Relaxation of the Asshole,

there have been a few retellings of this story lately. this one is special in that it is narrated by dock himself, shortly before he died. back in the 70s, this dude pitched a no-hitter with a head full of acid.

"But, you know, we're software developers. We write Solutions For The Enterprise^TM, and Solutions For This Horrible Itch In The Middle Of Our Backs and also Solutions To Stop Having to Friggin' Do This Goddamn It Is Annoying. So, I wrote this thing."

the readme for this thing, while professional and helpful, is clearly written by a dude mad as hell at some software. i love it.

http://github.com/jmhodges/build_cassandra/tree/master

If you spent any time on a college campus, at one time or another, you've probably run into the LaRouche people, packed together in a group surrounded by signs spouting all kinds of crazy in your face- "Russia-Alaska land-bridge is the only solution to new american fascism," "Dick Cheney is an alien," No man can understand the time cube," etc etc. These people are passionate about all the ideals they spout, misguided as they are.

A few years ago, a bunch of us assholes decided that we'd put on tinfoil hats and stand next to them and one-up their crazy spouting, just to wind them up. We succeeded, which isn't really surprising- we were taking something they believed in and making it into a farce for laughs.

Sometimes, I think PETA is doing the same thing to vegans and vegetarians that we were doing to the LaRouche people. I mean, vegetarianism is not in the mainstream in most parts of the country, but you can make rational arguments in its favor from moral, ethical, and practical standpoints. What, exactly, is the point they are trying to make by selling George Clooney flavored tofu?

a lamb with a third of my salary, maybe

for showing me that edward james olmos barfing is even less pleasant to watch than you'd think.

"man, i am getting kinda fat. i should buy some granola bars."

this thought actually occurred to me today.

Juliana is selling some of her ceramic things at a one-day market at Hillel in the U District, on 17th and 50th.



Stop by and say hi if you are around!

i'm glad i got to see telefon tel aviv when they came through with matthew dear a few months ago, because apparently it was the last chance to do so. one of the two members just offed himself. sad times. it was a fantastic show, and while matthew dear was no question the main attraction, i really enjoyed the telefon tel aviv set as well. their remix of apparat's komponent is one of my favorite pieces of sad music.

on another note, some dudes in switzerland made up an instrument based on the steel drum, but all you can do with it is autechre ripoffs.

at 6:45am, i might have to call it a no-sleep night.

at least my pac-man score improved, though. i figured out a new way to start that makes things much faster.

I've had some old video games lying around in my closet from when my parents finally kicked me out of my childhood room. This weekend, I took them to Pink Godzilla to sell them. Pretty good return, considering my parents were just about to throw them all out:


Nice little haul there, plus the added validation of talking to a dude into old games (dude: "oh, rygar? hell yes!") and then having him give me money for them.

I promptly spent that cash at Re-PC on an LCD display for my closet. I am clearly a hopeless nerd.

when you poop into someone's bloody vagina and then fuck it, it is called the Ann Coulter

Hail satan!

Tonight, I am going to watch Do. He is God, apparently.

the statistics presented aren't even that cheery (and the scan is clearly subpar), but even so, this made me feel better four years ago. it's been taped to my wall through three residences since its publication. now, when we're looking at a race involving a man who sings cute little songs about bombing anonymous people halfway across the globe, sees no problem with permanent war and nation building, and furthermore thinks the ability to use a computer is really irrelevant and the race is still an open question, i feel disheartened, and this poster makes me feel better again.

Sure gets me excited!

I am taking a class right now to finish out my VLPA credit. Our first assignment is to upload an image - any image - to a server for the class to see and use.

What image should I upload? Leave your worst in the comments.

No more spring break titties.

purged from the laptop drive today:

Steve Reich box set (love the guy's stuff, but 10 CDs is probably overkill)
Spoon (more than 5 tracks makes you gay)
Peanut Butter Wolf presents Stones Throw (i'm not cool enough to like hiphop anymore)
Ratatat - Remixes Vol. II (a great reminder of how shit mainstream hiphop is, but i don't need that reminder)
Milanese - Adapt (only one good track on here)
Autechre - Quaristice (when are they going to hang their hats? this shit is boring)

I left at 6 AM, it was 113 miles, and honestly 20 of it was kind of
miserable- I rode it on my fixed gear with its crappy crappy seat. I
probably won't be able to feel anything in my crotch until tomorrow,
but we arrived right at sunset and it became very worth it.

The first thing I'm doing tomorrow is buying a new bike seat.

I feel like sharing. Lawrence Lessig, a man who I respect a lot, just recently posted a short 20 minute talk on why he supports Obama over Clinton, and I think he makes a number of extremely valid points. There's a transcript here so you don't have to sink 20 minutes into this if you don't want to. Either way, it's very much worth your consideration- Lessig's a smart guy.

blue öyster cult played tonight at the emerald queen casino and nobody bothered to tell me.

thanks, guys!

courtesy of kenny bloggins:

Symptoms of depression include:

• Mustache/beard/sideburns
• Overcoat
• Dour expression
• Continued residency in latitudes at or above that of Kenosha, Wisconsin
• Drinking the same amount as usual but being less excited about it

shit! i think i've got them all!

I <3 Portland!

my stat professor was just going over the normal distribution and used salary as an example. he made a joke about how he is way over on the left of the bell curve - ha ha ha i am not paid well!

so i just looked up his salary. $196,000/yr.

do i call him on it? Y/N

what a fantastic opportunity- i did not even know he was at the uw! guess this is why he left make believe.

I am an idiot for missing this shit until now.

me: "Hey school, can I get a projector and a MacBook?"
school: "Sure thing, dude. Just bring them back every seven days so we know you've still got em. We're not even going to charge you."

so, no need to take my laptop to campus any more, no more carrying it back up the hill on the way home, no more fucking up the screen by stuffing it in an overfull messenger bag.

also, i get a projector. to watch movies on. at home.

pretty sweet deal.

they're showing the sigur rós movie at 8pm today at the Metro in the udistrict. anybody else gonna go see it?

you should!

but it is taking me out regardless.

( the samichlaus )

i feel like a nancy!

Does anyone else need a truck? I am throwing a bunch of stuff out.

In other news, I have a boxspring again and now can rejoin the ranks of "people who might in certain circumstances be called adults."

My parents had to put my dog down this weekend. She's been in a bad way for a bit, incontinent and obviously in pain. In her old age, she's turned into a bit of a grump that doesn't like to be touched all that much, but this weekend she came up to my mom and just put her head in her lap and stared at her helplessly, almost saying to her "I'm done."

This sucks. Dogs aren't supposed to die.

time machine is broken, and missed backing up my homework. i'm screwed completely.

fuck you apple, fuck you hard. i can deal with little bits and pieces of leopard being broken, but when you push out and hype a new backup system and it fails me every time i rely on it (twice now), i get irate.

that's just it. installing ubuntu on this thing tomorrow.

It went kablooey and now I get to wait 4 hours for a restore. I have a compiler due in 7 hours. This is getting rough.

backstory: there is a band that i was introduced to by way of the 8-bit movie called "tree wave". it consists of a guy named paul slocum and a vocalist whose name i do not recall- she adds a lot to their album, but it's clear that slocum is the main creative force. they have a very shoegazey, wall of noise kind of sound to them, but here's the catch (remember i said i saw them in the 8-bit movie?) - they use nothing more modern than a 386 PC with an FM synthesis chip. also, slocum writes all the software for the machines they use himself.

more backstory: there is this dude who calls himself "the field" who had an album out on kompakt in the middle of last year which music journalists and techno nerds (like myself) just ate up. the album owed a lot to 90s electronica and/or "trance" music in its rhythm and form, but nearly all the sounds used were very short loops of other tracks, used as pad textures. microsampling isn't new at all, and it's been done before by artists like oval and akufen, so the album feels a little bit cheap, but it's done well enough to grab you regardless.

so, that tree wave guy? looks like he just wrote software to turn other songs into the field. check the sample and tell me you do not agree.

the first part of last night ended with getting rickrolled in a karaoke bar by a bunch of former informatics students, including yared and kevin wong. it was a very drunk rickroll, and it could have been delivered a little better.

rock band is AWESOME.

i need to know if anyone you know owns rock band and how i can be their friend.

you could call me a fanboy, and you would not be wrong.



for the non-nerdy, that right there is a comic book which just also happens to be the official documentation for a cross-platform ruby GUI toolkit. i realize that there is still an acronym in that explanation, but that's kind of the point.

i also post a bunch of crap at a crappy blog stampedes. it's mostly just images pulled out of context, with videos every now and again.

both the name "porfirio" and the phrase "broad phallus" cause me pleasure

i'm getting to use ruby at work in a very primary way now. i'm pleased as punch! why didn't i do this from the start?

what i thought of when watching this was a quote from paul verhoeven on how "showgirls" turned out- "It was like watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon, except instead of a butterfly, it was an ugly moth."

the intro starts off with a really interesting premise (to me), and then goes and does something completely trite (though more or less well-executed) with it. the two sections are incredibly disjoint- the first section at least promising something heady to chew on; the second section, the referent of the promise of the first, being entirely predictable and incredibly airy. however, the strength of the first section still makes me want to share it.

note that i am not saying that showgirls had a really interesting premise.

shows where characters suddenly get cancer as a plot device have just made the list.

i've had a lot of days this quarter where i don't have to leave the apartment (every tuesday). so i usually don't. this means that in the morning, after i shower, i don't really have to put on pants- just like, boxers or sleepy-pants and a shirt, and that's it. however, if i do this, i get absolutely nothing done until i give in and put some real pants on.

i may hate pants, but they get results.