November 8, 2002

Please could you stop the noise, I'm trying to get some rest?
From all these unborn chicken voices in my head?
What's that?

Have you ever bought a really cool game, only to get really pissed off with it because there is one part that is outrageously frustrating? I'm ready to put SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals back on the shelf for good. I bought the game so I could play it online. The twits at Electronics Boutique tell me they won't be getting any network adapters until after Christmas. So, I've got this expensive video game with 12 lousy levels, the third of which I cannot pass, and I've got to wait 2 months to even play it properly.

On another note, my Blip Digital Game should be arriving soon. Blip is this little pong type portable electronic game from 1977. It runs on two AA batteries, and is probably very noisy. I bought a used one at Value Village not long ago, but the battery case was all corroded, and it will not work, so I turned to eBay for a new one. It should be here anytime now, in which I'll be sure to node all about the game's functions.

And in a couple of days, I'll be adventuring into the big city of Toronto, for a night on the town with the girlfriend. Touring chinatown, drinking, blowing saved up money, these are all on the agenda for the evening. We'll be staying over at my brother's house, my girlfriend pretending she's sleeping at her friends' house (her parents would never let her leave the city for over a day).

Work keeps piling up at school. I just wrote a software engineering exam last night, and I've got a math one coming up, and every Tuesday there are two labs due in different classes, and HTML lab on wednesday, and a database lab on thursday. It never ends, and I can't wait until the Christmas break.

Don't ever metanode a CD's lyrics. It seems like an easy dozen or so writeups, but you'll be brutalized with downvotes. I tried to node Sea Change by Beck, and hahaha, what a mistake. I couldn't stand such a taint on my record, and requested they all be nuked. C'est la vie.

That's it, sir
You're leaving
The crackle of pigskin
The dust and the screaming
The yuppies networking
The panic, the vomit
The panic, the vomit
God loves his children, God loves his children, yeah!

I still hate the job search process. I had my interview two weeks ago, and heard today that I didn't get the position. At first, it didn't really bother me very much; I do have a job and I do make enough to live on for the moment. And I really appreciated that the boss down there emailed me to tell me they'd chosen someone else for the position. In my experience, it's pretty rare to hear anything if there's no job offer forthcoming.

As the afternoon passed, though, it started to get to me more and more. I'm damn good at what I do, but in a time when the market is flooded with people with CS and IT degrees, my BA in German Language and Literature is pretty meaningless. Sure, I've got experience, but I've got no formal training, no certifications, and no credentials to back me up. It's pretty depressing when you can't land a position with a different team within your own organization, when your boss and your boss's boss are both singing your praises. I'm sure I'll get over it before too long, but I can't help wondering if the economy will ever turn back around to the point where I can get a real job and start making closer to what I'm worth than what I'm desperate enough to accept.

Oh, well. So ist das Leben, eben.

The good news is that as of tomorrow Oklahoma will cease to be as ass-backward a state as Louisiana and New Mexico ... at least in terms of animal-related blood sports. Now that we're firmly in the 21st century, the good people of this state have finally decided that the image we want to project to the world is not that of a bunch of drunken rednecks gathered around the cockfighting pit. Tuesday's election outlawed cockfighting, and the ban goes into effect tomorrow. Since that's the only thing I even came close to giving a crap about on the ballot, I'd be pleased if I weren't so apathetic.

Well, that's enough whining for one night. I'll leave you with this final thought: If cockfighting is outlawed, only outlaws will fight with their cocks.

This is a poem about poetry. I'm not really sure what it means, so you're probably supposed to come up with whatever your imagination tells you. Don't take it as advice, or even mild amusement... It's self-expression and nothing more.

throwing pain to the wind
having calamities without style
such is my life, for a while
I've been a self-observed relic.

Swallowing myself whole
in the ruptured nature
of mere immortals, comparing myself
to gods among men.

Eating their bullshit like Vonnegut--
breakfast is a meal that I skip
without remorse. Hearing their voices
penetrating shadows of former lives

passing up masks created by tribes
long-forgotten by time,
by maniacal plans of forlorn laughter

Eleciting responses from unknown subjects
Little Albert never objected
to irrigated streams of confusion
presented by doctors without a clue
about the workings of the mind
but now Little Albert's out of time.

Inspired by that guy with a hat,
words escape from my atmosphere
set free by an accidental instigator

flying at me like an arrow,
my thoughts are more narrow
than I'd have liked.

losing connections between body and mind,
soul and head,
my freakishly devilish eyes
playing word games with intelligence.

She stood in front of me. A soaked tissue was in her hand and tears were streaming down her face. The fight had been vicious, yet ended subdued. My own face was wet with tears, as i looked at her beautiful form.

"I'll never stopped loving you" she said to me. I just cried harder as i watched her. Her fingers reached for another tissue as she wiped her eyes. Sitting there, looking at her, seeing the love in her teary eyes, i wonder how we ever got to this stage.

We loved each other more than mere words can describe, yet the fights had become frequent, almost daily, and the hurt was building. She said she couldn't stand it any more. She said apart from the fighting she was happy. She said that the love we shared wasn't enough to get past the obsticals laid in our way.

She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight. "I'll never stop loving you" she repeated in my ear. Tears continued to stream down my face. I managed to reiterate my love for her, that i would do anything for her, that i was the right man for her. She cried harder as she stood back up.

"Goodbye Alan" she sobbed. The tears ran down her cheeks and dripped softly off of her chin. She turned and walked out, closing the door almost silently, bar a small click as the latch caught. The click, however, seemed to echo around the room, getting louder and louder, piercing my very soul and breaking my spirit completely.

I lost the woman i love, i lost my rock, my teacher. I love you always and forever. Only you know who you are.

As time goes by, things change around us. It happens, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You will have different friends, you will listen to different music, and you will play different video games. However, as much as time goes by, somethings, no matter what happens, against all probability, remain the same.

After several years in hiding with, my guess, some good food and light drugs, Guns N Roses, the uber badboys of the cock-rock glam era of late 80's early early 90's music have returned, and are currently on tour. Yeah, GNR, back on tour, with no Duff McKagen, no Izzy Stradlin, and, most importantly no Slash blazing away with cigarette in mouth and greasy hair dangling down from the top of his head, a top hat perched on top. Not to fear though, Axl's still there, and so's their keyboardist.

Back to the point of this rambling. I find it hilarious that in Vancouver there was a riot. Now, you must understand, being an American, I do joke about my neighbors to the north, but I have no hatred for them. I don't find it funny that there's a riot, but the reason, I find hilarious. Axl Rose was trapped in an airport in California, and couldn't get up to Vancouver to perform. As usual, the fans went nuts and rioted. The police only moved in when people started bashing in windows with metal pipes.

I say as usual because Axl has a nasty habit of inciting riots. Not really inciting them, he does not work the crowd into a rabid frenzy, so the only thing on their mind is mass destruction of large inanimate objects. Riots seem to follow him wherever he goes.

Back a few years ago, the coolest tour ever worked it's was around the United States. Guns N Roses, riding high from the success of the use your illusion albums toured with opening act Metallica, who were just beginning to get really really huge off the black album. On September 8th, 1992 the tour made it's way up to Montreal, and tragedy struck.

When Metallica goes on tour, they always have three things. Beer, a box of dirt for James Hetfield to step in before they take the stage, and pyrotechnics. Make that lots of pyrotechnics, fire spouting things and other objects that go boom. Before that show on the 8th, the stage manager went up to the band and told them that they added pyro that would go off, and told them during what songs. What wasn't absolutely clear was that the old pyro was still there. Shortly after the intro to the power ballad Fade to Black, a song James wrote after the band's gear got stolen in Boston while on tour for the first album, the pyro went off. The only problem was, James Hetfield was standing over one of the fire pots, you know, one of the thingies that shoots out an 8 foot flame straight into the air.

Needless to say, medical attention was required immediately. James suffered burns on his right hand and arm and could not play guitar for a good while. Metallica would continue the tour after some downtime with a roadie standing in for James on guitar.

The fans were totally bummed out, and understandibly so, but the worst was yet to come. Axl decided that he could not go out on stage that night. The band was present, with all their equipment, ready to take the stage and for some reason or other, Axl would not. They announced that Guns N Roses would not be performing that night. The Canadian fans, upset that their expensive concert was only about 35 minutes long, went into their best British football hooligan riot impression, and riot they did. I fear for what happens when Guns make their way to Boston near the end of December, and I don't think Axl should be allowed in Canada, ever.

sources:
www.encycmet.com
CNN's Headline News

I was at Anna Banana's, one of my favorite NW Portland cafes, this afternoon and I overheard at the table next to me some girls being interviewed to become Suicide Girls! It was all I could do to only occasionally look up from my copy of Edward Said's "Orientalism" and not continuously stare at them.

The interviewer, who was really really cute, talked to one girl first, who was sort of cute and who showed the interviewer a bunch of her tats right there at the table. (upper arms, collarbones, small of back). she said she also modelled as a bottom for "paintoy.com". then after they were done and she left, another interviewee showed up. this one looked more like a candidate for hippy-earth-mother-porn.com.

choice quote from the first candidate: "Yeah, Sunday evening is good, cause i work that day and i'd be all shaved and made up already."

yikes. needless to say there were several moments where I almost spilled my raspberry mocha.

Meanwhile, instead of reading in a cafe and eavesdropping on strippers I should have been spending that time at home in front of Final Cut Pro, editing video for my shows I have in New York next week. It will be cool anyway, I just feel a little bit rushed and stressed. If you are a New Yorker and you like experimental music and video, see my site for info on my activities in the big apple. detritus.net/steev....

Today was my girlfriend Karlin's birthday. I spent a wonderful evening eating Thai food and watching Van Wilder (testosterone-oriented movie).

I came home to find that on my email was a message to the perl 6 documentation mailing list from Allison Randall. It stated, in respone to an earlier post:

Close.  But you're part of the Perl 6 project now, you have
a much more direct route than [the other mailing
list].

Here's the proposal. Just like Parrot, the documentation 
project acts as a self-organizing independent unit within
the larger project. You pick one person as "Chief Architect"
(or whatever). He'll try to answer most questions. When he
can't answer a question, he'll escalate it to me and
I'll either answer it or route it to the rest of the design 
team.

"Chief Architect." I answer a lot of questions. I know Perl 5 and 6 inside and out (for the latter, only to the extent that it's possible). I have a lot of free time. Wouldn't it be lovely if I was that "Chief Architect?"

Is that possible?

One hasn't been selected yet (though it's most likely Mike Lazzaro).

Nah. I'll just do as much as I can as the worker bee. I don't need to be Larry's right hand.

Good fantasy though.