the Prodigy concert on Glasgow Green a few years back.
As Lynsey mentioned, there was a lot of trouble getting the tickets - eventually, i phoned WayAhead, and they reported the tickets as lost or stolen, so all I had to do was turn up at the Barrowlands with my Switch card and the order number.
The first band, de salvo, were from Glasgow, so they automatically got lotsa 'spect. ;-)
Lotsa moshers at the start, bloody irritating since people were geting mega-pissed off... one of them jumped up into my chin, I nearly bit through my tongue - so i pushed him as hard as i could, and he went a long way. (I thought i was much less fit than i actually am, i didn't mean to push him that hard...) ah well... ;-)
An Irish band, Turn came on next, and they were kinda sucky to start with, then (when they were playing the drummer's songs) they rawked hard... then they got wussy again. Kinda gimmicky band, they liked to go "quiet quiet, LOUDLOUDLOUD"...
Idlewild came on!!! I can't remember the setlist, but i cried a few times, it felt like such a release of emotion to hear those songs I'd been singing in my head for a year or two live...
I was screaming along as much as I could, but I got exhausted quickly. ;-) need to get fit quick.
My body says it's 18:00, the clock says it's 10:00. However, it's bright and sunny in San Francisco and I had a passable Eggs Benedict for breakfast.
It seems the Marriott has four conventions on right now, and the attendees attitude is very different to European conferences. They wear their name badges everything, it's like a tribe running through the hotel, then spilling over out into the streets. Off they walk around the area, with their badges still on, waving and shouting at each other over the traffic. In Europe we wear our badges whilst we attend, as soon as we leave the conference area, the badges come off and we blend back into anonymity.
I'm undecided on what to do today, I think the Museum of Modern Art calls me. My colleague, Trevor, wants to go shop.
Whats really stange, and amusing is the fact that people assume Trevor and I are together. It took 5 minutes to explain to the breakfast waiter that his assumption that breakfast was on 1 room bill was wrong. He then got quite embarassed. Personally, I was amused, it's funny to see reverse assumptions, I wonder what will happen when we start to hit bars and flirt with women ...
Dinner time is almost painful, American portion sizes are huge, I have heartburn, but I can buy Zantac over the counter. Handy!
I need to find a way to rouse myself out of this deep ditch I have fallen into.
So many things there are I want to make and do, and things I need to have done, and what do you find me doing? The boring mundania.
The shift key (and the backspace and pffft a lot more) on the lab consultant's computer at work here is the evil flaming Hades to push--it's like it's glued in place with jelly. It's a horrible icky feeling on my fingers.
What Muke needs done... finish carving that tilde in the rock for sculpture class, finish translating Philemon from Greek to my conlang Hadwan--it starts out 'Pavlus vinjius Iesus Hristus ki Timotheus vraçir'... also finish reading these library books 'The King's Fifth' by Scott O'Dell, 'Chaos Mode' by Piers Anthony, 'The Screwtape Letters' by C.S. Lewis, and those other books about the Hittites, the history of Korean and that Portuguese grammar.
Oh, and remember to bug the library about them bugging me about the books I already returned. Feh. Also draw that picture of Muke-ratty i meant to draw this weekend, and look up what people wore in Greece in the early Christian era for my project.. I will get very little accomplished today, i'm sure.. I just want to sleep... but it's not the same anymore. Ever had an E2 wish come true? Ever messed up horribly? Ever have it all taken away? This is the state my mind has just sunk into.
it will go away again, later, as usual
Oh yeah, lots of fun. It seems I did something this morning that badly munged up my computer so I was forced to pull the plug and reformat the disk. Then I reinstalled Windows...
Add 2 hours of watching Windows 98 SE and Gateway-included software install...
And to top it all off, I had to rummage through my CDs to find the driver for my stupid USB/Parallel Adapter. ARGH!
Well, on a better note, three of my aunts came down from Philadelphia for the weekend. We had some fun, and we ate out alot (yum!) at all the Southerny resturants, like Logan's Roadhouse and Cracker Barrel. Also, when we went to Opry Mills yesterday, I found a nice acoustic guitar at Gibsons that didn't cost a fortune! And it was real easy to play to boot! Now I just need to get that job...
I must say that I am quite tired. I noded a lot last night, mainly all of Leftoverture, and some of Point of Know Return. This was tireing because I had to copy the lyrics off of the back of an LP, and they were in this barely readable script. Oh well. LP's are pretty cool, mainly because you can put huge pictures on them. For instance, Point of Know Return has a book on the back of it, with all the lyrics to the songs in it, as well as sketches of all the band members. It's just really cool.
I also got my CueCat working by disabling the encryption and serial number in it, which is cool because I can now keep track of all my stuff... not like I will anyway, but I have the ABILITY to do it now.
My boyfriend is out of town this weekend, which makes me mildly sad. The feeling of cuddling up with someone, kissing them, and sleeping with them... you miss them when they are gone... even if it is for a short time. I'll go see him Monday afternoon. If nothing else, just for a single kiss.
Heathrow Terminal Three
Traveling for the last three days, more trouble than it has been worth so far. This started in San Diego some seventy-two hours ago with the first of several plane flights to three countries. I never slept the last day at home, spending most of my time between noding and packing until shortly before I was due to leave. The last of the checks written and safely stuffed into envelopes I set out to pack the truck and make the obligatory return trip after realizing that I had managed to forget my sunglasses. 7-11 providing one last touch of Americana prior to leaving, a hastily consumed Mountain Dew washes down the last of the cigarettes smoked on home soil. The ground beneath my feet shifts into a haze of airports and time spent asleep travelling. The space covered seems distant from where I stand now, the location that I inhabit now seems less real for having slept through the passing time used to arrive. In a way I am not here and at the same time everywhere in between the root of my existence and the ship that I am riding in now.
The U.S.S. Lincoln, CVN-72, cuts a wide swath of roiling wake through the waters of the Northern Arabian Gulf. The ship intermittently shudders as planes are launched from the catapults, the roar of jet engines preceding the crashing hiss of the steam catapult hurling more mass into the sky. I stood on the flight deck for most of the previous day watching the planes taxi toward the launch area, carefully checked for last minute problems and then thrown beyond the grasp of gravity. They carry ordnance that up until now I have only seen pictures of, only heard about through local rumor and myth. They leave with heavy loads straining metal wings only to return empty with another blast of jet exhaust and the unwinding spool of the arresting wire being pulled from below decks. The war it seems, is real. To what end we push man and machine is lost in the translation between the hectic movement of the daylight hours and the silence bleeding into dawn. The flight schedule stops at 2230, national defense needs a nap every now and again.
The tale winds down again. I explain to another person what I am doing here over space competed with by the blaring of a television mounted over our heads and the occasional low crash of an endless series of launches. The motivations as to why I would volunteer to come to the Persian Gulf are deadened by this translation into speech, occasionally I shift the conversation away from where it is we are headed only to have a circle drawn in meandering verbal sands. There are people that do not know why it is that I am doing this, why I am asking for this, why someone would be such a fool to come here of all places. To this place and at this time, for no reason. Many things are pointless, pyhrric victories won in inane wars. My desire to give myself to Mars just to see if the open hand is accepted? This is my own and no one else's.
Watching the sun crest over the waters this morning I seriously wonder if this was the right move to make. If the open invitation to dance will be taken, filling in the missing pieces with something more broken than what was there before. The time to be tested calls for a reckoning. Begging, crawling on abraded knees, it pushes itself forward in a shuffle leaving behind the blood of claimed lives. Forcing open a mouth once wired shut and twisting the shredded flesh into a leering gap-toothed grin, war sings to be loved again. It pleads with all of us to let it have a kind heart, a gentle touch so that it can stand upright and claim the share of living thus far denied. We know it is there. We hate this creature and yet wish to kiss the deformed mouth, mix violence with passion in a final union. Making the madness ours, justifying the energy and training endured to bring us to this point. The ship shudders and another plane is into the atmosphere bearing another load of ordinance. This machine like the rest will return empty. I watch and wonder what else we're planning on doing today aside from blow shit up. Sweepers, have to keep the ship clean. Bingo perhaps, it is Saturday night.
The alcohol buzz riding heavily over reality from the pint of Boddington's I nursed in the Heathrow airport is gone. Crispness in the air hinting at a coming winter bled into sticky humidity and flies that seem to spawn themselves from nowhere in particular. I desperately wanted to stay there, just loaf around London for a few days before travelling the remaining distance and dropping into what I knew was unavoidable. Trying to deny the eventuality of arriving in this place at this time, with nothing more to do than accept. Slow tendrils of daylight slowly creeping across concrete and brick, the shutter of my camera snapping open and then closed in slow exposure to capture the fading taillights of passing traffic. Justifying anything at that point was ludicrous, halfway around the world and trapped in a time I could never go back to if I tried. This is what being a brave little boy is, this is facing it like a man. Tired, halfway around the world from anyone who even remotely knows my name, lost and alone. Capturing the vision of a single moment with film and light twisted by an unblinking lens. This is putting one's money where one's mouth is and owning up to responsibility. This is not crying when mom puts the iodine on. This is fucking pointless and I have picked the wrong time to come to that realization. Lighting another cigarette while resting on my collected possessions in front of Heathrow Terminal Three, I question if it is indeed futile. If there is no point then why act at all? Why not just sit on my can smoking cigarettes and watching the dawn break in London? A mother and her child stroll by in the pre-dawn gloom, I switch to questioning whether or not I will ever have a life normal enough for kids.
Bounce onto the ship, the decking of the aircraft's floorboards bucks in response to the impact with the steel beneath the tires. The crewman motions for me to depart the HH-60H I rode over to this ship in from the Lincoln as the strangeness of finally being here settles. Wind from the downdraft created by the rotors surges through the open crew window in front of me briefly pushing the M-60 machine gun and the pintle mount it rests on into my knee. Limply pushing at it I unbuckle the web strapping holding me to the seat and climb out of the turning aircraft. Home rolls slowly underfoot.
I seem to node about the previous day, as if I'm living one day behind myself. But I find it easier to node about the previous day, after I've had a chance to digest it in my dreams.
Yesterday, the girl I like came with me to get my tongue pierced. On the way, I was paying too much attention to her and my genica mp3 player, and almost lost control of the car. Instead, I clipped a fence and lost my right-side mirror. Oops. I'm sure that impressed her greatly.
The piercing was exciting. I got in, filled out a form, was escorted into a little doctor's office. A really hot woman, who was probably a dominatrix on her own time gave me a cup of Listerine and told me to rinse. Then I sat down, she clamped my tongue with a pair of forceps, and shoved a needle through my tongue. It was all over in about two minutes from the time I walked in the door until the time I was walking back out.
Today, it's a little swollen, and I'm having a hard time eating solid foods. I already hate the taste of listerine blue.
This will be worth it, though, when it heals and I have someone to kiss.
Oh yeah, I'm home again, so I'll be exercising again. I don't think missing two days is a bad thing; a lot of exercise plans suggest 15 minutes, three times a week.
_ | | O | | | | \ | | |\ \ |_| | \ \ | | \ \ _|_|_ \_\
.. which is called, for some reason "King Dick". It says so right on it (etched in, along with "made in U.K") I painted it red.
I finally broke free of fiddle mode, and went up to Ballard to search for halloween costumes. Wacky Willys has a lot of shit, but not the right kind of shit. though I was tempted to pick up some small robot stuff. But it's hard to go as a robot, because once you have done the box thing, you have to move on, and it gets tough.
I then went to a strange fabric store, full of women. I walked around, feeling like I was infiltrating some form of slightly sacred female craft place. "Where is the fake fur?" ask I. "Animal pattern or solid?" the bright eyed old woman said, staring right at me. They have a whole wall of fake fur, I look at red for a while then settle on the black.
So I bought a yard of black furry fake skin. Guess what I am going to be: I already have some antenna, I program computers, I do a lot of testing of my code..nono, not a gorilla... nor a thousand chimpanzees (which is a great idea, actually)
After that I headed down to the empty but supposedly fun building that is my office. Sat there for 4 hours drinking Red Bull and moving smaller and smaller pieces of code around.
Came home and descended on 4 hapless coathangers with paper mache in mind. this stuff is tougher than I remembered. now there are 10 competing glue recipes. I started with the "elmers and water, 1 to 1", but ran out, so moved onto the "1 cup flour to 2 cups water", which is great, if a little chunky.
Now noding, because everything is rushing along, and I need to quickly put a stake in the mud.
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