Allahu Akbar

Allahu akbar
So I know it's been like a month since I've updated and I doubt anyone is reading this but basically I had to work overtime and it really was kinda shit. Not just like a few hours a week, either. Some weeks were in excess of 65 hours.
That went on forever--
and then after it finally ended I had a few days off so I went to Osaka.
Let me tell you what Osaka is like: it's awesome. It's the biggest city I've ever seen.
Well, except New York City.
And Seoul.
But those don't count because I only saw those through the airport and I think technically the airport in Seoul is in the ass end of Incheon.
Just like the Busan airport is in Gimhae.
No I don't understand it either.
It's not like these are suburbs of these places either (although technically that's how they function I suppose) but if you were to address a letter to someone in Gimhae at no point would the address contain a reference to Busan.
It's all been so long I don't even know what to say. I don't even know how to unpack all this.
66 hours a week is a fucking nightmare and by the end everyone is so grumpy and like two of the higher level management is bitching at me
about nothing, really, and it's like motherfucker
I didn't want to be here
this wasn't my idea
just send everyone home
But you know get drunk with everyone the day of the part and suddenly everyone is cool
people are are fucking weird, man.
So anyway then I go to Osaka which was a nightmare flight that got delayed--
well I missed my first flight and all this overtime and generally not spending money while here in Korea means I can just buy another ticket without really blinking so that's what I did--
so then this flight is delayed because of all the rain or something. Then there are a bunch of, and I have no way of saying this without sounding racist so I'll just say it, Muslims and they're being super loud during the flight and it's just me and this 80 year old Korean man exchanging concerned glances the entire time.
But it was fine. Except I think Japanese immigration was getting ready to deny them entry for some reason. I dunno. All I know is I sailed through immigration and they were being detained.
So then I take a taxi--
in Japan--
which as it turns out is a huge mistake.
So he drives for a while and he ends up in this narrow ass road in like a residential neighborhood and he has to turn around and he's like welp
that's the end of the taxi ride
so I say hey wait no you can't just ditch me here where's the fucking hotel
and he's like oh
it's over there
and so I say well fucking drive me there
and he says he can't and it's time for me to get out
oh by the way it's 11,400 yen (114 dollars) and I about flipped my shit but no, that's ok, my laptop is in his trunk and I'd rather be out 114 dollars and hopelessly lost in the dead of the night in an unfamiliar Osaka suburb that might or might not be owned by organized crime than definitely lose my laptop.
You know because I can potentially carry through and get to my hotel but if I throw a shitfit that laptop and all my clothes are definitely gone.
So I get out and I make sure to position myself so he can't see where he's turning and he scratches the hell out of his side (good fuck that guy) and then I start my hike.
So he seemed to indicate that the road would continue to the main drag where the hotels were (I could see a rather porno looking hotel called Hotel Layla close) but no, the road ends and turns into a gravel road and some woods.
And I think oh good this is how I die.
So I walk through the black woods
of Osaka
Japan
fortunately I didn't see anything and I ended up just making it to the road.
My keen survival instinct just informs me I should keep left at all times so that's what I do and luckily the hotel isn't that far.
Maybe it's just me but as I'm walking in all these unfamiliar places I always try to remind myself about how low the crime rate of Korea or Japan or wherever is
but then there's this moment where I think yeah but it isn't 0
but luckily, no, nothing happens.
So I get to my hotel and by now it's 10:00 PM and I'm just ready to go home
to fucking America I mean
but I check in and what the fuck is this hotel room
it's gorgeous.
Like I have never seen a cleaner hotel room. The room had a desk and couch and a king size bed and a huge projector that worked as a TV. 100 inch TV in my room.
Oh and a slot machine. I was told they had Fist of the North Star slot machines but sadly wasn't lucky enough to get one of those rooms.
This hotel was like 40 dollars a night, mind you.
I'd like to see what an 80 dollar hotel looks like.
So at this point I think hey this'll be ok.
Even if I can't find anything chilling in a room that isn't perpetually a little bit damp due to the age, humidity of the place it's in and the general pissing-down-rain nature of Korea will be great.
So at this point I think oh good I have no clue where I am at all
most people do research but fuck those people frankly
you have way more fun when you wing it I think
So I ask the desk lady hey where's the station and she gives me a map and circles the nearest terminal.
So I think hey this'll be it then.
So I go up to my room and it's time for Japanese TV
turn it on
porno
this is going to be a theme running through the whole of the trip to Japan, really.
So after checking that indeed I just turn the TV on to porno a few times I decide to see if there's any better porno on. Flip through the channels? no more porno.
But oh wait there's an entire softcore channel just part of the basic cable package apparently.
So then I discover that there's an Art of Gundam show so I fucking went to that shit hardcore, man.
That was my entire Saturday.
That and going to Den-Den Town where they sell everything for nerds
basically nerd heaven is what I'm trying to say. And occasionally you see a hot chick dressed as some sort of weird anime character.
Basically where I want to go when I die.
Anyway that's about it for today I might post again tomorrow with something relevant I dunno
fuck blogging

That's a penis

Here's some jackoff with a blog I dunno

I’ve been looking at the high-powered blue-beam lasers for a few years now, that are capable of starting fires from a distance. I actually had several ideas of what that could be good for (no, not arson) around my own area. This is just entirely my own ideas, maybe someone with more experience with high powered lasers can tell me if I’m just being more paranoid than usual.

Use it to castrate yourself you fucking wad.

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to put that entire idea on hold for safety. I know that may come as a surprise to most who know me, as just yesterday I was messing with an antique rifle that’s bigger than some people are tall (the shaving cream can being used as a test dummy sort of exploded with just a glancing blow. Oops.) but in this case I think my usual paranoia’s actually moved beyond my normal ‘twenty foot thick backstop’ solution and into the actual realm of actually NOT doing something. This is new.

Why do all these guys with blogs sound the fucking same? They're always pseudo-intellectual and talk like they're some kind of misunderstood genius but really they're just fucking weird and furries.
And losers.
Is it a rule of the internet that if you have a blog you have to be fucking boring?

Well, here we are a full two weeks after my appendix burst, and so far so good. My last side-tube is out, the infection seems to be gone, and I will have to do some follow ups to look into surgery some time in November to remove the last bits of appendix, but it seems to have worked out well. I did not die, which sounds pathetic but is a real accomplishment.

Too bad.

I passed my dissertation defense today. This means I am entirely done except for the paperwork, which has to be in on time. That’s the one area I’m still worried about.

The job situation is also good news as I’ve picked one up at the community college back home! While not the highest paying, it’s where my house is so no rent to worry about and I’ll be able to start putting it back together as I’ve largely been stopping in for a day or so every few months to drop stuff off. Not the best way to keep anything.

Woooooow who cares

A while back I had a problem with one of my diamond cutting blades. I’d used it for a while on everything from sheetmetal to ceramic without issue, and one day cutting through a very thick iron pipe I noticed it wasn’t cutting well at all anymore. The edges appeared to be polished smooth, which was very odd as it was, as I said, a diamond blade. Usually wear exposes more cutting edges. A smooth edge was rather strange.

I just found out yesterday that diamonds are often NOT used for high speed machining of steels due to diamond, and carbon in general, being soluble in iron at very high temperatures, such as what you get when you’re moving a blade at about 45,000 rpm and the metal you’re cutting is white-hot as a result…

I didn’t know this and now I feel stupid. I’ve been told that I can fix my blade if I cut through some hard substances to wear the smoothed part off and get back to some unfuzed diamonds. I don’t know if that will work yet or not.

Luckily, industrial diamonds, like I prefer in my cutters, are in a totally different category than jewelry-grade diamonds in that they are very CHEAP. Most are synthetic and the rest are cast-off from mining processes. It’s true that my sharpening stones, which are also made of diamond suspended in a metal bonding, do sparkle if you stick them in sunlight but it’s a ‘grey’ sparkle that no one would be impressed by.

Even so, I did wonder what it says that I think my favorite ‘gemstone’ is industrial diamond (just by virtue of how many I own compared to any other kind of stone) and the general consensus is that it means I’m cheap.

So much for those birthstone charts and zodiac things…

I just forgot to breathe for like three straight minutes.
Did I die?

 Apologies to anyone who’s life I destroyed by not writing ‘spoiler’ in before I talked about Adventure Time. I didn’t think that anyone would be as far behind as me in seeing it. So, SPOILER:

I was giving some thought to the Ice King, and I realized something. I think he is the only cartoon ‘villain’ I know of who got his evil powers through perfectly legitimate methods. Even in cases where the bad guy is supposed to have had great wealth or something they always seem to imply that something shady occurred to get it.

Him from the Power Puff girls got his power by virtue of being the devil.
A transsexual devil.
What a bizarre show.

And another thing…

So I was thinking earlier (soul-cutting scream here) but then I realized (head banging on desk) except I needed to take into account (knock over desk yelling) yet, when you get down to it, it’s really just a case of (throw chair through the window and dive out head first, wailing).

You know what I mean…?

Dude just stop.

I don’t have a game console of any kind but I did see someone playing the game recently and saw the full scenes on Youtube. In Arkham city (and most other media) Ra's al Ghul wants Batman to kill him, marry his daughter, and take over some organization of assassins. In almost every version Batman does defeat him in combat, passes the trials, and then…just walks off, not killing the guy, and making a lifelong (or longer if Ra's al Ghul’s claim of being 600 years old is correct) enemy.

Great game. Mr. Freeze is a genuinely tense and creepy boss fight.
The creepiness comes from your conditioning as a video game player. As a game player you're probably used to bosses following a pattern and you exploit it until you win.
So imagine my surprise when I engage this instinct only to have Mr. Freeze toss Batman off his back and say "I learn from my mistakes, Batman."

While I admit I’m not as ‘morally perfect’ as Batman (having to deal with actual reality as opposed to scripted fiction will do that to you) I agree with the idea of not killing a man for no reason, but not Batman’s result. Why (and this might make a great comic) not STILL avoid killing him, but take over the assassins while making al Ghul his TEACHER? If this man is indeed centuries old, he would be an amazing repository of information and skills.

You know it was like game of the year according to many sources. I don't think they need your help telling the story, buddy. I ended up doing something else for like 2 hours.
This is that fucking boring.
Jesus.
Song of the now.

The Struggle

Holy God Diablo III fanfiction.
This is one post but we're doing it and then I'll do another blog because holy shit.

Character Info ››
Name: Malthael
Canon: Diablo 3
Age: Many thousands of years
Appearance: Faceless, glowing wings, likes to dress in black and white
Canon Point: Just after the Nephalem enters the Pandemonium Fortress

"Likes to dress in black and white"
like oh hey Malthael, Archangel of Death, Reaper of Souls, what are you going to wear today
I dunno man how about some black and white robes?

 Personality: By the time Malthael starts to exterminate humanity to bring about an end to the Eternal Conflict, He has become a cold, heartless, ruthless being. The only hint of his old self is when he spares Tyrael, as even though Tyrael is mortal, he lacks the demonic taint present in all humanity. He sees anything demonic as worthy of being destroyed, and this includes all humanity in his canon (encountering non-demonic humans will be a very troubling issue for him in the game).

... "encountering non-demonic humans will be a very troubling issue for him"
"he spares Tyrael because he's a non-tainted human"
WOW IT'S LIKE THE INCREDIBLY THIN, CLICHE PLOT TO DIABLO 3 WAS ALMOST TOO MUCH FOR YOU TO HANDLE!
Here let me summarize this shit so you can get a non-retard summary of this literary tour-de-force on par with Herman Hesse's Siddhartha:
In the grim darkness of not-earth Satan and his asshole brothers decide to terrorize not-earth because--
uhh--
and anyway there are angels but they're non-denomination angels with no God.
This shit isn't Christianity, okay?
But the angels are almost as bad as the devils so humans are doubly fucked.
Also humans are the spawn of angels fucking devils.
Shut the fuck up. Someone was paid to write this and you're going to goddamn listen to it.
So a ton of stupid shit happens and then we come to the world stone which is like a magic stone that's somehow important to keeping reality stable but if you fuck with it enough you can also alter reality.
Malthael, who used to be the angel of wisdom, became the angel of death. His solution to defeating the demons (as angels and demons hate each other, natch) and therefore ending the Eternal War is to kill all humanity by stealing the world stone and then sucking out all the demonic essence in the world, thereby exterminating humanity because, as we said, they're half demons.
This will make Malthael all-powerful and then he can kill all demons and rule over a realm of death.
It's a solution, anyway.
But luckily your character in Diablo 3 is the Nephalem which is like a super powerful human throwback to when angels and demons first started boning.
This plot is fucking stupid why am I even wasting my time trying to summarize it?
Malthael is effective as a villain and Reaper of Souls does have some excellent art direction but the plot is fucking stupid and also gay.
He enjoys taunting the Nephalem about the futility of their quest, and enjoys every death brought about by his army: Each death makes him stronger and brings that much closer the end of the Eternal Conflict, something Malthael has always been denied in the past. In a way, it could serve to soothe a wound and ease the trouble in his mind that began when the Worldstone was first lost. At the point from which I am taking Malthael he will be full of wrath and fury at being torn away from Pandemonium when his victory is so close at hand.
You keep saying "enjoys" and "likes" like this thing can possibly have emotions outside of fucking murder.

While Malthael was once capable of working alongside others, accepting their right to bring their opinions forth as part of the Angiris Council, he no longer views any as his equals (Imperious' temper causes them to lose their chance to capture Diablo, and looking back at all those failures does not help his opinion and view of his fellow Angels). Angels are probably the only beings he would not kill for getting in his way, and then only if sparing them would not (in his mind, and he doesn't have the best judgment on this matter because he considers himself unstoppable) cause further trouble.
He used to be the angel of wisdom, idiot.

Then he became disillusioned with what he saw as the angel of wisdom--
what the fuck is it with fanfiction?
It's like every five minutes there's a new monument to insanity ready to horrify me right to my fucking core.
 You're writing a fanfiction/roleplay about a series that can be summarized with "click on skeletons so you can get loot to more effectively click on skeletons"

He'll accept those working towards the same cause he is, but isn't going to listen to any dissenting voices once he's decided on a course of action, even if that course of action is ultimately going to be self-destructive.

... Which explains why the other angels, who have proposed the destruction of humanity before, side with him.
OH WAIT NO THEY SIDE WITH YOU BECAUSE HIS PLAN IS CRAZIER THAN WHAT THE ANGELS USUALLY DO.
Malthael's only allies in this war are his own underlings, who, understandably, are corrupted like him by him becoming the archangel of death.
This seriously is a simple, simple black and white morality kinda plot. How are you this shitty at characterizing death?
He fucking kills people.
That's the end of his characterization.
This is not a dynamic character.

Malthael was once a beautiful and wonderful being who cherished all life, but continual failures led him down the path that ended in Death. The Nephalem destroying the Prime Evil, a feat that the Angels had been unable to accomplish for thousands of years, was simply the final unbearable proof that he'd been inadequate as Wisdom.

Malthael has a lot of anger he doesn't acknowledge, at himself, the Angiris council, humanity in general and the Nephalem in particular. 

Or to summarize this succinctly: Malthael is disillusioned so he becomes archangel of death and Tyrael becomes the archangel of wisdom to fill in the spot.
Come on people, fuck.
The main angels summarize concepts as complicated and not-cliched as hope, wisdom, fate, death and valor.
Clearly we need fanfiction about this.
Somehow fate and death aren't buddies, either.
I'll leave it to the reader to decide how much sense that makes.

Instead he lives in denial, rationalizing that as Death, he is in a better position to combat the remaining demonic threat than he could when he was the Aspect of Wisdom; Likewise, the Angiris council is flawed, and the only Angels Malthael accepts are those who agree to serve him obediently. And obviously humanity and the Nephalem are abominations, since nothing good could possibly rival the power of an Archangel.

He's not wrong.
The Angels have proven incredibly inept at fighting demons and his plan, while extreme, would have worked.
So is he in denial?
He's just a man with a plan, really.
Also the main problem with the angels, as I see it, is them trusting Imperius.
Despite his name being Imperius and him being the archangel of valor he's also a total puss.
Again, expert writing.

There was a time when Malthael rarely spoke, but he has become considerably more talkative (in comparison) than he was before the Worldstone went missing. 

>more talkative than when the Worldstone went missing
>the story states he disappeared after the Worldstone disappeared
yeah no that's true.
Hard to be less talkative than being totally absent.

He's still not the most talkative being, but he does enjoy taunting his foes. As Malthael has no face in his normal form, emotion and feeling are usually communicated through body language, and in particular, the movement of his wings (which now take the form of skeletal wisps of pale light rather than the luminous purple they once were)

>body language
>spends 90% of the expansion folded up like a mummy
No, cool. You're making the actual plot to Diablo 3 seem competent.

Abilities/Powers/Skills: Malthael is the Aspect of Death. In Diablo 3 that made him invulnerable to everything except Death. The only way the Nephalem could defeat him was to also take on the aspect of Death. That wouldn't really work so well in a game, so this will be nerfed so that he can be hurt by anything (he is not going to accept this so well), but only actually killed by another thing that is Death.

God that was so fucking dumb in the game.
"Only his own aspect can harm him!"
"How do you get that?"
"I dunno like eat a ghost or something"
AND INDEED YOU DO.

Being death, Malthael can create fog from his wings that causes living things to decay. He can also sense any amount of demonic essence in a soul, and rip souls from bodies (although that is more difficult the stronger his opponent is, and Malthael is unlikely to do it to anything that isn't demonic). Hearing his voice can cause dark and brooding thoughts and feelings in people.

Here just watch this and save yourself a ton of time with this garbage.
I'll give Blizzard some credit. This cinematic is, well, cinematic as fuck.
In fact if you're not paying attention you might actually think this is quality writing.

Weaknesses: Malthael has no particular kryptonite

I dunno he seemed to have a pretty big weakness to getting cornered and cheesed to death with frozen orb spam. Also after watching that can you believe some people had the audacity to claim the game was too bright?
Like sorry they had to use a color other than black. You won't find someone who is willing to criticize Blizzard faster than me but the art direction wasn't the issue.
Actually it was in a way. The classes are kind of uninteresting at times. Like you have this wacky high Gothic world and the best you can do is a wizard and a dude with an axe?
Like I got a cool idea for a character. A hot Egyptian kinda chick who's Diablo 3's equivalent to the druid.
She can turn into a crocodile, a jackal and like an eagle or something.
You can have that idea, Blizzard.
A lot of people are bitching the game needs a necromancer class but that's pretty much the witch doctor. Sorry you can't summon skellingtons. Guess you'll have to make due with exploding zombie bears you ungrateful whining losers.

Special Items: His armor and his two weapons are highly magical and incredibly durable/hard/sharp, but they have no special characteristics beyond that.

... He is the suit of armor, buddy. Remember when Tyrael pulled his pauldrons off and his wings went with it and it made him mortal?
I think it's safe to say angels are just embodied suits of armor.
Wow I spent the entire entry talking about Diablo 3.
Fuck me. Fuck fanfiction.
Song of the now. I've had this stuck in my head a while because I'm a homo.

Blogs are boring

Fuck me it never ends with this shit.
Overly intellectual (usually British) guy
girl who writes too much fanfiction and thinks she's humanity's gift to literature--
religious person who won't shut the fuck up about little shit being baby Jesus--
furries (just kidding that's not even a thing anymore)
actually, yeah, let's talk about furries briefly.
Remember all those people who said in their soul they were actually a fox?
What happened to that?
Are they even still around anymore?
How long has it been since we've had a furry blog?
This wave of boring pseudo-intellectualism and Dr. Who fanfiction has just obliterated the furry.
Not that I'm complaining or anything but, I dunno, I need some variety. I think all the words and permutations of words I can use in regards to stultifying Dr. Who fanfiction story #58934741.3 I'm skipping have been exhausted.
Anyway pseudo-intellectual person.
Maybe a girl. Who can say?

I've spent a not inconsiderable part of the day coping with the inefficiencies of the current financial infrastructure. First I went to pay off a chunk of my mortgage. I went to my old C&G branch at Moorgate, walked in, gave my cheque to the cashier and told her what I wanted to happen. After some apologies that it was "her first day", I was passed along to the next guy, who told me that it was now a TSB branch, and although he could process it, it might be a better idea for me to go to the Lloyds branch around the corner.

Have you ever seen Reservoir Dogs?
Well that'd be a solution.
Just saying.

So, of I went to the Lloyds around the corner. That led to a 25 minute farce as they tried to work out what to do. The main problem is that most of the mortgage payments that they receive in branches are just that - payments on the mortgage. What I wanted to do was reduce the principle on an interest-only mortgage, a different transaction entirely. And they just could not find out what code they had to enter.

>reduce the principal
whoa easy there, Mr. Moneybanks. This is 2014.

When did the 1960s start? 

January 1, 1960.

The obvious answer is, January 1 1960. People took more notice of decades in those days. I do not remember the passing from the 1950s to the 1960s, but I do remember the passing from the 1960s to the 1970s. I went to a New Year's Eve Party at a council flat off the Wandsworth Road. A pop TV programme was on, of which I only really remember The Who.

January 1, 1960.
Unless we're talking metaphorically like when did the culture stop being 50s and start being 60s.
Because as we all know the 80s actually started in 1978.

But social movements and decades do not neatly coincide. And how one defines "the sixties" depends on your parameters. Politics? Economics? Fashion? Music? Literature? Film? 

Like 1964 or something.
I possess two well-known books on that decade - The Neophiliacs by Christopher Booker and The Pendulum Years by Bernard Levin.
Yes, truly those are the books of the 1960s.
Two books I haven't even heard of.
Not Dune?
Like of all the books of the 1960s surely Dune should be in the top 2.

It would be easy to write 200 pages on how the Age of Austerity morphed into the era of "You've Never Had It So Good" and then morphed again into the end of that Macmillian era -- so beautifully drawn by Timothy Birdsall in an early Private Eye, depicting Bacchanalian excess at the heart of the Conservative government.

That sounds like the least interesting thing ever.
Like holy shit that was the era of psychedelics and scifi and that's what you got?

But this is more of a personal memory, written down now because, I realize to my horror, far fewer people are alive who remember the early 1960s than those who do not.

Yeah that means you're too old to be blogging. My mom doesn't remember the early 60s.
She was a toddler then.
You gotta stop, dude.
Like come on man.

I was quite distinctly defined by pop music. And so my measure of the start of the 1960s is pop-related.

I was reminded of this while watching a compilation of 1960s hits. With the benefit of time, it's easier to see the flow from the 1950s through the 1960s to the 1970s. The "new music", so hated by my father, in terms of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, really consisted of nice middle-class white boys in sharp suits and ties, adapting the blues music of American blacks. If you wanted a real innovator in UK terms, you had to look to Lonnie Donegan.

No, it was not "She Loves You" that defined the beginning of the 1960s, not for me.

While watching that 1960s music compilation, I realized that the real groundbreaker was Sonny and Cher's performance in 1965 on Top Of The Pops of "I've Got You Babe". The tune was not radical, but the words represented the San Francisco ethos that would become famous three years later with Scott Mackenzie. 

YES, TRULY
SONNY AND CHER ARE THE 1960S.
THERE WERE NO BETTER ACTS.
Like I say 1960s music and what's the one answer you should give?
Oh I don't know, what about THE BEATLES YOU FUCKING RETARD

I had an interesting encounter early on in my holiday in Las Vegas. I was talking to a rather intelligent ultra-liberal (for the US) poker player, about 30 years of age. Somehow the conversation got round to living for nothing in London, and I mentioned the word "ligger".

He reacted with horror, which puzzled me. Then he said that it would be difficult to use that word in the US, because it was too close to the "N Word". 

1. ligger isn't a word.
2. shut the fuck up.

Needless to say, this set me off on one. "So", I said, "the liberals are now so sensitive to the word nigger that you can't even use words that SOUND like it? Hasn't the fact that words which sound like each other don't necessarily mean similar things sunk in in liberal America?"

Subsequently I asked him if he had similar problems with the words rigour, figure, bigger and that character from the Jungle Book, Tigger.

I'm suddenly reminded of my buddy in EVE Online, Digger Nick.

Obviously, he hadn't. That was because the meanings of these words were in his brain. The transfer to meaning from sound was entrenched. However, with "ligger" (a word that he did not know) he had no meaning to fall back on -- only the sound of the word. It was this which caused him to think that there would be a problem with the word.

But does this not also say something damning about liberal America? The word "nigger" (even though he could not bring himself to say it) was so high in his consciousness; the fear of offending "African-Americans" was so great, that when I mentioned a word that even rhymed with nigger, then that was the first word he thought of. Not "figure", "rigour", "bigger", or "Tigger". No, his mind leapt immediately to a word that he could not bring himself to utter.

Remember when Fox news was debating if the word nigger was as bad as cracker?
But it wasn't "nigger vs cracker" it was "n-word vs cracker"
like when you won't even say one of the words
that's the worse word
Also I'm allowed to type the word nigger because I'm called it enough in a 24 hour period by teenagers I'm basically black at this point.
Like when a 6'7" kid comes in with his posse and addresses me "what up my nigga" and means it genuinely there's something wrong
like I'm a tie and a clipboard away from being middle management I don't think this is how this is supposed to work
but yeah good to see you too, Larry

This, I feel, indicates a far higher level of race consciousness amongst white liberals than the white working class. I've long maintained that part of my problem (as far as white liberals are concerned) is that I frequently forget the race and colour of people. To me, they are people.

I don't even give a shit about race
black, white
Indian
Asian
Hispanic
you're all dumbass teenagers who don't know the first thing about anything to me.

As such I do not have this white liberal (and, it must be admitted, black intelligentsia) hyper-sensitivity to the "travesties of history". I'm not perpetually carrying a guilt trip for the misdeeds of people in the 18th century who happened to have a skin similarly hued to mine. 

I just want to know why black people name their kids after Roman Emperors.
I mean by and large black American culture is very offended by their past enslavement (totally understandable) but naming your kids after the rulers of people who are so sold on the idea of slavery they owned white slaves too--
not sure that's what you're aiming for.
Maybe they just like the names.
I will agree they had some rad names.

It would be a lot easier if the white liberals and black intelligentsia could think the same way.

Most black people I meet are about as sick of the likes of Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson playing the race card incessantly as anyone else.
They're just people, Jesus. Most of them are just trying to make some money before they fucking die like the rest of us.
Here's a post about online poker--
but not like "here's my grand online poker strategy" it was just a discussion about point conversions.
Want to read four paragraphs about me discussing the merits of buying champions in League of Legends with Riot Points versus Influence Points?
NO?
Me neither.
Fuck it.

Third day in France, and not a whisper of a blog entry. 

Wow that's fucking incredible.
Not a whisper of a blog entry so what the fuck are all these words that follow this sentence?
It's the miracle entry.
It's the fucking virgin birth of blogs.
The entry that wasn't conceived.

Have Facebook and Twitter updates truly made the blog redundant?

Why are you asking this question on a blog?
Clearly the answer is no.

Certainly a significant number of the people whom I know who used to write blogs now confine themselves to FB or (increasingly) Twitter posts.

I'll admit that, when Twitter started, I was sceptical. Grubby (Pauly's brother) was the first blogger whom I saw mention it, 

Who you saw mention it.
You directly mentioned him. Grubby, Pauly's brother, who was the first blogger I saw mention it.
He is the subject of this sentence.
Whom is the direct object.

when he was working at a radio station, back in, I dunno, 2008 or something like that. First of all, I couldn't quite get the hang of what it was, and then I couldn't quite work out what the point was. I got the fact that it would be useful for real-time updates of chip counts and the like, but this was before the smartphone and 'always on' was ubiquitous, even in Europe, let alone the US, which was about 18 months behind the curve when it came to mobile telecommunications.

>need a mathematical count for a mathematical game
>uses Twitter and not a spreadsheet
come on dude what the fuck there's a reason the stock market is a ticker and a candle graph and not twitter.com most valuable stock on the NYSE

And, speaking of mediums, I'm writing this on a laptop which is on my lap. That doesn't happen very often. Laptops in the main these days are more portable desktops than laptops, aren't they?

... No?
I know we're getting cute with our words but a desktop just means there is a cabinet for the computer and the other bits are separate and a laptop is integrated.
And I swear to God if anyone posts about Macs being integrated I will kill myself and haunt you.

In the office a few years ago you would see people moving between floors carrying their notebooks (paper). Now they are carrying their laptops.

Do you want to pick a thought and stick to it?
What I got from this:
Twitter replaced blogs because laptops replaced paper.

People moan about the depersonalization of air travel these days, and never stop criticizing the hassle off fflights in the modern world.

Did you guys see the Korea Airlines commercial during the Olympics?
Prove to me that isn't a country that has its fucking act together.
Hot women in skirts.
Have you seen American airline commercials?
I feel like I'm being sold a line of credit.
Fuck off, everyone.
Here just compare.
Am I going crazy
Like I dunno which would you rather do?
Go on Korean Air where hot women will serve you drinks with umbrellas and this P.F. Chang looking motherfucker will cook you chicken or do you want to hear bloated William Shatner and that unfunny cunt from Big Bang Theory cackle?
Excuse my while I load this 9MM and put it to my fucking temple.

One of the things investors are always careful of when looking at balance sheets is spotting how "optimistic" a company is when it comes to booking revenue. 

I don't know why companies are ever optimistic in predicting their earnings. If you meet expectations your stock goes down because it didn't exceed them and if you don't meet them it really goes down
so just assume the fucking worst.

If you see marriage as a religious institution rather than a legal institution, one "sanctified by god and by god alone", then you could be a strong supporter of gay rights and yet still feel unable to vote in favour of gay "marriage", because (their argument would go) they simply cannot do so because they believe the institution of marriage to be something unique to a man and a woman. 

To which I'd remind you that not everyone believes in your hateful desert god.

That isn't homophobia (the most common accusation) or bigotry (the second-most common accusation). It's a deeply held belief (no matter how misguided from some people's point of view) based on an interpretation of the Bible. 

Wrong is wrong.
Well intentioned or not.
Some day people will learn the only thing that actually matters is results.

In the early days, advertising and marketing was effective because it was new. If advertisers and marketers had been shrewd, they would have rationed it – kept it rare and thus maintained its level of impact. It could, in other words, have become a sustainable ecology.

There you go. Better to sell one of something at 300 dollars than 10 of something at 40 dollars.
You heard it here first, people.

It was nice to come back from Las Vegas in profit. I still haven't achieved the dream of paying for everything, but I came pretty close. I won $1,350. The holiday cost $880 (flight), $400 (spent), and $630 (hotel, including added gym and internet fees). So that's $560 spent for the entire two weeks. However, included in that is about $100 that I spent on clothes and stuff (I bought another $200-worth on my card). So that brings it down to $460. And if I had stayed at home I would have spent about $160 at Tesco and maybe $200 elsewhere. So the net cost of the fortnight, in a hotel, in Las Vegas, and most definitely not here, was $100. I'd take that deal.

>profit
>lost 560 dollars
uhhhh
maybe I'm don't know what profit actually is but what?
Also you "won" 1350 after two weeks. What's that in dollars per hour?
Because I'm guessing it's about minimum wage.

I also won about $1,350 online this year -- pathetic compared to the $25,000-odd that I chalked up in 2009, but rather better than the $10 or thereabouts that I achieved in 2011.

I can tell you precisely when the wheels started to came off -- it was in October 2009 in France. My monitor blew up, so I started playing cascading rather than tiled.

>tool failure
>instead of replacing the tool you change the fundamentals of what you do to make money
>wonder where you started going wrong
do people think about shit ever?

Dell announced a 47% drop in profits this morning. That's a neat indication to anyone who supports buying "growth companies" as an investment strategy that the important part of that strategy is to know when to get out.

>Dell is also looking to go private
>implying
Fuck blogs Jesus Christ.
But do you know what shouldn't even be badmouthed ever?
Playing Fallout: New Vegas and then this is on the radio in the game.

INTELLECTUALISM

let's read a blog written by a guy who fancies himself as really fucking clever and let's be put to sleep by it--
Oh boy.
Like I could write about my misadventures on the internet and make it more compelling than this. It's not that more interesting stuff happens to me it's just I can express it in a better way.
What I'm trying to say is your life isn't boring. You're boring.

I’ve blogged before about the decline of radio as a channel for breaking new music, which is due to both online competition from the likes of Spotify and the effect of consolidation on radio programming (i.e. there’s a reason you hear the same “classic” hits over and over and over again).

So you feel the need to revisit this already boring topic.
Good.
In other words, the medium people rely on most to discover new music is playing less and less of it.
>rely on the radio
>2014
turn up the radio.

This seems inevitable [via Engadget]: A guy was ejected from an AMC movie theatre and questioned by the police for wearing Google Glass.

[…] the unnamed individual stopped by the AMC Easton 30 in Columbus to watch Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, wearing Google Glass attached to his prescription lenses, something he says he'd done before without any trouble.

Where the story takes a twist however, is when officers moved in an hour into the movie, yanked the Glass from his face, and brought the man and his wife to separate interrogation rooms for over three hours.

They eventually let him go after plugging the Glass into a computer, checking it for pirate material and finding none.

I think if you're caught wearing Google Glass in public you should be shot in the eyes.

The MPAA has since claimed that it's official stance on Google Glass is “it’s not a threat”. Which doesn’t explain why the guy was yanked out of the theatre and interrogated for three and a half hours in the first place.

Because the police are fucking thugs. I don't understand why this is a mystery for anyone.

ITEM: A new study published in the Yale Law Journal has found that tracking a cell phone’s location costs somewhere between 1.9% and .015 % of the price of tailing someone the old fashioned way.

The number depends on the method yr talking about, but essentially it’s the difference between spending hundreds of dollars an hour and just pennies. 

Incidentally he does this annoying thing where "your" becomes "yr".
Considering he bothers with commas and apostrophes the only reason I can conclude for him doing this is to piss specifically me off.
Well it's working so good job.
Also good I hope Google is monitoring me.
Fuck it prepare for boredom.

And that’s about all I have to say about pot legalization in the state.

Well, one other thing, maybe – I don’t remember ever bringing up the War On Drugs™ here.

As you might guess, I am in favor of legalization for a simple reason: criminalization makes no sense whatsoever in a land where binge drinking is either an acceptable rite of passage or an average Friday night. It’s a double standard, and even the people who actively oppose legalization know it is. They just live in this bizarre fear that America will turn into a nation of hippie stoners and then the Communists will take over the world. Or something. 

>Or something
>implying the alcohol industry didn't lobby intensely for the criminalization of marijuana
 The only reason it's swinging the other way must be because the US government reckons there's more money to reap legalizing it than there is from the alcohol industry buying them off.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have inhaled.

Having said that, I’ve never really been into drugs of any kind, and I’ve especially never cared for recreational marijuana for a few reasons:

1. It’s a long-term ticket to lung cancer.

2. It smells like someone pissing on a hot frying pan full of okra.

3. Most people who smoke it regularly tend to be very boring, boring people.

Ah so I guess that makes you a regular user, then.

Obviously I don’t watch A&E. Or reality shows in general. And based on what little I now know about it (Phil Robertson’s worldview aside), Duck Dynasty doesn’t sound like something that would interest me in any case.

Anyway, of course I have nothing to say about Robertson’s opinions that I haven’t already said a million times before on this blog and elsewhere.

As for the inevitable social media trainwreck, the whole thing is silly on multiple levels. It’s silly that people get lathered up into indignant outrage every time some D-level public figure says something offensive – especially some reality-TV person whose producers benefit from all the publicity. I get that people are offended by Phil’s comments, but yr really just feeding the machine by filling yr Facebook feed with anti-Phil memes. 

OH MY GOD DUDE COME THE FUCK ON.
Do you have any emotions?
Come on. Get angry.
Get indignant.
Get happy.
Get something.
Fuck.
And I don't mean about Duck Dynasty. I mean about anything. You clearly don't give a shit one way or another about Duck Dynasty so why the fuck are you even talking about it? Do you feel required to post about timely shit?
Who cares?
Here's my timely comment: Justin Bieber is a twat.
There.
How hard is that?
Move on.

Needless to say, the lead story in Hong Kong for the past couple of days over the weekend (until the MTR broke down for five hours today) has been China’s Chang'e-3 lander arriving on the moon, and deploying the Yutu (“Jade Rabbit”) rover. 

I hope China lands on the moon.
I swear to fuck I hope it becomes a reality.
This country needs to get its act together and I hope losing the greatest thing it ever did to China sends some kind of message.

Peter O’Toole is gone. As you know.

I can’t add much to what’s already being said about him,

SO WHY ARE YOU POSTING YOU BORING SHIT

So.

What have we learned from watching the Twilight Saga?

They're movies for dumb teenage girls who gives a shit?
Are you incapable of picking an interesting topic?

“When yr in love, stick by yr decisions, and don’t let anyone tell you how stupid yr acting because love will never steer you wrong, so what do they know?”

YR YR YR YR
Go piss up a tree, shit for dicks.

This pretty much sums up why I look back on my teenage years with horror and revulsion. Every Friday and Saturday night, all the cool kids would cruise the local mall and hang out.

I hated mall culture. I thought it was superficial bullshit for people who cared more about being popular and fashionable and trendy – and more importantly, being seen doing it – than they did about anything important.

This was, of course, because I was unpopular, unfashionable and the polar opposite of cool. Also, I had no car and no money, so I couldn’t really get to the mall to hang out even if I wanted to. 

>live through the 80s
>80s were gay
DUDE WHAT THE MOTHERFUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOUR FUCK
SHIT
GOD

I’ve long since gotten over my aversion to shopping malls, mainly out of necessity – Hong Kong is lousy with them, as is pretty much every major city in Asia that I travel to, but they do usually serve as giant multilevel convenience stores. They’re also usually where the CD stores and good English-language bookstores are.

You live
in Hong Kong
and the most you can manage is to bitch about shopping malls in the 80s?
So if I'm understanding this entire situation correctly
you came of age in the golden age that is the 1980s and then you went to Asia and you're this boring?
How are you not the most interesting man alive?
What have you done with all this wasted opportunity?
Whew I just need to sit back a moment and catch my fucking breath because this is doing me in and not in a good way.

The film version of Ender’s Game is now playing at a cinema near you – unless yr in Hong Kong like me, in which case it will be at a cinema near me later this week.

And as you may know, there is controversy – mainly because Orson Scott Card, the author of the classic SF novel the film is based on, has expressed fairly silly and noxious opinions about gays and lesbians (though not in the novel).

how is your post not
WOW
I'M IN FUCKING HONG KONG
ONE OF THE MOST COSMOPOLITAN CITIES ON EARTH FILLED WITH ASIAN WOMEN

ITEM: The Daily Beast has an interesting TL;DR story on the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM).

You know, the movement where oppressed dudebros fight against the evil domineering feminist matriarchy that enslaves us.

Yes. The same movement that comes up with ad campaigns like this.  

Where are your balls?
I mean goddamn I cannot believe
with the awesome gift you've been given
the only thing you can think to talk about on October 24, 2013 was to manufacture how pissed off you are at some assholes for being pissed at some cunts.
I mean are you fucking joking?
What, life wasn't good enough for you?
You had to find something to pitch a bitch about?
If I had come of age in the 80s and now lived in Hong Kong and you said "hey men's rights activists are pissed at feminists" here would be my reaction:
"what the fuck is a men's rights activist?"
followed closely by:
"what the fuck is a feminist?"

Despite being a man, I’m not that sympathetic to the dudebro cause. (Which, I understand, makes me a “pussy” – a term that’s been pretty much applied to me since junior high school, which tells you a lot about the mentality involved here.)

You are a pussy.
I mean god
fuck me.
No I can't be mad.
If I get any angrier I'm going to have an issue on my hands.

I don’t do many posts about Obamacare, for a couple of reasons:

1. I know very little about how the healthcare system works. 

Oh yeah?
If I were in your exact situation here would be my one and only post on the subject of Obamacare:
Now all I gotta say to you
Wannabe, gonnabe, pussy-eatin' cocksuckin' prankstas
When the shit jumps off what the fuck you gonna do
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta

2. The attempts by most politicians, pundits and Facebook memes to explain to me how Obamacare is a good or a bad thing tend to be overblown and/or apocryphal. While this is generally a bipartisan issue, it’s a much bigger problem on the Republican side of the equation. 

Oh yeah dude just tell me all about it.
MMMM YEAH GET ME HARD WITH THAT TALK OF BIPARTISAN BULLSHIT GOD I LOVE IT

Anyway, I am now back from Singapore, and I go straight back there next Tuesday (hence the headline of this post). So you can expect some random Singapore-related posts – most of them pictures of buildings and food – for the foreseeable future.

Lucky you. 

COOL.
VACATION FROM HONG KONG TO SINGAPORE.
I get it, though. You needed a break from that 70 degree, full sun beach day.
So instead you went to--
A PLACE WHERE IT'S 85 AND SUNNY.
God fucking damn. 
Oh no good glad there are 5 videos that play automatically when loading this page.
No I'm glad you did that.
Fucking cocksucking asshole.
You know of all the Victor Greywolfs of the world
and the Meanest Moms
this motherfucker has made me angriest.
Good job, dude.

Pacific Rim

Guillermo del Toro’s love letter to giant-monster/giant robot films, in which giant monsters start emerging from a portal in the ocean floor and attacking coastal cities. Humanity fights back with giant robots. Said fights are epic.

There’s so much wrong about this film – technological silliness, bad decision making, and acting ranging from standard to hammy – and yet it works so wonderfully.  

Pacific Rim was good?
What the fuck world are you from--
A kid asked me last week why Hector was such a pussy in The Iliad and my response was "probably because an enraged, nearly invincible demi-god wanted to murder him with a sharpened stick"
I'm suddenly getting that feeling again. Like are we from two different worlds where Hector's motivations are unclear?
Are you from a world where Pacific Rim wasn't shit?

I am back from Tokyo.

I was there for a conference. I got bored. So my note-taking got a little sidetracked. 

UHHH BORING OLD JAPAN
BEEN THERE SO MANY TIMES.

 I used to travel here pretty regularly. I had a lot of fun. Of course, my idea of “fun” is spending a few hours in Tower Records Shinjuku looking for new Japanese bands.

Fun in quotes because you had it once and it was awful.
Well fuck.
You could piss up my leg and I wouldn't be any angrier.
Ok if I go any longer I'm going to stroke out. The rage engine beaten into my brain has finally started scratching into my cortex so I'm outta.
Song of the now from the glorious 1990s.

2pro

Let's take a break from all these women blogging and go for a guy blogging.
You know what I say: all guys with blogs are gay.
Read this shit. I can almost see the fedora through the monitor.

I was in despair, I tell you: utter despair. There had been no sightings of any feathered beings anywhere near any of my feeders, bar only Black Phoebe the Tyrannical Flycatcher posing on the hanger while she watched for insects to massacre; I quite thought all my efforts to be in vain. Spurned, I felt. I did.

But I was just making a cup of tea, in the classic British manner, when I happened to glance out of the window - and lo! Hummer! Zooming around the feeder, trying the sunny side and the shady side alternately (I was worrying at five o'clock this morning, whether it would get too hot for the little birdies under our relentless sunshine), pausing on the hangar, being entirely darling. So that's okay.

How much money do you want to bet this queer is American?
And fat?

Today's good news: the bottle of vanilla extract didn't break, tho' it fell from a great height and not much like the gentle rain from heaven* upon the plates beneath.

Today's bad news: those plates. They did break.

M'wife says "So fucking what?", but, y'know. I get so sick tired of dropping things and breaking things and so forth, and yet I continue to do it.

He never says "my" it's always "m'" which really leads me to believe he's tipping his fedora every single time.
Like run through this thought exercise with me:
"my wife"
"m'wife"
"my lady"
"m'lady"
What do you think?
"My wife" = man with wife
"my lady" = knight
"m'wife" and "m'lady" seem like an incomplete thought. The clause needed to finish the thought would be "he said, tipping his fedora."

As with most of my bad habits and character flaws, come to think. I read once that short-sighted people are often clumsy, and I drew solace from that for years, decades; but solace wears thin in the end, I find.

Anyway. We get to buy new plates, yay?

Also I am instructed that I should point out that m'wife is taking shameless advantage of her inside track, and has posted a list of my award-eligible stories on her blog. Hrrumph.

(Also also, I hadn't realised quite how little I published last year. Good grief: what happened there?)


*Which, I might put out, we are still waiting for, here in NoCal.

>NoCal
>faggot doublespeak for "Northern California"
Got you you motherfucker.
You're not British. Stay where you belong, Amerifat.

Actually, at the moment I'm quite in favour of lists.

British spelling.
Do you hear that? It's the sound of neckbeard rubbing against double chin.
Actually I just found out his irl name (Chaz Brenchly dude what) and if you google him you can see he does indeed have a neckbeard but appears a reasonable weight. Also he's wearing a baseball cap but I feel that's just a replacement for the fedora.
Inside it's all fedora.

In my backpack I have put changes of jeans, of shirts, of underwear. I have a small pharmacopoeia of chemical aids and bathroom appurtenances. I have my phone, the Laptop of Utterable Delights and a spare little bag full of cables. I have my sunglasses and my reading glasses. I have a book and my Kindle (and, again, my phone: now with Kindle app applied).

I do believe I may be ready for a day and a night in the city. 

"laptop of utterable delights"
"laptop filled with porn"

So I have all this lovely goose fat, which as we know is yummyscrump for roasting potatoes. What I'm wondering, though, is how else I might splendidly use it. I don't really have enough for a pot of confit, alas; but in any case, I'm thinking of more general uses. F'rexample,

I'm sorry, can you run that by me again with none of the pretention?
Oh that's right you can't because you just seriously asked Dreamwidth how to use goose fat.

I came home this morning with a lovely piece of skirt steak*, which I am browning for tonight. Is it wasteful of me to be browning it in goose fat, or will that make a blessed contribution to the complexities of flavour...?

I did also come home with small quantities of various rices, for purposes of playing with the new toy. And yet, and yet - we are not eating rice tonight. This is because I am an Imp of the Perverse, and I want to make beef stew in a pumpkin. Because I can.


*The word "steak" is added here purely to obviate and head off at the pass any tendency among my readership to go "fnar, fnar". Or local equivalent.

 I'm going to need a minute to decompress after reading that.

Redefinery: where crude language is converted into smooth innocuous prose. Lede-free.

 I'm going to need another minute.
In fact brb I'm going to play a game of League of Legends and take this out on hapless idiots.
Jesus that didn't even help.
Uhhhh.

M'wife has the sleeping sickness.

Isn't that seriously fatal?
How'd she get that?
You only get that in Africa.
Like deep Africa.
Like the Congo.
What's happening?

Down to the farmers' market this morning, for the usual round of fruits and veggies - strawberries, raspberries, broccolini, fennel, kale, brussels sprouts, beetroots, Chinese beans, chocolate from the nice Vice lady* - and also to drop in at Leigh's bookstore, where she was hosting three local foodie writers.

The note is talking about chocolate being a vegetable.
But it's not. It's a seed, technically.
I know because I just googled it.

I just spent a thousand bucks on lumber for the fencing.

I should like it noted, though, that at least I did it in American. Bucks, you say? Lumber? Very well...

So let me tell you about League of Legends.
I suck.
Then I get a bit better and a magic number in the game starts matching me with better people.
Then I suck again.
Until I learn--
Then the magic number goes up and I suck again.
I can't see this number but it must be there because I'm facing increasingly tougher competition.
It's like Caesar says. Better first in a village than second in Rome but okay, at this rate I can be first in Rome.
But whoa hold on. I was used to everyone sucking so hard they couldn't even buy their own champions so I'd just play all the free rotation once and I'd at least know what everyone was going to try to do a bit.
But now I've rotated up enough that people can buy their own champions.
So besides the usual free rotation (because they're not that good yet to just not use free rotation) I'll encounter at least 3 people using shit I've never even seen.
Like spike turtle man. Apparently named Rammus?
Then Vlad the gay vampire who is surprisingly not bad at all--
And nothing prepares you for this. You just get in range and hope you don't die to a move you didn't know existed until five seconds ago.
Meanwhile half your team is screaming at you for dying too much because you've never even seen half this shit before and you're too busy telling them how you're going to find where they live and staple their lips to their own assholes if they don't shut the fuck up about how bad you are because you've only been playing this fucking game for a week and I'd like to see how fucking good you were the first week in--
it's all very stressful.
But if you go 14/7 with Ahri because you've been studying a lot about how she works no one says a fucking thing.
Basically the quest to not be a scrub lord is intense and fraught with screaming middle schoolers.
Much like teaching.

That may be the first time I've ever fried a strawberry.

Welcome to Freedom.
So what the fuck am I supposed to do for the song of the day huh
All I've been listening to all day is gay Korean pop.
So I guess it'll have to be that.
Oh by the way don't get excited and think the girls are going to kiss at the end. I've seen this video 197 times and they don't.
So let me explain to you what this group is about.
Much like all pop bands created by committee they're all the same so the thing to set this one apart is they're all slutty.
You'd think someone would try a group that can sing.
That's ostensibly The Wonder Girls (I know a lot about Korean pop, ok) but the thing is they can't sing either so I don't know what that's about.
I guess they did have that song Nobody from like 2003 or something but that doesn't count because I don't think any of those members are still in the band.
Then there's all the bands that kind of blend together in their mediocrity.
KARA
miss A
Girl's Day
Afterschool
These are real. You can look these up. It might sound like I'm making up but I promise you I am not.
Then there's all the single singer spin offs from previous girl groups like Hyuna and Gain--
am I going insane?
What am I talking about?
Then it gets really confusing when the Korean girl groups cross over with Japanese has beens or never weres--
like when Afterschool did a song with Namie Amuro.
That's a thing I listened to.
That's not even the most obscure Asian music thing I know. I have a CD of Matsubara Miki's greatest hits in my car.
That's a Japanese bossa nova singer who had a couple of minor hits in the late 70s and early 80s.
That's a thing I know about.
Is this being a weeaboo or is this neurosis at this point?
No wait that's not the most obscure thing about Asian music I know.
Midori Kinouchi's 1979 one hit wonder Yokohama Eleven is.
That's a song you can listen to on Youtube if you want.
89 people have listened to it.
How do I know this
am I going insane?

Jesus Christ People

Dreamwidth's front page is awash with people posting every single log of every single roleplay they ever did ever and it's mostly two people just posting constantly.
No one cares. Knock it off.
This one person just signed up today and they already have 20 posts.
Stop.
But luckily amid all the garbo I found this jackoff.
Look at this motherfucker's avatar. Have you ever seen such a fedora tipper in your entire goddamn life?

I was very depressed this morning, and am less so now.

I essentially gave myself permission to do whatever I wanted today, as long as I was doing something, so naturally I defaulted to coding on LiSE. I've nearly got the map editor working again.

How long until there's a post about My Little Pony or atheism?

I'm not feeling well lately. I doubt I have any very compelling reason for feeling this way. The stresses I am reacting to are ordinary, and I know how to deal with them generally. I need to refine my approach a bit, and I'm having trouble with that, because I'm not feeling well, and planning for the future is difficult.

"He felt the hate engine stab rage into the meat of his mind."
-- Aaron Denski-Bowden, Betrayer, 2013.
Seriously one of the best Warhammer books ever written. Listen to the audio drama Butcher's Nails then read Betrayer for some shit, man.

It may be difficult because I haven't examined the present closely enough. To examine the present I need to examine my feelings, since they are rather directly relevant to my plans.

I was going to quote something but I forget what it was and I ended up listening to The Geto Boys for some reason.
I think it was related?
Can you imagine if blogs were as well written as Mind Playing Tricks on Me?
This blog wouldn't exist.

Any amount of self-reflection upon my emotional problems is going to sound very similar to self-pity. Maybe it is self-pity. I'm not sure. Is it always called "pity" when you try to empathize with sorrow, your own or someone else's, and want to make it better? Is that condescending? Regardless, this is what I need to do. It will probably sound bad, even to myself. So I shouldn't dwell on it any longer than useful, and I shouldn't try to share it with people who aren't already interested in it.

What the fuck are you talking about you nut?

I'm feeling disappointed in myself. Not for any particular failure. There are a few that I can point to, but they're either recoverable, or they're old news. It's stupid to be disappointed that I didn't put enough effort into high school, or I shut myself off from my would-be friends. I don't even remember those experiences very well.

I forget who said it but someone wise said he never trusted a man that has never felt disappointment and failure.
Who knows how you'll act when you inevitably face failure if you've never felt it before?
Best feel it early so you don't feel it when it really matters.
And then fail that.

I lack motivation.

To get motivation, I need to form an emotional association between what I want and what I need to get it.

There is no greater or purer emotional assistance in aiding motivation than anger.
Studies have even demonstrated you make your best decisions while mad.
Contrary to most conventional wisdom.
Except, of course, the sanguine wisdom of the true wise men.

To form an emotional association, I need to go about doing one thing in a way that evokes the emotions of another thing. To form an association with something I want, I need to find bits of what I want that evoke an immediate, visceral emotional reaction, and insinuate them into whatever I need to do.

I am not in the habit of finding the visceral bits of things. I'll need to practice.

To viscerate something is to find the visceral bits of it.

To enviscerate something is to insinuate those visceral bits into it.

And to feel like you need to eviscerate something just read this tripe.

I am a nihilist by disposition.
I do not subscribe to any of the various belief systems called "nihilism," unless you're one of those people who think that moral relativism is strictly equivalent to moral nihilism. However, I dislike belief, and try to avoid believing in things whenever it's reasonably practical. I rejected theism just about as soon as I understood it, 

BOOOM
ATHEISM POST
I'm counting it
fuck you
a thousand points to me
I am the greatest

rejected the notion of American exceptionalism (past or present) once I understood it had to do with identity politics, and rejected most notions of group identity in general when I learned how easy it is to identify as anything you damned well please.

I think I was thirteen when I did that. I was trying to reject the relevance of mathematics, too, but that didn't stick.

I rejected the relevance of mathematics in my life when I was like 10 and haven't looked back.
Have I mentioned how well my fake stock portfolio is doing?

Why not just describe myself as a skeptic? Well, I guess I could say that, but skepticism to my mind implies a degree of curiosity and inquisitiveness that I only demonstrate on occasion. My urge to disbelieve is more like a reflex. I rarely think about it, and I don't remember a time when I didn't have it.
I have a theory about how I might have learned this habit.

>I reject belief
>here's what I believe about what I think
hurrrrr

Today wasn't terrible.

Can't ask for more than that I find.
That's what I do when I look for jobs on the substitute teacher system. "Well that probably won't be terrible or get me killed or fired."

I have power issues.
That's nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone has those. It's like saying I have "health issues". It's trivially true, because "power," like "health," is an exceedingly broad category.

Me too.
My power issue is I'm not caesar.

Power is a confusing concept. Most of the time, when we say a person is powerful, we're not really referring to the number of joules or amperes they can put out. We're referring to who obeys their orders and under what conditions. So "power" in the common use is intrinsically conditional.

There's soft power and there's hard power. Soft power people feel obligated to do what you say based on some sort of fallout for not doing what you say or whatever. Hard power people want to do what you say because they're compelled either through mutual interest or admiration or whatever.
Machiavelli makes this all very clear in his definitive guide to the subject.
As Machiavelli teaches and is so often mangled by idiots misinterpreting his wisdom it is better to be feared than loved if you can't be both but he never goes so far as to say being feared is preferable to the point of exclusion.

Even if you're commanding an army, your power is contingent on the cooperation of everyone in your chain of command. Getting that chain of command to the point where it's reliable enough that the people giving the orders can be meaningfully said to have power is a very difficult problem that takes up a fair portion of the national budget.

Wow your understanding of power politics, government and military spending is breathtaking.
Clearly, clearly the US government spends a lot of its budget ensuring the loyalty of the troops.
That's why troops make so much money, obviously.
Not, you know, the fact that guys are firing rockets that cost more than they'll make in a year at people who won't make that much money in their lifetime. 

As an aspie, I have to think harder than most people in order to accomplish basic tasks like talking, eating, and getting out the door.

Are you genuinely autistic or are you just an antisocial, lazy cretin using that as a screen?
If you're genuinely autistic then no harm but if you're just saying that then you're a fucking asshole.
Like what, I'm just sitting here having the time socializing, eating and getting out the door?
Life is a fucking wide awake nightmare and no one has an easy time doing fucking anything. We just pretend we do because if we don't then that's when motherfuckers get shot.

Because I am accustomed to thinking about every action, I often fall for the delusion that thought is action. 

I do that a lot. "Did I do that or did I think about doing that?"
Most of the time I don't remember.

I think I've worked out what my issue with "pride" is.

It's rare for a person expressing pride to say exactly what they are proud of doing.  

Oh let me break this shit right the fuck down for you before you launch into a 3 page treatise of pretentious garbage on the subject.
Pride.
I am proud I lived.
I am proud I died.
Simple as that, dipshit. It's a trait you either have or you don't.
The old Pagan cultures engender a healthy sense of pride in its men in particular believing that's what caused people to aspire to greatness.
And I think few can argue with the glories of Rome or the Han.
Christianity was quick to quash that idea and instead opted for meekness and submission.
Dark ages ahoy!

Usually they point at the result of their efforts instead: "I'm proud of you, son" vs. "I'm proud of the way I raised you, son". The intended meaning is the same. The former phrasing means something different by the pronoun "you" than usual: instead of referring directly to the person the speaker is talking to, as they stand right here and now, it refers to some experiences that the speaker had with them.

Usually when someone says "I'm proud of you" it's more of an empathetic thing or perhaps a notion of being proud to know the person.
Because, you know, usually we're judged by the company we keep because we tend to surround ourselves with people who are at least similar to us in some regard so if someone does something you're proud of you likely possess a characteristic at least broadly similar to them.
Also pride is a pretty serious thing. It's easy to not have pride.
Having pride suddenly makes you intolerant of a lot of shit you'd otherwise be fine with.

To use my empathy to its best effect, I need to turn it up and down at will. Perhaps I already have this ability. I seem to be pretty good at turning my emotions off; my new task is to turn off particular emotions when and where they cause trouble.

For example. My calc teacher will be disappointed to see how far behind I am on the homework. But it's still his job to help me, so I should ask, and when (if) he makes his displeasure apparent, I should acknowledge that, and not care.

You're in college, dipshit. His job is to lecture and your job is to figure it out on your own.
He can help you and probably will if you're a nice guy but no, his job is not to help just you when you need it, plebeian. 
See that's what I mean about pride. If I were a college professor and you said that to me that'd be my reaction.
I didn't get a fucking PhD in mathematics to babysit spoiled bitches like you.

Starting today, I am going to award myself experience points for every moderately difficult task I complete. Ten points is standard;

If only life worked that way.
I'm serious.

I am a coward.

“It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.”
-Herodotus
I love these essays on bullshit that can be answered with one sentence by me or someone else.

Years spent actively pursuing indifference have left me with a general tendency toward indifference. This is causing problems.

Wow what do you fucking know
If you think something over and over it becomes your thoughts
Beat your thoughts to the mold of your will.
Fuuuck.
Anyway work tomorrow and shit so time for the SONG OF THE NOOOOW.

Whoa what

Low blow I understand but what the fuck is up with your hair, friend?

The premise is sound enough: let's take a day to remember those who fought, and in many cases died, to protect our homeland, our communities, and our way of life. My father, for instance, was an infantryman in General Patton's Third Army, and fought at The Bulge and the Siegfried Line. The enemy he faced was perhaps the most profoundly evil force in human history, Nazi Germany. My father survived the war and is now in his 90th year of life, but many of his comrades were not so lucky. Do they not deserve the honor and remembrance of a grateful nation? Of course they do.

But what about the other wars -- wars fought not to defend anyone's home or loved ones, but to rob other peoples of their lands, resources, or sovereignty?

>being this stupid
Yes I'm sure the Germans were aware of how evil they were. They definitely weren't just calling themselves the good guys and the British/Americans/Russians/whatever the invaders.

How are the men and women who fight in these wars much different from the German soldiers my father fought? And if we honor such veterans, what about the 100,000+ Iraqi and Afghan civilians and as many as as three million Vietnamese who died at their hands? If Americans killed more Indochinese civilians than Pol Pot, one of the most infamous mass killers of the twentieth century, how is our celebration of Veterans' Day much different from Japan's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the soldiers and sailors who died in that country's wars of aggression?

Just take the day off and shut up for real.

...the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

What might the world be like had Guy Fawkes succeeded in blowing up Parliament and King James I/VI? 

Does anyone else wonder why Americans celebrate the foiled attempt of an English terrorist to overthrow monarchy? 
Outside of, you know, V for Vendetta and general internet idiocy.
In general Americans should be in favor of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot yet the famous nursery rhyme kind of takes the opposite approach.

I hate making decisions when I am feeling intense emotion. I almost always make the wrong choice.

I only make decisions while angry.

In the spring of 1979, as I prepared to graduate from college, I applied for a job at the NSA. I went to Fort Meade, Maryland, where they were headquartered, for an interview. Then I heard nothing from them for about a year, by which time my career aspirations had taken a different direction. They asked me back for a second interview, but I told them I was no longer interested.

1979 you graduated college--
I was -8 at that time--
and here you are posting on Dreamwidth.
Where did you go so horribly wrong with your life, friend?

I've used a succession of phones including two Blackberries and my current Mororola Razr, and I've hated every one of them. Last night I plugged in my phone to charge and went to bed. This morning I had to go to NH, and among the things I took with me was the phone. When I got to my destination, I noticed that it was only 30% charged, and during the course of the day that dropped to 15% and then zero. This thing does not have a replaceable battery, and it is less than a year old.

It's also inconvenient to use, and things like passwords are impossible to type reliably by anyone with fingers larger than a small child's. And every few months it gets a software "update" that makes it even less convenient; the first one took away my ability to connect to my computer with a USB cable, and the latest one made file transfers via Bluetooth a major chore.

If these things are supposed to be the wave of the future, why do they leave me longing for a Morse code key?

This editorial brought to you by some yahoo.
IF THESE THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE WHY DO THEY LEAVE ME LONGING FOR MORSE CODE KEY?
A HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE

At church today our minister described his Boston Marathon run, the cheers and encouragement he got from spectators along the route, including a group of parishioners camped out at the church, the delightful weather of last Monday, his feeling of triumph as he crossed the finish line, turning to wait for his wife, who was also running, and then... the explosions, the bedlam, people running to help the injured, two hours of anxious searching for his wife, and a tearful reunion. I wish I had recorded it.

Ok.
Must suck living in Boston.

Every time I log into LiveJournal, I get an email entitled "Login to LiveJournal from unrecognized location".

Unrecognized location? The IP address is always the same, and I rarely log in from any other. What's the matter with these people?

Considering this is Dreamwidth I think you might have other problems.

I am an agnostic. I do not claim to know if there are no Gods, one God, or seventy Gods.

But I do sing in a church choir, and after church when I got in my car, I turned on WHRB. They were broadcasting the service from Memorial Church, and I heard a beautiful pefformance of Thomas Tallis's "If Ye Love Me (Keep My Commandments)". That's an anthem for Pentecost, not the first Sunday in Advent. It's six months out of season. It's like singing Christmas carols in June.

I don't know why that bothers me, but it does.

Must be nice having nothing at all to worry about in life.

Somebody on dailykos.com asked whether a sustainable human presence on Earth is possible under capitalism. I remarked that capital is like yeast; it wants to keep gobbling up resources until it drowns in its own waste, and in the age of "globalization" no government in the world is strong enough to stop it.

Whoaaaaa.
Capitalism is like yeast.
Deep.

One of the things I've come to realize is that nothing, no matter how well or long established, can last forever. The Soviet Union was a great power in 1985, an unassailable fact to be reckoned with since time immemorial, yet all the Party's tanks, ships, and nuclear weapons couldn't hold it together, and it would be gone in six short years.

This is totally how history works. Shit just collapses and is gone forever into the void.
Soviet Russia was a like a clean shit where you don't have to wipe. Just one and done.

There are more descendants of Germans in the United States than descendants of English, yet we speak English not German.

Presumably, we speak English because the English spoke English. But unless I misremember, Britain was the only major province of the Roman empire in which a Germanic language came to be generally spoken, most of the former western provinces retaining a Latin-derived language despite invasion and conquest by Franks, Lombards, Goths, or other Germanic peoples.

>England
>major Roman holding
OK.

The Visigothic kingdom of Spain lasted from the fifth century until the early eighth, when it fell to Arabs; yet Spain retains its Romance languages today and no trace of Gothic survives. Yet in Britain, Latin was replaced quickly by English,

Well after Rome was on its decline--
Also Britain never "replaced" Latin as its main language because Latin was never the main language of England.
Maybe stop talking about Rome now plz before you keep embarrassing yourself.

and not even three centuries of rule by French-speakers after the Norman conquest would change that.

Yeah, you know. When English was replaced by French.
That's why England and America speak French now.
Do you proofread this shit at all?

In the east, where the empire survived the era of Germanic incursions, Greek not Latin became the dominant language in the areas that were not lost to the Arab conquests of the seventh century. But Iran, which fell to the Arabs at the same time, still speaks Persian.

Yet in one eastern Roman province -- Dacia -- the Latin language survived to become modern Romanian, a Romance island surrounded by Slavs and Magyars.

Weird, huh?

Yes. Greek had a resurgence in the East.
The Greeks stopped speaking Greek and picked up Latin only to pick Greek back up when Rome declined--
are you fucking joking?
Rome always worked with two dominant languages. Greek and Latin.
So if I'm to understand this yahoo's post correctly Latin was replaced by modern English which was replaced by modern French in England and Greek had a revival a la Hebrew in the early ADs--
Jesus Christ, buddy.
Read a fucking book sometime.

Why, in the middle of yet another global panic, as the economy continues to unravel, is Barack Obama vacationing in Martha's Vineyard?

Perhaps, Mr. President, you should try your hand at the fiddle. It would help drown out the noise all those annoying Romans are making as they watch their houses burn.

Nero didn't fiddle while Rome burned as the fiddle wasn't invented ye--

oh right, sorry.

Thought we were still on the topic of being smug and wrong about Roman history at the same time.

So far, I'm unimpressed. Both SSD's in my laptop are now unreliable after three years of use. I've ordered a new SSD, and in the meantime am trying to see if I can use a Flash drive as a stopgap.

But so far, it's looking like old fashioned mechanical disk drives are better. They are cheaper, more reliable, and last longer. I wouldn't buy another SSD right now if my laptop could take a conventional drive.

>letting packed-in disk sweepers sweep your shit every week

WHY DO MY SSDs BREAK AFTER A WEEK

I guarantee this is what is happening.

You gotta turn the defragger off, bro.

Take care of your fragments yourself like an adult.

You get pretty pretentious about technology and history. You can swing it.

I learned that in 1985, 75% of a UMass Boston undergraduate student's tuition was paid by the state, while today the state pays only about 25%. Increasingly, UMB students come from households earning at least $85,000 to $100,000 a year. About 1,200 of them live in luxury waterfront apartments immediately adjacent to the campus. They probably pay $2,000 to $3,000 a month in rent.

Are we moving back toward the pre-World War II era when college was accessible only to a moneyed elite? If so, this is surely another consequence of the tearing up of the Roosevelt-era social contract since 1980 by the special interests and their (mostly, but not exclusively) Republican hired guns.

>social contract

>The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Thirteen

What's it like being this delusional? 

It amazes me to see immense cuts looming in government social programs that help poor and middle class people while the super-rich are rewarded with tax cuts, and there is not a whimper of protest coming from anyone but a few isolated liberals. I see a vast chasm looming in front of our country and the tea partiers are urging us right over the edge of the cliff.

Then I inform people that both the Democrats and the Republicans are Neo-liberal and everyone flips shit.

A few years ago, I set out to read the Qur'an from cover to cover in the original Arabic. I got as far as the beginning of Sura 3 (Al-i-`Imran) before getting sidetracked, and I think it's time to take it up again. I would like to recover something of the Arabic I studied for four years back in college.

There was an intriguing article in a magazine a while back that claimed that the standard story that the Qur'an was compiled in its present form in the time of Caliph `Uthman (644-656 by our calendar) is wrong; that it may have evolved over several centuries; and that Muhammad may have been more a legend than a historical person.

Oh, what, like the Bible and Jesus?

You mean people who have an axe to grind about the historicity of their holy book might not be totally honest with themselves about the historical reality of their chosen book?

Color me fucking shocked.

Certainly there are aspects of it that need explaining; for instance, several Hebrew names, such as Isaac, are close enough to their Arabic equivalents that they should have been easily understood by Arab listeners, yet seem not to have been. If "Yitzhaq" means "he laughs", that is "yad.haq" in Arabic, but the Qur'an spells the name "Ishaq", which is meaningless. Ishmael, Israel, and Abraham are similarly rendered incomprehensible. Yeshua (Jesus) is called Yasu` by Christian Arabs, yet the Qur'an names him `Isa. And John, which ought to have come out Yuhannan or some such, is Yahya. Could these names and the tales in which they figure have come into Arabic from Greek, Persian, or some other non-Semitic source?

Or maybe the scribes who copied the Quran down originally weren't perfectly literate themselves.

This might be shocking to modern people but back in the day spelling wasn't standardized and literacy was an especially rare thing to have.

Following on my previous post, I know that a number of y'all don't listen to the radio.

What could radio stations do differently that might get you to listen?

Basically be totally unlike radio.

Fewer commercials, better music, better disc jockeys--

Fuck.

Song of the now.