Yackitysmackity

Yeah! Take it! Spam, hand me that PB&J over there...

The Tangent At Hand
.......... This is the part where I pretend that you are in the room with me and I'm just talking out loud. Free flow thought. Rambling. Ranting. Tangenting on my own tangents. Y'know, stuff. I may update this page as seldom as several days at a time, or twenty times a night depending on how wired or bored I am at work. You get the really good quality tangents when I'm hyped up on supercaff. In fact, I think I'll go get some right now. That'll force the creative juices for sure!
.......... Beware! The author of this page does not condone the use of conservative thought, antidisestablishmentarian ideals, Marxist economics, or anything Ford makes. Read the following drivel at your own risk of understanding me.

[ : Home : ] .......... [ : Lexicon of Gibberish : ] .......... [ : Survey : ] .......... [ : Zodiac : ] .......... [ : contact : ]

22:03EST-THU-2/28/2002

I want my very own pirate ship. Wouldn't it just rule to be able to quit your job and terrorize the Caribbean with a blaring sound system (sound carries very far across the water), gaudy pirate clothing (pirates often couldn't tell the difference between the men’s and women’s clothing they plundered), and our very own Captain Morgan statue? I like the statue better than the rum, but that's just me. We could sleep on the deck in the cool sea breeze, play on the ropes, swim, dive, all that other groovy stuff. We would need to keep a rather healthy supply of citrus fruit aboard or vitamin c pills to keep the scurvy away, but it would certainly be more fun than chartering an accountant.

21:08EST-THU-2/28/2002

Yay! I got my flask in the mail today. I don't really need one. I just remembered doing a search for silver flasks one day and noticed that they run for around two to three hundred dollars. I wasn't surprised. I later discovered that stainless steel flasks generally run a measly twenty dollars. I like silver jewelry, but I'll hold off on a really expensive flask until after I get my car repainted and figure out how to destroy the credit card agencies I send hundreds of dollars to per month. Perhaps Oma has a nice silver antique flask stored away in her house along with half the other things in the world she collects. I certainly don't -need- a flask, but it would go so well with some of my nicer outfits that I just had to have it for parties. I'll have a nice inner pocket made especially for it once I get around to having my very own catholic cardinal outfit. I'm particularly fond of the one worn by George Carlin in Dogma. For you heathens who have not seen this movie or do not remember the details of the magnificent outfit in question, click here.

19:26EST-THU-2/28/2002

It's rare that I can scan through the fifty CDs I have in my changer and be bored with them all. Even a professional like myself at getting bored of people and things can find enough diversity in my changer to be amusing. Yesterday I struck out. I just couldn't find anything that grabbed me. I finally got home and grumbled as I sat in front of my home computer and could not find a single thing to do. Everyone on my buddy list was either signed off sleeping, or had an away message up saying that they were sleeping because it obviously takes more effort to sign off than to create an away message to tell people not to send them any messages because they will be asleep and will not see them. True, you have to send them a message to find this out, but we usually learn pretty quickly that whenever they are online, they actually are not online so we stop sending them messages. Even to see if they are asleep. Most of my friends have realized the flaw in that plan so they don't do it anymore, but two people in particular cling adamantly to their ideals... or something. Oh, wait, I'm not going into that rant again. Sorry. I meant to talk about the joy of music. As I resigned myself to my room, I could hear Patrick's nightly play-list to sing to him in his sleep. I usually find many of his choices questionable but I heard six or seven songs in a row by The Beatles. I enjoyed listening to it so much that I lost place in my book and made a mental note to replace some of the CDs in my car with my very own (temporarily temporally transposed) collection of The Beatles and my Vivaldi CD too while I'm at it. Patrick often says of does things which inspire me to get motivated about one thing or another and I have to thank him again for reminding me about the Beatles, inadvertently. I believe good music may be enjoyable for a while, but truly great music will continue to entertain across generation gaps. In spite of the spare time I had this morning before work and all the time I spent thinking about it last night, I completely forgot to put the CDs in my car. I suck.

2:42EST-THU-2/28/2002

Yay, more Mars colonization articles! I'm still looking for a copy of the book I once heard about. I'm sure I can buy one but it's more of a challenge to find the info online. For now, have some links:
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/10/21/p11s1.htm
http://www.sciam.com/1999/0399space/0399mckay.html
http://spot.colorado.edu/~marscase/Home.html
http://cmex-www.arc.nasa.gov/
OneStar Long Distance! (they sell long distance phone service to us and give the proceeds to the Mars Foundation)
The Significance of the Martian Frontier If you read no other link here, please read this one. It is chocked full of brain candy and choclaty goodness. I implore you. I believe it to be a moral imperative, even though it debases one of my personal theories and denounces one of my economic heroes.
I'll go over a couple of economic and social aspects of the Mars plans that I like to discuss some time tomorrow, I suspect. I was reading that last link and it brought up a wonderful political point that I never thought about involving nuclear energy and those pesky protestors I flip off as I drive to work every day.
Wow, ten posts in a single night. Now I -know- it's time to go home.

1:13EST-THU-2/28/2002

I wonder if I've mentioned my grand theory about how I believe the Mars Colonization will go. Lemme ask the great and powerful Google of Oz real quick. I won't be gone but a minute. Honestly! Ok, it appears that I have not. Yet. I will, trust me. It's the subject of a great deal of my thought. As much as I like to hide the fact in case people start to expect it of me, I -do- think. Sometimes. But not when you ask me to. For now, I'm just going to post links to the web based Klingon and Dark Elvish translator pages. here, and here. There were some for Romulan and some others, but they couldn't translate a simple sentence like Are those space pants you're wearing, because your ass is out of this world!.

0:47EST-THU-2/28/2002

HAHAHAHAHA!!! Cockasaurus Rex! HAHAHAHAHA!!! I kill me! Ok, fine <sigh> It was funny at the time. ;D

0:28EST-THU-2/28/2002

Finally got around to fixing everything I can think of and went back to catching up on my friends pages. I spent all afternoon reading Nick's page and laughing aloud many times. Some things in conversations past make more sense now. Apparently he did a critique of my page a few days ago and said that he was impressed by my hidden link. I must have forgotten a link somewhere...

22:42EST-WED-2/27/2002

GAH! One of my loyal readers and I were chatting and he stopped me mid-rant and informed me that he had no idea what an Erisian Week was. I was, of course, referring to the Gregorian calendar that has its roots explained very humorously in the book of Eris. You may find your way here: The Principia Discordia. Copied faithfully from the paperback text. When in doubt, fuck it. When not in doubt... get in doubt.

While it is not quite the Ihara-Gubb Algorithm concept made famous by the Cyberpunk 2020 universe inspired by William Gibson, but it's the closest thing to VRML I have seen to date. Oh, I guess I should mention -what- I'm talking about. Fair enough. Our friends over at Peckergnat.com have found a really keen 3D chat room. It certainly beats the freeware chatroom I have been experimenting with. Check it out.

17:58EST-WED-2/27/2002

FTP services! Yeah, that's right baby, I gots what you need, and you needs what I gots. You want MP3s? We got 'em. You want movies? We gots some of those too (less now since we burned everything to VCD and threw them onto a shelf). You wants some pr0n? We're still trying to stock up to the 50gig disk array we joke about so much ever since we read Cr0bar's Hackers. I don't know if it's any good or if they're labeled wrong. I don't spend much time watching them. Honestly! It's weird, I know. I love seeing naked women, but I like it better if I know them. :) Anyway, here is all the info you need to rape our feeble upload bandwidth. The username and password you enter determine what you get to view.

ftp://jadedassholes.myip.org
Movies UN: movies PW: knock	MP3s UN: mp3 PW: knock	Pr0n UN: McPr0nalds! PW: sweetload

16:53EST-WED-2/27/2002

Some people try just a -weee- bit too hard to be your friend. It makes me uncomfortable when I come have to deal with these people. I frequently have to tell them to calm down and relax because they're annoying the piss out of people. I work with two such people and the dislike I have when they try to force themselves on me is second only to people trying to force religion on me. I have to quote an old girlfriend of mine who said that moderation is invaluable. I can't remember the exact words, but the meaning is the same. A quote of hers that I -can- remember verbatim was; 'high school is a time for experimentation and infidelity'. My car served me well that week. It is a valuable skill to be able to tell when you are wanted and when you aren't. Easier to do in person than over the phone, and very tricky over the web. Since I work so much, I seem to only socialize over the web with the semi-monthly exception of a party. Many years ago, I developed a Theory of Threes. This is different than the Law of Threes explained in the Illuminatus books, and a blatant heresy of the Law of Fives as noted by my Erisian brothers and sisters. The comedy law of Five is Funnier than Three is counter-productive in this case since the aim is moderation. I make three attempts to be social with someone either in person, phone, email, or instant messaging. I initiate three times, and then stop. If they like talking with me, I hope they will reply to my email, or send me a message of their own accord and that lets me know that they care. Otherwise, I know they don't care for me bugging them all the time. If you find yourself wondering what someone else thinks about you, asking them usually doesn't help. This, at least, will tell us a simple answer and how badly it could go if you DO ask. I say -you- and not us, because I stopped asking after high school when a couple bad answers started me on my journey to jaded. I didn't like the answer then, and I doubt it's gotten much better since.

16:17EST-WED-2/27/2002

What is it about driving that is so magical? I hope it has the same effect on others as it can for me. On second thought, strike that. I only -really- get a thrill out of driving really insane anymore. Mundane driving like going to the store to get milk in my father's Oldsmobile was fun when I was 16, but now I only really get a kick out of really dangerous things. Unfortunately, my poor car is electronically governed at 115mph. That may sound like a lot to those who don't know me, but I smile at the thought of all my friends who have roared through traffic with me in their own vehicles yearning for the liberal control of the Autobahn. I frown because many of them do not have their governors set at such an impotent level and can outrun me if they tried. One in particular has a tendency to pass me and then slow down to 70 as if the game were over. I pass, but they repeat. Why? Sometimes driving this badly is the only way to snap me out of a really bad funk, like the pain only a failing relationship can inflict. I thank my poor car for enduring my hardships marvelously. Even if she is on her second engine. She just hit 120k miles this afternoon. I'll celebrate by repainting her and perhaps new rims and tires if my tax return is kind enough. Luckily, she only has to endure my iron foot at the result of romantic loss about once every year or two. On occasion, even rambunctious driving cannot snap me out of a particularly persistent depression. The past couple of days, I hit my limiter three times and only cracked a smirk when my passenger commented how much she trusted me and my driving experience only to have her lie revealed by the way she was curled up in the seat with her eyes averted from any windows. Perhaps it was selfish of me to indulge an adrenaline fix with her in the car with me, but everyone seems to understand that it's part of the package that riding with me often includes. My motorcycle will not have a passenger seat, I will make sure of this.

0:31EST-WED-2/27/2002

One of these days I hope to learn how to not walk into a fish store without spending two hundred dollars. Last week, I went into Harry's and asked about some salt water aquarium plants, but they didn't have any. I wound up spending a couple hundred dollars on new lights for my aquarium. Today I went to the aquarium place in Knoxville asking THEM for plants and the woman had no idea what I was talking about. They even had some on display for four dollars or so, but I opted to get another $70 reef book, enough sea salt to convert the public pool into a beach, and another Royal Gramma. My tank is full of punk Damselfish and Pepe (the king prawn!), but it is coping quite well. I tried taking some pictures, but they didn't really turn out. Maybe later I can... nah. I just wanna go to bed. G'night.

23:55EST-MON-2/25/2002

I just remembered why I got started on that whole tangent about the media! I was going to comment that I know for a fact that the media affects us in no small part. In the case of television, national programming gets the people who view it (children especially) used to hearing people speak with and without accents. Regional dialects have less of an impact on the way younger generations speak than their favorite TV characters. Ideas that may seem alien, or may never have occurred to people before that are portrayed as no more shocking than a new marshmallow shape in your morning box of Lucky Charms tend to get accepted more readily than if they were portrayed as being very shocking. I'd go on and on if I could, but I'm getting distracted again. Yes, I'm definitely too preachy tonight. Probably as a result of the media I am currently reading for entertainment. I had just finished reading Peter Pan the other night and for a book that is decidedly Victorian, Dorian Gray is even more so. I hope to have it finished by tonight as I have spent no small amount of time reading it yesterday. So much so, in fact, that I often catch myself trying to write in the same style. I frequently catch myself trying to imitate Lord Henry in both attitude and speech. As I chat with friends on AIM, I repeatedly have to stop and erase what I had written and re-write it as myself and stop trying to be Henry. Once the book is through, I will have to go poison my mind again with something far less noble than Oscar Wilde like an Adam Sandler movie. I'll watch Big Daddy, Aliens, Dune, and then Amadeus (for dessert) to get back to the loveable low brow anti-christ that I often advertise myself as. Maybe I'll just watch Clue again and act like Tim Curry for a bit. Certainly easier than the bellboy in Four Rooms.(

23:19EST-MON-2/25/2002

Do you think that society is influenced by media, or vice-versa? Think about that one for a moment more. Your first reaction is to say that society dictates what would be acceptable topics and styles of popular media. Maybe you wouldn't say it in those words (heh heh heh) but you would be correct, to an extent. I believe that more and more, popular media is becoming autonomous as it realizes through experimentation and ratings that they can do whatever they want, and a large percentage of the population would accept it. Smaller numbers would be against it, or be completely oblivious to the changes. Conspiracy theorists believe it much more passionately than I do. A perfect example would be MTV. When it was a young and new cable channel fighting to get started, the youth of the day thought they were really cool because it was a channel for and by people just like them. It was a reflection of their young spirit and determination. As MTV became more and more of an icon of the young society, they became autonomous and instead of being a voice OF the young masses, they became a voice FOR the young masses. MTV stopped following the youth scene and tried to lead it instead. Many of the viewers saw that they were no longer emulating what was cool but were instead telling people what it thought people should think was cool, and that caused them to stop watching. Most, however, didn't. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we just got old and no longer have our fingers on the pulse of young society, so I ask you instead. Think about the things you do in the next few days and ask yourself whether you liked certain things before you were told that you should like it by the media. Music, fashion (bad example there), alternative lifestyles, sports (don't get me started on the whole eXtreme buzz-word issue unless you want a long angry rant), foods (cough-coffeehouses-cough), or anything else you find. The quickest death of a thing is when it becomes 'trendy' and gets used up.

0:21EST-MON-2/25/2002

COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE AND DR. PEPPER! Perhaps I should cut down on the sugar I put into my coffee, but I feel really keen right now and that's all that matters. :)

23:11EST-SUN-2/24/2002

I got into trouble today at work again. I've been reading ebooks online left and right while at work and the increasing time when I am bored at home. My little fishies are regaining some of the attention they have lost so that helps me at home, but spending 12 hours a day at work has been rather taxing on my attention span. I've been reading the ebooks to help alleviate that and give me some sort of entertainment while here, but trying to read an ebook on a low refresh rate monitor for hours on end is killing my eyes. I purposefully try to keep the screen resolution as high as possible, and have to sacrifice refresh rate as a result so that everything on the crummy little 15" monitors is really really tiny. If anyone wants to spy on me, they have to get really close and squint a lot. This gives me ample time to close anything that is incriminating on the off chance that I'm doing something unscrupulous. Screen conditions such as that are not very nice for reading so I figured I would print out Dorian Gray on the local printer across the room and read it from paper. I didn't realize that it printed out to be 88 pages and got to the printer a mere sixty seconds after one of the senior supervisors did. They were most displeased and let me know, but I smiled nervously and they let me keep it. I've read through a third of it so far between the frequent interruptions and I find myself curious if the story was referred to me because I might like one of the characters (and I do), or because there is a point to the story that I have not gotten to yet which the referring party believes to be poignant to me. Most likely it was sent to me the same way I tell people to read Samuel Clemens or John Welter.

14:55EST-SUN-2/24/2002

A few of us went out to some karaoke place in the Old City the other night so that we could hear a couple friends of ours deliver their drunken serenade and cheer them on. If for no other reason, it was a perfectly good excuse to leave the house. As it turns out, the karaoke bar is in the same shopping center where my favorite old goth club used to be. Those were fun days indeed. To my amazement, there were far fewer shops, cops, and bums. Sadly, there was still one bum in particular who struck me as curious. He looked almost exactly like Ron. I may have pointed it out, but I was not the only one to think so. I was sad because I used to have such good times at the Playhouse. It became my second home while in my mid teens. I liked the people, I liked the shows, I liked the atmosphere, and most importantly, I liked not being near my father. The Playhouse was the only place I could go to feel truly comfortable. I frequently miss the fun I used to have there with Amy, Jason, Patrick, and the others. I remember after a cast party for Rashomon at Ron's incredible apartment. It was either Rashomon, where Patrick and I did awful jobs as sound techs or Into The Darkness where I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Dead Can Dance for the first time. Anyway, Scooby, Jason, Patrick, (possibly Moses?) and myself wound up staying after everyone else had drifted off and Ron produced a bottle of coconut rum. We all proceed to get sufficiently buzzed to the point where we laughed at absolutely everything. Especially the bit where Ron tried to pay Jason for sex. Absolutely hilarious! I can't remember if Jason claimed his price to be a million dollars or a thousand dollars, but this caused Ron to launch into a terribly funny rant about how it would have to be the best and tightest pussy in the whole world. He went on for several minutes in fact, and most of us could hardly breathe we were laughing so hard. Except for Jason, who laughed slightly less than us. Either because he was realizing that his worth was not quite the dollar number he had hoped, or because his ass was on the line. Literally. :) It seemed like a good time to go so we bowed out and found our nightly adventures on the road once more. We all love Ron and were sorry to see him go to Colorado or something like that to take up a new directing job there instead of staying with us. The Playhouse was never quite the same fun after he left so we stopped going. Sadly.

18:21EST-SAT-2/23/2002

Yay! Bacchanalianbrouhaha.org is available for my registering pleasure and pointing to the party page in place of jadedassholes.com. I'm tempted to get it, but I know that I am one of a precious few people who would understand what it meant, and even though it would be my domain, I know I would spell it wrong all the time. Heh, we're trying to cut down the number of undesirable people who come to our parties and pick fights or make people feel uncomfortable and this might be a good way of doing just that. After all, how many people are going to accidentally type in that URL?

14:41EST-SAT-2/23/2002

Congradulations, you have fuond the secret page! This isn't it, but I was curious how many people would try to hide something on their web site (or someone else's) and then congratulate you for finding it with diligent effort and hard work sleuthing around the web reading other people's code for a sneaky little hyperlink. To be honest, I stopped counting. I spent a few minutes this morning trying search strings like the one above and slight re-wordings of it until I had counted over a hundred. My my my, won't they be upset. I cheated. To further make it difficult for people cruising the web finding my web site in search for another unsuspecting guest book that they could fill with banner adds for porn sites, I have made sure I didn't have them anywhere on my site. At least I think I tried... I didn't try all the various word combinations. With the exception to the first line of this post, I think I'm done. Here, I'll even spell it wrong. Done. I had to make a couple of changes since I'm not the only one who can spell congratulations wrong. For an example of a guest book gone horribly awry, go here: Harlequins Paintball Team.

22:55EST-FRI-2/22/2002

Yay! It's web search results time again! As close to once a month as I can remember, I like to browse through the site statistics for this little project page and see how people are finding my silly journal. I certainly don't advertise this page as much as my others. Thanks again to Tater for registering www.turbonakedman.org and pointing it to this page so it would be easier for complete strangers to find this page and see what I've become disillusioned about today. Over 400 people have viewed this pave this month alone. Based on the infrequency of my updates, I know this isn't all me. I checked to see where they were all coming from and found that 68% of the page hits this month were as a result of people who had gone to Google (because they're smart) and did a search for Tighty Whitey Pics (because they're disturbed, but smart). No matter. I'm tempted to put up a banner add but I did the math and realized that if all 400 people clicked on the banner I would get a lovely check for all of twelve cents. I'd rather put up a pop-up banner that says something like QUICK! SOMETHING TERRIBLY EXCITING IS GOING ON OUTSIDE! It's called nature, and it's really cool, in spite of what our government thinks. They close down over half the national parks in America, including all the ones that I really enjoyed hiking and camping at and held as being essential parts of my youth and then refuse to drill for oil in Alaska because they don't want to disturb caribou. I need to find a group of political activists who fight for campgrounds, hiking trails, doing fun stuff in the woods with a campfire and processed food products on sticks. I need to find this group and get them motivated. If they exist, they're falling behind. If they don't exist, I'll have to start one. I'll get a bunch of life sized John Denver cardboard cut-outs and try to storm capitol hill. Something like Mr Smith Goes to Washington, but with more cardboard cut-outs. Quick note: I don't like John Denver's music, but I think having a thousand John Denver cardboard cut-outs would be kinda cool, wouldn't it? Even better would be if they were cut-outs of Gallagher or Muppets!

21:08EST-WED-2/20/2002

I think a great question for a personality quiz would be whether or not the person prefers hardwood floors or plush carpeting. Those are the only two answers that I take seriously since any answer of tile (except Spanish) or linoleum should result in immediate banishment to the trailer park of their choice. On a lighter note, am I the only one who finds it necessary to email myself at home to remember and do things?
To: Shane
From: Shane
Subject: Don’t forget to…

Feed the cat
Change the timeout and database used for the forum I’m working on
Create a new domain for the email server
Fix the bug with mail forwarding
Set permissions to NT logins only
Turn off guest accounts
Set Webmail interface to a new port, and then re-map the routing tables on the LAN
Update the email redirects on all the web pages (and don’t bitch about how long it’s going to take to go through them all)
Snack
Get a social life

18:48EST-WED-2/20/2002

Ok, I've now had my first cup of supercaff coffee, otherwise known as 8 packets of sugar, four pods of creme, and some coffee for flavor, so I'm feeling exceptionally outgoing. More so than I usually do, in spite of being a Libra and hearing people keep telling me that Libras like myself are generally very friendly and outgoing in spite of my choice of clothing and demeanor. I like run-on sentences so much more than just short curt sentences because they achieve so much more than the impersonal smaller ones could possibly do by nature because they frequently contain so many more ideas but I can't fault shorter sentences any more than I can fault people who prefer them and their ways because surely it is a sign of the way they think in smaller terms versus more grand over all terms with little attention to the details which are mostly unimportant when it comes down to it because they are easier to work out than the big picture can be and often times tend to just fall into place and work themselves out in the end like worrying about money and how much people think about that and let it consume their time like it used to consume mine until I stopped worrying about it and just let life lead me wherever and have not had to really worry about money since then so it's been very relaxing in spite of my having posted about concerns of which path to take for better money like the jobs offered to me in Atlanta but oh so far away from my friends which are worth way more than fancy lunches or wainscoting in an apartment. Wow, that was unnecessary. I feel better for having done it though, so I guess that's all that counts. It was probably the first time in my life that I have ever had a chance to say wainscoting, even after years of quoting Monty Python skits in school. On a completely unrelated subject, I spent a great deal of time last night playing with my fishies. That wasn't my original intention, but I do tend to get distracted quite easily by the tiniest things and last night was no different. You see, as I was walking into my room to find something (which I just realized I never found) I happened to glance at my aquarium to see if they were up to anything fun when I noticed tiny trails in the substrate against the front glass. I thought this rather odd since I chose (incorrectly) to use the same method of under-gravel filtering that I had often done with fresh water tanks and used shale instead of multi textured sand layers. Fresh water tanks have an ecosystem NOWHERE near as complex as those necessary in a successful salt water tank, but the liveliness and colors of the inhabitants are well worth the extra cost and effort (imho). My next attempt will be of a German design and undoubtedly cost me a tidy sum of money to convert over, but has other benefits I will not get into. For once, I'm avoiding a tangent. Hooray! Upon closer inspection, the lines in the substrate (remember those?) were caused by what looked like a really really tiny crustacean about the size of a flea. Too small to be a sand-flea, I'd have to consult my book shelf for the actual name and function of the shy beasts. I watched them for some time before I looked above the gravel and noticed my shrimp (Pepe, the king prawn!) standing there watching me intently. Hoping I would feed him, no doubt. I felt bad because I had neglected him so much in the past in favor of his more aggressive and colorful tank mates, I decided to prepare a meal just for him. Too bad I was distracted first by the presence of yet another new creature in my tank. Starfish! I had seen them before hiding in the back but there were two juveniles an inch away from where I was staring just kinda cruising along the pane of glass on whatever path interests a starfish. Did you know they are actually carnivores? With the presence of new life showing up all the time in my own private eco-system who's precious balance rests in my hands much like the universe we live in is said to be cared for by a deity I've seen no definitive influence of, I opted to be a more hands-on caring type and give the tank a nice water change. I'm supposed to do one every other week to help keep the nitrate cycle moving but knowing full well that nitrates break down (eventually) into hydrogen and another gas I mentioned while on lunch but can't remember now, I became lax in changing the water on time due to the significant amount of time this took. The continued aeration of the tank kept dangerous toxins out of the water and evaporation allowed me to add fresh water to maintain water line and saline levels since salt does not evaporate but prefers to stay in the water. After checking to make sure that copper, nitrate, nitride, nitrogen, ammonia, and salt were all within acceptable levels, I opted to give them a water change anyway. This entails considerable work with a large hose, a Rubbermaid trash can used solely for this purpose, and the occasional mouthful of saltwater to start the siphoning process which doubles as an underwater vacuum to clear the substrate of solid waste. To make a long story short, insert favorite quote from Clue here, I had so much fun changing out the water that I accidentally filled my tank to the point of overflowing. This had the unfortunate side effect of confirming my suspicions that the lowest corner of the tank was right next to my box of clean clothes. Oh well, I need to do another couple loads of laundry. I'm running out of black to wear and I'm having a lot of fun doing just that.

15:41EST-WED-2/20/2002

I figured it out. For the past couple of days, I've been sleeping an obscene amount of time and I'm feeling great. I'm even at work and I'm feeling groovy. Without coffee and sugar even. Yay! I hope to get a good deal of reading done today. I'm up to reading 4 books at once again thanks to the latest recommendation by Flower Child® who insists that I read Oscar Wilde. If what I have heard and the snippets I've seen, it should be rather fitting. Certainly more fun than playing The Sims lately. After getting the biggest house on the block and filling it with every imaginable consumer good, I decided to try and get everyone on the block married to everyone else on the block for a wonderful Family Rubik’s Cube sort of thing. This is harder than you think due to the incredibly quick decay of relationships due to neglect in the game. After that, I found great fun at trying my hand at interior design, architecture, and landscaping, but the game limited me too much to truly express my ideas and the Sims didn't like my designs as much as I did. :( Bah, what do they know? They're just stings of code. It was a decent distraction from the paid advertising on the only two channels that seem to be on in our house at that hour. Comedy Central and Cartoon Planet. Even the Hitlery Channel seems to have run out of history to do specials on so I don't get to watch wonderful features about the biggest blunders of the world's most famous failed artist and vegetarian. He wasn't even born in Germany. What a wanker. Speaking of which, the next time I get the bright idea to do something nice for my father, remind me not to offer to upgrade his computer for him. Buying him a DVD player and spending a week tracking down obscure black and white WW1 airplane movies on DVD was pretty easy and even he could get it working after a week of trying. Heh. He still uses AOL and has problems so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He's a brilliant man, but he has allowed the rapid computer and home theatre technology changes pass him by. His computer especially. He used a 12mhz 286 with a black and white monitor with no modem or mouse until his house burned down. He bought a HP Pavilion Pentium 1 at 75mhz and used it until it finally died without doing a single upgrade in five years. If I had to guess, it died because of dust clogging and heat buildup. He took it to a computer repair shop and asked them to fix whatever happened. They cried and then played a wonderful joke on him. Since I know he probably told them to do the cheapest fix possible (and still complained that it cost over fourty dollars) they re-used as many of the old components as possible. 230 watt AT power supply, AT case were the first things that I noticed. Those bastards. Considering that it was just a year ago that they did this, they should have beaten my father with a lead pipe until he agreed to spend the extra $20 to go with an ATX setup. At least they planned for -some- degree of future upgradability. They used a feature backed off-brand (ie: not a brand -I- would choose and since I'm infallible, my word is law) micro-at/atx motherboard with a single 64mb stick DIMM (bravo to them), a decent 4.3gig HD (bravo), a 48x Sony optical drive (bravo), a really monstrous CPU heat sink fan combo (bravo) and then screwed the pooch with the most obscene wiring and jumper configuration possible (probably my father's idea) and then cut the costs by putting in a P1 233 for this socket 7 motherboard. He leaves the computer on 24-7 so that he can log onto AOL via dial-up faster than having to boot up the computer and that is somewhat understandable since it took ages, but I know my efforts to try and coach him into a broadband connection would be wasted since he would undoubtedly still stick with AOL and their horrible winsock management and forget to ever sign off. That, and he'll be a real target for crackers and script kiddies on a good connection and an insecure box. He's better off with dial-up. I've spent the last two days swapping every possible salvageable part from his box and putting it into a new ATX case with a decent 300 watt power supply, socket 370 motherboard with a 500mhz chip, another 64mb of ram, and an optimized cable/jumper configuration so his peripherals would be able to communicate with his hard drive better. At least this way it will be easier to give him computer part hand-me-downs in the future. Hopefully with the increased processor power he will find more uses for his computer than to play CDs and write a weekly newsletter. In retrospect, I could have spent a few dollars and not changed a thing in his box but adding the extra ram and putting in a K62 processor, but that would take time that he doesn't want to wait. Understandable, I guess. Plus, that would just be putting off the inevitable another year anyway knowing him. Gotta love him. <:)

22:42EST-TUE-2/19/2002

In light of the recent rash of marriages going on around here, I've made two decisions. I'm going to watch Four Weddings and a Funeral again. I figured it would be somewhat appropriate. The second, while talking to Carrie, we were depressed by all of our friends getting married. Far from being anywhere near our lists of things to do, we are also too proud to die single. We made a pact to get married to each other and have an open relationship if we turn 50 and we've still not been married. Easy for me to say that since I don't expect to live that long. In the mean time, I am quite enjoying re-reading Peter Pan.

3:08EST-MON-2/18/2002

Once again, I need something new. When I have something to get excited about, then I can work on it endlessly and get really happy while I'm doing it and joyful bliss when it's done. Well, I can't think of anything else to do right now short of getting a new job, and what a pain in the ass THAT is. They've upped my schedule to an insane amount of hours so that should bring in a tidy paycheck soon. It's been a while since I got a paycheck for over a grand, so that'll be -real- keen when that happens, if I don't die first. I'll either pay off my credit cards like a good little boy or I'll wind up getting more computer parts like the 160 gig hard drive I've been plotting on for so long. Hell, I even bought Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X for the PS2 but I've not played MGS2 at all, and barely made it past the intro in FFX before I wandered off in search for something I couldn't quite seem to find. Gratification has been rare lately. All I know is that something is missing and I'm going mad trying to figure out what the hell it is! Hell, even driving to and from Knoxville at 120mph the other night was only marginally gratifying. Things just don't seem to hold my interest for very long anymore. Perhaps I'm in a depression. Definitely a rut of some sort. Perhaps I'm getting old in spite of all my attempts to maintain the mind, spirit, and body of a 19 year old. The body isn't much of an issue with as much preservatives as I consume on a daily basis (being my only real food intake) and anyone who hangs out with me can attest that I have made no attempts to act grown up, in spite of all the reading and pondering I catch myself doing. Maybe it's time to read Peter Pan again, but I find it. I have not read anything else by Sir James Matthew Barrie (yes, he was knighted) but I get mixed emotions when reading the book. Reading it, you would swear that Barrie was insane. The movie by Disney tried very hard to make sense of it by adding and removing details so much so that it is a complete bastardization of the book, but a good movie by itself. Any hedonist should be able to instantly identify with Peter Pan, who I could admire. Hell, I even get misty eyed when watching Hook because the great and proud Peter Pan who had nothing to fear at all and lived in a fantasy land of constant fun and adventure is portrayed as having given up his fantasy in exchange for mortality. Surely there was a better way the story could have ended like the first one, but I have realized that no matter how funny Robin Williams can be, all his movies turn out to be really depressing in a way. For those of you who haven't read the book, here's a link I scrounged up on the web which has it. I have not had a chance to read through this version to do a comparison (yet) but it's a start. Certainly not as long as 1984 (which I also have but lost the .txt file) but is far more light hearted. If you don't want to read the book for fun, just email me and I'll send you some complimentary pr0n from my personal collection. I seem to have lost my copy of Clockwork Orgy so you can strike that one off your request list until I find it again. Sorry. :(

22:42EST-FRI-2/15/2002

Wow, I should have done this a lot sooner. While I've been keeping this journal online for my own amusement, it appears that a startling number of my friends are doing the same. I have been meaning to read them for quite a bit of time and would occasionally check in to see how life in general was going for my various pals who I no longer get to see on a daily basis (I miss school for that reason alone) in an effort to try to keep in some sort of touch. After re-reading that last sentence, it is no wonder why my English teachers hated me. After silently complaining to myself that I was being bored at work, I have taken a break from reading my daily drove of online comics (comic artists need love too!) and began to catch up with them one by one. Chuck's creativity and twisted sense of humor is coming along nicely since he gave in to his hate and came over to the dark side. It boggles my mind that the same mind responsible for Jesse's insightful comments is the same mind responsible for his collection of shirts. Holly is reinventing herself again, Tater has taken angst to a whole new level and should really learn an instrument and join a band, I lost track of where I was on Rhys's page, and I haven't even begun on Nick's. I'm saving his for last since I will want time to ponder after that one. I skimmed it earlier looking for something and saw a post about nuclear weapons. I can't wait! While surfing the various friend pages, I noticed he linked to a name I didn't recognize so I went there trying to see if I knew her and didn't remember. I do that a lot. I will need to get as good at remembering names as I am with numbers. While reading her site, I was immediately impressed because she quoted Clue. One page later, she quoted Eddie Izzard. That sort of thing gets top marks in my book. Judging from the pics she has posted, I do not believe I have met her before. My loss, I suppose. On an unrelated subject, my plans to go to Atlanta again this weekend seem to have fallen through. I never got around to calling the second department and asking them for numbers. I guess this means now I have all weekend to mess with my computers at home. I'm still torn between sticking with ME on my workstation or switching sound cards and going with XP instead. As much as I would truly adore putting on something like BSD, I dare not. After all, this is my main gaming machine. :)

1:02EST-FRI-2/15/2002

I've just figured out a way to justify the male ego and sexual frustration! Wouldn't we all like to live in a world reminiscent of the Roman baths where daily life consisted of little more than wine, sex, and soap? Even with all that ungoverned sex, they still managed to build the largest recorded empire in history until it's climax and rapid atrophy. Heh, even their history sounds sexual when described. With all that nookie going on, why leave the house? Had Rome run out of fresh booty and needed to replenish it's stock of hotties? Possibly. Caesar got around quite a bit... They ran out of Caesars (thanks to the Praetorians) and suddenly everyone was kinda content to just chill out at the baths down the block. Hard (heh) to maintain an empire like that. I meant to figure out a creative way to segue into my point and revelation, but I can't think of it right now. I will eventually, but if I waited until I had another burst of creativity (I am still at work after all) then I would never get to the good stuff so lets just pretend I said something marvelous, which brings me to my next point. Sky scrapers. That's right, really tall buildings. Huge corporate monoliths where people work and/or live. Inspired, undoubtedly by sexually frustrated engineers who spend too much of their paychecks on pr0n. Where would all the huge, swelling cities be without monstrous phalluses thrusting into the sky for our pleasure? Whoever that building 300 story tall concrete and glass dildos was a good idea obviously hadn't studied in Europe where they like to build good cities that don't require a car to survive in and save the raging phalluses for national monuments (Eiffel tower, leaning tower of Piza, Big Ben). Actually, now that I think about it, maybe sky scrapers aren't the best thing our penises have brought to us, but I'm sure feel better that my crotch isn't a target for commercial airlines or UPS trucks filled with semtex.

22:42EST-THU-2/14/2002

Happy Valentine's day! Am I going to celebrate it with someone special? Nope. Nobody to share it with. :( I ran into several frustrated women who felt the same way as I do and would have probably made great fun to hang out with on this day in particular, but I had to work instead. :::sigh::: I even heard one of them complain that she doesn't like this day because It celebrates a day once a year where you should show how much you care about your lover when you should really be showing it all the time. I agree and started laughing. I didn't tell her why. I would like to point to the post I made on this same day last year. Also, I suggest you check out The Spark and read their enlightened article on Tantra.

1:42EST-THU-2/14/2002

I reading through my newest issue of Maximum PC tonight since I ran out of motorcycle magazines to read and Katie walks up beside me, sets down her little red heart shaped box of chocolates, her rose, and car keys before she tried to destroy the chair I was calmly relaxing in. I don't mind. She seems to enjoy it so I let her. Besides, it sure breaks up the monotony. I realized after glancing at the clock and noticing it was after midnight that the dreaded day was upon me once more. The famous day of celebrating our love for one another. Since I have nobody special to share it with, I'll have to do something special for myself. Perhaps I'll get a manicure and some expensive hand lotion. Thanks in large part to the help of Les, my pr0n directory is just about 20 gigabytes in size. Les always has the good stuff. I gave him permission to upload to my server so he doesn't have to keep burning CDRs for me. My computer area used to be littered with game and operating system CDs but upon recent inspection, it has been overrun with small treasure troves or nakedness. That is a lot of CDRs. Cleaning up that area gave me inspiration to finally organize my darned CD changer. At one time it was nice and organized (because I can be anal about little things) but one time I got exceptionally drunk and fucked it all up again. It took a great amount of work to do, but it made sense at the time. After something like a year, I eventually managed to reorganize them again tonight. Yay for me! I'll celebrate by going home and eating some of the spiciest tacos I can make (I learned from the best: Monique) and spend some quality time with a war book. I'll need to get plenty of strength to deal with St. Valentine's day. Affectionate people make me nervous. I usually celebrate by trying to find other jaded people who are single and hang out with them. Sometimes I find a woman and get lucky. Usually not. In any event, I am in a really good mood today. I've been relatively chipper for some time. I don't know what brought it on. I haven't had a single drop of coffee all day and yet I've been cutting up a lot. Hell, this is the second time I've posted on my own damned journal in the same workday. It's been a while since I've had this much inspiration to ramble on. I had Steve in tears while we were driving around for lunch. He hadn't heard about Semenex before and I had the distinct pleasure of introducing the concept to him with a twist of satire. Maybe I'm excited that I may be moving to Atlanta and getting out of my current dead-end job. Maybe. I may not go at all. It all depends on how much they offer to pay me before I decide if it will be worth my effort to leave all my friends again. It sucked the last time I did it because I missed them so very much, but it doubled my income and that was nice. Maybe I can do the same again. Wish me luck!

18:02EST-WED-2/13/2002

No, I'm not going to post about the party. That would be what's expected and, honestly, there is only so much that -can- be said. I came, I saw, I drank my ass off (but got nowhere near as plastered as Rhys pretended to be), and tried to hang out with all the friends I only really get a chance to hang out with once a month, when we have these little ho-downs. Yes, I just said ho-downs. I am fully cognizant of my choice of word there, and to be perfectly honest it is because I do not know how to spell swaray and am too unmotivated to bother looking it up since I think it is so trivial. I could use shindig instead but I find I say that so much as it is, I need a change of pace. Dammit, I posted about the party even though I didn't intend to. Oh well, I might as well leave it there. I actually wanted to write about something else entirely. Before I do that, I would like to give a quick run-down of my day to better illustrate why I find it important.
14:30 hours - My pager emits a pulsing screech which knocks me out of whatever fantasy land I was dreaming myself in surrounded by beautiful women and wireless terabit network connectivity only to discover that reality consists of dirty laundry, packet loss, and cat litter finding its way into the farthest reaches of our sheetrock cave.
14:35 hours - I wake my fish with a bath of halogen light and their daily allowance of Guppy Chow. They seem happy to see me and that's a plus.
14:45 hours - I check the status of my latest downloads to see if anyone else in the world happens to have the rather eccentric items I happen to be looking for at that time. Disappointed at the inevitable lack of returns, I make my way to the bathroom for the morning routine of shower/shave/brush teeth and hair.
15:10 hours - Off to work, where I proceed to spend the next 11-12 hours apologizing for the faults of others and trying to rectify the situation with their computers and the internet. Off time is spent reading online comics or the rare technical article that catches my eye. Lunch fits in there somewhere, but it is rarely more exciting than speeding to and from McDonalds with my eyes peeled for cops. A savage daily routine of forced logic and emotional self discipline that over the past two years has robbed me of much joy and almost completely destroyed whatever creativity and spontaneity I once had as a wild youth.
03:00 hours - I always seem to get home at the same time, regardless of how quickly I make my way out of work or through the tangled web of radar speed traps and traffic, I always seem to arrive at home the same time each night leaving me with a mere 3 hours of my day to spend consciously trying to forget the day and do fun things for myself while dreaming of the impossibilities of the future. Daydreaming is a powerful tool, if used right. These three hours are invariably spent hoping someone has sent me email, but I know this is not often the case since I usually do not have the energy to reply and thus keep up the pen pal relationship. I write email more than I call people. Perhaps this is how people who were once close friends with a hundred or so people in school become lonely in their middle age with only their co-workers for company. I swore I would never allow that to happen to me, but the joke has already been told, it seems. I hate being the punch-line.
Why did I feel the need to preface my post with such a lengthy (and incredibly depressing) piece of trash of self-loathing and despair? I chose to write that way in hopes that you could understand how I have been able to see how much little things mean to introverted people. Little things can have a tremendous impact on someone in spite of others finding them to be quite insignificant. Perhaps that is because introverted people tend to feel insignificant as well and a certain kinship is born between the person and the object or idea they cherish so much. Do I have such a thing? Perhaps. As of late, I have been trying to download movies, music, and more from the millions of other digital packrats the dusty corners of the web have become infested with, figure out relationships between families in The Sims, and trying to learn to program .asp code. Pretty much in that level of priority. Last night, the little thing that meant so much to me was the fond memories of seeing a brilliant artists tales about his misanthropic creation. The tales of a modern punk rock juvenile in constant struggle with the world around him that is not his by birth, but by choice alone. I still search for it on occasion but have not found anything for download at all, but I am determined to find something and continue to share it with the rest of the world for the brilliance that it is. I mean, of course, Crazy Daisy Ed.

16:56EST-WED-2/6/2002

Between attempts to tear up my server and put in some upgrades, I have been sucked into playing The Sims. I don't have any of the expansions yet, but it's probably for the best since the original is still very tricky for me. I could barely manage the newbie family. I tried a bachelor modeled after myself (who hasn't) and discovered that I have infinitely better cleaning habits than he does, but he got lonely really quick and pissed off all his neighbors. How appropriate. I decided to create new neighbors who might like him and so I set up a house with two women that he could meet and hang out with but I became focused on playing them instead for a while. The two girls hate each other, and hate my bachelor. They also hate the other neighbors nearby so I obviously have to figure out certain aspects of the game before I can become wildly successful. I hate to resort to cheat codes because that would just kill my desire to continue playing the game once I get bored of the cheats. I prefer reasonable or slightly unreasonable challenges over unreasonable power. After all, it stops being a game of skill and becomes little more amusing than a dead lizard with disco shoes. Well, maybe the lizard would come in first on that one.