THE WORLD AWAKE!

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:20:17 GMT

Ever ask yourself, "Why am I such a fuckup?"

Unlike most of you, I got an answer.

A thought

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:03:37 GMT

I just read a short section about the fritillary butterfly of asia, and that the males of the species quit chasing the females when presented with a model that exaggerates the female qualities beyond what is considered normal. But then the article did a funny thing.

It drew a parallel to human men. Why, it asked, has the ideally beautiful female face (as given to us by scientific tests) not been selected for? It also supplied the information that very few human females have these proportions. I'll tell you freaking why. Because a lot of the time, men can't have the blue ribbon broad and gotta settle for the girl who works at Wendy's--you know the one, with the eyepatch and carbuncles.

So I exaggerate, but E.O. Wilson should know that there's more than just "every dude wants to bone her" going on. At the very least, a girl with, say, 90% on the hotness scale provided by our scientist buddies, won't be like that for long, especially after she has four or five kids. Besides, wouldn't some XYY super dude kidnap her and tie her down in a cave? You know, with vines and shit, for concubinal purposes. Again, I exaggerate, but otherwise it wouldn't e fun to read.

Not that I'm advocating any of that. Not without full consent, anyhow.

this is far too pretentious to put anywhere else

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:49:19 GMT

Given that the quantitative and qualitative theories of the brain would leave us, for all intents and purposes, in the same place, whichever is more correct (I have a feeling it's both), it's occuring to me that the processes that are hard wired into us aren't an accident, especially the compulsion to figure things out. It's obvious that curiosity, experimentation, and just plain asking "why" would be selected for. Groups of people who figured out how to grow crops, domesticate animals, use tools, cure illnesses, etc, would be more reproductively successful than those who were still foraging and hunting.

Also given that, as far as we know, we're exploring every hard science that we know how, it's natural for us to ask why about ourselves too. Like the navel and whiteness of bone, examining our own purpose is a byproduct of evolution. The answer, should it ever be found, is not necessarily going to be practical, but it will be a byproduct. Navels are because of umbilical cords; bones are white from calcium. People wonder why we're here because it's hard wired into us. Whether the answer matters is something else.

Can we ever know the noumena of ourselves?

P.S. Kant owns Rousseau.

On a better note...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:10:08 GMT

how's this for being vague about my personal life?

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:29:53 GMT

don't grab the wheel. this is quantum physics. you don't want to be your own observer effects, do you? of course not. you're in brownian motion, but you could probably bump yourself off course. if you tried hard enough.

the tires are in ruts, it seems. you can't tell. the road is taking you somewhere, but it might as well be a parking lot.

sustained metaphor does an allegory well. just don't fuck it up. could you bump yourself a different direction during your random walk? maybe it doesn't make a difference. except for the one step, and a few after, odds are you'll end up in the same spot. or maybe not.

practice zen. what is god? ummon: a dried shit stick! ...a head monk gathers all the other monks at his monestary and told them a new monestary was being built. a jug of water sits in front of him. whoever can say what the jug is will be the head of the new monestary. a monk says: the jug is not a shoe. the cook walks by and kicks the jug over. the cook became the head monk of the new monestary. now learn a lesson, take and apply on affected areas.

these make me giggle

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 08:04:38 GMT

with thanks to http://silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com/blog/

border patrol

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:59:43 GMT

"These premises are monitored by closed circuit television."

premises. for ONE piece of land. doesn't it sound like more than one premise, more than one piece of land? i'd rather read "This premise is monitored..." makes a bit more sense, don't you think? but maybe they're premises because they're counting the sides of the piece of property, assuming they're all straight enough lines, anyway. but what if the premises are circular? then there's only one side. and we're back to one premise.

and why's it a premise anyway? isn't a premise just an idea? that's all a "piece" of land is anyway, an idea. nobody really owns the land, we just draw imaginary lines. it's all in our heads. so maybe the sign should be a little more truthful and read "This land bordered by imaginary lines is monitored by a fat guy halfway through his second six pack who lazily scans the area for people having sex in their cars."

not to be posty mcpostalot today, but...

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:02:16 GMT

this just came to my attention. i actually have no problem with this. if it floats your boat, then may it bring you to many profitable days at sea. but i have a few observations:

obviously this just begs for other skins like "whitewash," the skin for white yuppie assholes, "musk," the skin for men, "devo," the skin for hat enthusiasts, etc. fill in your own cleverness.

but here's what caught my attention:

Blackbird was developed on the simple proposition that we, as the African American community, can make the Internet experience better for ourselves and, in doing so, make it better for everyone.

sure, they can make it better for themselves. that's all fine and dandy. but that word everyone. everyone. you. me. the bum on the subway getting a hardon while he fondles a slightly dismembered barbie doll. even an inuit man whose greatest challenge in life is taking wet leather pants off a woman in sub zero temperatures. just by making the internet better for blacks. but how can they be sure all blacks? surely colin powell isn't listening to the latest t.i. album.

well it all sounds pretty presumptuous of the blackbird developers, but it's a noble and admirable idea, and i sure hope it works.

last thing. when i see bloggers and cyber-savvy news folk posting on it, they refer to it as "skinned" firefox. personally, in this country i'd be wary about using the word skinned while referring to black anything.

because it wasn't bad enough before

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:11:26 GMT

i've done the language a favor and come up with euphemisms for things that don't come up enough in day to day conversation for english speakers to have done this yet. so let's get started.

alcoholic: liver castigation expert
bestiality: interspecies orgasm promoter
rape victim: unwilling sperm recipient
rapist: consent initiator
loin slapping sounds during sex: pelvis percussion
suicide jumper: high velocity impact enthusiast
bank robbery: armed withdrawl
bukakke: focused protein treatment
ass to mouth: digestive reiteration
guys who like fat chicks: more whore

that's enough for now.

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:51:42 GMT

this is the fifth start to this post. nothing else was coming out right, so i'll just say i'm still alive. if you want something more specific, i guess i could tell you i had an extended post sunrise period of physically intensive duties with which to enhance my personal pecuniary position. allegedly, a lot of alliteration, but bollocks to that baloney, brothers.

and now i'll do my part to maintain whatever minimal expectations people have for my lj with a list of things that have been on my mind.

medical doctors start with the dead and move on to the living. shouldn't lawyers do it the same way?

i'm the product of the two cheap and easy ethnic franchises here in boston: a McWOP. you should try my special sauce.

two girls one cup: did they really have to keep their shirts on? surely after all that, we deserve to see some titty.

real men wipe with sandpaper.

if a woman says to a man with an ugly face and an attractive body, "i want to have sex with you, but only if you wear a brown lunch bag over your head," that's STILL an offer he can't refuse.

you know you're a nerd when:
you laugh hard, really hard, at jokes about the doppler effect.
ontological empiricism and statistical random samples "just pop up" in conversation.
you learn that nicholas cage's son was named for superman before he came to earth and you think to yourself, "i wish i had thought of that."

new ad for mcdonalds, appealing to both ends of the digestive tract:
come in for a number two, leave with a number three!

and if those weren't bad enough, i was in traffic yesterday and considering impatient potential hijackers in an airport and the real purpose of airport security.

"hey habib, this security line is taking forever."
"i know. i have to take a dump. i don't want to get to paradise and tell my virgins to wait while i drop a camel."
"i could use a coffee. do you want to get out of here?"
"we're supposed to blow up a plane and all the heathens inside."
"c'mon, we'll still get to paradise! and it's not like we won't get ramadan presents."
"do we get presents for ramadan?"
"i'm not sure. i'm just in this for the virgins."
"me too."
terrorist fist bump.
"heeeey jihad-dot-bomb says starbucks is a symbol of capitalism, isn't it?"
"it is indeed my friend."
"then we can get there for the rush and take out at least twenty people guaranteed to be perpetuating the current christian socioeconomic system that keeps down us and our true religion."
"is it the true religion? i heard--"
"of course it is! in christianity you get rewarded by getting to 'heaven,' and nobody knows what happens when you get there. you could have to shave yaks all day."
"how terrible! i'd be so bad at it. we've never been allowed to shave anything. i don't know what things look like shaved."
"it's odd. my wife shaves between her legs. looks like a llama's upper lip. if i fed it a carrot, do you think it would eat it?"
"of course, llamas love carrots. it's too bad she's not a christian. she'd be good at shaving yaks."
"exactly. virgins over yaks."
"okay, starbucks it is. what kind of coffee do you want? i'm buying."
"i'm good, thanks. i don't want coffee breath for my virgins."
"oh come on, we don't know if they have coffee there. just virgins."
"vanilla nonfat latte, extra shot. don't make it too sweet. gotta go do my behind-the-tent-business now."
"okay, see you there. don't forget the explosives. actually, one more thing. why don't more americans become muslims? you get to paradise and you get virgins. why wouldn't people want that? you don't get virgins on earth."

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:51:39 GMT

Glenn's "Hey, I've Got Nothing Better to Do" Survey

1.) What's one subject or topic that you wish you knew more about?

Pickling tits.

2.) What's the best piece of mail you've received recently?

I got a "package" with "wood." I guess you could call it mail genitalia.

3.) If you were to lose the ability to see all colors but one -- meaning that the rest of the world was in shades of gray, but one color could stand out in all its shades and variations -- what color would you choose?

Green. Trees, grass, boogers. Oh yeah, gotta love a nice iridescent green booger. Especially after snorting the contents glow sticks.

4.) If you could make your own constellation, what shape would it take?

A hand flipping off the universe. Just to make everyone feel at home.

5.) What are three foreign languages you wish you could speak? Would you rather be able to snap your fingers and know them instantly, or go through the process of learning them?

German, Russian, Arabic.

6.) When was the last time you felt genuine wonder?

Last time I listened to Aenima the whole way through.

7.) You are given the power to see the solution of one of history's "unsolved mysteries." What secret would you choose to uncover?

Either the JFK asassination, or what killed the dinosaurs.

8.) You meet someone who was unable to taste anything up until this point in time. What are the first three foods you would have them taste?

Chicory stout, lobster, and swordfish sushi.

9.) What's your favorite way to spend an entire weekend?

Playing gigs if the band weren't on hiatus, and spending time with my lovely lady.

10.) If you could have three words (adjectives, nouns, verbs, exclamations, whatever) become synonymous with your name and who you are, what three words would you choose?

Intelligent, funny, riffing.

11.) What are three things about you that make you feel special?

My smartassness, being good with languages, and rocking odd time signatures.

12.) When you're outside, do you prefer day or night? In either case, what usually catches your eye first? The sky, plants, animals, water, light, something else?

Night. The feel and smell of the air is what usually catches me first.

13.) You get to be a higher power, deity, or god for 13 and a half minutes. What would you do?

Cure cancer and aids. Make all cats have rainbow colored fur. Get everybody thinking that chocolate dipped moose balls are a delicacy.

14.) What was the last situation in which you settled something by flipping a coin or doing rock-paper-scissors?

Don't recall.

15.) If you appeared in an article on the cover of the Weekly World News, what sort of bizarre story would accompany your picture?

"Frustrated musician kills both people who really do, deep down, like Linkin Park."

16.) If the statement, 'You are what you eat' was true, I would be (a) _______.

Doesn't matter. I'm a fat kid.

17.) If you had to join the circus, what would you join as?

That guy who hangs glowing 50 lb weights from his testicles and rave dances.

18.) What's your favorite axiom that you find to be true, despite its cliche status?

Instead of that, I'll write a cliche and tell you who I think it's always true for.
Another cliche another dollar. (Hollywood) What's cliche got to do with it? (Ike Turner) Never put off till tomorrow what you can cliche today. (I'll figure that one out later.) A good cliche is hard to find. (Gay men.) Let the cliche out of the bag. (Schrodinger) Heard it through the cliche-vine. (Tabloids)
And now, a special on death cliches! Pick cliche, pick victim, apply liberally.
Pushing up the cliches. Kicked the cliche. Gave up the cliche. Cliche or die. Bite the cliche. Bought the cliche. Bite the cliche.

19.) What are three experiences you want to have in the next year?

Get a band back together. Move in with my lovely lady. Eat a sandwich.

20.) We've done lots of question-asking, but in your opinion, what is the most significant question? Depending on your answer to this, you may be able to answer these follow up questions: What is your answer? What do you want the answer to be if you ask it?

My question: What's your strongest quality?
My answer: Giving flippant answers to perfectly straightforward questions.

sometimes i can't fucking believe things

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:44:11 GMT

my good friend alex had an interesting thing to relate to me tonight. her class president, a very smart young woman, was on the mic at graduation and leading the school in the pledge of allegience. she omitted the phrase "under god," and promptly received a few boos. there was also the following letter of complaint, among others, which were all published in the town newspaper.

"I cannot believe what happened at my son's graduation ceremony. a selfish, uneducated senior, who unfortunately had privelege to the microphone, ruined a beautiful and happy time. She purposely omitted the phrase 'Under God' during the pledge of allegiance.

Something is very wrong here!! 'God' has been acknowledged throughout united states history. The founding fathers implored god for courage and guidance. Our currency and our courthouses reflect our trust in god. Abraham lincoln used the phrase 'Under God' in his Gettysburg address. Our country needs God.

I am appalled at the conduct of our school system, and the ignorance of what occurred. I believe an apology is due from everyone involved. To quote our great president, Dwight Eisenhower (the one who added "under god" in the first place!), the words 'Under God' remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles that alone gave dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded. God bless America!!!"

now, who's to say if what she did was appropriate or uncalled for, but i applaud her for it.

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:58:21 GMT

scott sent me this one, from time magazine. 1923 to present. i got 29, which isn't bad. it's a fair selection of modern authors, but it leaves out some giants like joyce, oe, and mailer. i'm still happy to see burroughs on there, though. and roth/pynchon/mccarthy/delillo, the fantastic "ain't dead yet!" four.

The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow

All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren

American Pastoral
Philip Roth

An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser

Animal Farm
George Orwell

Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume

The Assistant
Bernard Malamud

At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien

Atonement
Ian McEwan

Beloved
Toni Morrison

The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder

Call It Sleep
Henry Roth

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess

The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron

The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon
bout time we saw some pynchon

A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell

The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West

Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather

A Death in the Family
James Agee

The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen

Deliverance
James Dickey

Dog Soldiers
Robert Stone

Falconer
John Cheever

The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles

The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing
Read the Original Review

Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers

The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene

Herzog
Saul Bellow

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson

A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul

I, Claudius
Robert Graves

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

Light in August
William Faulkner

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies
William Golding

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

Loving
Henry Green
Read the Original Review

Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis

The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

Money
Martin Amis

The Moviegoer
Walker Percy

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

Naked Lunch
William Burroughs

Native Son
Richard Wright

Neuromancer
William Gibson

Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

1984
George Orwell

On the Road
Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski

Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov

A Passage to India
E.M. Forster

Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion

Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth

Possession
A.S. Byatt

The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark

Rabbit, Run
John Updike

Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow

The Recognitions
William Gaddis
this book is a MONSTER. to be fair, i only read 2/3rds of it.

Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates

The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

The Sot-Weed Factor
John Barth

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

The Sportswriter
Richard Ford

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
John le Carre

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf

Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller

Ubik
Philip K. Dick

Under the Net
Iris Murdoch

Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry

Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise
Don DeLillo

White Teeth
Zadie Smith
fuck zadie smith.

Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:26:39 GMT

just cuz scott did it, and i want to see how many i read. (29.) i'm very disappointed brothers karamazov wasn't on here.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read only six and force books upon them.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (New and Old Testament, King James ed.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Haaaaaaated)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ---not really all of them... more like half.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ---I prefered the BFG
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

worst quotidian experience in the world

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:31:11 GMT

when your shirt gets wet, and i mean soaking wet from a rainstorm or sweat, when you get home and it takes two agonizing, flailing, grumbling minutes to peel the fucking thing off your back.

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:48:21 GMT

george carlin dies on my birthday. but i got a really nice dartboard.

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:22:47 GMT

i knocked this out with some 3/4 maple and maple plywood left over from the last furniture job. i done good. :) just wait till i finish the bed, which i'm thinking of doing in tiger maple. grrr.

life update

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:42:55 GMT

a journal-like post? weird.

no work this week. three kitchens and some side jobs coming up. gonna be busier than an alabama hooker having a 4th of july sale.

my finger is healed and i'm playing guitar again. not sure why, though. the band is on indefinite hiatus. i should probably call rj and hogg and see if they're up for jamming on some of my stuff. i think i'm more addicted to music than i ever knew. the longer it's been since my last gig, the more depressed and antsy i get--mostly when listening to music.

built a little tv stand with scraps from the art cabinet. it makes me realize a few things:
1. i need a thickness planer, jointer, drill press, band saw, and compound miter saw.
2. i need a truck. badly. but i don't think i'll be able to finance the whole thing since my credit's on the low side of mediocre. i'll probably need a down payment of what, 2500 for something new? looks like i'm in bad shape for a while to come. and i'm gonna stay away from used stuff, cuz god knows how much i'll spend fixing shit in the first couple months.
3. i'm a pretty good carpenter and furniture maker.

i miss hanging out with my friends. people are pretty busy these days, or many thousands of miles away. it makes me feel like an old man already, the hanging on to all the old friends and acquaintances and my seeming inability to really form new friendships even when opportunities abound. my social inhibitions are never apparent when i'm around people--because i don't know boundaries around people, which is probably apparent if you've ever held a ten minute conversation with me--but when i'm alone and it comes down to making contact with someone, it's hard because i don't really know what to say. it's better than it used to be, at least.

also, has anybody heard from jim russell?

Thu, 01 May 2008 23:50:59 GMT

finally, congress does something right. scott, analysis? i know you're good for it.

if in my meager life i earn enough money to afford to be able to keep myself alive, they won't be able to deny me coverage because of my problems which, for years, i've been trying to blame on genes anyway.

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:59:18 GMT

table saw tried to eat my finger. ascertained that i wasn't missing anything of my person. strongly considering career change, but can't suffer a pay cut--can't suffer nasty finger cuts either. also kept the offending piece of wood. plans to torture and transform said piece into pile of carbon.

the flying spaghetti monster strikes again

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:46:58 GMT

i'm not proud of much, but being from massachusetts is one of those few things.

how to give your mother a heart attack

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:56:04 GMT

at easter breakfast this morning, my ma was considering some pretty basic questions concerning the religiosity of my sister and me. (and no, it's not my sister and i, because i am an indirect object in that sentence.) she asked me what i believe in.

"nothing."
more conversation.
her: "so what gives you hope for the future?"
me: "the future's going to come, i don't need to hope for that. i just do what i have to to get where i want to be."
her: "but what gives you hope?"
me: "hope for the future is such an abstract concept it doesn't register with me. i can hope for things without believing in god, and i don't think it's going to change the outcome."

the look on her face... i wish i had responded like my sister by muttering something about watching a lot of sciencey documentaries.

also, i'm addicted to battlestar galactica. fuck you all.

lessons in what not to say when ordering food

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:52:44 GMT

"Sweet Tomatoes, can I help you?"
"Yes, takeout order, please."
"What can I get for you?"
"A large chicken fajita pizza, please."
"Cheese?"
"Yes, please."
"Can I get your name?"
"John, with an H."
"Can I get a last initial?"
"M."
"M?"
"M, as in MEAT."
She stifles a laugh. "That'll be 25 minutes."

i hang up and my company starts laughing her ass off at me and says, "i'm not coming in with you."

The mind according to Steven Pinker

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:01:42 GMT

The combinatorics of mentalese [the proverbial language of the mind], and of other representations composed of parts, explain the inexhaustible repertoire of human thought and action. A few elements and a few rules that combine them can generate an unfathomably vast number of different representations, because the number of possible representations grows exponentially with their size.

Language is an obvious example. Say you have ten choices for the word to begin a sentence, ten choices for the second word (yielding 102 two-word beginnings), ten choices for the third word (yielding 1003 three-word beginnings), and so on. (Ten is in fact the approximate geomentric mean of the number of word choices available at each point in assembling a grammatical and sensible sentence.)

A little arithmetic shows that the number of sentences twenty words or less (not an unusual length) is about 10^20: a one followed by twenty zeros, or a hundred million trillion, or a hundred times the number of seconds since the birth of the universe. [Holy shit.] I bring up the example to impress you not with the vastness of language but the vastness of thought. [Italics mine.]

Language is, after all, not scat-singing: every sentence expresses a distinct idea. (There are no truly synonymous sentences.) So in addition to whatever ineffable thoughts people might have, they can entertain something like a hundred million trillion different effable thoughts.

An open letter to the late Heath Ledger

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:14:43 GMT

Dear Mr. Ledger,

I knew thee not in life, but in death you provide much hilarity.

When someone dies, I'm sure there's usually a lot of things that are embarassing. You'll roll in your grave when your parents go through your stuff and find that porno wing you had been adding onto.

But to die in Mary Kate Olsen's SoHo apartment? Even I'm embarassed for you. Not for the obvious drug overdose, but for your taste in women.

Still, thank you for dying in such an awkward situation. I got a good chuckle when I heard the news, and laughed even more when I looked you up on imdb. They should cast your corpse in the next Robin Williams comedy as I'm sure it'll be nominated for many prestigious awards.

Hugs,
-Me

P.S. I've never seen a movie you've been in--in fact, I was just made aware of your existence last week--but I'm dreading how much you'll get verbally fellated when the new Batman comes out.