September 2003 Archives

as the whining playlist of doom spins in the cdrom and i spin within, i realize i have to code what amounts to a miracle before morning. we are talking final deadline. final. not a personal deadline mind you, those i've blown through like a los angeles criminal through stoplights with a hundred of lapd's finest in hot pursuit. hot pursuit. no, this is a real actual deadline.

*deep breath*

ok then. it's on.

unusually this woozy this early but here it is, time, time. relentless procession of thoughts shuffles past, shabby refugees of the uncivil unrest of the past four decades, anxiously searching the uncertain territory ahead with shattered eyes mostly but here and there a glitter, a glimmer, hope.

hope has always been the enemy, cunning and deceptive and utterly merciless and yet after all these years still irresistable still powerful persuasive with the delicious feasts of visions, how easy it is to settle into the warmth the fullness the seductive comfort; sedated in this decadence i drift off and the next thing i know it's the same old hard cold wakeup in a muddy ditch missing everything that mattered, even though it was unreal, it is still a loss.

is this depressing? shit i was gonna be funny but i had this in draft and i thought hey, have i whined enough lately? why yes. should i whine some more? why of course!

in unrelated news i am having to hold myself back by my own hair to keep from installing mysql 4.1 alpha release, i *need* the new features. oh god you have no idea. subselects! i need subselects sooooo bad. but it's in alpha. thou dost not subject thine webhosting clients to alpha releases unless ... unless you really need to right?

sigh.

i've said it once i'll say it a million times it is supposed to be difficult if you do not encounter serious challenging circumstances that test you to your soul you are doing something wrong life does not get better being easy, it merely leaves you numbed out complacent stagnant struggling to stay awake under the influence of the inertia.

maybe that's what's wrong with me, huh? maybe life is supposed to be easy and the same thing day in day out maybe it is about comfort and moderation in everything except numbness, can't get enough of that? or, here's another question: what's better, to have bested a beast of a difficult situation, or never to have had the difficulty?

now for some people comfort and moderation is the thing, but for others among us it is not. and though we may long for it even pine for it and consider ourselves suffering for the lack of it, our minds have other plans. we can try to defend against those plans, adorn ourselves with the psychic shock absorption the insulation the well-appointed interior the long list of amenities, and do our level best to cruise through it controlled but for us comfort is really not the thing, it looks good it seems like it should feel good but it is never quite right with us down deep, that restless shifting within that vague disquiet that surfaces in the idle silence between heartbeats, a sense of urgency that is all at once impractical and illogical and irresistable. and oh, resistance is costly, though it's intensity that it costs us and that's hard to justify; much easier to take credit for our efforts against surrendering to the messy chaos our dreams suggest to us. logic tells us that messes and chaos and red 1969 z28 convertibles are difficult and stressful and therefore wrong for us, but logic knows naught of intensity. logic tells us intensity is not a need. i beg to differ.

some of us just aren't buick people, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise.

i therefore rescind all my whining about wanting to be normal. fuck normal. i'm a freak. i'm weird. but life is interesting, and i am awake, and i am alive.

a. snobs and westlake village
q. what are, things that go together, i.e., counterparts**.

time&tide   cut&dried   tried&true   fast&loose   free&clear   fair&square   rough&ready   slow&steady   quick&dirty   cheap&cheerful   nip&tuck   tuck&roll   duck&cover   dick&jane   kick&scream   chop&change   ball&chain   safe&sound   lost&found   up&around   bow&scrape   short&sweet   aim&fire   live&learn   slash&burn   smash&grab   search&destroy   fear&loathing   bait&switch   cut&print   rank&file   wash&wear   cut&paste   loud&clear   up&up   out&out   spit&polish   serve&volley   search&rescue   chalk&cheese   rack&pinion   hit&run   hit&miss   high&dry   hue&cry   skin&bones   sticks&stones   stars&stripes   stripes&solids   new&improved   dollars&sense   chapter&verse   over&out   out&about   above&beyond   far&away   hope&pray   night&day   swing&sway   down&away   happy&gay   straight&narrow   hide&seek   hunt&peck   rhyme&reason   lock&key   lucy&ricky   moose&squirrel   cats&dogs   tooth&nail   hand&foot   hook&ladder   cloak&dagger   block&tackle   bow&arrow   odds&ends   off&on   dead&gone   hither&yon   heaven&hell   fire&brimstone   flotsam&jetsam   flora&fauna   matter&energy   momentum&inertia   drawn&quartered   tarred&feathered   bound&gagged   bound&determined   thick&thin   kith&kin   barbie&ken   now&again   pins&needles   apples&oranges   bells&whistles   cruel&unusual   charm&strangeness   armed&dangerous   words&music   gin&vermouth   rhythm&blues   socks&shoes   rock&roll   song&dance   smoke&mirrors   shuck&jive   hot&bothered   sugar&spice   cock&bull   beck&call   bump&grind   wine&dine   rise&shine   slap&tickle   stand&deliver   lift&separate   ribbed&lubricated   in&out   fore&aft   give&take   long&hard   over&over   kiss&tell   alive&well   stop&go   high&low   yes&no   touch&go   fast&slow   body&soul   flesh&blood   one&all   pride&joy   peace&love   time&again   over&over
AMEN.

q. what type of lizards are out there?
a. i am. i am out there. there are others, but let's worry about me first, ok? be afraid.
q. use the word irrepressible in a sentence
a. okay.
q. the inspiration of mosquitoes
a. um. blood?
q. what an autobiography looks like
a. mine looks like this. but i'm kinda different that way.
q. wasting time at work and not getting caught
a. well i never.
q. how does music affects the lizards
a. i can't speak for all of lizardkind, but i personally would be dead without it.
q. what makes lizards die
a. same thing that makes you die. life.
q. lyrics blackmail radiant carrot
a. i knew this would happen. meet me by the starbucks, we'll talk. i'll be the wired, nervous-looking person sucking down strong coffee.

**lovingly transcribed from the cover art of counterparts, which holds endless fascination for this lizard, and which probably got more than a little inspirational assistance from this. the lizard's google-fu is strong.

You hear me say this don't make any sense As I hop up and over the fence Hooked on nicotine and phonics Fun like macro economics Still and quiet like they taught us Fun like macro economics Vigilante thoughts and a cheap guitar I am my own movie star I don't know you I don't want to I don't know you I don't want to
eve 6, tongue tied

could quote lyrics all nightlong and possibly express everything but then again maybe not, since it would be impossible to include enough context, and with me with music it's always contextual. the elaborate process by which these things become one with the soundtrack adds anything from nuances to entirely alternative meanings to these things i quote, and yet, and yet ...

Pacific Sun, you should have warned us, it gets so cold here. And the night can freeze, before you set it on fire. And our flares go unnoticed. Dimminished, faded just as soon as they are fired. We are, we are, intrigued. We are, we are, invisible. Oh, how we've shouted, how we've screamed, take notice, take interest, take me with you. But all our fears fall on deaf ears. Tonight, they're burning the roads they built to lead us to the light. And blinding our hearts with their shining lies, while closing our caskets cold and tight. But I'm dying to live.
dashboard confessional, several ways to die trying
Something 'bout the whiteness of the phone Something 'bout the Genius of Modern Music How can I think How can I fail you? Something 'bout the distance to the nerve Something 'bout white hands of fate I don't deserve The bedroom ghosts
the posies, love letter boxes

between the posies and the dashboard confessional there were things starting seeming like damn good ideas the eve6 is a little mentally healthier for me at the moment.

How much longer will I try before I realize I'm desperate in the situation that I'm in again I'm exhausting yet another topic I've exhausted frequently with no regrets.
eve 6, how much longer

my life is mostly dreamt in the textures my speakers spin around me and i live in a world where the surreal sensation of the loss of these latest dreams fades into a fantasy in which there ... in which there is ... there is no loss (but there is always kansas)

I'm woven in a fantasy, I can't believe the things I see The path that I have chosen now has led me to a wall And with each passing day I feel a little more like something dear was lost It rises now before me, a dark and silent barrier between, All I am, and all that I would ever want be It's just a travesty, towering, marking off the boundaries my spirit would erase

give me an inch of out-for-a-pack-of-cigarettes and i'll take miles and miles. well miles. but it'll take me an hour to go those miles, because i will wander, and when i wander, it's almost always downtown, i'm drawn to the lights like a moth. but not one of those big furry scary ones with the bizarre fern-looking antennae, no.

the majestic ventura theatre (either owned by someone with the name of majestic, or just a finely honed sense of irony):

the century theatre, good sign bad photo:

in the window of an upscale boutique-looking place:

the sans souci, a divine dive of a place with a most excellent sign.

i am simply enchanted by the sans souci signpicture, to the extent i am compelled to upload the big picture, just as it came out of the camera, all 1600

no lemons were sucked in the making of this face.

age: 15 attitude: oh yeah.

finally

you need to be in front of your son's school at two twenty pm on the dot. you need to leave work at one thirty to allow for shit to happen because shit happens, but since you were over an hour late this morning because the person who informed you you would be changing your schedule from now on, purposely did not wake you up on his way out because he's all about tearing you down with told you so when you fail, and your lack of failure lately has got to be wearing on him. so your boss is not happy and your coworker wants these details seen to and since you were late you do not insist upon leaving when you need to. you are in the car 14 minutes after you should have been. you are dead flat on empty. it is hot, you are thirsty. you do the digging for change on the bottom of your purse on the way to the gas station, collecting some $4.25, out of which you splurge $0.75 on a diet coke. you pay with a handful of sticky hairy quarters, pump your gallon and a half and go. it is hot, you get shitty gas mileage, you wonder which is worse, bad aerodynamics or the air conditioner, you pick the aerodynamics and you sweat. you make the best time you can considering the fact neither your tires nor your brakes are actually safety features anymore. you do 80, 85 as long as you can, thinking rather ruefully about that four star safety rating, knowing the chances are a horrendous wreck would fail to kill you and just leave you maimed. the drive gives you time to reflect on your life. for the longest time you have been allowing your ex to tell you "well you just have to pay it" when there was no money, and you played the cashflow like a maestro until this month when he brought that crashing down. perhaps 'i'll hold you down and fuck you in the ass till you give me the money' was an idle threat, perhaps not; it's not like it hasn't happened before, and whether or not it's still in him to do that the words just the words took you threw you back a half decade and if you remeber correctly it really pisses him off when you scream and cry in pain, and these are the excuses the bottom line is you gave him the money you gave him more or less all of it and the checking account the whole cashflow juggling thing came crashing down and is most likely beyond rescue at this point and you allowed this, you did. and in two weeks you'll be free of this but this is small comfort in the face of total financial ruin, and it is two fourteen, and you have six minutes, and the traffic in front of you comes to a dead stop. you begin to freak just a little, your cell phone has been turned off, you are going to be late, and incidentally let's not forget the bit about life being in the toilet, not even for a moment. the coming to a stop you manage with practiced skill, many's the car you've nursed through needing work. the stupid bitch behind you whose car is not even old enough to need replacement tires or brakes has to swerve onto the shoulder to avoid hitting you and you think well at least i'm not stupid, it could be worse. the traffic the traffic the fucking traffic and your cell phone is off and it is two nineteen you are at least ten minutes out and the traffic and you think of your son standing outside the school waiting worrying and you start seriously crying like freakout crying. the traffic is constant until almost the exit, no particular reason for it except that people are fucking stupid and can't merge. off at the exit two twenty six still several traffic lights to get through, you pull up in front of the school at two twenty nine and where is your son? you creep slowly along, looking, an idiot motherfucking excursion driving bitch damn near backs into you fucking look before you back the truck up you stupid yuppie cunt and there he is, poor kid's been out there waiting, he gets in the car mommy why are you crying i said i was in terrible traffic and i was worried you would be scared.

i didn't mention any of the rest of it.

i was going to mention the apocalypse and shit like that, but i think i'll let the 'word burst analysis' done by blogvision.com, speak for me. it shows the top 20 most popular terms in the blogosphere today, and ... well, here you go:

I can't go out no more.
There's a man by the door
in a raincoat
smoking a cigarette

i have such a complicated relationship with reality, which is why i spend so much time here, in the internet. when i venture forth into meatspace, i am so easily overwhelmed by the normalcy i perceive. sitting outside the school yesterday afternoon as other mommies and daddies gathered, even though i blend in well and you can't tell, i still felt this intense difference between myself and everyone else. times like these i am seized by this fierce wondering, this what if i had grown up when i was supposed to and led a responsible existence, what if i had settled into the world as opposed to flipping and twisting and thrashing through it as if i'd been washed ashore here, drowning in this unfamiliar atmosphere, what if i'd behaved like i was born here and belonged?

the difference isn't visible to the ordinary eye but i am not feeling it with my eyes, i sense it in the deepest layer of my skin. and i sit quietly wearing my awareness thinking wondering what it would be like not knowing what i know, not having gone where i have and not now being someone who is from where i've been.

i wonder if they appreciate the quality of their stress. i wonder if they realize how luxurious it is, having ordinary middleclass problems. i wonder if they have any idea, any at all. and why should they? and why do my thoughts take this tone? there is no unfairness here between us, we are merely the results of our different decisions.

and can't help it this is the sort of thought process that brings the litany of regrets rolling like credits across my perspective. doesn't obscure anything that isn't indistinct already in my watery eyes, but serious selfpity is never about the vision, is it? it isn't. and in this case, the introspection concludes with a few words from one of the more bitter aspects of my self, spoken in a voice one might mistake for reason: this is not unfairness. you had your chances, you made your choices, your life is your own ... here the reason ends, and the abuse begins, which makes this as good a place as any to stop all this whining, doesn't it? it does.

* * * * * * *
what a lot of words that was, when all i really had to say was this: i have reclusive tendencies, because i am weird and i have many issues and complexes as a result.

logic requires payment of at least lip service to this, this concept of release. this l... this lett... uce. this lettuce. no, no, this letting

go. this letting go. i've talked the talk to myself for some time now, and as easily as the right-sounding words come to me, they are even more easily discarded, carelessly tossed aside, or no let's be honest here they are very carefully and in fact meticulously tossed aside, a deliberate act in direct defiance of all that makes sense. excuse is as follows: what if?

what if i am wrong about how right i am about this? what if i do what i am convinced i know i must do and five minutes later i feel the universe shift on its axis (which is within me the same as it is in everyone and everything, trust me on this) where was i oh yes what if the universe shifts within and spins things around so that this terrible unfulfilled need is suddenly within the realm of possibility rather than the almost ridiculously unreal estate it occupies at the moment? everything is entirely different from moment to moment and you never fucking know, honest you don't and neither do i, and so who am i to simply turn away from this and say that i know this, that i know this is not? what if my pessimism (if that is what this is) costs me this (i have no words for what this is)?

i play the music that invokes the feelings attendant in the letting go, randomly breaking down in a manner suggesting i am feeling this letting go, telling myself over and over it's done now and time to be letting go, and still i find my self clenched in a deathgrip in the absolute opposite direction and find i am not even close to beginning this ... this letting go.

i am, however, going and getting some more beer. at least there's that.

sure, you can write one of those boring wills and all, but where's the fun in that? me, i want one of those crazy irish wakes when i go, i mean i want everyone to get totally shitfaced and tell embarrassing stories about me and share screencaptures from the tequila webcam days and things of that nature.

anyway, what i've decided to do, is put together a playlist for this epic wake event somewhere at the end of my future. i'm dead serious here. it's going to take a little time, music is important. i know i'd have to start with goodbye yellow brick road because sometimes i am a clich

found in referrer logs: wizard.yellowbrick.oz
spoofed, of course. but why?

google led me to confessions of a g33k, which in turn led me to google groups, in which this URL is used in a Perl script intended to "automate an HTML form submission" (in which case this would most likely be an unsuccessful test run, since no form submissions accompanied these visits).

so far i have these two IPs, DNS traces to arrival.net (bakersfield)?:

66.17.15.132 (dns is 132.15.17.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer 66-17-15-132.biz.bkfd.arrival.net.)
66.17.15.164 (dns is 164.15.17.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer 66-17-15-164.biz.bkfd.arrival.net.)

ARIN returns this, consistent with the above:
Arrival Communication, USA ARRIVAL-COM (NET-66-17-0-0-1)
66.17.0.0 - 66.17.63.255
Lightspeed Technologies ARRV-66-17-15-128 (NET-66-17-15-128-1)
66.17.15.128 - 66.17.15.191

i will now pause to contemplate my navel referrer logs for further spoofage and ponder the meaning of this, life, the universe, and everything.

well, i got my dsl turned back on, and that's what's really important right? as to the rest of everything else, well, fuck.

there is a new version of PHP. i am going to go compile apache with it. there will be a glitch, when i restart apache. you might not notice it, or, you might. however it will be brief i am good at this.

i'm sorry, these are just too good.
q. sick of my short fat girlfriend
a. there's only one thing to do then. Seppuku is highly ritualistic, exquisitely precise and earns you maximum respect from some truly world-class babes.
q. bored beyond words
a. i couldn't give a shit if i tried.
q. i couldn't give a shit if i tried.
a. i'm number one! i'm number one!
q. what does gaze mean
a. Kinematic non-locality, or quantum entanglement between the states of separate non-interacting particles, is implied by the symmetrical form of the combined wavefunction that is used to describe many-particle systems. Imagine, for example, two beams of particles, with momenta of p₁ and p₂ respectively, being fired from independent sources (1 & 2); the particles from both sources are detected at two separate locations x₁, and x₂. The combined wavefunction for these particles is, then:

And the probability distribution for position is just the square of this combined wavefunction,