this day is my birthday. I'm not going to say which one. I think it's up there though. I'm so stinkin' old. Be nice to me today...

Lately, I've been noticing how fast time goes by. One moment I'm having lunch, the next thing I know it is time for dinner, then it's another day. What happened to 60 seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in a hour, 24 hours a day?!?

But this 'fast time' phenomenon isn't productive time - it is simply time that has passed. Ever seen Fight Club? The main character suffers from insommnia and describes it as such: when you have insommnia nothing is real, everything is far away, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. You're never really asleep and you're never really awake. A sustained lack of sleep produces those consequences. This is how I feel. If you have every been in mind-numbing meetings or lectures that drag on for hours and hours with the a constant drone of someone's voice in the background ... that's what my life is like.

I need sleep.

Everything Day Logs
Yesterday | Tomorrow

Everything Snapshot

Time: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 00:21:10 GMT
Everything server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) Debian/GNU mod_ssl/2.4.10 OpenSSL/0.9.4 mod_perl/1.21_03-dev
Number of nodes: 745430 (845 new since November 7, 2000)
Number of users: 20349 (38 new since November 7, 2000)
Number of links: 2525728 (25891 new since November 7, 2000)

Node to user ratio: 36.632 nodes per user
Link to node ratio: 3.388 links per node
Link to user ratio: 124.120 links per user

New Nodes: [bin packing] [Garrison Keillor must die] [Artists Metanode: Neoclassicism and Romanticism] [North American plate] [Permission to use Imperial Herald Letters] [fireplug] [American Civil War] [Brotherhood of Shinsei Letter #5] [Enola/Alone] [Dream Log: November 7, 2000] [Brotherhood of Shinsei Letter #6] [Diary of a Gas Station Attendant] [E2 nuke request] [stupid customers] [The Pope]

Users Online (50): [dannye] [Sylvar] [Electricsound] [ModernAngel] [Lord Brawl] [ToasterLeavings] [danlowlite] [siren] [Girlface] [junkpile] [nocodeforparanoia] [kaytay] [Demeter] [m_turner] [liha] [spacklequeen] [sakico] [Muke] [Wigs] [sockpuppet] [Lith] [narzos] [amelinda] [dg] [SophiesCat] [wish23x] [Duane Dibbley] [b_o_leary] [Inyo] [Infinity] [ithron] [Spuunbenda] [flyingroc] [Mitchevious] [WonkoDSane] [sabby] [barbie] [mordel] [Ryouga] [Haggis] [Dataknife] [Antisonic] [jm229] [Fquist] [_Yup] [NYCadAdept] [UberGeek] [rabidcow] [Jennifer] [danincb]

JeffMagnus node count: 4038 (-1 new since November 7, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience: 9659 (3 more since November 7, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience to node ratio: 2.392 XP per node
JeffMagnus nodeshare: 0.542%
JeffMagnus node of the day: what will occur the day after Windows NT becomes open source

I spent the evening at the Computer Weekly e-commerce awards. It's nice to go black tie, as I'm normally in jeans in the office, so I was pleased to get the invite. The idea of an evening of free alcohol also appealed.

It was awful. At a table with customers, which is fine. I can't deal well with people, but I make an effort. Then the sales force turn up, with the customers. Sales are already very drunk. I don't get introduced, my work ability gets questioned and I get insulted in front of the customer. As you can guess I stayed very sober. I have no idea how to face the customers now.

It's been a long time since I felt this lonely in a crowded room. Right now I just want to curl up and die. Life is getting more and more difficult to deal with. I wake, I work, I go home, I sleep. There must be more than this, but it's too hard to deal with people. Much too hard. I can't figure out what people want, what people need. So I end up being the butt of everyone's jokes. And there is no end in sight.

I can't cope with pubs, bars or clubs. I have no idea what to do right now.

The only redeaming factors for the evening was Bill Bailey as the entertainment, and the look on a girls face when I gave her my coat in the taxi queue. It almost made up for 5 hours of idiotic behaviour.

Today I found out that I am not on the list for a viva. This means that it is highly likely that I have passed (my final exams in medicine) ... or have failed so miserably that the board of examiners think it's a waste of time trying to pass me.

I am highly in favour of the former. =-)

well i just talked to the doctor today about why my arms keep falling asleep, and he says its because i might have this weird syndrome called Thorasic outlet syndrome. if thats spelled wrong i'm sorry, the doc's handwriting is a little like sanskrit. what happens with this syndrome is there's a cervical rib (once again, i'm NOT a doctor so i appologize if i've made an error in the terms) that's near my collarbone and when i raise my arms above my head it cuts off the circulation to my arms and hands. most people dont have this extra "rib" as he calls it, and it's a very rare occurance. basically it sucks, but it's not detrimental. although if i were to fall alseep sometime wiht my arms over my head there's a possibility that the blood thats trapped in my arms will begin to thicken and when it travels back to my heart and lungs, it can do some pretty serious damage. i'm going in tomorrow to have a chest x-ray done, and if he's right about it all, i might have to have surgery. yuck!! well i guess i'd rather have surgery than fuck my lungs up right? we'll see how it goes...

My toe hurts.

I spent most of the day in my car, which seems to be the case more often than not. School was the usual. Dissected some more of “Fran” in Anatomy class; we’re looking at the muscular system these days. I was without a pair of latex gloves, so I volunteered to do the writing instead of the cutting.

Had to remove numerous pieces of thyroid glands and parathyroid stuff in order to get a good look at the sternomastoid and cleidomastoid. Fran is exceedingly obese, and I believe her numerous and large thyroid glands might have ruined her metabolism. I don’t understand why rats have to have more muscles than humans – it makes it so much harder on the students, since we’re more apt to be dissecting rats and therefore being tested on their muscle structure. For example, the rat has three separate muscles ending in "____trapezius," which is just one large muscle in the human. Same with the pectoral area, and the deltoids. Sigh.

Band was boring as always. We have a concert on Thursday, which no one is prepared for. That’s what happens when all the section leaders are sophomores.

I’m bitter.

Went to Burger King for lunch again. I was the chauffeur, as is usually the case, for an obvious reason: I have good taste in music. Or at least a unique taste. Some people aren’t very fond of my listening preferences, although almost anyone can laugh along with the sheer stupidity of most of them. We listed to Molotov while cruising the parking lot. Smooth. Too bad I don’t speak Spanish and can’t understand a word they say on that CD. But that’s the whole entertainment factor in a nutshell.

Took a nap when I got home around 12:30, woke up at ten till three and swore something awful when I remembered I had to get to Hope in less than ten minutes. It’s an eleven minute drive when speeding, and I try my best not to temp fate by going too fast all the time. But I made it to class just as the clock tower was finishing it’s third toll. Good puntos.

Back at home. Nothing. Watched some news on the elections, but it made me too antsy. I get sympathy-nerves for the candidates, I guess. Pathetic.

Yesterday was Josh’s birthday. We spent the day doing all kinds of manly things, in manly pubs, and manly pool halls, before going out to a dance club and losing ourselves in the smoke and strobes.

He’s been having a hard time of things, as of late. His relationship with his father seems to be deteriorating, and life in general has been weighing heavily on him. I wish him all the best, and hope that he finds the peace that I cannot.

...

In the shower, I found myself slowly turning up the hot water. Not all at once, but over the course of the shower.

I just kept turning it up, and up, and up, until I noticed that my skin was pink, and steam was rising.

It didn’t hurt, but it seemed vaguely creepy, so I stepped out of the shower, and went on with my day.

...

Venk told me yesterday that he hasn’t felt lighthearted, or carefree since the days when we were living together, visiting the Dutch consulate, and booking plane tickets to Amsterdam. We were happy, we had no worries, no concerns, nothing that we couldn’t do. The world was ours to take, the stars shone only to please us.

And now we’re being politely requested by an insurance company to pay back ten thousand dollars that we don’t have, he’s being evicted due to the sale of the house he rents, and I’m still here, still living with Jessica’s family, with no foreseeable way for us both to get back to Toronto, let alone be able to support ourselves there, and live once more with Venk.

I don’t know. Not in the least.

I need something.

...

So yes, peace. Something to quiet the chaos in my soul.

It seems to me that the situation as it is now is a recipe for disaster, a road map on how exactly to fuck yourself real good.

Things need to change. In every area, in all possible way. Things need to change, lest I find myself trapped here again.

So yesterday I had a nervous breakdown and made the mistake of calling my mom in the middle of it. Therefore I recieved upwards of five phone calls today seeing if I was okay, encouraging me to get some "professional help."

Since last night, I'm doing better. I still have no motivation to do anything. It even seems like a chore to take my dog outside. But I'm trying, I really am.

I made dinner for sane guy and zot tonight. It was decent food, practically gourmet considering some of the other things that I've concocted. They were only over for less than an hour though, and I was very sad to see them go.

After that, I went to watch some television. Mostly old episodes of last season's Real World. Kinda makes me feel better about my life. No matter what is going on, at least I don't have as much drama as they do. I also flipped back and forth watching election coverage. I wonder how the president elect will feel knowing that the people he represents barely wanted him, and that he made it by such a narrow margin. I bet that's one hell of a self-esteem booster.

10:12

CLICK HERE FOR NON-ELECTION NEWS
Seeing that link on cnn.com made me smile.

Ok, so Dick and Bush will be running the show down there for a few years. Fine. Whatever. Dubya wouldn't have been the one I'd voted on if I was a US citizen, but what difference will this make for me? It's not like George would start a war against Finland or anything. I'm content as long as Esko Aho isn't the president of this country.

Many pretty girls on the bus this morning. You gotta love public transportation.
And this is just another good argument against driving your own automobile. Think about it. What chance would I have to get good-looking ladies I didn't know personally to join me for a ride and even pay for it, if I had my own car? It's not like I can afford a Ferrari with my salary. :) I'm polluting the environment a bit less and getting some eye candy at the same time. A good deal, eh?
If I only wasn't such a pussy and could actually try to start a conversation... Oh well.


00:15
The next day

Blah. When I wrote the first entry, news about Bush winning were all over the net. An hour later the whole deal was suddenly off and everything was unfinished. The more I learn about the US election system, the more screwed up it seems. :)

Speaking of screwed up, today was the last time I'll be eating at the pizza place I go for lunch with coworkers. I felt really nauseous for the whole afternoon and evening. The owners of that pizza joint should really improve the hygiene or check the expiration dates on their food items more often. As of now I'll get the cure for my munchies from elsewhere.

What's keeping the snow and below-zero temperatures? It was so dark through the day you'd think the sun didn't exist any more. The white stuff would brighten up nicely, but judging by the forecasts we'll be stuck in the darkness for a good while. Thankfully I don't get depressed that easily.

~07:30 GMT

Still up. Saw the news.

You wanted it. You lusted for it. Now you got it. You incessantly whined and attacked. Now you can do your worst. But keep in mind, you can't just make it up as you go along (this is government, not religion ... at least not yet). There was balance, but now all one mindset. So much for people.

Power to the conglomerates! Marketing for the masses! Down with diversity!

Welcome to Corporatism.

Let the music begin.

Yes, feel free to vote this node to your political affiliation if you want; but remember, this is a day log, and I'll write what I think.

Sleep now.


~16:40 GMT

Getting ready for work... had a thought:

How screwed up is our system that almost exactly half of our people want one thing, and half want the other, so we let it all go to the one with the 1% margin? This can only cause trouble, because half of the people will always be pissed off. There has to be a better way to make everyone happy. That's just a thought for now. I need to get to work.


18:36 GMT

Ok, obviously the first part of this message was written after I thought Bush had won. I think I'll go back and put timestamps in. It looks like my vote really does count (I'm in Florida). It should be interesting to watch how this plays out. I think that a lot of the way elections are done is going to change soon. The ballot I received had so many presidential candidates on it, that they had to use two columns, and it became quite confusing. A lot of people are claiming that this caused a discrepency in actual numbers versus people's intentions. The only complaint I really have is that few people probably messed up their votes for Bush since he was first on the ballot. I don't really know what will be done, but I'm sure this won't happen again :)


03:20 GMT

I am absolutely enjoying the controversy in the presidential election. This will be going on for a while. This is so close, that everything matters. And I just happen to be in Palm Beach County, where they are having some trouble over the confusing ballots. I really feel good, getting a direct example of how valuable my vote is. I've never thought my vote counted as much as I do now.

What's interesting is that Buchanan most of his votes in Florida from Palm Beach County - three times as many votes as he got for the next county. So that just demonstrates that many people's votes were not properly registered by the defunct process. Currently, the margin of difference between Gore and Bush in the state of Florida can be easily crossed by throwing 2/3 of Buchanan's Palm Beach County votes to Gore.

I remember this ballot. I thought it was quite strange to have both sides used, but since I have only voted twice before in my life, I didn't really think much about it. Afterwards when I heard of the controversy, I began to wonder if I had not made the same mistake as they were reporting. I can't clearly remember now whether I punched the second or the third hole in my vote for Al Gore.

I read somewhere that the law states that you have to mark your choice on the right of the candidate's name. Having candidates on the right that requires marking them on the left could make the ballots invalid. I wonder if that would require a revote? That would be quite interesting to see what would happen in that situation. Would Palm Beach County suddenly be inundated with millions of dollars in campaign commercials? Would everyone who is registered get a chance to revote, or just those who did on election day?

Florida's all screwed up.. I say we just throw it out, or divide it's electoral votes in half :)

I've just spent (wasted?) an entire day glued to the CNN website watching the US presidential election. I don't even live there. I am tucked, safe and sound in my gorgeous little corner of the Pacific, away from the guns, drugs and general scariness of those loud and arrogant yank-types*.

So why am I so fascinated by this faraway election?

There was the borrowed excitement from my American friends. The normal "Ohmigod we're all online at once let's break out the porn and foolishness" party was interspersed with comments on the various state results, civics lectures for the foreigner and the odd discussion of policies. But that doesn't explain why I'm still peeking every 5 minutes. Why I'm frustrated with the slowness of vote-counting in Wisconsin. Why my heart sank when Bush was declared winner, and leaped again when the recount was confirmed. Why it makes any real difference to me at all....

It seems as though they are electing the president of the world

I don't even have the power of one vote.

I get politically passionate. Thus far, it's not been enough to do more than vote and argue. I don't have time to be more politically active. I can't choose between joining the Labour party and the Democrats. But here, I can vote. I can cheer and dance or scream about fools on election night. I understand the voting system. I can rail against those who don't. But ultimately, the only thing my elected leader can do is nervously disagree with the man in the Uncle Sam hat.

* Yes, this is a cultural stereotype. Please note that it does not apply to all Americans. liha, for example, can be loud, but isn't arrogant. Maldoror00, on the other hand, gives all Yanks a bad name. But I love them both, regardless. *snogs*

11:45

Hmph. YLE TV1: US Elections. BBC World: US Elections, live. EuroNews: US Elections, live.

So, if this morning I slept 'til 11, it wasn't because I didn't wake up - I got up after 9 - but because the stuff from TV was something I didn't quite want or need to hear. EVVK. Won't affect my life too much.

Bush wins... No, Gore wins... No, Bush is winning... (turns TV off) Goddamn it, I'll read about it from the newspaper tomorrow.

13:14

What the...

The local Usenet* news server seems to have a small problem... I see too few articles. All too few.

* I'll just say this for clarity, so that everyone knows I'm not talking of news web sites. Goddamned Big Media Events.

Or maybe a lot of clueless newbies went to Usenet thinking this "news" thing probably has "anything but election news" and all US news servers crashed. Or something. =)

15:12

I checked out Slashdot and noticed censorware was blocking candidate sites... I immediately thought it must be because of "gore".

Well, judging from the comments, I wasn't the only one who noticed it...

Anyway...

Has the 'net stalled or something? My home page redirection has not been updated, I still don't have that account to the test learning environment, and Usenet news seem to be clogged. Why is this happening to me????? =(

16:14

I'm getting a new kernel package. I'm still not moving to 2.4.0-test (yet!) but at least it'd be good to get the framebuffer stuff to work...

17:38

It boots.

I can get some sort of image back by catting from /dev/fb0.

But it ain't got a text mode, folks... Plus, the ATI Rage128 driver options have not been documented and I don't understand anything about the kernel. =(

18:29

Well, I got it to boot to framebuffer'd text mode. Kewl penguin. All this for the penguin. I need to replace that with a fox someday! =)

Anyway, a cardinal screwup: I did the extremely boneheaded move of saying "hey X11, now you can use fbdev instead of r128, cool, huh?" and it didn't think I was joking. Anyway, the console was screwed. Needed to reboot.

And guess if it tries to start GDM at the boot. Grrr. Another boot.

Well, fortunately I have "boot to single user mode" in the GRUB boot menu... =)

19:56

Oh dear GOD!

Turned out XML::Parser can return a tree structure. Had I noticed the Supreme Power of perldoc program before, I would have spared a lot of hair-ripping in past... =(

00:40

Yea, as some people already noticed, "I know what I want to do when I'm big!"

(Oh, and posted something to k5, too. Strange, that...)


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: EVVK Model-View-Controller design pattern mkfs (felt like rescuing it =) perldoc that dream mentioned above Koffing Weezing
Updated: Nodes about Finnish Language

Well, we finally did it. I don't know how it happened, but today we finally got people in this self-absorbed country to go out and vote.

And look what happened.

Who knows at this moment who the next president of The United States of America will be? It's amazing to me that it has taken our country this long to come to a point where the race has been so close. Perhaps we have Ralph Nader to thank. Or maybe it's the fact that so many people I talked to were so fed up with Bush and Gore that they simply voted for Nader in disgust. Either way, this has got to be the most exciting election in our country's history.

On a side note, I wish I knew why one of my writeups gets nuked every day. It's driving me nuts, because one minute I'm level 3, the next minute, I'm not. Is someone out to get me? Maybe it's the EDB....

On Saturday, the Adelphians (the choir I am in) are singing for the memorial service of a music professor who taught here last year, took medical leave this year, and died of cancer just a few weeks ago. I hear stories about him all the time from the upperclassmen, he was a gruff but charming old man who eventually won the hearts of most of his students. Through all the stories and pictures and the quotations, I almost feel like I knew him. I feel loss. I walked by his old office today, it still has his name on it (I don't know if someone else is using it now). It has a discolored note card with his office hours typed on it, typed with a typewriter, it looked like. There are little angels hanging from strings discreetly taped there. Nothing ornate, no fanfare, just a subtle tribute.

One of the songs we're singing at his service is a setting of the Gloria text (from the mass) composed by the late professor himself. Another is Song For Athene, written by the contemporary composer John Taverner. Now Taverner writes choral works which are free in tempo, very simple and smooth harmonically, and generally reflective, not unlike plainsong or gregorian chant; Song For Athene is no exception. The basses sing F's in octaves as a pedal point, staggered for the entire length of the piece. The upper parts alternate between the Baritones singing a simple, chant-like melody in solo to the word "Alleluia", and the whole choir singing the "verses," if you will, on a single chord that simply shifts up and down to form a melody. Now this is the kind of piece that I chuckle at when I first look at it, dismissing it as too simple-minded to warrant praise or respect. There are silly indications written in the music: things like "Very tender, with great inner stillness and serenity," and "With resplendent joy in the Resurrection."

Singing through this song, it became apparent that it's unspeakably beautiful. Combined with the setting of preparing it for a memorial service, and probably also due in part to random hormonal factors, I was overcome with emotion; joy and an unmistakable love for my fellow choristers, that by channelling, focusing our collective efforts, that we could produce something so beautiful. I felt an overwhelming sense of camraderie, and all of the sudden I wanted to purge religion and politics from the face of the Earth; anything we could disagree on, anything that would come between us, anything that would silence the music we were making. All of the sudden I did't give a fuck about who would win the election or pursuing attempts to solve life's questions; there was nothing but the other people in that room, and the sound escaping from our lips. This music, this is all that I am seeking.

The text is wonderful: it's from Hamlet and the Orthodox funeral service--It's especially appropriate for a funeral or memorial service:

Alleluia. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Alleluia. Remember me, O Lord, when you come into your kingdom.
Alleluia. Give rest, O Lord, to your handmaid who has fallen asleep.
Alleluia. The Choir of Saints have found the well-sprint of life and door of paradise.
Alleluia. Life; a shadow and a dream.
Alleluia. Weeping at the grave creates the song; Alleluia.
Alleluia. Come, enjoy reward and crowns I have prepared for you.

New maps, new directions... in this city i seem to spend more time travelling from one place to another than i do actually being anywhere. Before, in a quieter city, I travelled by car or on foot, and my journey was mapped by intersections, crossed and looped as roads are. Here the journeys are linear, tracked, and seem somehow automated: swallowed by the underground, processed up and down escalators, voided onto the train. With less to look at, i find myself focusing sharply on people, as a rule. There seems to be some unspoken law on the tube that people do not look at each other: they cocoon themselves in books or papers, stare up at the ads, look out of the window although there is nothing to see but blackness and blurred reflections. I like to break this rule. But this morning I was reading, (Bill Drummond's 45) and didn't look up until suddenly, there was a jerk, and the lights in the carriage went out.

We rolled along for a while, and then stopped dead, in absolute blackness.
I sat still and listened, watching the nothingness glowing green around me for probably no more than a minute or so, punctuated by shuffles and irritated mutters, and a few sardonic cheers. When the lights came up again, everyone was looking at each other, for once, and some were even smiling. I turned automatically and smiled at the person next to me, who I had vaguely clocked as female before sitting down to my book. She was worth looking at. She must have been six feet four, at least. Roman nose, high cheekbones. A tired but friendly face. Long blonde wavy hair, soaked by the rain into wet snakes, with a bedraggled tinsel crown on top. Body glitter. Silvery purple eyeshadow, to match her handbag. A crumpled, short cerise dress, a too early-for-that-dress dress, highnecked and vampy. Pointy braless breasts, swayed gently by the loose rocking of the carriage. And pitch-black, bristly-looking facial stubble.
She grinned back at me and said in a bass voice: "Bloody awful weather, innit?"
And i agreed, and showed her my similarly soaked skirt, and she asked me about the Bill Drummond and we talked for a minute about the KLF, and then off she got at Goodge Street, towering above the crowd, man-size feet clumping heavily in platform boots off into the rainy morning.
She was replaced by a man in a suit. I went back to my book.

back | days | forth

Talking to my work colleagues, telling them that I got engaged yesterday, has shown me just how introverted some male engineers can be; Some just nodded as though I had told them I would be having a tooth filling, others told me I was insane and bonkers. Thankfully a small number have given the correct reaction at a time like this; enthusiastic congratulations and a hint that they want a wedding invitation! Still, I wonder at some people; are they so devoid of emotion or empathy for me that their only reaction is to grunt and nod? It's also tragically bemusing to see a manager's reaction to my news; their first thought is "Oh, she's American, when will dizzy be leaving for the US, and who will fill his position?"

A word of caution: Marriage is not a slashdot comment; there is no prize for first post, there are no prizes for rushing into things. If you're thinking that perhaps this person or that is perfect for you, and you've seen the massive, positive reaction that katyana and I have received here on E2, you may be tempted to move things further than the other person is prepared for. To the outside observer, our engagement seems fast, whimsical, unprepared. What they don't know is that our souls resonate together; we've shown our deepest fears to the other, only to have them calmed, quelled. We've shared our worst memories and worried that the other will hate us forever, only to have the other love us more deeply and trust us even more. We've realised that we really want to grow old, to see good and bad times together. We've thought deeply about this. This relationship is iceberg-like; you, dear reader, are only seeing the tip above the deep oceans below.

In other related news, I am telling my mother tonight - Wish me luck :-)

Well... it all boils down to Florida. This has deffinately been the most action packed election in my life time.

I must say that I was impressed with Ralph Nader, he did much better than I expected him to.
I know I'll get voted down for saying this, but I am a Bush supporter. I'm really hoping the Bush gets Florida, I don't know how I'll handle another 4 years of a Clinton-like rule.

I love politics, everyone in my family does. We live for this time of year. In my house an election brings as much emotion as a football game in the stereotypical bachelor pad, meaning that we will stand and yell at the TV, or laugh out loud, or root for our candidate.


Please do not /msg me with your hateful words, I am stating a opinion here. Nothing rude you can say will change it, rather strengthen it.

Exercise Log:
  • Pushups: 50 (and boy, did they hurt.)
  • Side-kicks: 40, each side
  • Crunches: 75 (my god!)

Insomnia: Mild

Stupid dog kept me awake 'til 2am with his barking, so I'm only half-awake at work and I've gotta drink coffee to keep up. My car's in the shop getting snow tires, I've gotta move all my shit to the place we're renting in 7 days or less, and I've got about a month to finish up the things I'm supposed to finish before my job ends.

I'm a little stressed.

The D&D game that I run on WebRPG was particularly satisfying last night. A lot of the players got drawn away by real world shit, but two core players pulled through and we managed to close a major chapter of the game. I've also humbled them a little, by bringing some massively powerful enemies into the game. Fortunately, the enemies have their own agendas, and the players haven't shown up on their radar as anything important yet.

I'm not sure what's going on with the girl I like. She's really busy and stressed, but I sense that she's losing interest. Which is rather annoying, because she's too busy for me to do anything about that. Maybe if I'm lucky, she'll invite me to the cast party, or take me up on my offer to spend the day with me on Sunday doing nothing but vegging. But I'm not holding my breath.

Aughhh what an infuriating election. I have the curious feeling of being buffeted about by an unseen wind. I'm no american citizen, but..

well, as my friend puts it, to paraphrase: god help us if bush gets in. the governer of the most polluted state suddenly in charge of the nation that makes or breaks almost every environmental treaty? god help the earth.

with such a close call, I guess it'll be a president walking on eggshells either way, but oy. I want gore to win. I remember in 1988 feeling the same for Michael Dukakis. I wanted the duke to win. Only I was 8 then and I didn't understand why I felt that way. Now I'm 20 and for the first time enfranchised in my own country, and oh wow.. I care about politics, don't I? What a strange revelation.

I'm voting NDP. libby davies, the MP in my riding, rocks the house. or at least, bothers to speak up about health care in the house.

Everyone is holding their breath in canada. Our own election is frozen in time. The cbc mumbles halfheartedly about some idiot thing Day said about abortion, but no one's listening.. yet.

I keep drifting off at work, staring in to my poppy pin. that's a canadian thing. I'm a canadian. that's how simple the world works, hey? hey..

hey.

Hee, dad just asked "So, if there's a tie, do they get a Gushing Bore in office?"
I too made the mistake of staying up way too late to watch the election coverage on TV. Two things about this bothered me.

  1. I flipped back and forth between stations like an idiot. Somewhere, buried deep in my subconscious, is the stupid hope that there will be actual election news. For some reason I cannot get it through my thick skull that all of this information is coming from the same consortium.
  2. The nagging feeling that voting for Nader was a mistake. Having that feeling that my vote actually counted and was actually a check in the wrong column. This is especially irksome knowing that I may soon be very much in need for health care that extends way beyond the limited means that I have. Maybe all this talk about free trade will open up the market for people to actually sell their organs and I could just get a loan to buy a new pancreas.

My African-American Studies class was more than a little surreal today. The professor didn't show up. Normally, we would have collectively bailed but today was supposed to be an exam day. No one wanted to miss a test so we all just hung out. The boredom finally set in and we started talking to each other. It was like something out of The Breakfast Club. One person had just lost both of his parents in a plane crash and was leaving town for a while. It's weird to have all these perceptions that you have of people shattered by actually interacting with them. I know that my radical ideas about interpersonal relations have already occurred to others but...

Ballot initiatives are frustrating. There were quite a few in Colorado that were total trojan horses and aimed mainly at slipping underhanded legislation under the noses of voters unwilling to read the full text of them. We had a really slippery measure regarding abortion that thankfully did not pass. The part that I agreed with was legally obligating doctors to inform women of the availibility of counselling and after care. The part that blew was that there was supposed to be a waiting period of at least 24 hours and some kind of standardized literature and video tapes given to each woman. Insert big sigh here.

One kind of disappointing failure was a ballot measure that would've required voter approval on expansion. Denver is developing a case of urban sprawl that in the next decade is going to give Los Angeles some competition.

The gun show measure also passed with the momentum of the killings at Columbine High School. I don't have a real problem with this because it just closes a loophole in existing law but I am pretty tired of what happened at Columbine being the justification for any action, no matter how unrelated. I keep thinking about the super soaker fight scheduled at Mile High Stadium that was cancelled out of "respect for the victims of Columbine." Uh, ok...

Go home. Go to sleep. See Yoon. Be happier. This is my to do list for the rest of this day.

NON-ELECTION RELATED DAYLOG!

That's right, you heard it here first! I'm sick of it, and that's all I'm gonna say. That and I voted for Ralph Nader

So Anyways, today goes well, I'm sitting here during the break in my photo class ( Art Studio 389.002: Digital Photography) (woo...) and like, the teacher is going on about web pages and basic HTML, so I got bored. I hate mac keyboards, they're too clickity clackity for a class. The teacher gets annoyed by my typing.

It was kinda funny, a few minutes ago he started talking about what kind of websites you can make. One example was a website where "you could have just words, and every word is linked to another page that has more words that are linked to and from even more pages of just text, and in effect create a form of digital poetry." I thought that was neat, it sounds a LOT like E2 don't it? I'll ask him if he knows about this site.

Oh what else to tell.
plans for today:
play pool
Work on photo project
go home
sleep
(note: I applogize, but note.. nowhere do I mention worrying about the election)

Anyways, I hope all my fellow noders out there have a good day also, ciao!
-doug

In exactly 6 hours I have to take a political science midterm. I have progressed past stress and hair-pulling to a calm acceptance of failure. How can a poli sci prof schedual a major exam the day after the US presidential election? He has to know we were up all night watching the results come in! Afterall, that's what good poli sci students do, I wouldn't dream of showing up in class without being able to loudly express my opinion of the results! Egad, to think I would study before learning if tweedledum or tweedledummer won!

Sunday, Number One Son and I were treated the Air Show at Davis Monthan AFB. When we got there a stunt pilot was doing Hammerhead Stalls. Dad said that he loved doing those and recalled doing them in a T2 (or was it a T6?) He put his arm around my shoulder and told me small stories about the various aircraft like he used to when I was a little girl.

Like the time a U2 lost an engine near Ramsey AFB, Puerto Rico and the tower asked the pilot where he was expecting to ditch in the ocean. The pilot radioed back he was going to glide in from 300 miles out. His altitude was so high and the wing span on the plane so wide he was able to land safely. Or how they used to use water in the engines on take off when he flew the KC-135 Tanker so that the expansion of the steam gave them enough thrust for take off when weighed down with fuel. Converting JP-4 he calls it. The Thunderbirds were there and dedicated their 6 man Diamond Fly ByReview to Colonel Hoot Gibson. Later one we went over to the Retired Officers Affairs and met up with Hoot a very nice man. Former Commander and leader of the U. S. Air Force Thunderbirds. Jet fighter ace and war hero, he shot down five MiGs in Korea. A totally phenomenal set of eyeballs. Hoot could see a MIG-21 with a three meter cross section at 25 miles.

We met General Keith Connelly (Ret.) and Dad and a retired Army Colonel, a veteran of The Big Red One exchanged anecdotes about Generals. In the early 60's we were stationed in Georgia. Because the United States Air Force wouldn't allow the Army to fly their planes, Dad's job was to fly VIP's back and forth to the forests of North Carolina where the Army practiced their war manuevers. One of the Generals carried a walking staff and lost it somewhere..... he called the mock war to a screeching halt to have the soldiers search the woods for his staff.

Dad would sit in the shade of the wing of his Gooney Bird and read while he waited. One day his very bored eleven year old daughter managed to put a call through the Base Operator who patched it through to his aiplanes radio danlging over his head. I really missed him when he was gone and well Daddy I think the painters are using too pineappley of a yellow for the house. He told me he'd look into it when he got home and to go outback and make sure the garden we 'd planted over the weekend was watered well.

General Connelly shook all our hands and in a booming voice hollered to one of the wives that he was looking for a sheet cake! ...... from her and you know how I like your marble cakes!!!

But those who wait on the LORD will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint
Isaiah 40:31 (NLT)

Devotion

This feels totally like a Wednesday... boring, not even halfway through the week, but far enough through that you want it to be Saturday. Well, that's how I feel, anyway...

For once I didn't have any clubs, appointments, or obligations to fulfill. YES! I took advantage of it. The school day was boring and uneventful, even though I did take some crap about my Gore/Lieberman sticker. I came home, read a couple chapters of Les Miserables, and now I'm relaxing.

I shouldn't really be relaxing though, when I look at long-term obligations... Language Arts Academic Team is discussing Madame Bovary next Thursday, and I haven't even started the book. It's kind of boring and confusing. That's ok, though, because we're all planning to fake out Mrs. Reynen and pretend we didn't read the book. "I liked the foreshadowing in Chapter 2, and the similes in Chapter 5 were awesome." Hey, it works...

I should be studying my AP US History too, considering we'll probably be having a test later this week sometime. I'm never really prepared for them.

Anyway, I'm going to chill out and listen to some Glenn Miller now... until tomorrow.

an interesting thing about living in ann arbor is that if you are conservative, or fundamentalist in anything besides judaism, you're made to feel like an outsider.

case in point: election day, 2000.
               yesterday.
               i'm voting for Bush, while
        apparently everyone else in the city is voting
        for Gore or Nader.  and
        there are signs EVERYWHERE, urging you to vote
        democratic.  it made me feel like
        a minority.  i was getting evil looks from people.
        weeird.  although, apparently it's coming down to 
        that whoever's more popular is more popular by 
        one or two thousand people.  so i'm not really that
        rare.

tried to be productive yesterday, although failed. ended up spending a large portion of the night with my new smooching partner, which was fun. although i probably should have been doing homework or something, but blah blah, whatever.

i'm really tired of people preaching about the election; it seems like everyone in town is trying to convince everyone else that they know something more than them. it's really annoying.

or maybe i'm just tired of getting shit for being a republican.

in any case, the day ends with me being just generally frustrated about things.

I didn't sleep at all well last night. Nightmarish visions of a Bush presidency danced in my head; I imagined the United States transformed into The Handmaid's Tale as the religious right sunk their teeth into their coke-snorting, killhappy, drunk-driving idiot richboy dilettante. I dislike Gore, he's uncharismatic, elitist, arrogant and stodgy but I fear for the human rights under a Bush term in office, especially since the winner of this disturbingly close election will choose perhaps as many as three supreme court justices. I didn't want to vote for Gore, but I realized that a vote for Hagelin or Nader would possibly be a vote for Bush, and that frightened me into voting for someone I supported with little enthusiasm.

There are so many things that disturb me about Bush, but even more disturbs me about the people who voted for him, people who said things like, "I like the way he talks better" have these people been listening? Bush has said some of the most unbelievably stupid things I've ever read -- a few quotes attributed to him I was sure were phony until I saw them verified by chillingly reliable sourses like the associated press. I called a close friend of mine and jokingly told him that I wished I could be with him on the last night of the civilized world.

But this morning was even worse. With the complete certainty of a Bush win gone, I dared to hope for Gore to win(funny how someone I see as a mediocre choice and for whom I did not decide to cast my vote for until the last moment becomes a "hope"). Anne Sexton, that crafty fur-wearing, suicidal bitch taunts me again and whispers what I have chosen as my quote for E2 "The worst of anyone can be, finally, an accident of hope". Brutal. When I got to work this morning, I found that a few people I work with had voted for Bush, when I asked, "why?" I found that the only reason they supported him was that they were against abortion. I was infuriated at first, wondering how they could support someone who does not have any of their best interests at heart (these people are first generation immigrants who have worked low-paying jobs) but then I was just sadly resigned. It looks like a return to the Reagan years, and Clinton's silly bridge to the next century is going to be demolished for a time warp back.

Gore won this state handily, and he carried Illinois and New York, and the boost from California has given him a slight edge in the popular vote. He will likely loose by the narrowest of margins in Florida. If anything, this may serve as a wake-up call for the United States to demolish the silly electoral voting system. Why can't americans vote directly for the president?

Otherwise, I was surprised to learn that Alabama still had an anti-miscegenation law on the books that was repealed yesterday. Opposition came from the Southern Party, a confederate heritate group. Cnn quoted one of its leaders as saying

"Interracial marriage is bad for our Southern culture."

Which I found amusing because of research I did for a college geneology project which included extensive study of passe blancs. Apparently, race-mixing has been hugely prevalent in southern states, especially where octoroons and quadroons (people with some, but little african descent) were pale or european enough in feature to pass into white society. And many wealthy antebellum southern planters kept Quadroon mistresses. I guess what he meant was that it's okay to treat non-whites as whores, but bad to bring them home to mother.

This has been a tiresome day.

Ok, so I jumped to some conclusions. We ALL jumped to some conclusions. But why do I have a feeling Bush is going to win and their just trying for some extra suspense? A friend suggested that there may be some eventually offical questioning of whole electorial college to popular vote issue but its seems very unlikely. And now they expect me to get to sleep, I could barely sleep last night . . . .

Wow. What an eventful day. Well if you want to start from the beginning, at 12 midnight this morning, I was at a party. The occasion was that it was my friend's boyfriend's birthday. I kinda felt like a tool not bringing a present, but I got invited a couple hours before, so I don't feel that bad.

I was feeling loopy. The party just happened to occur after I pulled my groin at fencing practice a couple hours before. I hate my coach, but that is an entirely different subject alltogether. Well anywho, remembering my experience with icy hot, I decided it was better to be on all kindsa painkillers, and I was giggly all night.

The party consisted of a bunch of cool people hanging out and doing hanging out type stuff. Five of us managed to weave ourselves comfortably together while we sat there and chilled to the Eurythmics, and later Kruder and Dorfmeister. I gave some good hand massages. We had a cake fight, after which everyone was covered in that caloric goodness that is icing.

After awhile, some people left, some went to sleep, some went to play Diablo II, and me and my friend Robin, decided to cuddle for no real reason. Cuddling is nice. After awhile, we began to have one of those conversations about life and personality and people, and all was good. It took some coaxing, but by 4:00 am, I was allowed to leave.

You see, normally, coming in at 4:00 am would cause a ruckus in my house. Whatever. I walk in, and my dad, the political guru that he is, is wired to CNN trying to find out if his dear, dear Al Gore has won. Whatever. I walked upstairs and crashed in my bed.

8:34. I woke up. What the shit? I look at my leg, and my groin is screaming "FUCK YOU" at me. *sigh* Rolled over. Sleep again. 11:38. Woke up again. I called my boss to say that I wouldn't be in to work today. He gave me some stuff to work on from home anyway. Finished that. I decided that sitting at my computer and playing with the Winamp Advanced Visualization Studio was far more fun than doing homework. I talked to a friend of mine, and decided to go hang out with him rather than go to fencing again.

We hung out on Pittsburgh's South Side. This place is interesting. The kind of shops you find on the the south side are body piercing studios, used cd shops, occult and wicca stores, you get the idea. Interesting place really. We went back home.

I called my friend Katie to see if she would be able to fix my dreadlocks. She picked me and a friend up, and we had to stop at her high school first so that she could pay a friend for some things for this weekend. I also got the chance to pay back some money that I owed. We left and went back to her house.

Now see, I just had a five day weekend from school, and I didn't quite have well...any of my homework done. So I had to sit there and write an essay about Edgar Allan Poe while Katie backcombed the hell out of my hair. We also got the chance to watch Dawson's Creek. Now, I would normally object to this, however the subject of the programme was raves and ecstasy. It was basically an annoying media rehash of Raves are bad...mmmmkay?. Apparrently the only electronic music in the universe of Dawson's Creek is the Chemical Brothers. Ooookkkkaaayyyy. After looking through her dad's entirely bizarre mp3 collection (how can someone have 4 copies of the same Marlene Dietrich song?}, she drove me home and here I sit.

23:40
It sounds an awful lot like skytrain construction outside.
Of course it's too late to be working on the skytrain, which brings us to our main point: If you are going to steal skytrain parts either: a.) do it quietly or b.) wait till you're certain everyone is sleeping.

10 minutes later there's a crowd of people outside and several police officers talking about the white pickup truck that loaded up with some building supplies and took off. Bastards kept me out of bed.
So I was driving along Rt. 2 to pick up cobie from work. It's in the latter part of dusk when I looked up into the sky in front of me. I noticed a cloud pattern and soon realized that it looked like a dragon. It was a very good likeness of a dragon at that. There was the body, 2 wings pointing up further into the sky, a forearm, an open mouth, and flames. It was just awsome. It really looked like a dragon. The clouds starting out from the mouth were little puffs, extending away from the dragon, looking very much like flames.

So I finally pick up cobie, and a little while later I start describing the dragon. He starts looking around the car, in my ashtray, looks over into the backseat and so on. I finally ask him what he's looking for and he responds "I'm looking for the crack you've been smoking!"

Later that evening, me, cobie and masukomi saw Charlie's Angels. Fun movie. It was at this point that I came to the conclusion that I really liked Drew Barymore's breasts. oooooh.

I cant typee anymre. bye.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.