Feh Brew Airy

It's February! It really really is.

"To Titan!" - Me, just now

Mon

• Studio.
• Went to Google for a tech talk (I'll link when it's up).
  

Finally: Snow!

As I write this, big fluffy snow flakes are falling all over the place. It's going like gangbusters!

Sat 'er Day

• The blog is back at hipolsoc.blogspot.com.
• If you get this blog via feed, be sure that you're subscribed to the feed linked to on the right: it will always point to this blog, no matter the URL.
• Comp stuff.
• Gym.
  
• Rehearsal.
• Clockwork Orange.

"Well my life has no meaning, but I'm totally sure yours does."

Thrusday the 25th

• Skipped calc.
• Loved Masked'.
• Finished Dracula.
• Whacked It.
• Pumped iron.
• Ate babies.

Just makin' sure you're still here.

Two's Day

• Food.
• Calc a.k.a. sleep.
• Food.
• Theater Studies a.k.a. sortainteresting.
• Food.
• State of The Union a.k.a. blewmyfuckingsocksoff.

Not really.

Quest Ion

Are all fashions in art and philosophy inevitable? How do we define or conceive of "all fashions?" I suppose there is no theoretical limit on the number of new kinds of art or philosophy to be imagined, but I believe the average human mind is limited in what it will accept as "art" and "philosophy." There are a near infinite number of nonsensical/arbitrary philosophies to which no sane person would earnestly subscribe. Perhaps there is a given tolerance for deviation from a central theme of Art/Philosophy which a statistical majority of our linear, discrete, biological consciousnesses are willing to accept. Perhaps one day we will fully explore that space. We will have every artistic and philosophical revolution to be had. We will then fail to recognize subsequent revolutions as being to the point of Art of Philosophy. Or maybe our minds will evolve. Are all fashions in art and philosophy inevitable?

Two Days Later

• I got to bed at 10pm last night.
• I woke up today feeling grrrreat!
• Then I sat in a chair for fouuuuuur and a half houuuuuuurs.
• I was sleeeeeepyyyyy.
• BUT THEN I had lunch.
• Pizza!
• And then I did crazy movement things. Crazy, I say!
• And and and, other stuff too um...
• There were Cheerios...
• and gym...
• and Rita Brown (a.k.a. Diarrhea Rita)...
• and I guess that's it um yeah.

!!$2 REWARD!!
Fast - Faster - Fastest
WANTED - Better - Best

The Wankers!

The Gym closes at 8 in the afternoon! on Saturdays. The Wankers!

Friday

• Our Friday studio schedule is really pretty sveet. For once!
• Read and Napped.
  
• Attended a talk by Cory Doctorow. He's always fun(ny).
  
• More food.
• Sorta got walked in on while looking at porn.

Love is the lie we tell ourselves to keep from dying.

Jan 18 (a Thursday)

• Cal Q. Luss.
• The first day of Masked Drama portends good times ahead.
• I was told today that something was, quote, "fierce." That event was, in and of itself, fierce. Recursive fierceness.
  
• I lunched (slowly) with two lovelies.
• Nappy nap nap.
  
• January means a bunch of New Year's Resolvers bunching up the weight room. Reinhardt assures me this tapers off by February.
• I saw four friends at the gym. This is odd. (Mem., am I being stalked? Should grow mustache)
• Am in high spirits.

This is my forth consecutive day of napping. What is becoming of me? Slow-eating, whole-milk-drinking, napper! Pretty soon I'll just come to a total stop.

First Day of Studio

• My fast was working, then I broke it.
• Studio once ageen. It was a bit queer. There are so few of us this semester. It was good to see some people who were away last semester (Travis, Claire, etc.).
  
• Ate at Naturally Tasty. I had eggplant.
  
• Began discussing our rehearsal-project-esk thing. Went OK. Emphasis on the OK.
• Read.
• Napped.
• Newsed.
  
• Gymed.
• Supped.
• Call my momed.
  
• Daily Showed.
• Read.
• Fixed the fast.

The speed with which I eat has precipitously declined over the last year or so. I am now a dreaded Slow-Eater. Coupled with my whole milk fixation, I expect to find horns sprouting beneath my hair any day now.

First Day of Classes

• Breakfasted.
• Calc, you old coot. My Calc teacher knows my cousin. They are both neuroscience post-grads.
• Dined.
• Read.
• Napped.
  
• History of Women Directors is going to be a lot of work.
• Supped.
• Went to the planetarium (it was closed).
  
• Watched the News.
• Fixed my computer.
• Read.
• Napped.
  

VERY Special

• Had breakfast with Nick, Lex, Antonietta and her girlfriend, Alex.
• Bade the abroad bound goodbye.
• Read.
• Napped
  
• After three weeks, I make my triumphant return to the gym. It was intense. Hooray!
• I saw no less then six people I know at the gym: KyDude, Lauren A., E. Korth, Reinhardt, Dan, and Dave my RA.
• Saw a movie with Jordi and Ross.
• There is a special ring of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.

Classes start at 8:55a tomorrow - excuse me, today. How fucking excited am I!

Back Again

Every time I return to the city I feel a little more like I'm coming home. My school is not a place in the way other colleges are. We half-jokingly call Washington Square Park our "campus," but it's really just a small park with lots of kids. This contributes to the homeliness of going back to school. I'm living some place that I could conceivably call home for my adult life: New York City.

The flight was fine. I've started reading Dracula (Laura gave it to me for Christmas along with The Origins of Species - she knows just what I like). I met my new roommate: Joe. He's a transfer from BU. I was delighted to learn that Lex and Nick were still in the city (they leave for Italy tomorrow). I was equally delighted to learn that Ross's girlfriend, Jordi, is living in Lafayette this semester. Ross, Jordi and I went out to dinner and then to meet Lex and Nick at a Belgium beer place. Then we came back to the room for quesadillas, muffins, movies, and bad wine. We started watching Fargo but popular opinion ultimately sided with Old School. I'm feeling well.

Live, Damnit!

My youth is fast evaporating and I say that so much even I'm getting tired of it but that doesn't mean it isn't true. Maybe I'd better do something about it. Like live.

You can tell school's about to start again 'cause I'm getting all depressed and abstract. I don't think I'm particularly good at living. I'm good at being alive. Really good. But not at living. SEE WHAT I MEAN! Depressed and abstract.

Just watched The Illusionist and 12 Monkeys. Saw Lizzy for the first and only time this winter. Had breakfast at Brit's where I also shimmied. This is not the correct order of events, by the way.

I'm ready to get back to school. I think my subconscious arranges my emotions such that I'm always ready to leave just when it's time to go. I wish I had interesting things to say, but this will have to do for now. The observation I was hoping to make can no longer be made. Ack! That post is from 2005. I'M SO OLD!!!

Word to the Wise

Bacardi Raspberry Rum and Mott's Apple Juice do not - I repeat, DO NOT mix. Tell everyone you know.

Recently

• I finished my aforementioned Phi book.
• I have an iRection.
• I have an erection.
• I've been playing the charming Russian puzzle game Full Pipe.
• I watched all of Black Books, a Britcom Sam turned me on to.
• I watched the following films:
• I [heart] Huckabees (own it)
• Blade Runner (own it)
• The Good Shepard
• Children of Men (saw twice)
• Lock, Stock & Two Smokin' Barrels
  
• Midnight Cowboy
• A History of Violence
  
• K-PAX (own it)
• Starship Troopers (own it)

Who knows what adventures await me...
Just around the river bend!

Come into my parlor...

Must watch:

The Unsuccessful Older Brother

Two coconuts ARE NOT ENOUGH!
I'm a hungry monkey and I don't have a mommy or the agricultural expertise to cultivate domesticated dairy cows, and I need milk like right monkey now!
Ooh Ooh Ahh Ahh Eek Van Winkle Almighty God Hail Consumerism I Love You WHAT KIND of stupid noise do I need to make to get more coconuts?!
I'll dance.
I'll eat shit.
I'll go to space.
The family is falling apart and so much for "Great."
Of the kibbles - red and green - which is better for the teeth?

Footnote

For now, at least, this blog can be found at
www.lunchtimemama.com

I'm sleepless in bed, so I wrote this instead

There's nighttime, there's bedtime, and then there's sleep time. There's dream time, there's wake time, there's day and lunch and light and dark and long and short time. There's plenty of and especially there isn't any time. There's tea and game and the right and not a good and half and over and quiet and supper and winter and summer time. There's do you have the and I've lost track of time. There's a time to live and a time to die. There's a time for love and a time for other stuff too. There's night time, there's bed time, and then there's sleep time.

The No. 1 Rule of Lying

Never ever ever ever ever lie to yourself.

Parsing Base64 Encoded Smart Playlists from iTunes Music Library.xml

Dear Google,
I commit this post to your index in the hopes that it may one day satisfy the query of a woebegone programmer desiring, for some unholy reason, to interpret the Base64 encoded binary representation of the logical criteria of smart playlists in the iTunes Music Library.xml file, for the fate they should otherwise suffer is a hell I know all too well. They are to rejoice, for the code is neigh. And Behold! for it is C#. Alas, it is not the prettiest of code; I am young and strange to the ways of computer science; but it does work. It is to be found in SmartPlaylistParser.cs and in Enums.cs, and the project to which this code is a part is to be found here, and a demonstrable screencast of the project is here. And, dear Google, should you lead the curious coder hither, and should this post prove to be "just what [they] needed," how I hope they will send me an email to let me know (lunchtimemama at gmail) for it would positively make my day! I trust this gives you all the keywords you need to unite them and me in happy fortune. Good indexing!

-SP

Do you have stairs in your house?

It is Tuesday, January Second, Two Thousand and Seven. I'm just back from "Miss Zula" Montana where I spent four days with Sam & Co. [insert more description here]

I've posted before about the deleterious effect tabbed browsing has on my attention span, but it promotes another behavioral pattern: "branching attention." My tendency toward branching attention is most obvious when I browse Wikipedia. As I read, I will detour into other topics of interest. Ten links later, I've got a scrolling row of tabs and more info than I'll ever need about the ampersand. As I finish the distal articles, I move precipitously toward the original topic, branching every now and again. At long last, I complete the prime page as well as a journey through the wisdom of man. I'm always surprised to find where I end up. One of these days I ought to map such a WikiWalk and post it.

Branching attention online is salient because it's easy to branch (open link in new tab) and it's easy to get back (close tab), but I was surprised to notice this habit persisting offline. As you may recall, I recently had some time to kill in the La Guardia Airport. The only book I recognized from terminal shop's pitiful selection was The Da Vinci Code. I read a hundred or so pages before encountering the number Phi. As chance would have it, I then happened upon a book devoted entirely to the topic of the golden ratio and I made Steve buy it for me. Da Vinci is now on hold while I read my Phi book, which I am enjoying very much. There have been numerous references to other tomes on math, art, philosophy and more, but I think I'm going to check my offline branching: books are a lot more expensive than tabs.

Home for the Holidays

This is the first time I will spend Christmas away from my family. My dad's an airline pilot, you see, which means I fly for free, but only if there's extra room on the plane. Paying customers first. There were no open seats on any flights to MSP today, or yesterday, or the day before. Lucky for me, tomorrow's flights are wide open: nobody travels on Christmas day.

Waiting all day at the airport wasn't fun (nor was an additional $70 in cab fairs), but I'm not really busted up about spending Christmas eve/morning alone in a chimneyless apartment. We (my family) don't have a real tree this year. It's some synthetic simulacrum; a geometrically perfect and odorless arrangement of plastic. I already have my main Christmas present: an Alaskan hat (received in advance for Neil's broomball party). So I don't miss the tree, I don't miss the presents. I don't miss the fam (I spent last week at home). I don't really miss The Event (you know me and my religious holidays).

Sure I'd rather be home. I'd rather not spend Christmas day on a plane, and I'd really rather it were not a 6:20 AM flight. But on balance, I can't complain. I'll have a soothing Christmas Eve wank, read a book (I'm still on Exodus), and then go...

Home for the Holidays.

The Antilogical Argument

God is the most perfect thing.
God does not exist.
It is more perfect not to exist than to exist.

Take that ontological argument!

It's A Shame

It's a shame I have to be an atheist and I blame religion. If these issues had been settled by now we would all be post-theist, paying no more than academic bemusement to the lore of yore.

God was shot in the head on November 24, 1859 and died 22 years later. We ought to have held a tidy funeral, paid final respects, mourned for a polite 50 years, and been done with it. God may be in his grave, but religion is proving more difficult to kill. It is much better organized, better supported, and better funded.

I show up, a century postmortem, and we're still in stage one. Thanks religion. Now I've got to be an atheist. Yuk.

Give me a Stone Hendge and I will give you a pegan dance!

Merry Winter Solstice, northern hemisphere!

It's December 21, 2006!

I use one composition notebook for every class for the whole semester. Today I am filling the last blank pages with an essay for European Drama. What timing! I was leafing through the chicken scratch to see what all I had learned these past four months. The pages included:

• Code
• IPA
• Sketch comedy scripts
• A few doodles
• 8 pages of writing done with my non-predominant hand (the left)
• Blog posts. Some posted, others not.
• Reminders and notes
• Thoughts

I wrote some stuff while sitting in Washington Square Park one day. Here are excerpts:

I'm sitting in the most, I guess, beautiful part of WSP, but it smells. There are perfectly yellow leaves falling all around me. There are newspapers and a trashcan nearby. I imagine that is what smells.

...

When I was walking to the river last Sunday, it occurred to me that almost all of the trees in the city have been castrated. They grow through tree-trunk sized holes in the concrete, spaced at precise distances. Each season, they spill their seeds upon the infertile pavement.

...

I don't crave attention. I crave interest.

...

The length of my hair leads me to certain new mannerisms and habits.

...

I love language. It gives form and order to thought. I enjoy the order of language, even past its point of usefulness. Syntax, for example. Language can be wrong in its grammar but correct in its thought, and it is wrong. There is a whole other level of "right" and "wrong" which has nothing to do with logic or morality, only conformance to rule. I enjoy this abstraction. It allows me to differentiate a "right" from a "wrong" without the encumbering ambiguities of logic or morality. I wonder how the English language has shaped the nature of my thinking. Greatly, I suppose. Nearly all of my thoughts occur in English and such a saturation of grammar, rules, violations, exceptions, and idiosyncrasies in the language have undoubtedly tempered the content of my thoughts in some way. Language is meant to serve thoughts. However, over time I'm sure the human mind, so often occupied with the translation of thought to word, begins to shade and alter the germinal thoughts as a consequence of the language.

Jos Ceausescu!

Olivialog

Parts of myself I particularly like:

• Top of Head (when bald)
• Ankles
  
• Eyes (appearance and quality of operation)
  
• Toes
• Eye lashes
• Teeth
• Clavicle
  

Ought: way cooler than Should

Winter Break Prologue is over: four days at home. They included...

• Krispy Kreme with Steve
• Bravo with everyone
• Perkins with 3/4 Blackmans
• Big Labowski with Sam
• MOA with 4/4 Blackmans
• Dinner with Beckmans, Blackmans, Hangs and Petersons
• Broomball with everyone
• Mafia with nearly everyone

I'm back in NY for a final on Thursday. I have other things to do. I return for Winter Break Part II on Friday. Winter Break Section C happens around Dec 30 in M'Zoola Montana with Blackmans et co. I am so happy to see Sam.

Spe me my rife!

This Revolution Has Just Begun

Today was our final performance of Mad Forest. It was well received. It was not a satisfying experience for me. As one of my characters remarks, "I felt empty." It is a sentiment others in the cast share. I was sincerely complimented by some whose opinions I greatly respect. It is on these nuggets that an ego survives the drought.

Home, and Sam, in two days! I'm psyched.

Remember the Failures

We tend to remember our failures more than we need to. I do at least. Here is the story of my most loathed personal failure.

On the very first day of school, mom and I strode down to the bus stop to wait with the other neighborhood kids and their folks. We were a mess of pictures and hugs and final bits of advice - "What ever you do, don't hold it in all day!" That big yellow motorbus put an end to the festivities and it was goodbye for real and, alright another hug and, OK one more picture and, really goodbye for real this time. I probably waved at mom and yelled something sweet, and then I turned to mount the steps of the bus. The driver was a nice, plenty large woman whose name left me sometime around middle school. She welcomed us aboard with a friendly smile and invited us to sit wherever we liked. I took a seat next to a young girl of about my age. We discussed the sort of things four-year-olds might discuss on the first day of school: our names, our lunches, and Sesame Street.

When we arrived at Teasley Elementary, I said goodbye to my new friend and took that first trepedacious step onto the path of academic enlightenment. That path has not been an easy one for me. I couldn't read at all until third grade, middle school and high school grades were nothing of which to be proud, my senior year transcript appears to depict attempted academic suicide, and I would not have gotten into this respectable university if mom had not personally cashed in favors with the principal. Even now I am astonishingly close to failing out of higher education all together. But none of these monumental failings in personal discipline, academic responsibility, even honesty and integrity, have trumped in frequency or duration of loathing remembrance the blunder I made my second week on the job.

Our parents continued walking us to the bus stop the next few days, each morning taking fewer photos, shedding fewer tears and offering less advice - "Geez mom, I know how to go to the bathroom!" By Friday, they stopped chaperoning all together. Through most of that week, I would locate my new girlfriend and try to sit beside her if the space was open. Then came Monday.

On the first day of the second week, our rolly-polly bus driver doled out seating assignments. The purpose of such a thing, I gather, is to bring order to a bus worth of prepubescent chaos. These assignments were carefully devised to maximise busly harmony by matching bench pairs for ideal personal compatibility. A week had been given to behavioral observation and psychological profiling (no doubt aided by the poorly concealed video camera and the magno-mirror-enhanced eye of our supposedly innocuous "bus driver," doubtlessly former KGB), all of which was analyzed by NASA supercomputers to produce the perfect seating configuration. This seating assignment would see us through a successful kindergarten year and onto a bright future in further grades. But I missed the point.

Monday, Ms. Bus Driver pointed to, "your seat, Scott." As a rule, I was not an obedient child, but these were my first days out of the nest and I was eager to please. I spotted my lady buddy and waved to her as I took the prescribed seat next to some nobody booger-eater. For some reason, it never occurred to me that this seat assignment was any kind of permanent rule. I was told to sit somewhere and I did. Mission Accomplished. Done and done. Gold star for me! Sure, it didn't seem very logical to be given a seat assignment for one day only, but when had I known adults to be logical?

Come Tuesday, I spied my old bus compadre and beelined to her half-occupied bench. We were just catching up when Madame Schoolbus spoke the most painfully inditing words I have ever heard: "Scott, why are you sitting there?" She was not upset, merely curious. Curious as to how anyone would ignore so simple a direction. I quickly figured out what she meant, where I was supposed to be, and what had gone wrong. No one laughed or teased me - I don't think anyone noticed. It was the most uneventful indiscretion, yet every day on the bus for the rest of the year, I was helpless but to remember. I decided some months afterward that the driver surely must have forgotten the incident, but how, oh how I remembered. With each passing day I made the conclusion with greater confidence: "She's forgotten but I'll never forget." And I never have.

Why is that? It was no terrible mistake to have made, I was not socially stigmatized for having made it, and the failure revealed no disturbing flaw in my morality, reasoning skills or intelligence: it was only a misunderstanding. I think the reason I have so fixated on this failure is to do with its developmental significance. It was the first time I was embarrassed before an authority figure other than my parents. Lovely Mrs. Bussy never knew, but her soft-spoken question broke new ground in my psyche. I wonder how frequently we tread on the fresh soil of another's soul without ever realizing. Perhaps if everybody blogged their epiphanies, and everybody read them, we'd all be really really happy.

Ego Relativism

Last night's events strongly suggest that Nick is a more good person than I am.

Words for Aesthetos

I am much better acquainted with the state of non-existence than with its opposite which I now enjoy. Both are potentially ephemeral, so each ought to be cherished. Unless I live forever, and I don't have any current plans to do so, I'll have a full opinion of each soon enough. I may or may not be able to blog about it.

Quotable Nick

"I'm gonna go out for a smoke because, unlike Kate Bosworth, I'm no quitter."
-Nick

World AIDS Day

It's World AIDS Day. Are you wearing red? How about (RED)?

Nick and I saw The Fountain and Casino Royal today. I'll share my thoughts latermaybe.

Any Post

I am the reason for the Universe, though not the cause.

NOTES:
I'm still plowing through video from Beyond Belief. I'm on session five right now. Very interesting. I loved Ann Druyan's remarks at the end of session four, but I think the man to whom she was responding was a ringer ;). Carolyn Porco gave one of my favorite presentations and made the fascinating point that we all know what death is like: it's just like before we were born.

DNA's Downside

We can only become what we are able to be.

The Word of Dog

New Scientist: Science is interesting and if you don't agree, you can fuck off.

I love you, Rich

Turkey Wrap(up)

Wednesday
I flew Home on Wednesday. Brittany and I saw Borat. She didn't much care for it.

Thursday
The family piled in the car and drove to Kansas City Missouri to see my Dad's brother's family. They have three children: Alison (my age), Josh (my sister's age) and Baily (three years younger still). Alison visited us four-odd years ago and we hadn't seen the others for a long time. They are all very old. Aunt Carole made a fine Thanksgiving diner and we retired to play Frisbee and pool. It's a fun bunch.

Friday
Alison and I did the crossword in a local paper (we finished). We played Mario Cart and pool and more Frisbee (which spellcheck is telling me ought to be capitalized. I never knew). We had diner at a great local pizeria. Kansas City has a quaint little Main St. area. Then it was back to the house for more pool and some movies. Forty Year Old Virgin lasted a few minutes before the old folks found it too inappropriate. The Nightmare Before Christmas was next and I had forgotten how short a movie it is. After that, I finally got my way and Vertigo was put on. That is a long movie.

Saturday
Six hour drive back home. Brittany came over late and we yucked and talked into the wee hours.

Sunday
Back to NY. The Gym was closed. Waaa! Rehearsal was tedious in the extreme. Afterward, I stayed up until five watching video from the Beyond Belief conference which was Nov 5-7.

Monday
I woke up at 2:30 and was late for 2pm rehearsal. No one noticed. I have 7-10 rehearsal in an hour and I'm writing this blog post instead of going to the gym. I'll have to go after rehearsal. That's bad because the gym closes at 11, but good because there won't be so many people there.

An Occasion on the 26th of Nov

Today marks a year of uninterrupted follicle growth on my head.

Catastrophe!

I was in a hurry yesterday and I needed some serious calcium. I popped into a university shop and found a single bottle in the fridge, labeled only "Milk." It looked good to me. Well, while waiting for the subway, I cracked open this beverage and discovered, to my utter shock, it was whole! Worse still, I liked it!!!

Today, catastrophe! I am at the dining hall, cup in hand, facing the milk machine. I have a choice: skim or whole. Both are available, both are fresh. My hand moves to the "Whole" lever, filling my cup to the brim. I drink it all. I am ashamed.

I don't know when - or if - I will return to skim, but I am confident of one thing: An old man will look back on the tatters of his ruined life and recognize this as the very moment which began the downward spiral.

"Things that make you big" for 500!

Working out is a lot like masturbating: you look at sexy people while performing a repetitive motion that makes you feel both good and sticky.

H2O

A man is wandering in the desert of the apocalypse when he comes across a machine. He says, "Do you have any water?" The machine replies, "No, but I am waiting for the Culligan man." The man asks, "Is the Culligan man coming soon?" and the machine tells him, "Very," so the man sits down to wait. The next day, the man dies from dehydration. Some billion years later, after the Universe has ended, God is walking through Heaven when he comes across the machine. God says, "Do you have any faith?" The machine replies, "No, but I am waiting for the Culligan man." God asks, "Are you sure he is coming?" and the machine tells God, "Very." Some eternities later, after Heaven has ended, the machine is walking through Chaos when it comes across a blue jacket and hat. The machine dons the clothing and Chaos says, "Hey Culligan Man!"

The moral of the story: Machines don't get thirsty.
Further reading: Transhumanism and the dilemmas of space travel.

No Title

A perfect human world is a world without humans.

Dems in Da House

And apparently in the Senate too. And then I heard Rummie was out, and I did a happy dance!

Blogiversary

Happy anniversary blog! A year ago today, Phil Martin was kicked out of studio, Sherin had a birthday, I jacked off and did laundry, and Manos Hands of Fate was enjoyed by all.

Today, I skipped a class to take a nap, Sherin had a birthday, and the country voted. Maybe I'll jerk off in a bit.

This year has been up and down for me and I've blogged through it all. Reading over old posts, I vividly remember certain things and have no recollection of others. Through good or bad, the blog encourages me to remember, provokes me to write, and incentivises interesting, blog-worthy behavior. Its a resource I will further cherish with each passing year. If you don't already, may I recommend you give this blogging thing a go. Let me know if you do: lunchtimemama at gmail dot com. What are you up to? What do you think? What are you? Do something worth blogging about!

As for the next year, I've got some great stuff coming up. More antidotes, epithets, poems, pearls of ignorance and turds of wisdom. I've also got a project in the works for you, dear reader, that should be done around next May. There's another thing that I hope to tell you about sooner. December-ish. Look for it all in the year to come. I'll see you there.

"We're not looking for the best, we're looking for the famousest."

Wonder

I don't fully understand the psycho-socio mechanism by which the gym is always packed on Friday nights. Whatever. Last night was amazing. I first thought $10 was too steep for a fund-raiser party, but it was the most fun I've had in a long damn time. Yeah. It was just awesome.

"I don't believe it's selfish to eat defenseless shell fish." -NOFX

Goood

Some poops are bad. Some are good. That one was very good!

Boo!

I don't think Halloween in New York is actually fun until you've done about a pound of blow. I'm not actually having fun.

Today was probably the best weather we'll have for the rest of '06. That was nice. Halloween was always my favorite holiday, but the joy has been lost on me these past three years. Maybe I haven't hit the right parties. Maybe I don't have the right friends. Maybe I ain't found the right costume. Maybe I should wear a costume. Next year.

Candy corn is my favorite candy and I had a helluva time finding some today. I tried Upstien, Downstien, Duane Reade, K-Mart. Finally I found some Indian Corn at another DR. To my surprise and disgust, Indian Candy Corn tastes different from the regular kind. Chocolaty. New York never has the things you need. Like fun.


You're not really my friend unless I periodically fantasize about sex with you.
-Lies

Ma

Mommy showed up to see my movement project. Yeah!

Ask not what your blog can do for you...

Rarely do I ask more of you, dear reader, than to consider this, or imagine that, or seance for the summoning of so-and-so, but today I make an exception. The new version of Ubuntu was just released. I'd really like it if you gave it a try. I know an OS installation can be a big deal, so I understand if you want to pass on this one, but be aware that the next version of Ubuntu (slated for release April 19th) will not be optional. You either make the switch or you say goodbye to our friendship. You have until April.

But if you think you'd like to try Ubuntu now, here's some persuasion:

• Ubuntu is totally free: no cost, no license. It is a gift to you from the penguin god.
• You can keep Windows around and choose if you want to use Windows or Ubuntu every time you start your computer.
• Installation is dead easy:
• Go to www.ubuntu.com.
• Download 6.10 for the desktop (if you're familiar with bittorrent, defiantly use that for the download).
• Burn the image. You'll need something like Nero or DaemonTools (the latter is free).
• Pop the CD in and restart.
• Behold! You're running Ubuntu! To permanently install it, click the "Install" icon on the desktop. When the installation is done, you can toss the CD.
• That's it!
• After you've installed Ubuntu, you probably want to install EasyUbuntu. That takes care of things like audio/video codecs, browser plugins, and other things that don't come pre-installed with Ubuntu for legal reasons.
• What "Just works" in Ubuntu:
• Surf the web
  
• Check your email
• Instant message
• Create and edit MS Office documents (Word et al)
• Listen to your music
• Rip and burn CDs
• Sync your iPod
• Connect your digital camera
  
• Watch videos
• And more
• Caveats:
• You can't listen to music you've bought on iTunes (blame DRM)
• Not all PC games are available for Linux (keep that Windows install around).
• That's everything that comes to mind.

If you decide to install, be sure to backup your files, bookmarks, etc. Put them on a data CD or DVD or an external hard drive.

If you have any questions, there is a great Ubuntu community ready and willing to help. I'm also more than happy to lend a hand. Send any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer:
lunchtimemama at gmail dot com.

FLOSS daily.

If you want to get into heaven...

Firefox 2

www.mozilla.com

Yeah!

Styroferno

The 9th ring of hell is filled with packing peanuts.

Haiku For You

Little turds splashing,
So happy in the toilet;
I don't want to flush.

Huzzah!

Tomorrow, code that I've written will go out to millions of people. Or rather, my patch has been committed for the 0.11.2 release of Banshee. OK, so it's not really a big deal at all. But it's my first committed patch, so it's special.

Existence is preferable to the alternative.

Falsifiability is God

Human understanding is not absolute. Truth is. If our belief in a geocentric solar system is pitted against the fact of a heliocentric solar system, heliocentricity remains true, despite our belief to the contrary. Truth also trumps human ignorance. If we know nothing of a planet orbiting another sun, it's existence remains true despite our unawareness. And indeed, on most matters we are ignorant.

Human observation, while imperfect, can provide reasonable evidence of truth. Evidence successfully obtained through repeatable experimentation can be said to be "true" to a certain extent (significant figures, error, etc.).

Given these circumstances, we are very likely to often find evidence contrary to or beyond the scope of our understandings. And indeed we often do.

Science is based solely on evidence. Science is necessarily falsifiable. All scientific theories seek to be disproved by evidence. Theories are modified, discarded, and created to fit our changing corpus of evidence. Thusly through science we learn via trial-and-error.

Religion is based solely on divine documents. Religion is necessarily unfalsifiable. All religions rely on the absolute and exclusive truth of their doctrine. When presented with contradictory evidence, a religion must (a) reject the evidence, (b) concede the absolute authority of its religious documents, (c) admit to "human error" or "metaphor" in its religious documents. In each of those situations:
A) The religion's point of view appears ever more absurd as humanity's talent for observation improves and contrary evidence mounts.
B) The religion violates the fundamental tenant of unfalsifiability and becomes completely defunct.
C) The religion calls into question all of its doctrine. How is one to know what is correctly interpreted and what is not and how does one know with what confidence a particular doctrine is interpreted and on whose authority are such things to be believed.

And indeed religions often face contrary evidence.

There are multiple religions which claim truth at the falsehood of all other religions. None of these religions holds a majority of the human population among their believers. No religion can therefor claim authority by belief ("it is believed, therefor it is true") because by that logic, all religions are made wrong by the disbelief in any one religion by a majority of humanity. Most religions possess supposedly divine documents. No evidence exists of these documents' divinity and all are of decidedly un-divine authorship (human). No religion can therefor claim authority by divine document since all religions claim that authority with equal evidence ("we say so").

Religion is therefor a most absurd means by which to discover truth. Science is, at least, a start.

Multiplicity

I share a birthday with Shakespeare and it's the date that he allegedly died too. I've imagined for some years now that I will enjoy my final birthday, fall asleep, and wake up in an afterlife populated exclusively by mes of different ages, each of who's final memory is the celebration of their most recent birthday. A copy of me from every April 23rd will be there: 1986, 1996, 2006, ... ? And we would live together forever. Certain rules would be decided: the tending of the perpetual infants, the minding of the eternally young, the dissemination of life story, cooking, cleaning, and of course, sex - or perhaps masturbation is the more appropriate term. It would certainly be a Hell rather than a Heaven: I am far too in love with myself to ever enjoy the company of other mes.

I've been playing Psychonauts. It is really amazing. If you have any interest in video games whatsoever, you must check it out! You can try the demo on Steam if you're so inclined.

"I am the milkman. My milk is delicious."

PAF

The gym is better than friends
The gym is a lot better looking than your friends, the gym is available anytime you are (until 11), and at the gym, you're free to engage in as little human interaction as you please.

The gym is destroying my soul
If some rehearsal or other prohibits attendance, the withdrawal consumes my psyche. I'm going to have to miss on Friday again. Send help!

All hail the great and terrible GYM!

When talking to myself, I address myself in the first person plural pronoun, "we."
"We know full well..."
"We really ought to..."
"We must burn..."
Who else is in here with me?

Five signs you hit rock bottom a while ago

1. You can't quite place the source of your apartment's sweaty reek.
2. You skip class to avoid turning in homework that isn't even due.
   
3. You're suite mate doesn't offer to share the skank week he's so obviously smoking in there.
4. "Buy Soap!" has rolled over six daily to-do lists.
5. You're eating cereal with a fork.

à la 5ives

Q

Would the world be better if we held our thoughts to the same moral standard that we hold our behaviors?

Ding Dong!

Sex Goddess of my life, Jade Jackson, paid me a compliment today. Yeah, I'm totally gonna masturbate about it.

"Life begins at ejaculation."

Pre-Order Now!

My next book is coming out in December (exact release date pending). I'll let you know when you can find it on bookshelves. Be sure to check it out. It's called:

Bestseller

The Modern Art of Titling Non-Fiction Books With a Single,
Punchy Word and Then Finding the Perfect Long-Winded Sub-Title
to Go Along With It and also Some Ironic and Self-Referential
Wit and Some Dick Jokes Too
by Scott Peterson

Durdenism

You are further noise.

Vid ee oh

Democracy + tvRSS = Die, television!

In related news, Google bought YouTube. I exploded.

You can't emphasis Beef!

Orson Welles, bless us with your peas!

War is always relevant.

Identity Misplacement

The pants I'm wearing don't have any pockets. I asked Kyle to keep my wallet in his bag during class today. Kyle left. I don't have a wallet.

Silver Lining

Girl on her cellphone in the elevator:
So she calls me today and asks if I'll help clean up and I'm like, "Clean up what?" and she's like, "All the puke" and I guess I had like thrown up all over her apartment which I totally don't remember at all. . . Yeah, I must have totally blacked out before that happened, which I guess is actually kind of really great because I only remember the good stuff!

Locked in the bunker

I barely left my room this weekend. I've been working on my latest computer project and the current phase is extremely tedious. Briefly:

Intro:
I'm guessing that you, dear reader, are either using Windows or OSX. Well, there's a third thing called Linux. Linux is FREE. It's free both as in speech and as in beer. That is to say, it doesn't cost any money and it's not proprietary/copyrighted/licensed/restricted/closed-source. The problem is, it's not as good. But that's starting to change. There's a new type of Linux called Ubuntu. Ubuntu is fully functional and very easy to use. It's not quite ready to take over the world (e.g., I'm not going to recommend it to my mom yet), but it's getting close. I've been using Ubuntu for about a month now and I'm not looking back.


Problem:
I use iTunes on Windows and when I moved to Ubuntu, I wanted a familiar interface for my music. Linux has a number of iTunes-clones for organizing and playing music. The app I settled on is called Banshee. It imported my music collection just fine, but certain information that I had in iTunes (song ratings, play counts, play lists, &c.) is kept inside of iTunes and therefore wasn't brought into Banshee. Since iTunes is a popular music player, I imagine other first-time Linux users will have this problem too.


Project:
I'm writing a plugin for Banshee that will dig that information out of iTunes an merge it into Banshee. If all goes well, the plugin will import the following:

• Song ratings
• Play count
• Last played
• Playlists
• Smart playlists
• Podcast subscriptions
  

Luckily, iTunes makes available an XML file with most of that info. Here's an excerpt from the file (emphasis mine):

<key>Name</key><string>Stacey's Mom</string>
<key>Genre</key><string>Rock/Pop</string>
<key>Size</key><integer>7995139</integer>
<key>Total Time</key><integer>198844</integer>
<key>Track Number</key><integer>3</integer>
<key>Track Count</key><integer>16</integer>
<key>Play Count</key><integer>77</integer>
<key>Play Date</key><integer>3242496736</integer>
<key>Rating</key><integer>100</integer>

As you can see, the information we're looking for is very easy to find. I've listened to Stacey's Mom 77 times and it has a rating of 100 (5 stars). Right now, my plugin does a fine job of importing ratings, play counts, last played, and playlists. The next step is to handle smart playlists. Here's where it gets tricky. While the XML data is very easy to read, smart playlists are encoded in binary: 1's and 0's. Here is part of a smart playlist:

00000000 00000000 00000000 00010010 00000000
01000010 00000000 01100101 00000000 01101110
00000000 00100000 00000000 01000110 00000000
01101111 00000000 01101100 00000000 01100100
00000000 01110011 01010011 01001100 01110011

That is decidedly more difficult to interpret. Enter the I-haven't-left-my-room-in-two-days factor. So I've spent the last 48 hours creating smart playlists in iTunes and analyzing the bytes that come out. I'm making good headway and it's only a matter of time before I have all of the bits figured out, but the tedium does wear on me.

Thankfully, I've discovered a new distraction: DEFCON! It's a charming little game about global thermonuclear warfare. It's easy to learn and loads of fun and best of all, you can play the whole game for free (the demo just limits the number of opponents you can have). New York City is a common target for ICBMs, so maybe it's best that I stay inside.

Awk! Toe-bur

Rabbit rabbit!

"Look at my poofy pants one more time and I kill you, muthafucka!" - William Shakespeare

Lucifer

We will one day tell our grandchildren of such a thing as night
And of a world on which there only ever shone a single sun.

ThursSeptTwenEight

• So much FOOOD that I had to eat. HAD TO!
• If my comp sci class were any slower, I'd be un-learning.
• I saw Christo and Jeanne-Claude having dinner here.
  

If you don't have talent, have beauty, and if you don't have beauty, have kids.

<3

I love narcissists.

Linguistic Epiphanies

I realized today the root of the word singularity.

I'm not clever enough to think of a title for this post

We are all mean, but some of us are clever.

Praise Be!

The laundry. It is done.

...

There is no reason not to legalize all recreational drugs.

Death Rattle

My dinner this evening consisted of two Silver Spur hamburgers. The meal was equivalent to eleven helpings of Grade A beef and the decision will likely cost me a day from the end of my life. I can hear old Scott's death rattle now: "If I only hadn't had those two hamburgers!"

A Good Day

Today was a good day. I. . .

• Polished off a poem
• Worked on a project
• Left for the gym just as the fire alarm went off
• where I had a great time
• And then a great sandwhich
• and then I more or less slept.
• More or less.

The Poem:
I would ______ you if I had a verb to spare.
My longing;judging;expecting associates have an expectation of me
And my fellow friends of blaming;masturbating;destroying need my company.
The tomfoolers want blatherers and violators require admirers
And my prior engagements to praying;pissing;repenting;begging commit me somewhat beyond my availability.
Were it but for my heavy spending of fearing, I would devote a bit of it to us, my dear.
I would fear our lack of predicate.
As it stands, my poverty of language leaves me somewhat indebted of ideas and expression.
All I can afford you is a punctuation mark or two.
;!

Reasons Why

1. Sex with you is a poor imitation of masturbation.
2. I'm drowning in the sea of your ineptitudes.
3. I don't do tofu.
   

The Best Sentence in the English Language

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. [1]

(Untitled)

Marriage is so pre-9/11.

Sidewalk Urges

One of my more violent urges is to throw the pedestrian in front of me to the ground while screaming, "Move your fucking ass you tourist turd!" I often have this urge. About 20 times a day.

?

A Utopia is a world in which no new questions are asked.

FYI

If you fell into a bottomless pit on Earth, your body would reach relativistic speeds after 35 days. Unfortunately you would be dead from dehydration by day 6, at the latest.

.

I'm always yawning and moaning and stretching and groaning andohgodifeelsoold

There are Two Constants:

Entropy and Chaos.

Aug 28

Old New York. Back again. I was surprised to find I'd missed the Big Apple. I'm more or less all moved in, but those CollegeBoxes fuckers have fucked their shit up again. I've got a box belonging to another Scott Peterson and I can only assume he has the one I'm missing. Errr!

I've started the Bible. I'll let you know what I think when I'm done.

Last night we (roommate-Nick, Leia and I) went to Limerick and found a gaggle of geriatric women bustin' their movies at Sunday night karaoke. Well I wasn't about to let that opportunity pass me by, so I got out on that dance floor and started shakin' my thang. I'll tell ya, those geese sure could dance.

Classes start in a week.

The glass is half full of air.

Movies to Which I am Looking Forward

Children of Men




The Fountain




The Science of Sleep

Requiem for the Recently Departed

The Solar System Today
A Haiku

Mercury Venus
Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn
Uranus Neptune

Etymology for President!

Venereal: The Latin adjective form of Venus - God of Love.

Adjective references to the planet use the neologism Venusian.

Eltit

What you want and what you get haven't loved each other since you were two. They separated for eight months before getting a divorce and now they only speak on holidays. But it's not your fault.

July 24, 06

AHHH!HH!H!HH!H!!!111!!!!1!!1

I just got the ALL-TIME-HIGH-SCORE on pinball. Wore yet, I was this close to getting a MILLION MORE for a total of 9.5 mill.

DAMN YOU SANTA!

Noon:30 on Friday

These days I have far less lint in my belly button than usual.

July 16

I've been unclenching my teeth a lot lately.

More from the Front Lines of 12 July

An Epiphany: The Pacific Ocean is so named for being pacific.

July 12 - Day 7,385

Played Prey all day. Grade-D story, poor animation, laughable voice acting, but damn the game is fun. And gorgeous to boot.

I delight in greek tragidies, except when they are my own.