Archive for November, 2003
Thus spake Ennui
November 26, 2003 at 9:47 pm
but, for some odd reason, holding a pen in my hand seems so strange these days. It used to be so natural. I’m supposed to be writing, but I’m not, so I’m thinking that, if I type some nonsense into this blog, I will have accomplished something. My journal is full of pages that start off this way - “The point of a journal is to journal” - but it always ends up like some crazy stream-of-consciousness crap. What the hell has happened to me? Tonight is one of those nights that I stayed home so I could get some sleep, but I’m not sleeping. Well, that figures. The house is quiet. Everyone has gone home (or somewhere) for the holiday. Tomorrow I will go to my dad’s new house and cook a 13 pound turkey for the remains of my immediate family. I say “remains,” but it keeps getting bigger. I’m supposed to be adding to that, but I am taking my time. I am being cautious. I have, however, contributed a really cool dog so far. It could have been worse. My dad’s new house is infested with ladybugs. Thousands of them. Every time I go there, I bring some of them home with me. They’re in my Jeep, too. I call my dad today and tell him this. He says, “Ah, they’re harmless. I had one with my coffee this morning.” My dad is funny. He misses my mom. Every time I go to his new house, we unpack something together that belonged to her. We share an understanding of how much this hurts, but we don’t talk about it. I tell my dad that she would have liked the new house (despite the fact that it isn’t in NY), and this pleases him. I used to go out there on the weekends while they were building the house, and Charlie would tell me every time that he fired my dad from painting and/or staining because of this problem that he has of getting said paint and/or stain anywhere but on the target. On the rug, on Charlie’s clean painted wall, on the steps. “All he did was open the can, and look!”
Mark and Charlie are working on Mark’s garage now. It will be the new home of Victor Charlie minus Andrew on bass. They are having a tough time replacing Andrew. You would think that a town like Athens would be overflowing with talented musicians, but I have never known a band here who didn’t suffer through a lot of BS before getting it right. A lot of the wrong kind of musicians is what we’ve got. In the meantime, Mark and Charlie are working on new songs and keeping themselves busy otherwise. Charlie’s goal is to play 3 or 4 shows a day. Mark’s goal is to just play well, better than ever, and lay it all down on the 8-track. Tara’s been scheming up new bells and whistles for the webpage. We’ll have to keep an eye on that. www.victor-charlie.com. I’m sure she’ll have it all figured out by the time the new lineup starts to tour.  Go Tara!
I had an interesting discussion with a minister friend yesterday about the differences/similarities of Christianity and Buddhism (outside of the Christ part). It was a necessary discourse for me. The outcome was surprising. Only time will tell if I got that message right.
Wow, I just wrote a lot of nonsense. My day is now complete. I will post this on the blog as proof that I did it, though I think only Dave still reads this thing. Sorry, Dave. And thanks again for the mp3 today. I needed to hear that. You deserve a new pair of sunglasses, at least.
I think here is where I say Happy Thanksgiving. Count your blessings so you know what they are.
Pax!
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 3:18 pm
I’ve gotten so much more work done being downtown than I usually do in my office. I’ll have to see if I can start doing all my server admin stuff from here. Thank you, Downtown wireless cloud! Computer work just isn’t as much fun without coffee, ciggarettes, and sunshine. I simultaneously feel ultra-matrix-cool, and like the biggest dork in creation, but it’s fun.
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Thus spake Ennui
at 2:10 pm
Though maybe not all that original. After you read his recent rantings about the king of pop, take some time to read through his archives. I swear that The Village Voice would not be what it is today if not for Musto.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 12:46 pm
Chemistry, my department at UGA, has closed for the day, so I’m telecommuting at Blue Sky Coffee. The temperature, on the Dave subjective scale, is medium with refreshingly chilly overtones, the sunlight is extremely bright and prone to bounce off things into your eyes and make you wish you’d bought sunglasses after you sat on your last pair, and the people index is lightly crowded with a higher-than-usual percentage of Normal People. Everything is strangely quiet; once again, the majority of town has returned to Marietta, leaving the rest of us to thrill to the music of silence.
In other news, Veronica seems to have lost control of her clicking finger. Unless of course she found that link three times as fascinating as your average link, and felt compelled to re- and then re-re-submit it.
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Thus spake Ennui
at 12:00 pm
Thus spake Ennui
at 11:54 am
This clip will demostrate the useless effects of mutilation on the zombies in any other form than a bullet straight to the head. Cutting up the living dead with a chainsaw will only result in living dead parts, and I can think of another movie that showed us the tragedies of that. So watch the clip, and remember - when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, and a chainsaw is not going to save your ass.
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Thus spake Ennui
at 11:51 am
This clip will demostrate the useless effects of mutilation on the zombies in any other form than a bullet straight to the head. Cutting up the living dead with a chainsaw will only result in living dead parts, and I can think of another movie that showed us the tragedies of that. So watch the clip, and remember - when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, and a chainsaw is not going to save your ass.
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Thus spake Ennui
at 11:50 am
This clip will demostrate the useless effects of mutilation on the zombies in any other form than a bullet straight to the head. Cutting up the living dead with a chainsaw will only result in living dead parts, and I can think of another movie that showed us the tragedies of that. So watch the clip, and remember - when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, and a chainsaw is not going to save your ass.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 8:06 am
There exists in India the practice of having relatives declared legally dead, and siezing their property. The victims have no legal recourse, because they’re dead. They have formed a group to campaign for help from the unresponsive Indian bureaucratic culture, calling themselves the Association of the Living Dead.
Part of the problem seems to be rampant corruption in India. These living dead can’t get the mistakes corrected, because it takes a bribe just to talk to the necessary officials, and the dead have no access to their possessions. Link
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Thus spake Ennui
at 7:51 am
The man who was ultimately responsible for bringing me to Athens has passed away. I am now free to go.
What is particularly odd about this is the fact that, when I woke up yesterday morning, the first thing in my head was this:
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand
~W.B. Yeats (from The Stolen Child)
I kept hearing it all day long, like a voice whispering in my ear.
Hugh Kenner was an extraordinary man. In the springtime, he wore two suits. The one with the light blue stripes always made me think of Dr. Seuss. Everything I know about T.S. Eliot I owe to Hugh Kenner, which includes a rather funny story about Eliot’s obsession with cheese. I consider myself very blessed to have heard it.
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Thus spake Ennui
November 25, 2003 at 2:14 pm
What do you do with a guy who accidentally (?) knocks one girl into a bathtub and then accidentally (?) smothers the other one to keep her from screaming? Hmmm…
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Thus spake Ennui
at 7:33 am
Thus spake Ennui
November 24, 2003 at 2:56 pm
Thus spake Evil Overload
at 8:20 am
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When I first saw this, I thought it was a liberal spoof on simpleminded conservative propaganda, but no! It’s the real thing! This Ann Coulter action figure speaks with Ann Coulter’s voice (she helped in the production process) when a button is pushed, producing any one of a list of “Coulterisms”, including:
“Swing voters are more appropriately known as the ‘idiot voters’ because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of fourteen, you’re either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster.”
“Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil. What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?”
I repeat: This product is Conservative propaganda. Not that it isn’t fairly difficult to tell these days. Link. via diepunyhumans.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
November 21, 2003 at 12:37 pm
The story of Yevgeny Rodionov, a Russian soldier killed seven years ago in Chechnya, is interesting in a number of respects. He is being venerated as a saint by much of the populace, despite not being so recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church. On the other hand, if enough people pray to him (or, more accurately, through him) for intercession, there will eventually be sufficient reports of miraculous occurences to cannonize him (assuming the three-miracle rule applies in Russian Orthodoxy). This article in the New York Times suggests that this veneration, unsanctioned by the church, has arisen out of a nationalistic hunger for a folk hero. History teaches us that a desire for identity and stability shared amongst a large group of people mobilizes and focuses a lot of power. It will be interesting to see where this goes. This phenomenon also seems to be a focusing point for increasing religiousity (religiousness?), still rebounding from repression under the communist regime. Several different sociological undercurrents are finding expression in the ad-hoc cannonization of Yevgeny Rodionov. I wonder, will the church cave in to popular pressure and make his sainthood official? Will he become a symbol of nationalism in the form of stability and support of the government, or will his image become a banner for discontent and rebellion? Oh, the suspense.
Link to the NYT article.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 11:50 am
A friend of mine from Germany was telling me about a protest that took place there a few years back. The government wanted to transport nuclear materials through a certain area, and residents of that area didn’t want them to. The protestors, discovering that singing, chanting and marching weren’t producing results, began digging holes under the roads that were part of the projected transport route, so that these roads could not be used. This was apparently so much fun that the protestors started undermining numerous other roads in the area, including many that were never a part of the nuclear transport plan to begin with. The government wound up transporting the materials as planned, and lots of otherwise innocent country roads were unusable due to overenthusiastic undermining. I think this is pretty much what happened with postmodernism, too.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
November 20, 2003 at 2:32 pm
Parts of this play were apparently found stuffed inside Egyptian mummies. The entire play was believed to have been lost when the Library of Alexandria burnt to the ground in 48 B.C. The national theater company of Cyprus plans to perform this play in Cyprus and Greece next summer. Link
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Thus spake Ennui
at 8:53 am
According to this article from SF Gate’s weird files:
The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, published in June, defines a “McJob” as “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement.”
According to the folks at McDonald’s, this definition is insulting to their employees. But the silly uniforms are cool?
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Thus spake Evil Overload
November 19, 2003 at 1:47 pm
For some reason, having the links on the blog automatically open new windows breaks the comments. For the time being, if you want the link to open a separate window, it’s back to right-clicking.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 1:04 pm
Currently experimenting with BackBlog. We’ll see how this works. All and sundry, feel free to comment!
Update: Feel free to comment, that is, when I get the #$%!@$ thing working.
Futher Update: It Works! Woohoo!
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 12:12 pm
From Penda’s Realm:
1. Take the ritual sword from the altar and make sounds like Darth Vader… “Luke, I am your father!”…and start making light saber noises.
2. Start skat-singing when chanting.
3. Take the ritual athame from the altar and start cleaning your nails with it.
More…
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 12:07 pm
Yet another random technology post! These eyeglasses flash messages on the lenses for 1/180th of a second, not long enough to be apprehended by consciousness, but long enough to be absorbed by the brain. The messages can be set to remind the wearer of specific events. This technique improves recall by 50% in tests. Link
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 11:58 am
The FDA has approved a hormone treatment for short kids that can add several inches to their eventual full-grown height. The Age of Enhancement has begun. Link
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 11:53 am
Thus spake Evil Overload
at 11:51 am
Thus spake Ennui
November 18, 2003 at 12:09 pm
I’m not too sure what it means, but I am certain that it is funny, and humour is always in the stars for me. I wonder what would happen if someone let you write horoscopes for their publication and you inserted subtle yet effective sexbliminal messages that made people go nuts. If you got caught, I guess your best defense could be that people who read this crap and believe it are fucking nuts anyway, man. Eh, better get yourself a “get out of jail” card just in case.
Anyhow, here goes:
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Back in the days when I could afford employees, one of them dreamed up a witty ad campaign for my expanded audio horoscopes. The headline was “Rob Brezsny’s astrological advice is like Viagra for the soul!” A week after the first ads appeared, I got a letter from the lawyers of the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the real Viagra. “Cease and desist using our trademarked brand name,” it said, “or we will sue your ass.” (I’m paraphrasing.) My campaign came to a dead stop, and I vowed never again to borrow a corporate fetish for my own marketing purposes. Carefully, then, I make the following announcement: What life brings you in the coming weeks will be like Viagra for your soul.
Wonder what happens to women when they take Viagra. This is just a magic day of wonder. Wonder when it will end.
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Thus spake Ennui
at 9:20 am
For those who never made it, these are the last 167 words of Joyce’s Ulysses:
…O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Now that’s what I call going out with a bang.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
November 17, 2003 at 3:03 pm
Our blog is no longer memory-deficient. The archive links in the lower-right corner finally work! It takes so little to please me.
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 2:22 pm
Thus spake Evil Overload
at 11:15 am
A good article on how idealistic computer security practices actually decrease security. For example, a system requiring four separate passwords that are changed every 90 days will invariably result in those four passwords being written on sticky-notes and stuck to the monitor. Link
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