Month: February 2004

I just took the “Geek Organizer Test” at Moveon.org – they are having a job fair soon, looking to connect organizations and individuals with technology needs to individuals who can help them get the job done.

If you think you might be interested in being a Geek Organizer (someone who marries a love of politics and geekery) i’d say spend the 5 minutes – who knows what might come up!

today is a day where it would have been better to just not read what was going on.
the president of macedonia is dead
the brits spied on the un
oop… just hit me with the first good news of the day.

two things hit today which really bug me.
first off gibson’s film started up. i am interested in seeing it, for linguistic and artistic reasons, but, at the same time, i hesitant to offer financial support – maybe i’ll just download it. fuck, i mean, it apparently already killed someone.

secondly howard stern has been taken to the woodshed.

let me start by saying that i am not a stern fan. i was an imus kid, and i think stern is pretty tired, honestly. i know a lot of people who like him – no beef.

however, the “revised standards” which are keeping him off the air are part of the post superbowl witch hunt that everyone concerned with “family values” has been participating in since a boob got onto prime time.

oh yeah, and that whole gay marriage thing… that fits right in here. this all ties together to make a nice bow tacked on by the president who not only fucks the constitution in an eye socket, but now wants to amend it to make sure noone fucks it in the pooper.

i am so enraged at the media bobbleheads which were calling for the ultimate censure for janet’s nudity, are now suggesting that gibson’s movie, which is acclaimed so violent it causes one to flinch from the screen “might be appropriate for children 11 and older, use your discretion”. i am so pissed that this shit gets airtime, when we have wartime combatants malingering in jail while a special interest war continues, and the environment rots to hell.

are these the 11 year olds that should see this movie the same ones that were hopelessly traumatized by boobage? the same ones whose soft minds are being pulped by stern’s idiocy?

why are snuff films ok when they are about a godhead?
fuck – i am angry… i am going to go make some tea.

i appreciate the love yesterday folks, even in incarnations which will involve cold slices of revenge in the future.

in other news, movin on saturday. i’d say about 3/4ths of life is in boxes atm, and the last 1/4th is the toughest.

just gotta keep on breathing, that is what is important.

This post will be updated later today with actual meaty details, sanity allowing.

Apparently my Hammer Dance amused everyone. The CC has changed a bit, but not so much in a bad way. It got pretty damn crowded by the end of the night – a good time for the few who showed.

This week will be mostly silence, as I have to pack n shit all week for move on Sat. I feel like I have so much to do, and so little time to do it in… Today is (hopefully) a preview of the apartment. If not, it is gonna be meandering with a very angry for a bit.

Here is somethin amusing to remember me by, as I drift into semi-awareness of LJ.

Today is Timaeusdisperge’s b-day.. Happy birth anniversery to him.
Tues is my bday.
Chellez, in her infinite wisdom knew I would most likely skip out on something soley in my honor (particularly after last year’s shennanegans), so she created a dual-honor tonite atThe Culture Club.
It has been a very long time since I have been there, and I doubt it has changed that much.
If it has, there is a distinct possibility of either a very long night, or a very short one…
Hopefully it remains the same cliche joint my memory holds it as, and all will go well.
If you are in the hood @ 9ish, drop on by – i’m the fuqtarded mook with the electric blue megatron shirt on.

who is too old to play until all hour of the night midweek? that would be me.
great time last night at bro jimmy’s with ,, their crew, and .

got a ride from my bro both ways! unfortunately for me, his idea of midnite is more like 2am.

much fun, but christ I cannot wait until I am 15 mins via subway from everything.

There is a new virus – code name “Work”. If you receive “Work” from your colleagues, your boss, via e-mail, phone or anywhere else, do not touch “Work” under any circumstances. This virus wipes out your private life completely. If you should happen to come into contact with this virus, follow these steps:

1) Put on your jacket
2) Round up two good friends
3) Go straight to the nearest pub
4) Order three drinks, 4 times

You will find that “Work” has now been completely deleted.

Forward this virus warning immediately to at least 5 friends. Should you realize that you do not have 5 friends this means that you are already infected by this virus and “Work” already controls your whole life.

I don’t believe in a god, but i believe in ghosts.
I don’t believe in any divine controlling forces, but i believe there are probably other intelligent forms of life across the cosmos.

What i get all the time is a curiosity as to why I believe in some unproven things, and not others. Basically – it can be summed up in a simple concept: i prefer boundless thought to limited thought.

If there is a divine creator, than that means there is a nice neat little bow around existence which can be used to sum it all up. I find this the particularly irritating aspect of the big monotheistic faiths, but it falls also to the philosophical faiths, as well as the strongly spiritual ones. Aliens and ghosts are conceptual sketches at best – the existence or nonexistence of them doesn’t really change reality a whit – at least in my way of looking at things.

I believe the drive for faith in the part of humans is an outcropping of our genetic hubris. Because we are on the top of the food chain, we assume we are here for a reason, or because of a plan.

Matthew Woodring Stover outlines the concept of “the Blind God” in his book “The Blade of Tyshalle” – in it, he suggests that the motivations of our species which bring us in direct conflict with both our environment as well as each other are the allegorical machinations of this divine entity:

“Clearly, the “Blind God” is a conscious, deliberately, anthropomorphic metaphor for the most threatening facets of human nature: our self destroying lust to use, to conquer, to enslave every tiniest but of existence and turn it in to our own profit, amplified and synergized by our herd-animal instinct – our perverse greed for tribal homogeneity
…
It provides a potent symbolic context for the industrial wasteland of modern Europe, for the foul air and toxic deserts that are North America: they are table scraps left behind after the Blind God has fed.

Structured by the organizing meta principle of the “Blind God”, the Manifest Destiny madness of humanity makes a kind of sense – it has a certain inevitability, instead of being the pointless, inexplicable waste it has always appeared.
…
The “Blind God” is not a personal god, not a god like Yahewh or Zeus, stomping out the grapes of wrath, hurling thunderbolts at the infidel. The Blind God is a force: like hunger, like ambition.

It is a mindless groping towards the slightest increase in comfort. It is the greatest good for the greatest number, when the only number that counts is the number of human beings living right now. I think of the Blind God as a trophism, an autonomic response that turns humanity towards the destructive expansion the way a plant’s leaves turn towards the sun.

It is the shared will of the human race.

You see it everywhere. On the one hand, it creates empires, dams, rivers, builds cities – on the other, it clear cuts forests, sets fires, poisons wetlands. It gives us vandalism; the quintasentially human joy of breaking things.

Some will say this is only human nature.

To which I respond: Yes, it is. But we must wonder why it is.

Consider: From where does this behavior arise? What is the evolutionary advantage conferred by this instinct? What is it instinctive for human beings to treat the world like an object?

We treat our planet as an enemy, to be crushed, slaughtered, and plundered. Raped. Everything is opposition – survival of the fittest on the Darwinian battlefield. Whatever isn’t our slave is our potential destroyer. We kill and kill and kill and tell ourselves that it is self-defense, or even less: that we need the money, we need the jobs that ruthless destruction temporarily provides.

We even treat each other that way.
…
The tragedy of humanity is that we are as much a part of our living planet as any primal mage is of his. We just don’t know it. We can’t feel it…
They call it the Veil of the Blind God, and they pity us.”

If there truly is a divine entity out there, the Blind God is about the only one I can see as a viable possibility, given our species collective history since our breach into agricultural society. That being the case, I disavow any god – I would rather believe in none than support a system which is simply shadowed puppetry of the Blind God.

I’m getting to allegorical.

There is a quote from “Angels in America”: “…before life on Earth becomes impossible, surely you will see that it will become completely unbearable.”

I don’t quite think we are there yet.

However, I do believe that faith, the supposition that some sort of divine entity is looking out, or deserves reverence, or has a set of rules we must live by, is a shove towards that direction.

I believe it with all my heart. I continue to look – to sojourn. I keep my spiritual awareness as cranked up as I can, even if it means gagging at the taste of manure at times. What I find most interesting about my life? Until I was 10, I was planning on being a priest. By the time I was 12, I had already come to understand agnosticism, but was too afraid to divest myself of the faith of my heritage. However, a few conversations with a former nun (who became a religious ed teacher after breaking her vows to marry) and the parish priest of my educational youth quickly helped me make that step.

Since then, I have tried embracing Wicca, in more than one instantiation. I have tried Taoism and Buddhism as both a philosophical and spiritual way of life. I have dabbled in Judaism (as much as one can without being circumcised the right way the first time) as well as Santeria. I have read oodles on old faith systems, emerging faith systems, failed cults, etc. I think that any kind of xian is a cultist, and therefore dangerous. Of course, I believe that of Muslims and Jews (albeit to a lesser extent).

Basically, I think the faith out there that deserves the most respect right now is the The Raelian Revolution, at least they aren’t trying to kill people because they don’t believe the same, just make new people.

If you embrace life as the short trip it is, and try to make the most of it, instead of looking at it as some sort of afterlife down payment or collateral, then you are living. The only immortality is in genetics – the soup that is you passing on to another – and that only lasts as long as your descendants keep the chain going. Print seems a more likely way to gain immortality at first, but I have a feeling people will forget literacy before fucking as our species sprawl continues.

One more quote from Stover:
“A religion that teaches you God is something outside the world – something separate from everything else you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear – is nothing but a cheap hustle”

Tx to for triggering this little thought fart, you can weigh in your opinions on the matter here in his journal, if you care to.

my parents called @ 6:30 from aruba, just to check in, and mention it was 80 degrees. it slipped their mind that today was president’s day, and it was a 3 day weekend.
*EDIT*
Here is what I have done with the last hour:
http://www.datacraft.co.jp/takagism/index_e.html
http://hkkk.fi/~laari/lodger/ilove.html

this evening was spent in pursuit of food and fun.
eats at pizzeria unos, with and his wife.
books afterwards, got a good clutch, i got a trio of hardcovers.

not so sure we will be back at unos anytime soon – the service was friendly, but not exactly the best, and both chellez and i are suffering from grease-quease (that or they put something in the pepsi).

it was great to just have a chill eve, with some good book browsing after.
mission accomplished.

can there be a better sandwich on the planet than leftover chateaubriand on toasted french bread with a lil garlic cheddar on top?

i defy you to find me one.

So I just got through making it very clear that it was not at all easy to block Bittorrent across our network to someone who wanted to make it work. I read a white paper about it after last defcon, and it has evoolved much the way I expected it would. Good stuff, I might even start hosting my own torrents, who knows?

MS got caught with thier pants down – this is ironic, considering how small a deal it actually is, yet what a potential risk it exposes the company to if it were more than 4% of the code. I’d be happier if it were not just another targeted anti MS activity – that was what I loved about MyDoom – it stuck it to SCO for being such whining money grubbers.

Everyone, by now, has probably heard about the gay marraige thing in CA, but how many have talked about Kerry’s stance on the matter? Bush is not being commited to backing the constitutional ban, but most think that he will. What drives me insane, like the whole JJ halftime bs, this is getting WAY too much press, when things like, oh, say, the fact that the majority now believe that Bush lied to get us into war, and that the public’s confidence in the leader of the country has hit an all time low.

I wish people would just stop over obsessing who fucks who.

In other news, I WILL do my book reviews this weekend. I know I said never, but I really want to get them off my chest!

People are giving off some wierd vibes, must be that whole friday the 13th thing. Wherever you are, tonight, stay away from lakes that bubble.

this one is for

That is all.

So i just got all worried that my fever was coming back. I went to get a drink of water, and realized how nice and cool it was outside my office. it is frickin 94 degrees in here!

My kingdom for a thermostat (since i have no kingdom, nor a thermostat, i figure that is a fair trade)!

What news eh? I managed, in my drug-induced bout of lucidity yesterday, to not only diagnose, but completely rebuild a mail server. Yup, you heard it here first folks, Dayquil gives you amazing prowess when it comes to diagnosing and repairing technical problems. Apparently, they had hugemongus power issues on Sunday, so much so that the power supply, case power switch, motherboard, raid card, AND network card all went pop.

So yeah, I survived, but it took me like 6 hours. Pretty much rebuilt from scratch. Not a happy camper.

One of the women in the office there tried to kill me, I swear.

Granted, she was trying to kill me with niceness and concern (which is so rare, in my day-to-day) but i felt the effects for some time. She heard me coughing from all the dust and computer debris, she came by with a handful of cough drops. Thankful, I immidiately began dosing myself (and my cough subsided nicely) with one about every 15-20 minutes. About an hour after she dropped them off, this woman came by just as I was about to pop my fourth of fifth drop and asked rather casually if that was the first one I had had since she had been by. I explained that it was my fourth or fifth, and she freaked out. Apparetly, there is a Dayquil cough drop out there – you are only supposed to take one every two hours or so.

No WONDER i was so tweaked.

Today has been both ponderously slow, and piranha busy. On the upside, secured a location and go time for the co-bday festivities of and myself. Anyone in the NYC-Metro area with a hankerin for 80’s tunes, feel free to add yourself.


Why dog does not look like snoopy, as illustrated by the supreme authority on the matter.


For clarification’s sake, please note the distinct lack of ‘coon eyes, mutant nose, and vacant expression.

I stayed home from work today because I am sick. Really sick. That is one of the things I hate about my body – I very rarely get sick, but shit, when I get sick, it is bad. I thought yesterday was gong to do it for me, but I woke up this morning feeling like the underbelly of a sewer snake.

I went to call work to tell them I will be absent, but before I could, I got a call from one of my conuslting jobs. Mail server down. I remote in, box is doa… Dunno what kinda hardware probs I have ahead of me. I called to arrange rideage, but I really don’t know if I am going to be functional enough to solve this efficently. Luckily, I will not be getting rideage until later, so I have some time to drug up. I did remember to call work and tell them I would be out though.

Of course, being AWAKE but feeling like crap, I started puttering. I couldn’t go back to sleep, and didn’t want to take drugs that would make me sleep, so I started working on some things I need to get done before the upcoming move.

I condensed my 2 44 cubic inch boxes of computer crap to one 44 cubic inch box of computer crap.

I took inventory of what I have to cull before the truck arrives.

ATTENTION ALL GAME GEEK PEOPLE WHO ARE IN R/L TRAVELLING DISTANCE

This Sunday is going to be the grand RPG cleansing. I will be keeping my 3rd Edition DnD stuff, and my set of 3.5 handbooks. EVERYTHING ELSE IS GOING. I have been collecting DnD stuff since the Red Book, and have several other RPG worlds worth of crap. I have 8/10ths of the 2nd edition shit printed. I have a full set of 1st edition books. I have some LARP manuals, and even some old Shadowrun shit. It will all be gone by Sunday evening.

I can’t sell it easly, I did some research.

I don’t want to throw it away, so if you want anything, make arrangements to pick it up before Sunday..

If providence serves, I will also have my books sorted by then into “keppers” and “goers”. Whatever literature remains unclaimed will be donated to the local library.

First come, first serve. The remainder is going in the trash.

Shortly after our move to this place, my secondary 20″ monitor started to flip out. It dates back to 1993, when VGA was still emerging desktop technology,I mean, VGA had been around since the mid-80’s but the VESA folks didn’t get thier shit together intil around ’90, before which SVGA was tha bom-diggity. However, the tchnology was not remotely affordable until the early 90’s. This monitor has old rgb hookups, as well as a tv synch, and a vga port. It was the last of a species. I bought shit in kits and put it together myself back then, because it was cheaper than buying the stuff anywhere else. I still remember when my dad moved from a 286 to a 486, and the 286 became mine.

Ah, the glory days.

It has been sitting unused on my “desk” since then. Today, I gave it a final sendoff. I tried re-soldering the circut board at the vga connection, which worked, or so it seemed. As soon as I put the chassie back together, it stopped working.

I took it apart again, and discovered that one of the heatshields was misaligned, causing extra pressure on the back of one of the circut boards. I remedied that, it seemed to fix the problem. I plugged it back in after re-assembly, and nada. I opened it the third time, and could smell the ozone… i burned out three of the four main connectors from the imaging board to the input channels, probably because of static or some bullshit, who knows.

At any rate, tonight it goes to Valhalla. I would send it off properly if I were not fearful of the toxins which would be released into the environment by consigning the ol clunker to flames. Feast happily with your fathers Radius Intellicolor, for you died as a monitor should, in hard service for over a decade.

I’m gonna go take a nap or some shit, I oly have an hour or two before I gotta be ready to go.

so, i guess being tired and stressed all week has taken a toll.
I have a fever, and my throat feels like I have been gargling a melted shardsofglass pop.
i cannot be sick! fuckers.
yup, all of them.

To talk of many things:
Of moves–and cars–and occupancy dates–
Of peniless–and change–
Of lease mistakes–and leasing breaks–
And Manhattan in the breeze–

So, my long radio silence explained in one word: stress.

Signed a lease today. Moving to the city.
Landlord’s reaction to lease break, firsthand: unknown.
Landlord’s reaction to lease break, secondhand: not good.

Them there’s some big changes on the horizon. I hope we made the right decision(s). I am going to be divesting myself of quite a voluminous amount of random stuff (whatever I cannot sell) in an attempt to make the move more possible.

Our lease starts March 1.

The apartment is a big 3bedroom that is going to be gut-rennovated, so it is a real steal for 1350$ a month. I just wish I had more reassurance about what my current landlord’s plans ential. I really tried to do the stand up thing with my notice letter, but I have this fear that things are not going to work out cordially in that arena.

Our new realty office kicks ass though. They were super-helpful. They are called Vertical Horizions, they operate out of a modest office on 1790 99th street on 3rd ave. If you are looking for an apartment in the UES of Manhattan, call them.

Work, both 9-5, and work-after-work has been stressing me more than usual, it is not helping with the other stuff. I just hope that in a month, I am looking back at all this pressure with amused nostalgia.

Donations of funds or labor to me and “Get your ass to mars” drive are now being accepted.

Book reviews this week, or never again.