Low Khee

You Don't Look Like an Engineer

2007-10-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in Ye Localle Banke, fretting over a savings account. I have never been particularly clever about money, and I wanted to change that. I know that I want more than 3% annual interest, because anything less and I'll be losing money instead of making or keeping money. Please do not ask me why this is because I understand economics and finances about as readily as a gorilla understands Kant.

I won't go into the details of the discussion for two reasons: one, they are boring; and two, I don't remember them. I don't even have the ability to make it up as I have on occasion. The inner workings of the banking industry and national finance is beyond me. I passed AP Economics. I got a 4 on that exam. My only explanation for that is Deep Magic.

"So, you're a student?"

"Yes." It was true at the time.

He smiled, straightening his papers by tapping their edges on the desk. I wanted the word for this, and right now I'm just longing for a reverse-lookup dictionary. "What are you studying?"

"Computer engineering."

"Really?" I couldn't help but notice the skeptical look.

I try to keep my voice level and calm, keep out the annoyance at his surprise. This man holds my monies and I like them. "Yes."

"Huh," he said, in a way that would have more aptly followed a statement of, 'You know, they can clone you and replace you at your job with your clone.' "You don't look like an engineer."

This statement always angers me, but I'm not entirely certain why. I can wear a skirt, earrings, makeup, do my hair, get a manicure, and wear a pair of fashionable-yet-practical shoes. As an engineer and thusly reasonably clever person (I won't go on a limb to say I'm smart, but I managed multi-variable calculus, chaos theory, and Heidegger, so obviously there's something there other than the alleged lint and bit of string) such things aren't beyond my grasp.

Basic hygiene isn't exactly fluid dynamics, and it doesn't take that much energy to look good. Put dirty things in the hamper, wash, dry, hang/fold. Wash daily. If inefficiency bothers you, brush your teeth in the shower. Odds are, if you ask me, that the reason nerd and geek types have a rep for not exerting effort is a media thing. The fact that some of the geek types actually follow that is not because they are unable to confine themselves to social norms, but merely that they lack sufficient motivation to do so. Nobody ever made them want to look good.

Put yourself in a certain context. Your friends are not addicts of VH1 or ... uh... I really wish I could fill in the blank there, but I can't. Say your friends don't watch much television outside of SciFi, Discovery, National Geographic, and maybe the History channel. Their hobbies aren't athletics or fashion, but watching anime and playing D&D. They would rather spend a Saturday in their basement surrounded by a detritus consisting primarily of spent Mountain Dew bottles and bags of Cheeto's than make some excursion to the mall.

Why? Well, here's the thing. Part-and-parcel of being a nerd is being socially awkward. If you're heavily into something but lack social awkwardness, you're a geek. Simple as that. And instead of being taken under a wing and shown the ropes, they are frequently shunned during their early formative years, and no matter what self-help books tell you, it does stay with you.

Note, however, that I grew up socially awkward, mocked in my formative years, and never encouraged to look good. Yet one day I up and decided that I would look good. Primarily out of a desire to meddle with common perceptions - why can't a rugby player wear pink and get her hair did? - but also out of a desire to simply receive a second look. Now I am somewhat fashionable. My past stayed with me but I've moved beyond it. It's possible. It merely takes effort.

But if your mother is the only one who cares about how you take care of yourself, and her care only extends to scrubbing behind your ears, there's little you can do. And when you've spent your whole life getting by without looking good or being hygienic, it's hard to change. After all, why should you care when nobody else does?

It Sits Next to the Strawberry Preserves

2007-10-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

Friend of mine from college, Porkins, is dating an odd girl. I call her odd primarily because of her raging, unbridled, and utterly baseless hatred for me. They've been together for five years now, and she and I have met. I was under the impression that we met under very good circumstances, had a lovely time together, and walked away with a better sense of one another. That, and that she might be less of an insecure bitch. I was wrong on both counts.

When they started dating, I had a boy at the time, who will probably come up later. I wasn't a threat. I'm still not a threat because it would take a nuclear holocaust of which he and I are the only survivors - which I would go to great lengths to verify - followed closely by some half-cracked notion that the human species is worth "saving" (and honestly, you're going to be hard-pressed to convince me of this) for anything other than utterly platonic friendship to develop.

Regardless, she despises me. Fair enough. I'm not an awesome person. I'm just curious what I did.

KHEE: You know, all this sneaking around bullshit doesn't sit well with me.

PORKINS: I know. I'm sorry.

KHEE: Seriously, I feel like the other woman.

PORKINS: [phone rings] Hang on a sec. Hi. ... Hanging out. ... Sam. ... Kind of. Can I call you back later? ... I love you too. ... Bye.

KHEE: Wen?

PORKINS: Did the 'I love you too' give it away?

KHEE: It could have been your mom. I'm guessing you told her I was Sam?

PORKINS: Yeah.

KHEE: See, it's this I'm talking about. This shit right here. I know you love her, man, but she's got your dick in a mason jar under her sink. Have the fucking testicles to hang out with whom you want. I'm no fucking threat to your relationship.

PORKINS: Yeah, she knows that. She's said you and I will never get together, even if she wasn't in the picture.

KHEE: Then what the hell is her problem?

PORKINS: I don't know. She's a good person. She'd be great if she was on some medication.

KHEE: See, and you said that with a straight face. You've thought about this before.

PORKINS: I have.

KHEE: You're in love with someone that you're full aware needs professional help. That's not healthy.

PORKINS: She's not Elly?

KHEE: ... Touche.

We Noticed Later the Mother was the Ringleader

2007-10-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, over the only fast food I'm willing to eat...

YOUNGLING: Would you like to buy a candy bar?

SLEEVES: No, thank you.

KHEE: That's a pretty good racket for a young kid, selling candy bars. Whatever you don't manage to sell you can eat, so it's not really a loss.

SLEEVES: Cute kid, too.

YOUNGLING 2: Would you like to buy a candy bar?

SLEEVES: No, thanks.

KHEE: See, now, there's their problem. They're too young to coordinate their marks. Not enough organization on the back end. Just pushing candy on unsuspecting strangers in their local burger joint.

[The first youngling walks up to an older kid, by the looks of it he has to be twelve or thirteen. He holds a box of the candy and gives the youngling replacements of what he has managed to sell.]

KHEE: Aha, I see how their operation works now. That older kid is the ringleader. He's sending out the younger, cute ones to actually sell the goods.

SLEEVES: Smart kid.

KHEE: He has a bright future of exploitation ahead of him. I see big things.

While Dropping Off Rome, Disk 2

2007-10-15T22:34:00.001-07:00

KHEE: My toes are weird.

SLEEVES: 'Oh honey, honey, shut your mouth...'

KHEE: What the hell?

SLEEVES: It's Owen Pallett. You should know him.

KHEE: Oh, Final Fantasy. No, I shouldn't know him.

SLEEVES: He's amazing. I would totally suck his dick, and I'm not even gay.

KHEE: There is a long list of peoples' dicks that you would suck. There's a certain threshold at which this makes you gay. I believe you are flirting with it.

SLEEVES: That's not true! It's not that you'd suck someone's dick, it's that you'd enjoy it --

KHEE: You can't tell me you wouldn't enjoy sucking Tim Kasher's dick.

SLEEVES: -- and the reasons for it.

KHEE: [disparaging look]

SLEEVES: I'm not gay.

If You Think the Internet is Unfriendly Now...

2007-10-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

... you should compare it to how it once was.

This is an interview I had. The company remains nameless.

He smiled at me, friendly, from across the round table. I couldn't tell if it was an Arthurian knockback or if this was the only table they had; either way, I said nothing. "So, Low, what kind of programming have you done in your life? What's your experience with technology?"

I think on it. Sadly, there's actually a lot there. I wasn't all that popular as a kid. "Well, um." My mind flits through college, high school, junior high, elementary school. "How about I start from the begining?"

"Sure, that sounds good."

"Er, well." Elementary school? Really? I knew it was going to sound absolutely unreasonable for a girl to have coded when she was nine years old. I figure it will seem doubly odd considering how often I've heard 'You don't look like an engineer.' "You have to understand that my father was an electrical engineer. PhD. It kind of came with the territory. I had my own machine when I was six, wrote my first program when I was nine - something really minor, in Basic, I eventually wrote a text game in it - we got the internet when I was..." I groped back in the years, but my mind was never that quick at basic arithmetic. "Eleven? Twelve? Thereabouts."

"So you had one of those old modems."

"Yeah, a little old 14.4, and I dove in with EarthLink and Netscape."

"Did you do the BBS thing?"

I looked down at my hands. "I... I tried." Lord did I. The memory still haunts me. "It didn't work out."

"Why is that?"

I looked up at him. How could I put it delicately? "Try telling the internet you're a twelve-year-old girl. See how far you get."

We Hung It Over the Bedroom Door

2007-10-12T02:38:00.001-07:00

PORKINS: Is that... did you steal a Denny's parking lot sign?

SLEEVES: Kinda.

KHEE: There was a lot of tequila involved.

And Who's Going to Have to Hold His Hand Through the Shots? Me

2007-10-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

SLEEVES: Honey! I forgot to tell you: I touched a squirrel today!

KHEE: [skeptical look]

SLEEVES: I did! I touched its tail!

KHEE: You are going to die of rabies one day.

SLEEVES: There were all these squirrels running around at the jobsite today and one of them got close to me, then bounced away, then got closer, then bounced away again, all curious. And then I touched it. I touched its tail!

KHEE: Rabies.

SLEEVES: Oh, whatever.

The Time Connor Stuck the Cat in the Freezer

2007-10-11T01:31:00.001-07:00

I wasn't really certain what else I could title this post.

I have mentioned previously my cat Gravy and her unworthiness as a blog post. Of course, I don't feel this way, I love the clawless beast and how she scratches at the couch in a manner similar to how an old toothless man would gum at an apple wedge. I could write about her all the time, but I try to spare people (the people who don't read this blog, technically). She is utterly devoted to me, for a very valid reason. I saved her.

She once lived in The House, the party house that Sleeves and Connor shared. During the time of my getting to know Gravy, I became enamored of Sleeves and the sentiment was reflected. Another story for another time, primarily because it's actually disturbingly cute in one of those must-be-fiction ways. Now, Sleeves, Gravy, and I reside in the Antique Roadshow, and for the most part I take very good care of her. I like tugging on her tail but nothing malicious.

I was introducing Alice to white wine spritzers (Riesling and Sprite) because she was only willing to drink Smirnoff Ice and I wanted her to get to be three sheets to the wind like I was and, oddly enough, wine is extremely efficient at this. I would know. I went through a 151 phase. The wine was warm, being freshly pulled from a rack at the corner 7-11, so I went for some ice cubes.

"Connor?"

"Yeah?"

I eyed the tray. "There's cat hair in your ice cubes."

"Oh, yeah. That'll happen."

"Usually when you put cats in freezers," I joked, putting the tray back in with some unease.

He sauntered into the kitchen looking far too attractive for his own good; this was a boy who could have any girl he wanted, and tended to, and tended to want the girls other people had. We're waiting for him to grow out of it. The eyeliner really set his face off and were I an idiot I might have flirted with him. But I've seen what he's put his penis in.

Connor shrugged with this disaffected air and I wondered how recently he had put some illicit chemical in his body. Statistically speaking, it was probably recent. "She was being loud."

"What?"

"I was hung over as shit and she was being loud. So I stuck her in there. Then I kind of passed out on the couch. I woke up about three hours later and let her out."

I wanted to react. I tried to be offended at this. But I laughed. My heart ached a little for the cat, but the story was unbelievably funny to me. I chuckled, specifically.

"At least I didn't set the house on fire." As if that defended him. "I fell asleep while smoking a cigarette."

I paused, staring at the now-closed freezer. "Until you two move out, anytime someone wants ice and they go to the freezer, they'll see the cat hair and put the ice tray back. And you will never have fresh ice cubes in this house."

"You're probably right."

"And that fucking sucks, because you never chill your wine."

He grinned. "I drink red. That's your fucking problem."

Google Declared Anti-American by Rectally-Focused Conservatives

2007-10-10T02:12:00.000-07:00

Oh I just love self-righteous political dreck because it just strengthens my imperative to move to a country that might make some fucking sense.

To summarize, the article discusses how ~~people~~ conservatives (not my word choice, read the article) were up in arms simply because Google changed their logo to commemorate the Sputnik launch. I wish the internet allowed for tone and inflection, because no matter how much contempt you might be reading through this, you're not reading enough.

I understand these guys are scientists and engineers and they have their quirks and want to make sure people are recognized who might not normally be recognized . . . but why not celebrate the struggles that we've come through as a people?

I would link to Gallucci's site but I don't want to run the risk of upping this person's Technorati cred.

I find it utterly pathetic that these people are being attacked for a logo. A logo. It doesn't even stay modified forever, just for a day or so. And it's not like they changed the colors to red and yellow and smeared the CCCP logo on every accessible space in their pages. One of the O's became the Sputnik satellite. That's it.

Also I'd like to ask about what we've possibly come through as a nation that isn't the 9/11 attack or the Pearl Harbor attack. I'm sure it was really fucking hard for us to invade a foreign nation and bomb the everloving shit out of it because we felt threatened by terr-- er, communists. (Sorry, the red-scare buzzword of the decade is fairly well ingrained in my vocabulary; I dated someone whose family actually thought Fox News to be an accurate source of information.) Also it must have been really rough on us to move all those native Americans to desolate wastes, a good deal of paperwork behind it. Many Bothans died, I'm sure.

Do these conservative assfucks even realize the power they've handed over to Google, and the responsibility with which Google handles it? I cannot put this in simple terms. They control what you find when you look for information. They can control news feeds, stock quote presentation, email, your goddamned email. If you try to Google "America" their algorithms are honest enough to give you what's out there and not data filtered through a pro-liberal agenda as is well within their power to do so.

Or maybe they do. And if they do, I applaud their underhanded tactics, seek employment under their umbrella, and welcome our technomancer overlords.

To be Honest, I Hate Smalltalk About the Weather

2007-10-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

I call my apartment the Antique Roadshow because the place is a house built in the 1920s that was converted into apartments a decade or so later. I live in one of the wings created for war widows to get their lives back on track. I face the street and get to watch the local train go by. The couch I have is this ancient velvet monstrosity that Porkins managed to break, for which I am grateful. I have never met a more comfortable couch since the back legs gave out. It cradles me as I sit in it.

What is best about this place is that when it rains, I swing open this four-foot-by-two foot leaded glass French window and smell and feel the rain. Occasionally it splatters on Severus (laptop of the moment) but he doesn't mind. I know it's sentimental, useless, and about as worthy of a blog post as is my cat Gravy, but it's a serene moment which I enjoy more than anything.

Although probably, the eeriest enjoyment I get out of it is catching the waft of someone's cigarette smoke and knowing I'm not alone at this hour.

Technically Desecration of the Flag, Techincally Illegal

2007-10-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

Arman came and picked me up on a Friday night. We had met at a rugby party and hit it off spectacularly. I remember Aimee - not Amy, but Aimee, which still nauseates me - grabbing my arm and telling me that there was this guy I "had to meet." She was right. She was also on hell of a fullback, but that's another story altogether.

I'm not sure where we're going, only that he specifically requested I look nice. Sitting in his silver Acura, dressed to the nines, we suddenly found it hard to make smalltalk. I had been so enamored of him that when preparing for the date, I didn't shave my legs, opting for a longer dress, and I stripped the sheets off my bed. Better safe, right?

He pulls up to a rather posh restaurant, and sweeps out of the car quickly to get my door before I can. A little cheesy, but I have to admit, the traces of estrogen in me are rather pleased. We walk arm-in-arm into the place, and it's rather shiny. If you're familiar with McCormick's & Schmick's, you'll understand. Obviously I dive straight at the seafood and a glass of wine later we're both able to talk with greater ease.

When I say we hit it off, I mean we hit it off. I was actually sad to be dating the guy because if it didn't work out, I'd be out one potentially amazing friend. "Let's be friends" never works, and you'd be surprised that the guys tend to be more emotional about it than I do. Just the same, we get to talking about anything and everything, and despite not having much outside of rugby in common, we spoke at length about some rather deep topics.

Obviously, if we're chatting so well on one glass of wine, imagine what hitting a bar is going to do for the conversation. Clearly a great idea. And I, still being somewhat an alcoholic at the time, call for an AMF and keep 'em coming. He sipped whiskey on the rocks, classy as ever, while I drained several glasses of electric blue liquor.

If you're unfamiliar with the AMF, think of a Long Island Iced Tea. Now make it blue. You've got it.

Unfortunately, I get sick. Now I know what you're thinking: Khee, you drank too much, you silly bitch! Well, no. I didn't. I once had the tolerance of an Irish dock worker, which has now tapered to the tolerance of a seasoned frat boy. I can still drink quite a few people under the table as far as sobriety goes, pending my stomach isn't too delicate. (Puke up blood once and your stomach is never the same.) But no.

My body wasn't angry at the quart's worth of gin, rum, vodka, and tequila floating around in there. It was the seafood that was talking. It spoke of revolution.

Details became somewhat hazy at this point. I felt hot inside, sticky with sweat, and yet my skin was frozen. I knew I looked like shit. Hard not to when you're lying on the bathroom floor. Most of my vomit made it into the toilet. Blissfully, that which missed was on the floor and not on me.

I hear dimly from the doorway, "Um, is that your date? She doesn't look too good."

He walks over to me. "Are you okay?"

"Seafood," I mutter. That's about all I could say. It was at the forefront of my mind.

"Let's get you home."

Sitting in the shiny silver Acura, leather seats, I feel that movement is a bad idea at present. "Arman."

"You okay?"

"Stop the car."

He tries to, but not in time before everything starts to come out. The dashboard is covered. The seat is covered. The floor is covered. Both of us are covered. He stops, I open the door, and it's still coming. I'm not even sure what I'm purging from my system anymore, but I knew I'd never have oysters on a date ever again. The wish for death floated through my mind briefly, quietly, but I couldn't hear it over the sound of my own gullet emptying itself.

We finally reach my place, only two more incidences on the way. I'm rooming with a few other guys at this point, and the house is in beautiful shape. Flowers are pristine, lawn is clean, and the flag hangs proudly from the front porch, despite the fact that the Fourth of July was months ago. They pay for lawn maintenance.

Which is good, because I puked on that too.

"Can you get some towels for me?"

"I'm so sorry," I can barely mutter. I feel feverish and I want to sleep.

"It's okay, really. I just want a towel."

I stumble inside the house, I think I'm still apologising at this point. Sadly, though, I collapse on my bed and pass out for two hours. When I wake up and stumble outside, he's gone, and I see the flag crumpled up on the lawn. I know what he did with it. I also don't blame him. I stumble back inside and fall asleep again, wondering drowsily where the fuck my sheets are.

Harry Potter Series, The

2007-10-08T22:54:00.000-07:00

So, in my conquest of becoming well-read, part of that is, obviously, being up on what literature is popularly known. Harry Potter ranks pretty fucking high on that list, right up there with The Lord of the Rings and The Bible. (I would like to make some crack about my inability to tell which is more poorly written or more based in fiction, but I do not wish to offend.)

I won't go book-by-book as, really, why bother. If you've read it, you've read it. If you haven't, you may never, and nothing I say will change it. I will give this cursory overview.

Books one through three (Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban) are well-done, relative to the series. Relative to the entirety of YA lit that I've read, I'd have to say that I've seen better. The first shows an amateur at writing beginning to get the hang of the beast, backed with a creative mind for clever names to attract children and adults (Diagon Alley?) and a basic understanding of the childhood hero story. Each book develops her writing, abandoning the bottom-heavy style of Philosopher's Stone for a more even, and vaguely more chilling Prisoner of Azkaban.

Then, Miss Rowling discovered the internet.

Suddenly her books became bloated, editors unwilling to say no as they saw piece after piece of licensed merchandise come streaming forth from books so thick that the Oxford English Dictionary began to feel as though it wanted to buy a new skirt and pair of do-me heels. Moreover, if you ask me, she did her readers a great disservice by not making the story more about Severus Snape. If you really want to get into the tragic hero, by God, there he is. Harry, for all his prattling and gallivanting about the wizarding world never really dealt with darkness. He fought it, but he never succumbed. He never so much as wavered. He tried to waver, but was actually unable to do so. Snape actually went to darkness and came back. How? Why? That's the more interesting moral quandary: how to crawl out of the chasm once you've thrown yourself in.

This is probably why Return of the Jedi is my favorite of the Star Wars series. But that's a conversation for another time.

Overall a fun read, compelling though hole-ridden plot, characters you can fall for or despise and can draw passionate debate from, but nothing worth writing home about. It filled a void in YA lit that many will try to emulate to a certain degree (Rick Riordan, I'm looking at you) and it inspired in many a winged prayer that literature and reading will become revitalized in a nation that can only read one book, and really they just want it summarized for them every Sunday morning instead of going through the damn thing on their own. (I know Leviticus is rough, kids, but just tough it out.)

Really, it just makes my heart reach out to those literary hangers-on who dream of a world in which people discuss the latest book deals instead of the latest "Brangelina" news. But I'm going to let my misanthropic nature come out on this - as it comes out on everything - and tell you that when it comes to books nothing shy of a societal collapse is going to bring back the written word and when the great revolution comes and number two pencils become currency I will do my best to refrain from telling the television-addicted assmonkeys "I told you so."

Master List

2007-10-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to list every book I've read here, and maybe I'll even one day review all of these books. It's in the several hundreds as of now, but not all of them are comment-worthy (I'm not going to talk about Goosebumps or The Baby Sitter's Club, despite the integral role they played in my literary development), and I will try to sort them by genre as best as I can.

I'm listing them as I read and remember them.

Literary Fiction

1984: George Orwell
As I Lay Dying: William Faulkner
Ask the Dust: John Fante
Brave New World: Aldous Huxley
Catch 22: Joseph Heller
Children of Men, The: PD James
Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Don Quixote: Miguel de Cervantes
Fall, The: Albert Camus
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway
Inferno, The: Dante Alighieri
Jayne Eyre: Charlotte Bronte
Like Water for Chocolate: Laura Esquivel
Metamorphosis, The: Franz Kafka
Odyssey, The: Homer
Old Man and the Sea, The: Ernest Hemingway
Plauge, The: Albert Camus
Shrine at Altamira, The: John L'Heureux
Siddhartha: Hermann Hesse
Stranger, The: Albert Camus
Sun Also Rises, The: Ernest Hemingway
Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe
Trial, The: Franz Kafka

General Fiction

Girl, Interrupted: Susana Kaysen
Last of the Wine, The: Mary Renault
Microserfs: Douglas Coupland

Young Adult

Cay, The: Theodore Taylor
Flowers for Algernon: Daniel Keyes
Gashlycrumb Tinies, The: Edward Gorey
Giver, The: Lois Lowry
Harry Potter Series: JK Rowling
Island of the Blue Dolphins, The: Scott O'Dell
Percy Jackson Series: JK Rowling
Red Tree, The: Shaun Tan
Series of Unfortunate Events: Lemony Snicket
Sideways Stories from Wayside School: Louis Sachar
Swiftly Tilting Planet, A: Madeline L'Engle
Where the Red Fern Grows: Wilson Rawls
Wind in the Door, A: Madeline L'Engle
Wrinkle in Time, A: Madeline L'Engle

Philosophy

Being and Time: Heidegger
Candide: Voltaire
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Hume
Fear and Trembling: Keirkegaard
Five Dialogues: Plato
Leviathan, The: Hobbes
Meditations, The: Descartes
Monadology: Leibniz
Myth of Sisyphus: Albert Camus
Nichomachean Ethics, The: Aristotle
Repetition: Kierkegaard
Republic, The: Plato
Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Khun
Think: Blackburn
Thus Spake Zarathustra: Nietzsche
Two Treatises of Government: Locke

Plays

Ajax: Sophocles
Antigone: Sophocles
Baby With the Bathwater: Christopher Durang
Beyond Therapy: Christopher Durang
Hamlet: William Shakespeare
Lion in Winter, The: James Goldman
Macbeth: William Shakespeare
Medea: Christopher Durang
Oedipus Rex: Sophocles
Romeo and Juliet: William Shakespeare
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: Tom Stoppard

Science Fiction/Fantasy

American Gods: Neil Gaiman
Anansi Boys: Neil Gaiman
Good Omens: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Hobbit, The: JRR Tolkein
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The: Jules Verne
Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The: JRR Tolkein
Lovecraft, Collected Workds: HP Lovecraft
Poe, Collected Works: Edgar Allen Poe
Snow Crash: Neal Stephenson
Stardust: Neil Gaiman
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: Jules Verne

Religious

Holy Bible (New International Version), The: Various Authors
Holy Bible (King James Version), The: Various Authors
Mahayana Sutras: Various Authors

Et Cetera

Art of War, The: Sun Tzu
Zombie Survival Guide, The: Max Brooks

Count: 83

Direction

2007-10-07T22:47:00.000-07:00

I have done a lot of reading in my life. Yet, I consider myself extremely ill-read. I don't consider this so much a sign of living in an extremely literate society (I don't) but that there are many good books and not enough time to devour them all (despite what others may have you believe). And no matter how much I have ingested, there will always be more. Such is the nature of the beast.

Thus, to remedy that, I'm going to go over the bulk of the books that I have read, and then add books that I mean to read, and compile a great list of sorts.

Yes. This is my project. This is my direction for my blog.

Why I Fail at Blogging

2007-10-07T22:42:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my interests in no particular order:

YA literature

Coffee

Whiskey

England

Science

Science Fiction (Star Wars in particular)

Philosophy

Quantum Physics (and its applications to philosophy)

Becoming well-read

Technology

Rugby (which is hard to follow in the US)

And here are the things I lack:

Television

Radio

The ability to listen to or read the news

Hope for humanity

Any interest in any sport that isn't rugby

When I tell people I'm uninteresting, I mean it. Moreover, I'm so unfocused that I can't even hope to pin one thing down.

I'm going to try blogging about becoming well-read. Maybe that'll be interesting.

Step 1: Find a good list of books.

I Don't Fucking Understand Women

2007-10-07T16:46:00.001-07:00

Or men, I should say. Specifically, Porkins.

"Elly was probably the most insane woman I've dated."

This was pre-Wen, and we were still in college, sitting in the cafeteria. I was suspiciously poking at what they had the audacity to call food while withdrawing a bottle of Ranch I kept on my person at all times, specifically for these moments.

Alice was visiting, and she and Porkins were able to devour with gusto what I could only cast wary looks at. It called itself a burger, and it probably wanted to be one, but I had my doubts that it could commit itself to getting anything done, the lazy sod.

"No way," I say. "Dee. Had to be."

"Who?" Alice was new and, obviously, had no idea who Porkins and I were talking about.

"All right." He tapped on edge of the table. "This end is where sane is." Tapping the opposite edge, he said, "This is where crazy is." Amassing the various bits which comprised generic cafeteria table detritus, he declared the pepper as Dee, the ketsup as Elly, the salt as Lansbury, and a spoon as, well, Spoon.

"Lansbury was probably the most sane."

"Well, she was a crazy hippie who didn't bathe or shave."

He cringed a little. "Yeah, I had to withhold sex sometimes until she bathed."

"And he'd fuck her while she was on her rag," I told Alice, "so you know his standards are low."

"And there went my appetite," Alice said. "I actually wanted to eat that."

"She was a gamer. They're hard to come by."

"I'm a gamer," I replied. "And I'd like to think I'm relatively sane and hygienic. Anyway," I faced Porkins, "wasn't there some actually normal chick you dated in high school? Some blonde chick with big tits?"

Porkins shrugged. "Sort of. I only dated her because she had big tits, and it was only for two weeks. If it counts, then she's the most normal."

"Tied with Spoon, I'd say."

"You didn't know Spoon that well."

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe she had some dumb fixation on you two eating Twizzlers from each end until you kissed, but on the whole she was pretty normal. Shallow as fuck, but normal. Oh, and the copious anal sex, but maybe she was just too dumb to be on a pill."

"I've been put off of my next meal too," Alice said. "Thanks."

"Elly was pretty crazy." Porkins set the ketsup bottle down nearer to the crazy end, but not all the way. "She told me she had breast cancer after going down on me. Right after sex she told me she had been raped at fourteen."

"Jesus Christ," Alice muttered.

I laughed. "Don't put too much stock into those statements. Apparently the next day her 'cancer' went into 'remission.' Good thing you pulled out of that one fast."

"In more ways than one."

"Oh, snap."

He picked up the pepper. "Dee." He set it down on the edge of crazy. "I wish this went further."

Alice held up a hand. "Sec." She studied the array of condiments before her. "Unwashed hippie, anal sex and Twizzlers -"

"Not simultaneously!" Porkins said.

"- and fake kiddie rape. And it gets worse?"

"Okay, see, here's the thing." Porkins leaned forward, and I knew where this was going. I sat back, smirking, watching him defend one of the poorer decisions he's made in his life to a relative stranger. "I was a geek in high school. I was tall, skinny, carried D&D books in my bag and wore shirts with dragons on them."

"And see the paragon of cool you've transformed into." He made a rude gesture at me. "I'm just saying, it doesn't excuse dating this chick for three years without getting laid."

"Was she that bad?" Alice loved this kind of shit. It's part of why we're friends.

"Do you know what an otakin is?"

"I know what an otaku is."

"Okay, take that, and like... uh..."

I hopped in to help, less out of kindness and more because I found this really, really funny. "Basically she thought she was an anime character." I paused for effect, letting that much sink in. "Three of them."

Alice choked on something. "Oh, God. Which ones?"

"P-Chan, Duo, and Pikachu."

"Wouldn't that make her a borderline furry?"

"Hah!" I shouted, pointing at Porkins. "Told you!"

"Shut up!"

"And you dated her for three years!"

"Shut the fuck up!"

"And you never got laid."

"Fuck you!"

"I mean," I kept pressing on this wound, even though it was a thick scar by now, and no longer hurt, but the whole thing still amused me, amuses me even now as I write this, "I can understand if you were getting some. Crazy chicks are great in the sack, or so I hear. But seriously?"

He muttered a protest pathetically.

"She even paralleled your relationship to the romance in... which one was it? Final Fantasy Eight?"

"Seven."

"You have horrible taste in women."

Asshole Customers are (Unfortunately)a Given, I Assure You

2007-10-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

There are certain slings and arrows that baristas are heir to. The previous post was one such arrow, although the moments of petty revenge, where I know I've slowed down someone's day, been that roadblock in their otherwise steady, fast-paced, self-absorbed path, even by a minuscule amount, brings a small tinge of joy to my cold, dead, misanthropic heart.

Sometimes my cat sniffs me right in the mouth and I ask her if she wants to make out. She usually turns away. Thank God, otherwise the Antique Roadshow (my apartment) could get very uncomfortable.

Other problems that, unless you make a steady stream of coffee, you will never encounter:

Milk on your glasses. I don't care how good you are, if you wear glasses and are making a dry nonfat cappuccino, you're going to spot your glasses at least once in your life. I do so daily.

Blisters. Everywhere. Were you able to stack all the blisters you will ever get, your hands will be simply saturated.

That particular feeling of wet grounds. Like sand you didn't want to take home with you. (For those of you who have never been to a sand-rimmed body of water in which you have swam, I really can't help you. Nobody can.) This feeling will get everywhere.

Dry, cracked, callused hands. If not from the dishwater, then the constant steaming and occasional splash of searing hot water (two degrees below steam). And when you're not allowed to swear, it makes the pain worse.

There will probably be more as they come by.

And asshole customers shouldn't have to be a given, but for some reason everybody thinks they're so goddamned important that they can't stop to realise that someone else matters too.

Grande Means Large, But It's a Medium

2007-10-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping that I can start some sort of Anti-Douche Movement. It's a lot to ask, I know. I just want people to start thinking before they speak, and realizing that other humans are not merely obstacles in their day. Maybe it is a lot to ask.

Maybe I am not the tongue for these ears.

Today at work, I was able to trounce a douche and not get written up for it. Thankfully.

There was a line. Nothing major, just a line about five people deep - at a high-volume store where the line can go out the door, this is a drop in the bucket. They wait patiently, staring at the menu, wondering how exactly they're going to ruin drinks that have been perfected through the ages. 'Perhaps I'll add Sugar-Free Vanilla to my cappuccino,' they ponder. Maybe. Probably.

I long for the day I can bust out a traditional macchiato for someone, and not this double espresso with a dollop of foam" bullshit. And for fuck's sake, stop ordering a "tall caramel macchiato" and shoot me a dirty look when I tell you "We use 'small'; you know, the normal sizes you grew up with. We don't feel the need to make up our own specific lingo to cover up shitty coffee." I digress.

The next time I hear "Oh sorry, I thought I was at Starbucks" I might just throttle someone.

This man comes in, decked in a power suit, crisp, clean, yammering away on his bluetooth headset, eyes fixated on his Blackberry. Bypassing the line, because his time is so important, he drops cash on the counter and mutters something along the lines of 'grandeflatnonfatlatte.'

Well, I have to tell you, the acoustics in this place are odd. People say 'Dana' and I hear 'Janet.' People say 'grandenonflatlatte' and I hear 'you're such a lovely person, here's a random tip for being awesome.' You can't fault me. They sound alike.

So I scooped up the cash and dropped it in the tip jar.

"May I help the next guest in line?" I shoot him a pointed look but apparently whatever is going on in his little world of hyperconnectivity is far more critical than treating a human being like a human being. I help the next person who waited patiently.

"What the hell was that?" she asked, pointing at the guy.

I shrugged. "Maybe someone rocked his world this morning. I took his cash as a tip."

"Did he order something?"

Again, I shrugged. "He talked so fast I couldn't hear. But it sounded like he wanted me to have money. Anyway, if he wanted a drink, I call what he dropped Asshole Tax." She smirked. "Don't tell anyone I said that."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Ten minutes later, the guy storms up, wondering where his drink is.

"Sir, you never ordered anything."

"Yes I did," he snapped, gripping his Blackberry fiercely. "I ordered a grande flat nonfat latte."

I smile politely at him. "Oh, sir, this isn't Starbucks. And there was a line. You spoke so fast it sounded like you were leaving a tip or something. I can help you now though. What is it you would like?"

He grit his teeth. "A grande-"

"Medium or large?"

"Have you never been to Starbucks?"

"I have. Obviously you haven't been here. Our drinks come in small, medium, and large. Pick one of those words and say it."

"Medium. Nonfat. Flat. Latte."

I read him the total and asked for his name.

"I gave you the money already."

"I'm not sure how much you dropped down, sir. And I can't take it out of the tip jar. I can't take for granted the fact that you gave enough, especially considering that since you can't differentiate between us and Starbucks, you probably gave the wrong amount of money. We do charge differently for our drinks."

He looked venemous. I smiled sweetly, took his money, and bid him adieu.

I hoped with every fibre of my being that he died in the parking lot of cardiac arrest.

And Try To Cite Someone Better Than Josh Homme For Guitar Prowess (Though He Is Good)

2007-09-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

KHEE: And you know, they put Muse in Guitar Hero 3, which really: finally.

SUGARPLUM: I have to disagree with you there.

KHEE: I'm... I'm sorry, what?

SUGARPLUM: I hate Muse. The vocalist sounds like a gerbil caught in a blender.

KHEE: I really can't take the musical criticisms of someone who wears a Staind shirt seriously.

Ka Ora

2007-09-25T01:01:00.000-07:00

One of the links featured in this blog post inspired a riddle.

Q: What do you call an online collection of user-generated data on Star Wars?
A: Wookiepedia

Many people think of Slytherin as the evil house. While ambition and cunning can easily lend itself to evil they can also lend themselves to good. (And try to tell me that she wasn't ambitious or cunning. I'll fight you. With fists.) I open this somewhat defensively primarily due to the fact that I identify Slytherin. More of a Slytherclaw according to a friend, which I can agree with, but the important bit here is the Slytherin side. Also, that quote in that entry is something neither a Slytherin nor a Ravenclaw would say about acing a test blind. That's a Gryffindor moment, if anything.

The key to being a Slytherin - never openly take sides on anything ever. You may think it a noble thing to pick a side and stick with it. You may want to display your loyalty. Whatever. You are of the wrong house and I'm not addressing you. Or perhaps I am, in showing you how to play our game. Either way, never openly take sides. You may have a side which you do support, but you do neither yourself nor whom you support any good by publicly joining the ranks.

Here is why.

It is obvious why openly siding with someone who is doing fortunately, such as a boss or other person in position of leadership, could be favorable. If you mark yourself as one of them, you could receive potential perks. Raises, promotions, having absences go curiously without reprimand, et cetera. Too much favoritism, however, can breed discontent with those of your own level. Your peers will come to ostracize you. Too much blind loyalty and the person you're pledged to can abuse your loyalty, and make it nigh on impossible for you to avoid his bidding.

But what about those below you? That kid in the mail room who seems all right? Or bagel boy? Well, say your boss takes a dislike with Carlos from accounting, that new young spark who seems to have aspirations above his station. If you show your colors in siding with him openly, your boss will view you as a threat too. No, if you truly feel loyalty to Carlos, you do two things: one, you lobby for him subtly, without openly showing you're friends with the guy, and you fish for information for him to stay out of trouble; two, in delivering said fished-for data to Carlos, make sure he knows you don't have his back, and if shit hits the fan you don't know the guy - and don't just tell him this (in fact, don't mention it at all), you cover your own hide on the matter.

If you're picking sides with people of your own level, and don't understand why this is a bad thing, especially by now, you're beyond help.

Everything about being Slytherin is subtlety, and in the end, it's about having your own ass covered. That's where so many Slytherins went wrong in siding with Voldemort, and that's where Voldemort showed his true colors: green and silver. You can't betray someone if you bear their mark on your arm, and he wouldn't give you time of day if you didn't have the mark. He tricked a good lot of Slytherins into being incredibly stupid, allowing themselves to be branded. Who does that? Gryffindors. Hufflepuffs. The houses of loyalty and dedication. To trick members of the house of cunning shows us the faulty nature of inbreeding.

But we're not an evil house. We're not a good house. We're just a place for the ambitious and the cunning. If anything, you have to wonder how an eleven year old child comes to have a thirst to prove themselves. I personally feel that, more than anything, it's a broken house, but that's an issue for another time. This is about sides. If you ever think a Slytherin has chosen a side for the rest of their lives, think again. The Malfoys weren't showing loyalty to the light or a change of heart. They were protecting their own. Slytherins are, above all things, survivors.

As a quick endnote, my team is through to the quarter-finals.

Customer's Not Always Right

2007-09-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

Until recently, I was a perpetual resident of the ever-expensive Tragic Kingdom, batting my eyes for a stack of thirty nine cent biscuits to sustain myself both physically and financially. Now in the Bay Area things are different and I have no desire to languish away in Great America merely because I fear I'll be revisiting the Valley of the Dirt People.

On one occasion, I had the joy of being able to sit in a restaurant with real food, amidst the overpriced glitz of Downtown Disney. I practically shoved my face into a platter of fried chicken and fries, having already polished off two tall glasses of some mysterious liquid which tasted suspiciously of rum and sweet things that weren't rum but certainly helped. It was in my mellow, full state that I overheard a customer requesting a manager. Their server had been our server, a waif of a boy who couldn't be more than nineteen, and he was unfailingly polite to us. I wondered what the problem was.

Prefacing this section, I'd like to let all people know who don't know: Disney is very accepting of the homosexual population. The odds of every man working there being gay are surprisingly high. Their benefits include benefits for one's "partner." So for those of you who are under the impression that Disney is a Wholesome Company who supports Good Christian-Right Family Values, realize that they're one of the mose fag-friendly companies I've ever heard of.

"We'd like to have a new waiter."

The manager appeared stunned. "Certainly," she said, confusion high in her voice. "May I ask what the problem is?"

"He's..." The customer appeared to have some semblance of shame here. Whether it was the good sense to feel bad about what he was going to say or the disgust at the g-word that he was about to utter, I couldn't tell. I'd bet on the latter. "He's too gay."

She physically recoiled from this. So did I. I think I dropped my fork here. "Excuse me?"

"He's to gay for us. It's ruining our lunch. And it's bad for the kids."

Two porky little loinspawn were banging away at the table, and I would guess they didn't even know what homosexuality was at the time.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you and your family to leave."

If I hadn't dropped my fork already, I would have now. The man looked about as surprised as I felt. "What?"

She stood up straight, crossing her arms, glaring down at him with a dark smirk. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anybody, and I'm refusing to serve you. We don't need your money. Come back when you stop being such a bigot. God help your children."

Flustered, the man turned varying shades of red and purple before storming off with family in tow. I merely started a slow clap. I also left the fattest tip I've ever managed in my life.

Sometimes it's okay to call a customer out on their shit. In fact, I encourage it. Intolerance is horrible, and that manager deserves a gold fucking medal.

At Least She Didn't Make the Logical Connections Available to Her

2007-09-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

It really is a damn shame that I'm not more interesting.

No, really. Ages ago, I found every snippet of my life utterly enthralling. But now, not as much. Perhaps I am less easily amused. I think I suffer for this fact.

In high school, I was a member of a program that required us to be "interns" somewhere. I took quite possibly the cushiest job I could swing: grading papers at an elementary school a block away. This tended to become a session of knocking back sodas and candy bars and discussing the children and their hilarity. Some of it was quite good.

One day off from school - some random Monday holiday that the early part of the year appears to be plagued with - I decided to go in and clock a significant amount of hours, to get the whole gig done faster. Fun as it was, I missed my afternoons.

I was in the second grade room. Storytime rolled around, and Miss McLeen gathered the younglings around her.

"Do you all remember the story I read you yesterday, of Little Red Riding Hood?"

There was a slow "Yes" from the chorus of younglings, as strong as a group of uncertain children leaning on one another for support for the correct answer can be. I was always the bold one who answered first but then I saw a lot of myself in Hermione.

"Do you remember what happened to her?"

A touch of incoherent babbling here, from which a strong "She got in trouble" leapt forth.

"That's right, she got in trouble, didn't she? And why did she get in trouble?"

This question was only met with silence.

"Because she didn't listen to her mommy."

I bit hard on my knuckle to keep myself from laughter at the somber tone she held when saying this. I'm just wondering how many younglings went home telling their family unit that not listening to mommy means you get eaten by wolves. I only pray it was every last one.

After all, that was the moral of the story.

The Funeral Pyre is a Lesson in Thermodynamics

2007-09-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

I have this thing. This condition. It has to do with quantum theory, relativity, and the probabilistic model of the universe, and the fact that the further I move in the state of inebriation, the more likely I am to discuss any of these topics. There is a constant likelihood of their being mentioned, even if I am stone cold sober. But if I'm drunk, and the conversation veers anywhere series, these topics will come out. You'd be surprised.

I have been thanked many times for my ability to explain these difficult concepts with relative ease. Especially relativity. I was in a philosophy discussion, and relativity came up, and I thought of a good example of how to explain it using Star Wars as an example. Well, how to explain the lack of absolute time on a macroscopic scale. My professor told me to fire away.

Before I launch into this, let me explain this professor. A PhD in philosophy and on her way to a tenure position, sharp as a Ginsu knife, utterly composed and distractingly intelligent. I was extremely intimidated by her and so did everything in my pathetic little undergraduate power to win her esteem. In the end I feel like I failed, but well, these things happen.

We began our ascent from the basement of Graham. "Well, there are three versions of the movies currently, right? The original, the 1997 VHS re-release, and the new DVDs. And there is one key event in A New Hope that has been changed. Who shot first: Greedo or Han?

"You see," I continued, now halfway up the stairs, "in the original, Han shoots first. In the 1997 VHS they made it so that Greedo shot first. In the DVDs, they tried to make it seem as if they shot at the same time. Which one is right?"

"Han shot first." The authority in her voice was overwhelming and I peed a little in fear. "There's no other way about it."

"Woah." I raised my hands to ward off any potential blows. It was a palpable moment of fear: she had one of my grades in her hands. I didn't want to argue with her for two reasons: one, Han did, in fact, shoot first and that pathetic CGI head-twitch to try to soften his character was just awful in every capacity; two, I really look more to the Jedi bits and find myself overall uninterested in the goings on of bounty hunters.

"And don't even get me started on that scream they added when Luke fell in Bespin. They took a heart-wrenchingly heroic moment and made him into a little bitch."

My Geek Self Just Shat a Brick

2007-09-12T22:55:00.001-07:00

Cadaeic Cadenza

A 3834-word story by Mike Keith where each word in sequence has the same number of letters as the corresponding digit in pi.

kottke.org

Because I couldn't say it better myself. And trust me, I tried.

I had something else to say, but now, distracted by this, I have nothing.

Sweet, Sweet Mescaline

2007-09-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

When working coffee, you get some odd characters. And I don't work your generic corpoare bullshit coffee. I work in a place with class. Regardless, you still get odd people.

To set up the scenario, I'm behind the counter, taking orders, set up in front of the free sample of the day. We're featuring a presentation tea which is sewn together to blossom like a green peony when met with water. Although if you ask me it looks more like a sea urchin.

KHEE: [handing coffee] Thank you, sir. That'll be a dollar sixty.

GUEST: [pointing to teapot] What is this?

KHEE: That's our featured tea, Green Peony.

GUEST: Peyote?

KHEE: No, no. Peony. It's a type of flower. And this is just green tea, chock full of antioxidants. What you're thinking of is chock full of mescaline.

GUEST: And how!

When Being Mean Goes Wrong

2007-09-11T19:25:00.001-07:00

I can remember the time my proverbial testicles shrank. I had a rather harsh tongue back in the day, and held back narry a comment on any topic, regardless of my level of expertise. One of my blogging experiences in the past actually became a touch noteworthy, which frightened me back into the recesses of obscurity. During my stay there, I was a featured blogger. But I was "featured" along side some slightly lower-calibre people, to which I responded:

It's good to know that expectations for excellence are exceedingly high around here. You're no longer even expected to have good spelling or exclude netsp3ak from your posts to be a Featured Blog.

You would be amazed at what a fucking honor it is to find myself judged as being the same level as people whose comprehension of grammar isn't even above a third-grade level. Thank you for that.

Somehow they still liked me there.

On one occasion, there was ridicule surrounding one of my favorite series, Resident Evil, wherein there was a cry to keep games with their original systems (by this logic Final Fantasy would be on Nintendo consoles), and that the pathetic quality of the movies somehow reflected on an inability to produce a good game. I pointed out the clearly faulty logic here and then continued on to say

You see this? This world in which the insipid are paid to think these thoughts? This is why I hate people. I'll gladly call a spade a spade, John. And I'll call an idiot an idiot. Three guesses as to who I'm referring to, and the first two don't count.

I picked on anything I could get my hands on. One game I ripped on, however, made me sad. A developer found my blog, and asked me what was wrong.

Now, I can't tell you what a spontaneously flagging erection feels like, but I'm assuming it's something like this. A touch of shame, pain, and a desire to crawl in a hole and pull the hole in after you.

Be careful who you are mean to. Sometimes they might be nice to you right back.

Sixteen, Going on Seventeen

2007-09-10T23:39:00.000-07:00

It is my experience - as it is the experience of many - that a person seldom actually wants to kill themselves. I would wager that nine hundred ninety nine times out of one thousand, it's a cry for help. Many successfully go through their cry for help, not in that they take their own life, but in that they get the attention they so desperately crave, the validation they believe they are thirsting for. They are caught with blade on wrist, pills in hand, rope dangling in their closet, whatever method you prefer, before they can inflict some real damage; or they are caught just after, rushed to a hospital, cried over, lamented, mothers and fathers asking Dear God What Did I Do Wrong.

I've had two noteworthy examples of people trying to kill themselves in my life. One, in eighth grade, got their wrist with a plastic knife. He was institutionalized. I felt at the time sad for him, that he never managed to do it. Sometimes some people are just better off, and I couldn't imagine with the start he had and the way things were progressing that he could have turned out sane. I'm not sure where he is now, but I wouldn't be surprised if he managed it by running himself headlong into a brick wall until he couldn't get up.

The other was a pure cry for help. He claimed schizophrenia at a young age, too young, claimed medication I never saw or heard him take, claimed a stack of problems that, upon going to his house, didn't add up. Then one night, professing his undying love, he threatened to cut his own wrists. "Fine," I snapped. "Just fucking do it. If you really want to die, I'm not fucking stopping you. Just lay a damn tarp down so that cleanup isn't such a bitch." He's still alive, haunting some new Beatrice.

Some of us fuck even that much up. I didn't actually want to die then. I just wanted it all to stop. It was a cry for help, and I've long since realized I was crying to the wrong people.

I was sixteen. It was a fistful of NyQuil. Unfortunately I didn't take into account that I had already been abusing the stuff to sleep for the past two years that it no longer had the same grip on me. I merely threw up and dragged my sorry carcass to bed once I was able to. On the way to school the next day, I was asked if anything was wrong last night. "I threw up. I think I ate something bad."

While lying there, cheek against the toilet seat, breathing in that particular smell of acid and stale porcelain, I realized this shit was stupid. Two more years, and I'd be gone, and never have to look back. That'd be it, the end of it. I'd move out and be gone forever. Once I was on my feet, I could completely disconnect. I could be fresh. I could leave it all behind and be a new person. I put the spent blister packs and box in my backpack so that they wouldn't draw notice sitting in my trash.

Problem is, once you cross that threshold, it stays with you. I already had stupid self-injurious tendencies, and I have them to this day. I suppose it's like any addiction. You drive and think of horrific ways to end it all, right then, right there, because you're stressed about the chores you have to get done today and wouldn't it just be easier if you were gone? Five assignments to do in the next two days but if you were dead that would be zero assignments. Would it hurt? Is there an afterlife?

I don't really know what keeps me alive right now. I suppose I've succumbed to my baser instinct of survival and procreation. I fear for when my children are old enough to care for themselves. I suppose that's why grandparents invest in their grandchildren so heavily. It gives them a reason to try and not die.

Medical Minutiae: Why You Get Headaches from a Hangover

2007-09-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

The bulk of the video could be reduced to a message of Having Fun Is Bad For Your Health. I hope I'm not the one to break it to them that the Puritans had already cornered the anti-fun market; someone down in HQ forgot to stay awake for that day in American History.

However, the fun bit came in the last thirty seconds, where I actually learned something. The headache you get from a hangover - and when I say 'you' I mean 'not me' because thus far in my life I have not become acquainted with that particular plight - is your brain, quite literally, pulling away from your skull. Perhaps a reenactment will help.

KHEE: I love Scotch! Scotchy Scotch Scotch!

STOMACH: There are many things in here, most of which is ethanol.

SYNAPSES: We're functioning more slowly now!

LIVER: I come to the rescue by controlling over five-hundred of the body's functions, one of which is getting you less stupid!

KHEE: Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker!

LIVER: Did you know alcohol is technically considered a poison by my standards? And every time you make me flush a lot of it, I actually decay a little? There's this little thing called cir-- actually, I won't spoil the ending for you.

KHEE: Seriously, the fact that I could spell my name at this point is relatively impressive. Is that my own vomit I'm lying in?

LIVER: I need water to do my work. Who has water? Brain! You're seventy percent water!

BRAIN: Oh no, not my water! That makes me smaller in size! And if you don't know why then you need to go back to junior high science class.

KHEE: It is! I'm so punk rock.

Effectively.

Going from BullShit to MoreShit (perhaps to eventually to Pile it High and Deep)

2007-09-06T04:53:00.000-07:00

What I like about having a blog no one reads is that I can write directed at a general ether without restraint, because this won't be ricocheting towards me anytime soon. If it does I suppose I'll deal with the fallout where I can, pending fallout even exists. It shouldn't, because I am ever-vigilant about my internet presence. But there's an off chance I could get completely smashed one night and talk about unsavory topics consisting of lives not mine but the details of which have been entrusted to me. Luckily my self-restraint while drunk is equivalent to that when I'm sober, which tells you something.

What I dislike about having a blog no one reads is that I can't ask for advice.

How do I apply to grad school?

Nothing Interesting to Discuss, Sadly

2007-09-06T04:49:00.001-07:00

I honestly wish I had something worth talking about in games. I mean, Sony drove a man to alcohol, and what initially appeared as Microsoft being exceedingly childish boiled down to a problem of trademarks. Outside of that, I don't see much that is fun or interesting going on in gaming. Or nerd-dom. I suppose everybody's probably too busy either playing BioShock or listening to things about BioShock.

And I don't read the regular news. You can only be so misanthropic until it starts cutting into your ability to civilly interact with those around you, and I manage to hold myself back from the brink with little tricks like this.

Normally I Would Say "Cockmonger" But I Feel Like Changint it Up

2007-08-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

Halo 3 Golden
Fantastic news for all the swaggering cockgobblers of Delta Kappa Phi, but those of us who aren't spending the bulk of our time either drinking from a keg of Natty light or pooling our cash to buy another are probably debating whether to save Little Sisters or harvest their sweet, sweet serum. Perhaps I'm coming of as a sanctimonious douche, but I have no reason to believe it offers anything new except for a wider variety of maps in which you can have your sexuality questioned and overhear vivid descriptions of your mother's sex life and your opponent's role in it by people who are only recently allowed to cross the street by themselves. And I'm not going to bother finding out if I'm wrong; the site is a slow-loading resource hog and not worth my time.

Department of Homeland Security Making a Game
A game that makes you the first-response to a terrorist threat? I'm not a huge fan of this genre, but somehow I feel that this has been done before. I don't know. The name Clancy is coming to me. Something about rainbows. Someone else figure it out.

Pessimistic Pachter Pooh-Poohs Take-Two Takeover Talk
I'm only linking this for the title. Now, I'm a fan of turn-of-the-century nostalgia (the turn between the 1800's and the 1900's, not the turn that included Spice Girls and flannel), but come on, time and place.

Fuck all this nonsense. I'm going to go watch the new Zero Punctuation. Last week's dig at the mindless hordes who only buy the games their frat brothers deem 'cool' had me in stitches. This one should be just as good.

Dear English and Anglophiles

2007-08-28T21:56:00.001-07:00

What is it with Belgium?

Let me rephrase this.

Eddie Izzard mentions Belgium. God is creating the world, running around frantically trying to get the bits he forgot together once more. Jam, cabbage, people with noses, small things, and Belgium, the last said in a somewhat defeated tone.

In the book Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Belgium is a swear word in the underworld.

And now, in the review of the Darkness demo by Fullyramblomatic, Belgium is mentioned, in the context that he would not purchase the full version of Darkness unless the following were added: a lower price, a better game (Beyond Good and Evil), cake, and Belgium.

Just wondering.

No, Not the Christian Television Station, the Other PAX

2007-08-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

Now that I have had my chance to get some sleep and detox, I'm going to take a highlighter, smear it all over the Penny Arcade Expo (aka PAX) and let you read the yellow bits. That is, to say, I'm highlighting the thing. See what I did there?

The fact that I managed to swing a cheap flight, free pass (thanks Kara!), and free hotel (thanks Jarrod!) made the whole thing so affordable that I could pick up a copy of Rez when I got home, to replace my lost one. Now someone just has to make those junksluts in EB/GS stock PS1 games again so I can replace my lost copy of Silent Hill. That would be sweet.

Wil Wheaton's keynote. If you haven't heard about it yet, you fail at the internet.

The first concert was good. The OneUps are good if you like jazz, which I don't. I spent that portion of the show drawing a variety of animated male genitalia and sending these works of art through the vast PictoChat network. Freezepop was what I came for, and I was not disappointed.

I can't speak much for the second concert. I was very drunk at the time. There are pictures. I do remember the Minibosses rocking the roof of the place.

FREE BAWLS. FREE.

Apparently the Frag Dolls aren't the corporate shills I had once thought them to be. At least, each doll on an individual level. Eekers, you're a cool girl.

Sidenote, I just went to find Eeker's profile on the Frag Dolls page, to find it suspiciously absent. She has left the dolls! I suppose that explains a lot of things.

I should never face the audience when singing karaoke because if I had just kept my back to them stage fright wouldn't have taken over and I might have won a PS3. Curse you, SingStar! I was one line shy!

On that note (get it? music? note? I hope you're writing this down) PaRappa the Rappa doing Run DMC's "It's Tricky" at the SingStar booth was pretty sweet.

Oh yeah, Mike and Jerry are cool.

But Kara is far cooler. Far cooler.

And I have airfare covered for next year. Hopefully I get to swing being an Enforcer. Hopefully I also swing substantial employment in that time.

The best part, the bit that I ran my yellow marker over twice: three solid days of goofing off and being a gamer without feeling weird about it. I'm still a little dizzy.

Thanks guys. A convention like this has been suspiciously missing for some time. Just keep out the spectacle and keep in the awesome.

It is Very Dark; You are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue

2007-08-28T13:58:00.001-07:00

Surprisingly high ratio of scary-game-stories today. Awesome.

Gore Is Less: Videogames Make Better Horror Than Hollywood
Although this should really come as no shock. There's a large difference between watching some scantily-clad girl traipsing through an abandoned house versus actually walking through the house yourself. For one, in the former, you're most certainly not looking at the monsters.

BioShock's Little Sister Killing Gets Mainstream Attention
Don't be shocked. Apparently the article actually goes into the bit where you can either kill or save the Little Sisters.

So what's your decision? Have you been sparing your Little Sisters, or harvesting them for their sweet, sweet serum?

Seeing Red: The Repulsive Allure of Pyramidhead (Silent Hill 2)
The contents of the article didn't entice me too much, but that's an unfair criticism - I've spent far too much of my life enthralled by Silent Hill, and the mythos therein, and could spout on for ages about the men, mythos, and mistakes of the series. But it does say what we all know about Pyramidhead - he's messed up but we love him anyway.

Wil Wheaton is King of Nerds

2007-08-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

Courts Block Laws on Video Game Violence
My guess is that these people - the ones comprising this dark enclave known as 'Courts' - have read the Constitution. I forgive my politicians for not having read it, however. It's a pretty old document, and I think they're still working their way through the entire Bible (somehow they can't get past quoting Leviticus).

Bioshock Installs a RootKit
You would think that we had learned our lesson by now. This isn't the first we've seen the 'sly' (I use the term loosely) invasion of RootKits on our systems, it won't be the last, but these tend to wind up costing people money. By people, I mean mega-corporations. By money, I mean millions. The sad part is that there's even protection for the demo. The demo. They are ensuring you can't copy and share the demo. Of course. This is logic at work here.

Gabe Newell: DirectX 10 for Vista was a Mistake
The title says it all, but in case you don't understand what this means (probably because gaming for you has more to do with a box which plugs into your television and less to do with building your own box that plugs into a smaller but sharper television-like device) it basically implies that the guys behind DirectX don't understand things like "market forces" and that not everybody is an "early adopter." Also that their new OS kind of "sucks the cock" but we're not going to get into that.

Leland Yee is a Douche
That's not the actual title. I'm paraphrasing. But I find it rather sad that I managed to verbally trounce this guy on the topic of videogame violence. Probably why his pet law failed. Stop voting for this guy, you noobs of district 12.

PAX '07: Wheaton Keynote Celebrates Social Gaming
It was incredible. I was there, saw it, and was motivated to play games again. The full audio is here, deliciously hosted by those machines at Penny Arcade.