Month: May 2008

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** REWARD **

I will pay a minimum of $100.00 US to any individual and/or party who rids my neighborhood of this tacky piece of shit:


What is it, you ask? Here’s a view from another angle.


Still not sure? Perhaps this will spur on your pattern recognition circuits.


Reward scales with permanence (and creativity) of removal. Incidentally, if a few manhood-restoring gas-guzzlers are purged in the process I certainly won’t complain. The offending property adorns the Dodge division of Bill Pierre’s auto empire (corner of Lake City Way & Northgate Blvd) and is always inflated on sunny days.

Why the hell do I live in Lake City if car dealerships bother me so much? Lake City is the only part of Seattle that will have my broke ass.

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Umpteenth time’s the charm

As of yesterday, the two old PCs I’ve been storing can do more than stop doors. I finally installed Linux on them…successfully; a feat I’ve been attempting (off and on) for, well, years. All previous attempts were halted by some retarded complication (i.e. the BIOS wouldn’t allow booting from a CD, old video cards were not supported, incorrect hard drive partitioning, incompatible motherboard architectures, etc.). Until yesterday, I’d run into a complication, throw up my fists, swear up and down, decide I had been defeated and pack the shits back up in my closet. Now that I’ve got some more computing power at my disposal there are a few chaotic systems I’ll have them simulate…for days, weeks, even months if need be. What are they going to do? Complain? We’ll see if Linux really is as stable as its developers claim.

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Mondegreen?

Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes

“…and she knows just what it takes to make a _____ ____sh.”

I was certain I had it wrong by filling the blanks: pro blush. According to lyrics from two separate sources, these are the correct words. Her use of “pro” is likely 20th century slang for prostitute. No wonder this song wasn’t a big hit among her typically country-oriented fans.

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On why I am lonely and have no friends.

Pure hatred courses through my veins all of the time.

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sun

The most common complaint I hear from people who have just moved to Seattle is that all the gray overcast weather makes them sad and/or depressed. To this I say bull; it is their longing for what isn’t (i.e. sunny weather) that compromises their outlook. Perhaps I’m wrong though. The weather has been perfect the past few days and I’ve been feeling great. Maybe there really is something to this seasonal affective disorder hoopla.
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Mr. Sensitive

I characterize my own personal development by what scares me. Since nothing induces fear like sound and moving pictures, I list below TV and movie characters that shaped who I am today.

Age 4: Endora (Samantha’s mother), Bewitched  (TV Series, 1964).
  

I loathed how she could pop into and out of existence. It bothered me so much that I hid in the living room curtains every time she suddenly appeared to make life miserable for all. Thanks Agnes Moorehead, even in syndication you sewed the seeds for my lifetime of torment.

Age 10: Mola Ram, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (1984)

One day in fourth grade, we got to watch this movie as a special treat. Anything occult-related absolutely terrified me at the time so demi-god Mola Ram performing a ritual human sacrifice–you know the scene where pagan chanting crescendos as some poor dude is lowered into a fire pit right after his still-beating heart is pulled out of his chest–did wonders to help me overcome this fear. What a friggin’ sissy I was.

Age 19: The many space-frozen, demon-mutilated victims in Event Horizon (1997)

I couldn’t even finish this exhaustively terrifying flick (neither could my pop who was watching it with me). It was as eerie as it was graphic (which is to say a whole hell of a lot).  Basically, a spaceship achieves faster-that-light travel by some geometrically paradoxical space-folding invention of the main character. It just so happens that the ship’s shortcut through space-time goes straight through Hell. A few castaways find their way on board, happy to relieve the crew of their eyeballs, entrails, sanity, gravity, heat, and pressurization (I’m pretty sure in that order). I found this review on Rotton Tomatoes: “In its first hour, “Event” is startlingly beautiful and compelling… its last half-hour (is) a gore-drenched free-for-all, with images of Hell that seem to have been lifted directly from a Nine Inch Nails video.” True cinematic delight this sum’bitch is. Don’t miss it!

Age 29: Corporate entities, The Corporation (2003). 
In this documentary, psychologists analyze corporations, and their behaviors toward society, as if they were individual people (after all, 19th century law affords them all the rights that individuals enjoy). Unsurprisingly, they diagnose corporations as a whole as profit driven psychopaths with notions of limited liability. It makes me proud our government enjoys the strong corporate lobby that it does. Now what issues haven’t been getting attention this presidential campaign?…hmm.

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Wallowing in self-pity…almost

Eventhough all other facets of my life seem to be spinning out of control, at least I have still got my wits about me:

The above proof ensures that certain recurrent neural network models will always settle to some local minimum (i.e. a best solution) during training.

“What a retarded thing to take pride in–what has that got to do with anything in the real world?” you’re probably asking yourself. Answer: nothing. Brilliant guys Cohen and Grossberg devised this proof 25 years ago; all I have done is simply work it out for myself. Right now, math seems to be the only stupid human trick I can do. A guy has got to savor the victories that he can, however small and inconsequential they might be.
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errrrrgh!

This computer’s battery has been suckin’ mammoth, jangly walrus balls as of late. It privileges me with 15 whole minutes of cordless computer time–that is, if my commands aren’t too processing-intensive. I bought this PoS with the (implicit) understanding that ‘puters of its ilk were above problems as pedestrian as this.

I wouldn’t be grumbling about this except that I’ve replaced the battery once already. Its predecessor ran the risk of catching my computer on fire so it was recalled. Apple computer sent me this pansy ass excuse for a battery in exchange…

Well, I’m down to 12% now so I’d better post this masterpiece before I lose it.

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you know how sometimes…

…depression can blindside you with the impact of a Mack truck. It did me on Sunday morning. It turned out to be nothing that 5 hours of drum practice couldn’t cure.

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Striving to Provide a Comfortable Atmosphere

This morning I ate breakfast at a restaurant I frequent every once and a while. The food is tasty and reasonably priced–I mainly go to this place to sit at the counter to eat, sip coffee and read. The place is never very busy; I go there because it is usually low-key.

While I was paying the check, the manager (or owner or whatever) starts critiquing the waitress loudly enough for me and all of the other customers to hear. Apparently the waitress was new, although I wouldn’t have gathered that based on my breakfast experience; she did fine.

“umm… any party comprised of at least one girl, should never be addressed as ‘guys’. Don’t let it happen again.”

“…next time, be sure to clear a few more plates before dropping the check.”

“When seating a party at a table with more place settings than people, be sure to take away the extras…”

“When you get a chance, jot down your schedule so we can work out your hours…”

…and other minutia.

I doubt bossman ever considered that schooling his employee in front of his customers detracted from the atmosphere far more than any of the minor infractions she committed.

It’s always impressive to watch people flex their authority.