I’ve popped up a new design, but I haven’t had time to work out the kinks, so there are some problems, most noticably being some CSS hiccups and a lack of working navigation. Sorry about that. Please use this thread to comment: is it ugly? Nicer? Easier on the eyes? It should be more flexible, but its not all I wanted, I simply ran out of time. A good start? :-/

“What are you watching?”
“The Daily Show. Leslie Stahl is on.”
“Is that the person you’re going to see on Jay Leno?”
“No mom, that’s Nicole Kidman.”

This is wonderful. Oh, did I ever mention, I am bigoted…against bigots. Do I have to hate myself?

Kelly Macdonald (That girl from Trainspotting) on Los Angeles:

Q: You’ve done some film work in Los Angeles. What do you think of Los Angeles as compared with Glasgow and London?
Macdonald: You can’t even say them in the same sentence really. Just completely different. … Driving around L.A., it’s a bit fascinating, everything is so flat. Other than that, I’m just very suspicious of the whole place. I think it’s not really even houses, it’s just sort of the fronts of houses, and there’s people tee-heeing behind and sort of thinking, ‘she thinks she’s in a town. Ha Ha. We’re just pretending. There’s no people actually there.

(No, the title is not a Buffy reference.)
I was feeling cooped up today so I took an excursion down to The Block to get some recreation. I figured if nothing else I could at least get a bit of walking in. I noticed that the film Gosford Park was playing, and it intrigued me. The funny thing is, The Block is a pretty mainstream theater, a massive 30 screen giant, and yet AMC still charges reasonable prices and, in fact, often screens films that, while not fringe independents, are at least less mainstream than others. Gosford Park is certainly not mainstream.

We begin in a rain storm, and the first person we see makes me go “Hey, Its That Guy!” (well, actually, girl) from Trainspotting. Turns out that the movie is basically a cross between Clue and…oh…I dunno…Titanic or something. We’ve got the old rich folks, the new-money rich folks, the folks who are leeches off of the old-money folks, and some folks that are just plain without money. Next we’ve got a bunch of serving staff, the butler, maids, cooks, valets, lady servants, etc. Each of them has a past and a story as well. The first hour is devoted soley to exploring these characters, and, amazingly, by the end of it I feel like I pretty much know all three dozen of them.

The surface appearances of everyone at the party are not as they seem, in fact many people — both guests and waitstaff — have secrets that they’d rather remain buried. These secrets become less hidden when the lord of the manor is abruptly removed from the land of the living. This is when it gets interesting, as various plot lines are merged together artfully in a strange and tangled web of relationships and crossed blood lines.


We are left with a conclusion that is not at all satisfying (nor, I expect, was it meant to be) but which reveals the mysteries of the past, shows a society content with brushing them aside, and returns everyone safely to their homes. What a strange world we live in.

Religions I’ve investigated and decided don’t quite fit me. The list so far, and the current investigation:

• Monotheism
  • Judaism
  • Christianity
  • Islam


• Paganism
  • Wicca
  • Technopaganism

“A startling number of Pagans work and play in technical fields, as sysops, computer programmers, and network engineers. On the surface, technopagans like Pesce embody quite a contradiction: they are Dionysian nature worshippers who embrace the Apollonian artifice of logical machines. But Pagans are also magic users, and they know that the Western magical tradition has more to give a Wired world than the occasional product name or the background material for yet another hack-and-slash game. Magic is the science of the imagination, the art of engineering consciousness and discovering the virtual forces that connect the body-mind with the physical world. And technopagans suspect that these occult Old Ways can provide some handy tools and tactics in our dizzying digital environment of intelligent agents, visual databases, and online MUDs and MOOs.”

My new resolution is that I don’t get to watch Buffy unless it is while exercising. So I’ve setup a set of wireless headphones to the TV/VCR in the exercise room, and now I do StairMaster-ing while slaying. Well, you know what they say, exorcise daily!

Anyway, I have a great quote here that really caught me in my search for all things techno-societal, and I want to say first off, props to the Giles (and thus the writers) for using the word “smelly” in a positive, like I do, instead of a negative. Yay, my usage is catching on! 🙂

Upon being asked why he prefers books and disdains computers.
Giles: Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell… musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is… it has no texture, no context. It’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be, um… smelly.”

Thanks to BuffyGuide.com for the reference.

All posts between December 25 and January 4 seem to be permanently lost. Luckily, I didn’t write a lot between those times, but it does mean you miss a nicec Culture Jammer email. Ah, well. You’ll just have to start reading Adbusters. 🙁

The cruise is going well enough. I’ve met a few interesting people. We will reach Puerte Vallerte (sp?) in two days. On this Christmas Eve the crewmembers are singing holiday songs in the grand atrium. Its nice. The food, however, isn’t quite so good as I would have expected.

What is better then I expected is the computer situation. There is, as you can tell, internet access! Now my 15 minutes are about to end, and I don’t want to spend any more money, but suffice to say that their NT machines are sufficiently penetratable that I was able to get around their simple security and in a few minutes get to the hard drive. Now to figure out the settings so I can get my iBook on the network…

But no, I don’t want to stir up trouble. Unless I get bored.

A note to Sara or Kelson: let me know what is up with Mock Trial. Its hard to get my email, but next time I’m online in a few days I’ll try to check it, and I’d like to know where we stand with that. Until then, bon voyage all!

So I’m off on this Mexico cruise thing, a day earlier then I thought we were leaving, so I’m scrambling to get everything done, one of the things not happening being the final Philosophy paper. Eesh, this is really bad. I’m gonna have to figure out a way to do it in the car and email it in before I get on the boat.

I had a dream last night that I wrote something stupid on AgBlog and then wanted to delete it, but didn’t know how. Now, first off, everything I write on AgBlog is stupid, second I try to avoid deleting entries. Third, why the heck was I dreaming about that? :-/

So I got back, after some long flights and some frisking by airport personnel (my cell phone buckle was the problem, apparently). We went to a nice meal and Claim Jumper and I received my Hanukkah present, an iPod, so now I am very happy. 🙂 At first the cats couldn’t figure out who I am, but I think that once I sat down in my room they got it. Its good to be home, even if I’m going to be leaving in three days. Tomorrow I get a haircut and some time to bug people at Foothill. Yay bugging! Oh, and I must embark on my quest to get my family addicted to Buffy. Cause I really am that sad. 😛

People have this obsession with locking eyes and telling truth. I don’t get it, it doesn’t work for me. When I know that is happening, I can’t look someone in the eyes. I’m pretty sure that that was what really got me kicked off of the Justice – not looking David in the eyes when I told him that I didn’t do anything wrong. Even when police reports cleared me, no charges were filed, I even got what could be considered an apology, he didn’t trust me to come back, because I didn’t look him in the eye at The Boulevard when he asked me that question.

See, I have this inner subconscious thing about societal conventions, expected patterns of behavior, and all that. I knew what I was doing as I looked away, I knew I was dooming myself, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps I hoped he would judge based on the facts and not some fake emotional exchange. There is a whole rant in here somewhere about the truth of memories, the ability of people to lie, etc., etc. Truth is, I’m a very bad liar, and thus I try to avoid big lies as much as possible. So people get upset sometimes, because I tell the truth, because I’m not as tactful as I could be but, for better or worse, that is who I am.

I should probably write the whole incident with the Justice down, but the conversations and chain of events are fuzzy enough that I don’t really feel confident to do so. People asked me about it for a long while afterwards, and no one is content with the explanation that “really, its not very exciting, in fact its quite boring.” Because, truthfully, it wasn’t a big thing, nothing incredible. Police investigations does not equal murder, intrigue, or whatever. And in America we have this thing about being innocent until proven guilty, and I wasn’t even charged. I was called in as a witness in a very minor act of tampering that I did not actually witness. A few statements were made (not by me) that were misinterpreted, and the police detective’s somewhat overzealous investigation lead to some troubles for a certain assistant editor (me) at a highly-unsympathetic newspaper. Of course, if I had waited until I had been established there, learned the people, and then carried out the investigation, this probably would have turned out very different. Truth is, I was given an opportunity for a job that I didn’t completely want, but I felt that the experience would be worth the work and so I signed on to try my hand at editing. I had some high dreams about getting to the heart of real stories that matter, especially at a newspaper that is not at all influenced by major media concerns like advertising. Too bad it didn’t work out, but maybe next year.

And I’ve used the expression “truth is” twice in one entry, which shows that I must really be out of it and incoherant here at 5:30 in the morning. But I figure, stay awake now, and I can sleep on the plane. So. Must…stay…awake.

(How did this come up? It was a line on 24.)

Yay, my Honey Nut Cheerios(tm) have “soluble fiber” that may lower cholesterol! Okay, I’m just happy to have AgBlog back, so I’m posting junk…

iTunes uses something like 50% of my CPU to play music – that is A Bad Thing(tm). In contrast, the newly installed command line utility mpg123 plays on my iBook at about 10% utilization, a much nicer number. But MPG123 doesn’t really support any options besides just straight playthrough – no fast forward, rewind, looking at playlists, etc. So I’ll try Audion, the other Mac OS X player, and hope I can get a good compromise. Cause my songs should NOT be monopolizing my CPU. That is just bad programming.

I go out to the campus shuttle at 10:00pm, and get home right about…now. Phew. I lugged my 60 lb. server around Grad for a while until I found Joel’s place, we spent some time setting it up (apparently Mac OS X won’t boot without a monitor…wha????), and then I caught a van back.

First we went into Waltham with four drunk guys (“You know what, Victory has food!” “Yeah, that’s cause they’re a supermarket.” “Oh, yeah.”) and they got me and the driver donuts in exchange for us waiting for them to get…donuts. Then we went back. So I’m here. Yay! And AgBlog is back on the air after a few days of darkness, and my server is up and running so that I can access everything over the break. And tomorrow…err..today, at 9:30am, I catch the Airporter to the airport, and then, home free! And I have four DVDs saved up for the flight. So it’ll be fun. But…oh crap…still have some philosophy to do. Sigh.

Who needs sleep when you’ve got Jerry Cohen papers to write? 🙂

(The title is ™ Willow)

I can’t remember the last time I heard sirens around here, but just a second ago I did. I feel like I’m home already. 🙂

Last night I dreamt that D’Argo appeared on the Larry Elder show for half an hour, then afterwards realized that no one was able to understand him (he speaks Luxon, of course, and no Earthlings other then John Crichton have translator microbes) and it was all a big joke. Why did this come about? Well, Justin, having found on my website my interview on KFI, told me about his experiences on KABC with Mr. Elder, and then we started debating something or other having to do with guns. D’Argo, being the gun-toting warrior alien of Farscape, somehow merged with Justin, and there you have it. Since I rarely have dreams, I like to remember them when I do, so I figured I might as well write this one down, even if it is completely without meaning.

It’s bad when you are writing your final papers on your laptop and then, when you turn it on in the morning, it refuses to work any more. As in, it won’t start up, it won’t boot from CD, it crashes every minute or so that it’s on with either a “bus error” or a fatal system crash. So eventually I realized that my Mac OS X cd would boot the laptop, while the OS 9 CD would not. So I booted into X, reformatted, installed, and cleaned up a bit. But I still can’t get OS 9 back on there. So now I am rewriting my essays. Sigh. Well, I had the majority of my work in my Conspiracy essay saved on my desktop, so now I’m finishing that up. Except its certainly not my best work.

On Wednesday I go home! Yay! I need to clean up, do some laundry, and vacuum, and also to make sure all of the Mock Trial stuff is in order. I have to meet with some administrators about getting money. We’re working up a budget and, with the help of my mom’s wonderful shopping skills, we’ve cut our car rental costs by about 300%. Yay! Thanks mom! 😉

So anyway, I get picked up by the highly respected Airporter which, I might add, is impossible to find on the internet, get dropped off at the airport, and take a nice big American flight (like the one that crashed into the…oh, never mind) into LA. No, I’m not worried anything is going to happen. But a lot of other people still are, even on the short-hop flights that were not used, unlike the Boston to LA flights that were. Oh, but I stop over somewhere, so I guess I’m okay.

And if all this talk about crashing planes sounds either sarcastic or mean, its just because I think that some of the opinions people have about airport security are just terrible. And the profiling and searching that is taking place doesn’t seem like its doing anything to fix the situation, only to make people more tense. Yeah, national guardsmen in our airports will really help, especilally in a 12 Monkeys scenario, when someone releases a small vial of smallpox and then walks away. Shoot that, buddy. 🙁

So anyway, I’m optimistic about the flight. I hate plane flights, but maybe this one will be somewhat empty, and I’ll certainly have a few good DVDs to watch, although my computer won’t last through more then 1.5 of them. I’ll have to recharge in my stopover in Chicago or wherever.

So I find out that most everyone who is giving me grief for watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer spend their Wednesday nights watching, of all things, Dawson’s Creek. Eek. So imaging my delight when on tonights episode of Buffy we see Spike, the evil vampire turned good (weird government experiments with chips in heads, don’t ask) watching television and exclaiming in disgust, “Oh Pacey you blind idiot, can’t you see she doesn’t love you?” Then there is a knock on the door and he quickly flicks the crypt’s TV off.

Yes, my show is sticking up for me, making fun of their show! This is AWESOME!!! 🙂 I’m gonna go squeal some more.