Will The Real Inventor of the Weblog Please Stand Up

August 1, 2002 / / 1 Comment

Fishrush has done some rooting through the archives, and come up with some very interesting evidence pointing to Eli Chanticleer as the inventor of the weblogging machine, and the man responsible for loosing this plague upon the world. what's my line?
Circumstantial evidence linking the identity of Mr Chanticleer to a certain well-known Miraculous Fowl should be examined with care, as there are clear indications in the ebb and flow of the blogospheric aether that the game is afoot, and impostors and pretenders are weaving a web of lies to trap the unwary and credulous.
Exercise caution, my weblogging friends. These are dangerous times.

Dirty

August 1, 2002 / / 8 Comments

She’s dirty all right, but no more so than the rest of the corrupt scumbags who run this circle-jerk cesspool of privilege.
She was rejected because she’s a woman, pure and simple.
f–kwits. Asshats. Crapclowns. I f–king loathe these self-satisfied, centre-of-everyone’s universe Korean men, and I loathe Korean politicians, who are not coincidentally almost without exception male, with a special nauseated red-eyed hatred that makes my head hum like a generator. Line these wrinkly old upper-caste cocksuckers up against a wall and mow them down, say I. The greedy old boys’ networks in this country will guarantee that it remains the sh-thole that it is for anyone who’s not part of their cadre. Slaves and their overlords, right down the line. The threadbare whip of Confucianism coupled with the half-understood yoke of transplanted Christianity keeping the poor poor and the rich rich, and anyone who’s not a high-born male in a position of eternal subservience.
f–k ’em.

Visionary?

July 31, 2002 / / 6 Comments

I noticed that Christopher Smith, a person I don’t think I’ve ever met but with whom I share at least one name, has added me to his blogroll, under the grouping ‘Visionaries’, along with such digeratti as Messrs Locke, Weinberger, Searls and Winer, amongst a few others of Great Stature and Flattering, Indirect Illumination.
Now this I like.
*pauses*
*strains to say something heavy with profundity and vision, farts loudly from the effort, looks around to see if anyone noticed*

We’re on a Mexican, whoah-oh, radio

July 28, 2002 / / 7 Comments

A few times during your life, you may have run up against situations that tell you what kind of person you really are, what your response to disaster might be, what your mettle is. Some people have these experiences and it breaks them. For others, it’s just an anecdote.
Greg and I had just gotten back from Isla Mujeres, off the Yucatan coast near Cancun. The sun was going down, and we were well lit up. We’d been on the island all afternoon, fixing up the light and sound systems, and as per the usual arrangement when we moonlighted, we’d been paid in food and booze. Given the quantity of beer we generally drank just to maintain our equilibrium and air of pleasant mañanaland befuddlement, it might have been cheaper for them to pay us cash, but this way it was off the books, and everyone was happy. We were looking forward to an evening at Dady Rock, on the strip, where we were customarily given open bar courtesy in return for helping out with sound mix and lighting there as well.
Greg and his Mexican girlfriend Bianca had a tumultuous relationship, to say the least. She was the very embodiment of the cliche of the fiery latina, and living with them as I did, I caught her wrath almost as often as Greg. She could be terrifying, and almost totally irrational when she lost her temper.
Bianca met us at the dock, and we wandered over to the main road into the Old City, intending, I think, to go find Greg’s dealer. I wandered over into the bushes to have a pee while Greg and Bianca waited at the roadside to flag down a taxi. Life was astonishingly good at that moment – drunk, living in Paradise, I rolled my head back as I peed to look up at the wisps of clouds that were painted a rich red by the sunset, and breathed deeply of the clean ocean air to clear my head.
Then I heard the yelling.
“Ah, sh-t,” thought I to myself, “they’re at it again.” I immediatedly started reworking my plans for the evening to be a solo flight. But as I wandered over (slowly, unkeen to put myself between the two combatants – I’d learned how ill-advised this could be before), I saw Greg on his back in some low bushes, and Bianca astride him, pummelling him, or at least attempting to. I stopped on the sidewalk about 10 metres up from them, and waited. No way I was getting involved once she started getting violent. I’d taken a heavy silver belt-buckle in the head last time I’d tried that.
A few seconds later, a police car pulled up, and the policia switched on their rollers. The cops got out, pulled Bianca off of Greg, and cuffed her. This wasn’t good. As I walked up to the police car, they were putting the screeching and struggling Bianca in the back seat cage, and Greg was telling them in Spanish that he was her husband and he needed to come along. He looked at me as he got in to the backseat and shrugged. In Spanish, I asked the shotgun cop where they were taking my friends, and their answer was incomprehensible. I asked if I could come with them, as I had very little money on me and no idea where they were going.
This was my first mistake.
They took us to the police station on the main street of Old Cancun. Bianca was beside herself, still cuffed, doing everything but foaming at the mouth. Greg had entered into negotiations for the requisite bribes, trying to negotiate his way down. Everything seemed under control, so I asked what seemed to be the guy in charge, behind the desk, if I could go and get a pack of cigarettes. He replied in the positive, and I wandered off, confident that all was well. I bought a pack of Montana lights, and a can of Dos Equis, and wandered back to the cop shop, getting impatient to get back to the Strip. This was my second mistake.
As I walked in the door, it became clear that something significant had happened. Two cops were restraining Greg, three restraining Bianca, who if anything had cranked it up a notch into complete non compos mentis wildness, and one cop was sitting on the bench, looking green.
“What the f–k?” I asked Greg.
“She kicked one of the cops in the nuts!” said he.
“Oh, sh-t.”
“Yep.”
I offered some of the cops cigarettes, which they took. Then, after a couple minutes, the boss said something to the others, and they took the whole pack. And my wallet and passport, and my belt, and they led me back to a holding area. I was now, somehow, one of the detainees. f–k.
Bianca was still screaming, kicking, trying to bite anyone who came within range. Cuffed as she was, it took what appeared to be a great effort on the part of the two cops still restraining her to keep her in place. Greg had been put back in the holding area with me, and was now pleading for our release for any price, rather than just trying to negotiate the bribe down.
I was starting to sober up. And the cops had taken my smokes.
Some time later, Bianca was brought back from wherever she had been taken, and she looked bad. Blank eyes, slack mouth, bleach-blond mane hanging in front of her face. I don’t know what they had done to her, but Greg bristled, and I started to get a little scared. I’d heard stories about the cops here, and how they dealt with gringos who weren’t tourists. Greg had a temper of his own, and two black belts, and I could see things getting out of control very quickly.
The cops led us out to a patrol car, with a bigger, sturdier cage in the back, and refused to answer our questions about where we were being taken. The three of us were pushed roughly into the backseat, Bianca in the middle, and the doors slammed.
It was dark by now, but it was clear that we were being taken west, out of the city. In the couple of years I’d lived in Mexico, I had heard enough first-hand stories to know that it wasn’t just in the movies that the cops in Mexico take people out into the back of beyond and beat them, or worse. And Bianca having kicked one of the senior cops square in the nuts did not bode well for our future. I started to get really scared, and when Bianca came out of her fugue state and started screaming curses and kicking at the cage between us and the two cops in the front seat, I started to, well, dissociate. Greg kept asking them in Spanish where they were taking us, forcing a calm tone on top of the growing panic in his voice.
No answer from the front seat, and we were leaving the last of the lights of Old Cancun behind. Greg murmured to me “When they open the doors, you go left, I’ll go right. Run.”
I didn’t acknowledge what he’d said. Bianca did, and fell silent. The sheer terror and helplessness washed over me, and I was frozen. I wasn’t sure that if the cops did stop and open the doors in the middle of nowhere, that I’d be able to move, let alone run. Like I said, sheer terror.
A few minutes later, there were lights beside the highway again, and we pulled into the parking lot of the federal prison. It looked like we weren’t going to be dealt with extra-judicially after all. The overwhelming joy and relief I felt at the realization that I was going to be put in jail is a very vivid memory.
That happiness dissipated rather quickly. Mexican jails aren’t very pleasant. But I wasn’t there long, and that’s a tale for another day, perhaps.

Vodka Odyssey

July 26, 2002 / / 1 Comment

I made this for an SA Thread, but then realized that it didn’t have The Funny, and that it was also pretty technically deficient, mostly ’cause I’m about 5 beers into the evening.
So I’ll show it to you folks instead! Woo! I’m havin’ fun here!

Edit : After several more beers, I have posted it to the SA thread in question, which is already richly populated by dozens of remixes far superior. I am bracing myself for mockery most cutting.

Wide Open

July 24, 2002 / / 3 Comments
Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper – Wide Open

I’m feelin’ wide open every day
I’m feelin’ wide open every which a-way
Got something down inside of me
It just won’t let me be
Got something down inside of me
and it’s a-talkin’ to me..
Said John Calvin he’s long-dead
we gotta get that in our heads
we ain’t got nothin’ to fear
‘cept for runnin’ out, outta beer
Oh the time is now
the day has come
there are no rules
yeah only fun
you know what it is we gotta do
Don’t give up before you’ve tried
Don’t be afraid, yeah afraid to die
We ain’t got nothin’ to lose
Fear is our enemy
Takin’ the life outta you and me
Everybody’s in charge
we don’t need to wait
Robert, Tim and Ishmael
Man them dude’s great
Can’t let ’em have all the fun
Get up and go, wake up and run
I am a-live!
Said John Calvin is long-dead
we gotta get that in our heads
Get that jealousy outta here
We ain’t got nothin’ to fear…
I gotta go
We don’t need no more rules
Rules and regulations
We don’t need cops, cops and spies
and all that sensation
We need freedom
We need freedom
We need freedom in the USA
Reinvent the USA
Every which a-way.
I’m out in Pennsylvania county
on Highway 7-1-8
Middle of a cornfield
No, I’m not too late
There’s about thirteen
Thirteen ’67 Chevy Malibus
In a circle, in the cornfield
with their headlights on…
And I can feel it.
I can feel!
And everybody’s dancin in the headlights
Dancin’ in the headlights
And off in the distance you can hear ’em sing…
I’m feelin’ wide open
I’m feelin’ wide open
I’m feelin’ wide open
I’m goin’ wide open
[30 second sample]

The album’s out of print, you can download it here.

Taking a whizz

July 23, 2002 / / 4 Comments

I thought I’d seen it all, here in my reeking little trash-heap slum of a neighbourhood.
I was, as people who employ such phrases usually are, wrong. Walking back from the subway station this afternoon along the main street, I saw a young mother squatting with her girl-child (who was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, and thus past the age where using her as a meat animal is a viable option† any more) in the middle of the sidewalk.
The little girl’s panties were around her ankles, and she was pissing. Like a little pink-clad racehorse.
Now, Koreans tend to be less prissy and self-conscious about the functions of elimination than us western folk (which is perhaps odd in light of all the other faux-christian pruderies they’ve saddled themselves with), and their earthiness is always refreshing to me, but it’s a little beyond the f–king pale to encourage your children to drop their drawers and let fly all over the goddamned sidewalk, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?
† No, I’m not suggesting they cook and eat infants here — once in a while I just like to see if you’re paying attention out there…

Yeah, so? Yer still C-List!

July 22, 2002 / / 9 Comments

The double whammy of my loose talk of attention-whoring below and my avowal over at Oliver’s that I am not nor have I ever been a hit-slut has got me to thinking, as I am wont to do after too much coffee.
For someone who swears not to care whether he’s the Hit King Of Bumfuzz Nebraska or not, I do check my referrers and webstats a fair bit, and am always tickled to see one of those spikes that indicates I’ve mortally annoyed yet another group of harmless citizens. Again. Other than comments, which I seek most assiduously, because I believe in this two-way sh-t with a passion (unless of course you want to criticize me, in which case go stick your head in a pig), it’s about the only way I can tell how the heck I’m doing at this non-zero-sum game.
But I wish someone would explain to me how this hits and visits and pageviews sh-t works. I still keep those two little icons ticking over at the bottom of the page because I’ve had ’em since I started on Blogger way back when, and I’m nothing if not a slave to continuity. We also got a webstats package set up on the server a few months ago, and that never ceases to confuse the hell out of me.
For example, here’s my numbers (gimme the numbers, Harry!) for Friday of this week, a pretty much average day for this month.
Sitemeter says : 260 visits/460 pageviews
Nedstat says : 340 pageviews
Webstats says : 10669 hits/484 visits/1135 pages
What the hell do these numbers actually mean? Why are they so wildly different? Am I a f–king superstar yet? Will I become rich and famous, to go along with fabulously handsome and extraordinarily well-hung? Will I start making $6K a month, like whatsisface?
Not bloody likely.
The only stats thing I ever pay attention to is the neat little monthly graph from the Sitemeter gizmo, anyway. But I am genuinely curious as to how on earth these different numbers can be reconciled, what they actually mean, and if they reflect in any way at all the actual number of people who visit this site and shake their heads in bemusement at my latest textual antics.
I sure as heck don’t know. Vanity is the cheese in the submarine sandwich of social intercourse. But if you understand this stuff, I’d sure love a quick tutorial…

Trackbackage

July 20, 2002 / / 4 Comments

Matt has added Trackback functionality to Metafilter. I just tested it out with my previous post, pinging this thread (see the bottom of the thread). When Ben and Mena released the latest version of Moveable Type, with this new trackback functionality built in, there was a great deal of interest and enthusiasm, but that seems to have waned a bit recently, as these things do. I don’t think enough people have been using it, that I’ve been able to see at least. (Edit : I note that Phil Ringnalda has been getting relatively massive numbers of trackbacks, though, so clearly some people are using it! (Edit of the Edit : Clearly it’s time to cut back on the drugs. I was sure I saw (TrackBack(18)) and (TrackBack(30)) there a minute ago!)) It hasn’t quite reached the critical mass needed to sustain the idea and start it metastasizing, but this may just push it over the top, and not coincidentally make Metafilter even more of a Central Bar and Grill for various weblog ad-hoc networks and communities.
I’m hoping Matt’s decision to incorporate Trackbacks into Metafilter threads as an experiment provides that push over the top that the technology needs, because the interconnectedness enabled by tools like trackback, backlinks, and recent referrers fascinates me. Should be interesting – as Matt says here : “Trackback’s the first attempt to string a wire through all the random blogs out there.” I’m curious to see what happens.

Bitch Moan Whine

July 18, 2002 / / 8 Comments

The university where I teach hands out student evaluations at the end of each semester. They are anonymous, and we don’t get to see them. In fact, the administration (who collectively have their head so far up their fundament that they can tell if they’re getting cavities or not) doesn’t even deign to tell us the results, normally.
I, however, have my sources.
For the last two semesters in a row (that is, since I began this job), according to the student evals, I have been the number one professor at my university (hooray for me!). Both semesters I had eight of the ten top-rated classes in the entire school (double hooray for me, with a f–king cherry on top!).
This is why I was so annoyed and disheartened when the new contract I was presented with this summer didn’t offer me a raise of any kind. In fact, thanks to some of the clever accounting at which Koreans can be so ept, I think I might end up grossing less this year than last. I genuinely love teaching, but damn it, I expect to be rewarded when I so completely exceed what is required and expected of me.
This annoyance percolated into rage today as I watched them erect a 30-foot, chrome-and-neon crucifix on top of the goddamn auditorium. They can spend what must be upwards of twenty grand on Xtian decorations, but they can’t throw me a bone.
f–kers.
[Edit : I forgot to say ‘Angry? Damn right I am!’]

fcuk Off

July 17, 2002 / / No Comments

Hey, my American friends, why not take the sage advice of my friend here…

I made this. If you steal it, please credit me. Not the old native guy, the other stuff. Well, not that stuff either, actually. Some underpaid governmnet employee made that...Ah, f--k it. Steal it if you want.

…and tell the bastards to go f–k themselves!
[Edit : Thanks to the random google-surfing psychos who crapped here, but I’ve closed the thread and deleted the bile, pathetically amusing as it was. Sue me.]

To Live and Die In Bugok

July 16, 2002 / / 6 Comments

There’s an article up on kuro5hin at the moment entitled ‘To Work in Korea, Part I’, and it’s actually pretty good, other than the stunningly bad advice that one go through a recruiter.
The author promises another on Korean culture soon, to which I look forward. Worth having a look if any of you, my faithful and devastatingly good-looking readers, despite my Korea-related screeds and rants here, are at all interested in coming over to the Land of The Morning Traffic to pick off some of the low-hanging dollars.

There are those who come here strictly for the money. Not necessarily incompetent, they are opportunists who seize the chance to make lots of money for doing relatively little work. I know of one fellow who plans on working here for 10 more years before retiring back in Canada. These are not necessarily bad people, just here for a different reason.

See – I’m not necessarily a bad person or incompetent! This is an enormous relief to me.

Work in Progress

July 13, 2002 / / 1 Comment

With the help of the mighty Burning Bird, the old ‘bottle is porting over to a MySQL database backend. Some oddness may occur. Please stand by.
Edit : I am aware that the recent conversations sidebar thingo is busted at the moment.

A New Hope?

July 12, 2002 / / 47 Comments

There are almost certainly more refugees from Metafilter than there are people who actively participate, these days. The registered user count is up over 14000 at the moment, but if I recall correctly, Matt recently said that the server logs indicate there are only (only) a couple or three thousand registered users that hit the site on a regular basis. All indications, based on the numbers, at least, are that Metafilter continues to be a robust and roaring success. Matt has recently purchased some new hardware, and there are days and threads when I would defy you to find anything smarter or more amusing anywhere on the iNtARwEb.
But everywhere I turn, there is a constant keening lament about how bad the site has gotten, as compared to its long-past Glory Days. It is typical of these things, I suppose, but amuses me anyway that some disgruntloids insist that the golden age ended only recently (with a raft of calm, reasonable, and highly respected old guard users quietly calling it quits) while others point to the beginning of this year (when there were some high-profile, I’m-taking-my-ball-and-going-home departures). Still others glare and hurl imprecations (though mercifully stop short of screeching and flinging their poo) at the huge upsurge in registered users following September 11th last year, and yet other others pinpoint the date that everything went to sh-t as November 16, 2000, a day of infamy that was marked by the first appearance of a certain wonderchicken on the #006699 scene.
Michael Sippey, for instance, lamented in Swiftian style

It is a melancholy object to those who click through to the great site of MetaFilter, when they see the front page, the comment pages and the MetaTalk sections crowded with chatter, with noise, and with meaningless posts that should have never seen the light of the submit button. Readers, instead of being able to rely on MetaFilter as a trusted source of daily diversion, are forced to employ all their time in scrolling to beg sustenance for their starving minds: which, as they evolve over time, either whither into dust, or abandon their dear MetaFilter for sites unknown.

almost a year ago!
A while back, I spent some time (way too much time, compulsively hitting the refresh button, wirehead monkey at the joyjuice hotbutton) hanging around with some folks who splintered off a long time ago from the grandpappy of Metafilter cult threads, 1142 (folks I miss, but in order to actually accomplish anything with my time must continue to hug from a distance – *waves*), and amongst all the other things that were talked about, they spent a lot of their time bemoaning how bad Metafilter had gotten. These were, are, some of the smartest, most creative people I’ve ever spent time with, virtually or otherwise. The few months that I spent a lot of time there were almost a year ago.
Since then, some of them have stopped appearing at all on Metafilter, although the occasional Special Guest Appearance leads me to believe that they are still watching, still disapproving, still shaking their heads in dismay at the decline of the Mothership.
Another gang of Meta-refugees with whom I hang out, the wacky kids at 9622.net, another MeFi splinter site that was birthed from a cult thread (9622 this time, duh), although much more concerned with having fun and being silly, also note occasionally, between flinging poo and screeching, that Bad Things are happening these days.
Recently, jpoulos (one of the admins of 9622.net) has been talking about his disenchantment in more direct terms in the comments attached to this post : Why Metafilter Sucks Ass. I find myself agreeing with him, with some reservations.
jpoulos doesn’t participate at Metafilter anymore, and is missed.
Many many words have been spoken and typed about the Metafilter and how it has changed over the past year or two. Hell, I’m adding to the wordcount now, and I can’t seem to stop myself. Nick Sweeney said a few months ago :

Matt’s always been very trusting towards his membership, and in general, receives the respect that’s deserved by such trust. I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t accommodate 13,000-odd members: partly because the times don’t lend themselves to seminar-style discussion; partly because you’re dealing with the friction between oldbies and newbies, and their different conceptions of what the place is, was, and should be. ‘Member memory’ is a vital aspect of community sites, even ones which profess to deal with the transient meme-feed, and I think it’s much stronger at MeFi than Plastic: so that when you have members who take perhaps two years’ worth of discussion into the day’s discussion up against new arrivals, it’s bound to create the same kind of frustrations as a USENET September.

Nick doesn’t participate at Metafilter anymore, and is missed.
For my part, I’ve written defenses both impassioned and tongue-in-cheek of the place in the past. I’ve said

…things are pretty much as they’ve been since I started coming here, at least – some good days, some bad ones, some thread hijacks, some crap posts, some egos and wrestling matches, some absolute diamond-hard fascinating discussions, some erudition, some crap jokes, some pee-myself-laughing ones too, a generally tolerant and friendly hubbub.

and other things, more embarrassingly and openly in love with the place.
I personally think the exodus started when Jason Kottke posted this Metatalk thread not long after the massive influx of users after September 11th, which seemed to be a continuation of a real-world conversation that he and Matt had been having. Matt commented in the thread that he was tired of it all, and thinking about folding the tent. Much consternation ensued, and I honestly think that some people who might have stuck around and dug in their heels to try and make the place better and lead by example threw in the towel at this point.
There were other things – the rise in chattiness, the rise in incivility, the decline in collective intelligence, the increase in jokiness and pointless IRC-esque chatter (in which I admit my occasional participation) – most of which were probably as a result of the massive influx of new users.
Whatever the reason, even though there are many voices still participating that I enjoy hearing, lots of people with whom I enjoy interacting, I’ve got to agree for the first time in public that the Mothership is not what it once was.
What to do? This is the $64,000 Question, of course. I still enjoy the place a lot, and will continue to participate until Matt bans me permanently for conduct unbecoming a wonderchicken, but I am starting to understand a little better the complaints that I’ve ignored or argued against for so long. To some extent I wish that I’d paid them more heed a year ago.
(Should I mention my theory about the disenfranchisement of the A-List now? No, perhaps not. Not until my secret plans for World Domination have been hatched, my pretties. Not until then.)
It has been said, and truly, ‘it’s only a website’. Can you love a website? Is it internet-era pathological behavior to say ‘I love that website’?
I dunno.
But some days it feels as if my love is turning into common street trash before my eyes, and no matter how well-documented my weaknesses for common street trash, that’s just not the girl I fell in love with.

You must not attempt this

July 11, 2002 / / 1 Comment

As Kent recently intuited, I’ve been rereading Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher and Bach recently, in part in hopes that a rereading will illuminate corners that I missed the last time through, and in part because good books in English are very difficult to find here, and prohibitively expensive when I do find them. There are no libraries of which I am aware within a two hour radius of my home, and even if there were, they would not have any books in English. This situation is particularly unhappy because I am and always have been a voracious reader, getting through an average of two or more books a week. Needless to say the tomes that comprise the meager collection I brought with me when we moved here from Sydney are well-thumbed and dog-eared by now.
Bitch, moan.
Anyway, this anecdote from GEB struck me, and I thought I’d share it with you.
Johann Bolyai and Nikolay Lobachevskiy independantly and to all appearances simultaneously discovered non-Euclidean geometry in 1823. Euclidean geometry, of course, is based on five postulates, four elegant and one perhaps a little less so, and had stood proudly for about two thousand years.
The first four postulates :
(1) A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points.
(2) Any straight line segment can be extended indefinitely in a straight line.
(3) Given any straight line segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as radius and one end point as center.
(4) All right angles are congruent.
and the fifth, which lacks a little of the concision and elegance of the first four
(5) If two lines are drawn which intersect a third in such a way that the sum of the inner angles on one side is less than two right angles, then the two lines must inevitably intersect each other on that side if extended far enough.
Over the intervening centuries, dozens of attempts had been made to prove that the fifth postulate was in fact part of ‘four-postulate geometry’, all unsuccessful.
One of the people who had attempted to do so was Bolyai’s father, Wolfgang, who was also a mathematician and a friend of Gauss (who is part of Graham’s mathematical family tree, synchronicitously enough). The elder Bolyai wrote to his son, in an attempt to steer him from the black sinkhole of depair that was Euclid and the Mathematical Life :

You must not attempt this approach to parallels. I know this way to its very end. I have traversed this bottomless night, which extinguished all light and joy of my life. I entreat you, leave the science of parallels alone…I thought I would sacrifice myself for the sake of the truth. I was ready to become a martyr who would remove the flaw from geometry and return it purified to mankind. I acoomplished monstrous, enormous labors; my creations are far better than those of others and yet I have not achieved complete satisfaction. For here it is true that si paullum a summo discessit, vergit ad imum. I turned back when I saw that no man can reach the bottom of this night. I turned back unconsoled, pitying myself and all mankind…. I have travelled past all reefs of this infernal Dead Sea and have always come back with broken mast and torn sail. The ruin of my disposition and my fall date back to this time. I thoughtlessly risked my life and happiness – aut Caesat aut nihil.

This passage astonishes me. Even allowing for floweriness of language, that a man could so deeply feel his life ruined and wasted as a result chasing a mathematical proof somehow sets me back in my seat, a-wondering about how we have changed, or if indeed we have. It may not have a similar effect on you, and if not, I beg your indulgence.

Hulk Annngrryyyy!

July 10, 2002 / / 17 Comments

Some things I’m angry about :

  • I have to travel 30 minutes by subway to buy cheese.
  • My shoes are stinky.
  • BBC World describes the shock and amazement with which ordinary people are reacting to the ‘greed, ineptitude and dishonesty’ of Big Companies like WorldCom and Enron and Xerox and so on. I tell you, ordinary goddamn people must be stupider than freakin’ cowsh-t. Every single large company I’ve ever worked for (and most small ones as well) have been nuts-deep in ‘greed, ineptitude and dishonesty’. Surely I can’t be the only one.hulk.jpg
  • George Walker f–king Bush.
  • This sanctimomious, prissy little pissant. I think I might tear him a new asshole pretty soon, and I might just let you folks in on the fun. Stay tuned.
  • 48 dead Afghani wedding guests.
  • That one student of mine in my summer class who keeps giving me this “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about” look no matter what I say.
  • The fact that at the age of 36 my belly has finally gotten to that certain size where a little roll appears over the top of my pants when I sit like I am now, hunched forward over the keyboard. In the summer heat, this area then proceeds to become, well, slick with my juices is perhaps the best way to describe it. Not pleasant for anyone.
  • George Walker f–king Bush (again), Dick Cheney, and their gang of petty thugs and greed-driven white collar criminals.
  • Not being able to visit my mom this summer.
    How about you? What are you angry about? C’mon, vent. It’ll make ya feel better!