Hans Reiser

This story is strangely fascinating to me, even though it will later be used to discredit my people. Geeks are inherently prone to expertise. Intellectual curiosity is what causes one to become a geek. Unfortunately we're also prone to feeding off of supremacy, and far too many of us indulge in escapism without tempering their own humility. It would make us dangerous if escapism didn't make us meek.

I believe this man is a murder. I believe this man is a geek. And I believe the two are in no way connected. The proficiency of the murder may have derived from his personality type, but the act of murder was derived from trauma and his own mental fragility.

Please remember that when his name becomes the rallying cry of those who are made ignorant by fear.

Checklist

I did almost all of the inane little things on my list of things to do while in Houston in the last two days.

I went to the Taco Cabana across from Taco Bell and raised my wallet high and spent more then I probably should on high class fast food. In one swift move I not only supported the idea that you can charge more for high quality products, but I did my bit of penance for every cent I misappropriated at the Taco Bell in Factoria.

I went and saw, with my own eyes, the massive open space where Astroworld used to be, it's absence glaring in my expectations.

After twenty minutes of wasted driving and an equally long argument about whether I was driving aimlessly or just lost (I'm not aimless damnit I have a very clear goal... Which I can't find at the moment) I found a Sonic, a fast food experience with unreasonable levels of significance. First of all Sonic runs commercials in Seattle, even though it has no locations there. Kevin and Adam, and I assume everyone else I know up there, have never been to Sonic even though their commercials truncated my daily dose of the daily show for nigh on a year. Going there brought triumph from that, but I was also supporting Sonic because I like their philosophy. If you hear their commercials four or five times a week for ever like I have then you know that they call them self "The ultimate drink stop." They're right. It's hard to do drinks better then everyone else, they're very basic. Coke is coke right? Sonic, however; will sell you all kinds of drink combinations, including my personal ambrosia: Diet Orange Coke. It's the only place I can get it without hand mixing.

Now I just have to go to Third Planet, a local comic shop, and get an unreasonably large steak from Salt Grass. The comic shop is partially to pay homage to an institute I support and partially to buy several bottles of BAWLS™ for the ride, and the steak house it because this is Texas Damnit, and I'm not passing up the opportunity to get steak from people who know how to do it right.

Truth Revealed

I don't even know where to start. I've never had much faith in the government, I've actively accused them of horrendous acts, but this is worse then I could've ever guessed.

All of the atrocities our government has committed in recent years, the same ones that caused me to lose my faith, were not signs of America's willingness to sacrifice all that made it great in an atmosphere of fear and blind loyalty. This wasn't a low point in our history marked by ignorance and greed. This wasn't our fall from grace.

This was status quo.

I encourage everyone to read them for yourself. I'm not sure how much longer that site will be up. I would draw special attention to the following page, and pages 7 through 11 all of which have everything but the crossed out "Eyes Only" mark whited out.
I would give a great deal to know what was written on those pages, and I would gladly give my life to make a world where this kind of deception wasn't tolerated.

Planning.

Week two has begun, and it's time I began planning. A journey of 2,500 miles is not something to be taken lightly. It's also one where the first step should be into a car, but I'm not sure of Zen's exactly policies on road tripping, although their views on motorcycle maintenance are well known.

I've abandoned my ridiculously simpled "I-10 to I-5" Houston to Seattle travel plan because the people I was hoping to see won't be there, and because I remembered that costing me distance also costs me gas money. It'll take a bit before I'm fully used to the gas money concept again. My Mom laid out a pretty solid sounding root for me as we were discussing my plans, but I decided to consult the ancient elders of my tribe, and I have to admit I was surprised when I didn't get an error message, but instead got back this:


They think I can do it in just 35 hours, so three days or so of driving.

Google maps says about the same thing, but they claim to have a route which is four miles shorter. Once again Google wins. They can also offer me a 109 step route that will get me to Seattle without using freeways. I looked into it and there's a lot of "Follow this freeways feeder road for 80 miles" steps in there, still impressive though.

Currently the thinking is this.

Day 1: North to OK city. Sleep in a motel or campsite
Day 2: North to Salina, Turn, West to Denver. Check in on Relatives, make use of free lodging.
Day 3: Onwards to Boise, maybe somewhere in Oregan, stop whenever I think that I have an hour left before becoming too tired to drive.
Day 4: Finish the drive to Seattle, don't tell anyone I've arrived and burst in to the apartment at around midnight, shouting obscenities and generally traumatizing my roommates.

Sounds like a plan to me, although I may need to buy some fireworks if I'm going to do step four properly.

Yalk!

Casually mistaking my straw with that stick of incense may have cured me of my tendency to chew on things.

Something funny that I will later regret recording.

I've been gathering these for a while now. The following are things I have shouted late at night while at work when I think nobody is around that only make sense if you can also see and hear the show going on in my head.

1. Cocaine Makes me High!!!

2. Haoooooo!!! (Chris's "Something Asian happens" sound effect)

3. Oh God... It's Happening Again!!!

4. This one was banned from Music Television! Because you can see my junk, through my jumpsuit

5. Hey! Hey you Birds! Go back to sleep Birds! It's four in the fucking morning!

5a. Oh, um, no not you sir, I was talking to the birds. See they're chirping already and it seems too early and uh, um, I was just thinking...

6. The Power of Christ Compels Me!

7. Buddha's All up in your Grill!

8. Lead import from the nation of Maximum Metal WaAaAaAaAa~!

9. RickRoll'd!

10. This, is the greatest undersea epic, ever filmed.

11. The entire song "Ebaums world" by Lemon Demon.

12. The entire song "Ebaums world" by Lemon Demon without my ipod covering up my lack of ability to sing.

13. 90% of the musical "Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

14. NOOOOOO!!!!

15. Por Que!?!?!

16. MY WAFFLES!!!

17. Next Time Gadget! NEXT TIME!!!

18. The entire theme song to the cartoon "Underdog"

19. I once had my ipod play the mega man three scene select song for twenty minutes.

20. DM Discretion, Your character dies and goes to hell.

21. FAIL!

22. AVENGE ME!!!!

23. (Unnecessarily loud supervillain laughter)

24. I Defy You Daystar!!!!

25. Oh God the cotton soft madness!

26. It Burns!!!

27. I SUMMON THEE HENCE!!! (If you had seen me pull a laundry cart across the room with a king sized sheet you would respect this more)

Farmers

The New York Times, of all places, has a very good article on third world gold farming out. A lot of key points stuck out to me in particular. They showed that my "Molten Whores" guild raid for hire idea had already been tried, but had failed for lack of customers. They talked about Player Killers having a genocidal attitude towards farmers, something I once almost participated in (You think a lot in the 8 second pyroblast windup when you're targeting someone who you don't know and doesn't know you're there), and most amusingly they point out that if you took all the gold in the virtual economy and converted it to real world currency at the standard rate Azeroth would have an economy similar in size to Albania.

I'm also beginning to miss MMOs. It's only been two weeks, it's pathetic.

Misc

-I spent nearly half an hour trying to get our old HP scanner to work before I bothered to look carefully at the power cord and it's glaring "CreativeLabs" logo.

-Heavy metal is more scary in Arabic.

-I have a couple packs of 7 sins chocolates. I was sitting on my giant chair eating the sloth one, and I was considering eating another. It only seems appropriate that I ate the gluttony one next.

-My massive cleaning project would be going a lot faster if I stopped finding interesting things.

-That fountain is really neat but I have no idea where I would put it. I have a couple of potential locations but I just don't trust myself to not inadvertantly knock it over.

-There's also a good chance that I would be really involved in a game, and thirsty, and end up trying to drink my little fountain, which by then would probably be growing something.

Glee

There's a phrase that I'm using a lot recently. "I am far too amused by X." It reflects a concept of dignity which I am gradually departing from. The idea that one must maintain a certain level of composure has a strong history, but it goes against the philosophy of full experience, wherein on surrenders their image of self to their actual self. While this idea conflicts with the ascetic approach I have been taking it is, in retrospect, another method of reducing the idea of the individual in pursuit of ones connection to the sublime. Perhaps I'm just approaching the same end from a seemingly counter-intuitive angle.

All that being said I am far too amused by the idea of "Ghost riding the whip"

Home

You can feel it from the moment you step off the plane. The air here is different. This is a place filled with life, almost choked with it. You can pave over it all you want, but Houston will never forget that it's a wetlands.

Two delayed flights and another lost bag later I return to the house I grew up in, and I realize that I'm not home. I'm here, I'm in Houston, but I won't be home for another three weeks.

The End of Exods: Nickle & Dime

Aside from the incredibly rare straight play bug hunting assignments at volt the best part of the job was the free soda. Not long after I started working for them I began to gather the tabs from every drink I got free from them. When I was put on other microsoft jobs I would do the same thing, I used a line of soda can tabs to distinguish my house keys from the other things in my pocket, and kept the others in a bowl in my room. My cab arrives in 140 minutes, so I'd say that I'm done, and I have a final count

179.

If you assume that a can of soda costs roughly 50 cents then I got an additional $89.50 in value from them. It's nice to know, but I'm still jaded on the whole testing thing.

They'll pay

So first com cast had ridiculous policies about transferring services.

Then their software screwed up which caused them to drop the arranged date

This time they informed me that they don't service our new location.

I hate them. I hate them in the face, and I wish I could hate them to death.

I wonder how much qwest costs.

Misc

-If I'm going to sleep for 17 hours I'm going to need a bed with much better back support. I'm not sure if the most valid concern here is that I have sub-par sleeping conditions, or that I occasionally engage in a series of events that lead to me sleeping for 17 hours.

-I like my new room. It's slightly larger, has a good window for looming over the street, and before long I'll have an actual desk.

-I must always remember to pack the bolts and washers when I'm moving a desk.

-I'm going to take several pictures and videos of the shakey upper shelf that will save me a great deal of money when we're trying to reclaim out security deposit.

-My ipod was next to the laptop. The cord was next to the iPod. I spent all night sitting next to the iPod, usually using iTunes. How did I manage to forget to charge my iPod.

-I love this location. Stuff is finally within walking distance.

-Back in Lander I used to complain that it was hard to study. The whole place was entrenched in drugs and alcohol, and sexy co-ed girls kept walking by. Now that I have my own place in the U-district I can finally study, without giving up access to that depravity.

-I like the look of the burned down building next door a little more then I should.

-There's a fire station only a few blocks from here. How the hell did that place burn down?

-If I hadn't had to stop and wait for my iPod to charge I would have left too early to go to the bank, this may have been a good thing.

-There was a printer that Kevin owned in the bottom of our closet for nearly a year. Every time we discussed the webcomic that year I would say that we needed a printer. Kevin had a printer. How the hell did he not know this? He brought it from home. WHAT THE HELL KEVIN!?!

-Being greeted by 1/2 naked Canadians at 6:30 am is very disturbing.

-I'm probably going to be involved in a star wars RPG based on D&D soon. Three of us, all male, will be playing in our apartment. This may be the nerdiest thing I've ever done. I'm going to try to get us to play while waiting to get into PAX, so that we're playing a double nerd enriched nerd game at a nerd con surrounded by nerds. Going further then that requires cosplay.

-Cosplay is exactly on the line of the stuff I can tolerate. Going any further causes you to lose my respect.

-That's right L.A.R.P.-ers, I went there.

-I still need a Force FX lightsaber.

-New Rule: Lightsaber fights are not larping unless they're part of an MET version of the starwars RPG.

-Comcast will be made to suffer for their policies.

-I don't have the money to buy a Force FX lightsaber. When I think about that reasonably it falls so far down on my list of expenditures. I hope they still make them when I get around to it.

-I'd like to thank whoever is running this unprotected wireless network.

-There's a story on this episode of this American life about a fake KKK raid on a heavily leftist Zionist youth camp that was intended to serve as a political lesson which is just fucked up. Seriously what the hell man?

-Adults do very stupid things while trying to teach kids important things. Kids listen to interesting stories, and it's not hard to make stories about prejudice interesting. Brutal and depressing, but still interesting.

-I wonder if my iPod is charged yet

-Once again spell check hates my esoteric terminology. I'm going to go play KOTOR until this is charged. More substantial updates once I have access to a better keyboard again.

A Step up

I like YTMND a lot better then 4chan, at least there's something approaching a creative community there. (Consider essentially every link NSFW, nothing is actually that bad, but it's a good assumption)

All that being said, Too Soon!

Nah, It's still funny. Also meme's apparently cross the border, and Creepipe continues to please.

Why don't you ask Mr. Owl?

Clever.

Misc

-662 on Shooting Range. Suck it Kevin.

-There's an interesting philosophical conversation to be had about the similarities of the protoss psychic collective, The Kallah, and the Zerg overmind. The short answer is Xel'naga, but I think there's more to be said.

-Specifically I think there's an interesting examination of two races born of one who got two different halves of the mind. The protoss are the superego to the Zerg's Id.

-More people would respect janitors if they remembered that Hong Kong Fooey was a janitor. After all, he climbed the ranks all the way up to #1 Super Guy.

-I would be more excited about moving if I wasn't dealing with all of the stressful details associated with moving.

-I think it's worth recording that I spent half of net worth on a peripheral for my computer. It was an almost surreal experience being that close to having literally 0 money.

-Part of me wants to be mad at C&C, but I know that it's not their fault and that they're in just as bad of a position as we are. I know that I can't actually hold it against them, I'd feel horrible if I did, but my vindictive bitchery won't go fully unheard. They're never getting that router back, that's' ours now.

-Paris Hilton needs to go away. I'm used to them not showing actual news, but this is just a disgrace.

'Murica

Have I told you my theory about 'murica yet? It's a handy little construction that allows me to live in today's political climate without killing somebody.

For several years I went out of my way to expose myself to both sides of the talking point issues, which at the time I thought to be real issues. I would listen to Pacifica, then the O'riley's radio factor, then NPR, then Michael Savage, in that order. The views I heard from both sides were so radically different that I felt inspired to help everyone settle everything. I was much younger at the time, and since I was just coming into political awareness I was still filled with hope.

delusion going on and I can respect that. But in the Eventually I began to realize that both partisan groups live in their own little imaginary worlds. The left's imaginary world is slightly closer to reality, so I usually throw my hat in with them even though I don't feel they've earned immunity from my bile. However the imaginary world that conservatives live in is something that fascinated me. In lefty-land the blue team was a clear renegade underdog who everyone agreed with but was still unable to seize power in the face of a giant mechanized conspiracy of the right. They had a good solid action movie-esque story they told themselves. However the right's imaginary world was full of good wholesome people who were being threatened by all kinds of things that were only threats because the puppet masters of this faux existence deemed them to be. They had constructed a false threat, a false victim, and then inserted themselves in as saviors.

I began to call the imaginary world that the conservative partisans operate in 'Murica. It's what the word America would sound like with a really thick accent. The basic idea of 'murica is that in 'murica foreigners (or feriners) are actually trying to sneak over our border and directly usurp good honest wholesome 'murican's jobs. These good wholesome people are also having their institutions of family threatened by "The gays," and their very lives are under constant assault from terrorists. In 'murica all of the atrocities committed by America are okay because it was all in the name of freedom, and all of the good wholesome people stand by our president; who was chosen by God to lead us.

This dreamworld breaks down amazingly fast when you look at the average family dynamic and the divorce rate and realize that the "Good wholesome people" don't actually exist. I could point out the flaws in all of the other key precepts of 'murica, but really it all stems from that. The same illusion exists on the left too; both sides believe that they actually speak for the people, which is a flawed concept because most of the people don't vote.

Anyway I've been carrying around this idea for a while now, and some part of me still laughs whenever I hear someone with an accent casually say "Murica," because politics has become a kind of show to me, and I usually laugh when something reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite shows. It makes the failure of your government a lot easier to stomach if you think of it all as a giant game show.

Ugh

I either ate too many hot wings, or I caught Adam's flu. We'll find out soon.

Flashy

All is one again well in my kingdom.

Well once my hands adjust to the new keyboard.

I went to Circuit city and saw everything from the hardcore to the barely apt, and in the middle of the price range I saw my shiny new Saitek Eclipse II. I've always wanted a backlit keyboard, and since they now cost 1/3 of what they used to (probably because you can now get backlit keyboards that roll up, or are sprayed onto a table by a laser pen) I've moved one step further into pimping my computer.

Actually, everything my machine has now comes with a light up feature of some kind, if you count the optical mouse.

I think the thing I'll enjoy most about this one though is the lack of an F-lock key. From now on when I press F7 it will always be F7. Seriously what were the alienware guys thinking with that?

Br--en

-eyb-ard Br--en. Can't type (F, H, O, Q)

T-an- G-d --r C-armap.

T-is is an Emergency Expense,

Misc

-If Kevin is going to use my laptop he's going to have to deal with my stupid pranks. Like changing the backgroudn to an image of Rick Astley with a massive word art of the phrase "RickRoll'd!" splashed over it, and changing the startup noise to the song.

-It occurs to me that all of the things that I enoy on 4chan are profoundly stupid. I don't think I've seen anything there with real intellectual content. Some of it is clever, and some of it is creative but the smartest thign I've seen is this:

-The caption cats ongoing meme may be the only thing that can affect me with cuteness. But even then it takes a lot of exposure to work on me.

-Paying $750 in one click causes me to tremble and lose my breath. That much spending in one burst is just so much.

-I stopped playin WoW about a week ago. It wasn't a big severance thing, I just gradually lost interest.

-Red Mountain Dew > Regular Mountain Dew
-Swill > Red Vault

Black Sheep

I was looking over another blog of mine recently. It's probably best to call it an old blog, but it was and technically still is my "Secret other blog." I used it to post things that I wanted to have saved, but felt were too explicit or caustic or incriminating for my regular blog. For a while there I was also posting everything twice. I would write an entry and post it to the secret blog, then remove any profanity and anything I thought was too graphic and post that in my public blog. This was back when I was writing this blog in lieu of writing individual relatives though, since then this has become my project, so if I no longer restrict my artistic aspect, even when it's incompetent, or untalented, or can't express my deep displeasure with the myriad of shallow pettiness that is modern politics with any more tact than shouting "Fuckers!" and throwing a towel at the TV.

Any way, I was looking over this other blog and a few things caught my eye. First the last post was in November 06, so it may be fair to call it dead. I read over a few of the the last entries and I saw two recurring narrative voices. One is just me in an episode of depression. The other is a self righteous little bitch who thinks he's better then other people because he's a self isolating judgemental prick. I won't deny that I'm fully free of this aspect, but I can say without ego that I have progressed beyond this earlier incarnation of myself. When I read the posts by this narrator I'm filled with the urge to kick him in the balls. Seriously, that kid needs a good kick in the balls and a good thrust out of his little narcissistic anger shell.

I saw one more thing which froze me momentarily. One of the posts had a comment. It was a post made in a state of depression, and part of me was afraid of what effect this pithy little rant could have had. Was it consolation? Advice? Perhaps it was another in my state seeking company in the depths. The possibilities were endless, what could it be?

It was a porn ad. That little sting of anti-climactic whiplash reminded me why I'm not supposed to read these things until I'm older and less emotionally invested in them.