things are as bad as they seem

The Stranger's Slog, Now Slightly Less Irritating

2012-01-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

It's a big world out there. I believe that we each have the power to shape the world however we see fit, in ways both subtle and gross. It all started when I couldn't stand his bullshit anymore. And by "bullshit", I mean "every last fucking thought that fell out of this guy's head".

The guy I'm talking about is Charles Mudede, staff writer for Seattle's Only Newspaper, The Stranger. He's some sort of enlightened neo-liberal communist and he needs to make damn sure you know this. He's the sort of guy who loves to write about People with a capital 'P' and about big concepts like Right and Wrong and The Rich and The Poor and part way through his articles you realize he's supposed to be a journalist reporting on the factual details on some kind of new local traffic law and he should leave his elitist philosophical masturbation out of your local news feed thank you. Is that too much to ask?

In many ways, his is a gross miscarriage of journalism. Amidst the other ne'er-do-wells on the staff of The Stranger, I'm sure he fits right in.

I read The Stranger's Slog RSS feed daily, and someone must have mistakenly told Charles that his bullshit opinions on Life, The Universe, and Everything have a place among legitimate posts about topical and relevant stories on art, news, sports, weather, and pornography.

Keep in mind I don't have a problem with Charles or his predilection for spouting bullshit. I just don't feel that I have an obligation to read it or even acknowledge it exists. It's a big world out there. I can live without Charles or his bullshit, and I can sleep happily having forgotten he exists.

The easy part was writing software that fetches the Slog feed regularly, strips out Charles Mudede's retarded bullshit, and republishes the sanitized remainder for the world to enjoy. The hard part was convincing Google Reader to fetch it more frequently than twice a day.

No matter. I have been relying on my own customized version of the Slog, Slog: The Stranger: No Charles Edition for a few months now and the results have been very promising. I casually mentioned it to a couple of people over the last few days and was really very surprised by their reactions. There appears to be great enthusiasm for what I've created, so I've gone public with it here. If you use it, leave a comment. If you like it, share it with your friends.

It seems that I'm not the only one who's sick of Charles's bullshit. It's a big world out there. Shape it as you see fit.

As a Surprise to Absolutely No One

2011-12-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

It turns out that organizational psychologist Billie Blair is a total cunt. I'm not saying that some of her observations aren't accurate, but I take issue with her general attitude and her fuel-to-the-fire biased statements like "[IT managers] just want people to bow to them as they come into the room."

What a stupid bitch.

She seems to appreciate that the job demands constantly dealing with people who neither understand the services you perform nor offer any appreciation for your doing it, combined with an ever-growing list of restrictions and responsibilities that, due to the ignorance of the faculties of our jobs, is usually the last to get much-needed resources and headcount.

She has one valid point: IT people aren't people people. We typically are the worst folks you can imagine to have to deal with customers or to focus on high marks on user satisfaction surveys. We are simply too socially retarded — and busy — to worry about how you feel while we are fixing whatever you've done to fuck up your computer, or the network file share, or the company website, or whatever. People don't seem to complain about how the janitorial staff just walk into the office and empty your trash cans without a smile or a simple greeting. They're just trying to do their jobs.

Am I comparing IT to emptying trash cans and scrubbing toilets? Yeah, sometimes it's like that. And it's unfair to treat your IT team similarly to a facility service yet expect them to act like chipper public relations staffers while they do it.

We're just people. We get extremely burned out when we only ever get called when something is on fire. At times we feel like janitors, and the rest of the time we feel like paramedics. Folks only pick up the phone and call the paramedics when something is gravely wrong. They never have good news and they never call earlier asking for input on taking preventative measures.

People don't have a problem understanding how emotionally draining it is to work in a hospital ER or on a trauma team stitching people back together after they've lost a fight with a freight train and such. The plights in the IT world usually aren't quite so life-threatening but they can be just as negative, and that serves to do little more than slowly erode a man's soul.

The job is so much better when the users aren't involved.

I used to really enjoy working Saturdays at the Science Center when the upstairs office was closed. This meant I had a near-zero chance of having to deal with user complaints and, instead of having to field questions like "Does Windows 95 double-click?" I could focus on actually doing maintenance work on the servers and on the networks. Isolation in a server room actually getting to fix shit was practically a vacation by comparison. It's not that IT people hate the users, at least not at first, but you can't help but grow to resent the people who make your life miserable, even if they're the reason you have a paycheck.

It happens to everyone in IT at some point. There are really good folks out there who may not know the first thing about computers, but when something breaks they treat you with an ounce of respect, answer your questions seriously, and listen when you advise them how to avoid problems in the future. You start feeling good about your public service role, but someone inevitably picks up the phone and expects you to be psychic, know what the issue is, and fix it without them having to ever get involved or lift a finger. It's the mentality of "IT is like the phone company" that doesn't do anybody any good and it makes you really unhappy about having to deal with that person in the future. And of course it's never their fault because IT people are naturally hard to deal with, right?

So like I said. Billie Blair is a total cunt.

Panic! At the DNS Co.

2011-12-18T23:37:00.000-08:00

There are a couple legislative measures taking shape at the U. S. federal level to provide private entities with heretofore untold amounts of power to interrupt communications on the Internet. The Stop Online Piracy Act is one of them. Another is the PROTECT IP Act.

I'm no lawyer, but I know that when it comes to politics, the side with the most money usually wins, and not many multinational corporations are pumping the coins out of their war chests to defend free speech.

In any case, there seems to be some tinfoil panic going on that this souped-up version of the DMCA is going to break the Internet, and there's actually some merit to this. It seems that one of the means that will become available to shut down SOPA violators is DNS hijacking, which is an established means of seriously annoying well-meaning netizens. I've even seen people posting simple lists of domain names and the corresponding URLs, so in case www.disney.com suddenly becomes inaccessible, you can still punch in "199.181.132.250" and hope Walt's virtual host logic all still works.

I make fun of people posting these lists, but the reality is that you never know when the mother of all /etc/hosts files is going to come in handy. Five minutes after "www.falundafa.org" expires from your DNS cache forever is exactly the time when you wished you'd actually taken note of the IP address it used before your ISP's servers got served an immediate C&D takedown order.

Hosts files are crazy paranoid, but I can't rightly tell you not to make one. The first step is to find every website you've visited in the last who-knows-how-long and then record the IP address or addresses that point to them. I'm lazy, so I just stopped worrying after this point because if I ever need to make hosts files from this, it's a few lines of Perl or, if you're hardcore, a few more lines of Perl and some cache config changes to set it so your DNS cache begins believing that you are the authoritative DNS server for your verboten domains.

For dnscache, it's super simple. It's one line. Here we go:

$ grep -r 'cached 1 ' /service/dnscache/log/main | cut -f4 -d' ' | sort -u | while read f; do echo -n "${f} "; dnsip ${f}; done

You need dnscache to use its default logging for this to work, but the output is one domain per line followed by all of the IPs that point to that domain. Quick, dirty, and accurate. From there, you can do with it as you please: hosts file or fake authoritative DNS server.

Checking for Perl Modules

2011-12-05T12:32:00.001-08:00

A while ago I lamented that finding out if your local Perl install has a specific module installed is tricky. Turns out that courtesy of the Perldoc page on threads that it's even simpler:

my $has_module = eval 'use My::Module; 1';
if ($has_module) {
  use_module();
}
else {
  dont_use_module();
}

P.S., Hawaii is very nice.

A "review" of The Big Thirst

2011-11-15T19:12:00.001-08:00

This is the story of a guy who takes his reading list very seriously.

A few weeks ago I got my grubby little mitts on a copy of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman. It's a non-fiction novel about water waste and management, and how several people in various situations have helped to change how we think about such a precious, non-renewable resource.

It is the worst book I have ever read not written by Thomas Hardy.

Simply enough, I wanted very much to enjoy this book. I care about the topic of water conservation. The disappointing delivery of this book left me cold. I have a tenet to which I always try to adhere: "Don't put a book down before you get to page 100." It has helped me on a couple of occasions over the decades when I've read some really great novels that had trouble getting their bearings or that could not start out in a compelling way. Books that present themselves non-chronologically, for example, sometimes need to be given the opportunity to make their case. I wouldn't like Margaret Wander Bonanno as much as I do if I'd put down the first book of hers I'd read before page 100. As I recall, it was murderous until about page 77, and then I had to buckle my seatbelt because man, it turned into a really satisfying ride.

But I digress.

This started out simply with me complaining on the Internet. I posted to Twitter: "Ever take interest in a book only to have the author completely fail at doing his job? http://sgp.cm/eb76d5" Shortly thereafter, Charles Fishman replied to me: "@xenotrope huh. in what ways, xenotrope, did i completely fail to do my job as an author? @cfishman, cnfish@mindspring.com".

Nice! I like it when an author tells me "Come at me, bro." I sent him the following e-mail. If there are any typographical errors contained within, please let me know:

Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:12:17 -0800 Subject: On The Big Thirst To: cnfish@mindspring.com

Hi Charles,

I first heard about your book "The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water", from your interview on The Daily Show. The subject of water conservation has always been an important topic to me, and it's not often than a guest on Jon Stewart's program can make him look even paler and more peaked than he usually does. The topic of the book is obviously significant, informative, and foreboding. In short, I was pumped.

I eventually picked up a copy and excitedly started reading. Honestly, I struggled through the first 100 pages. The subject matter is really compelling but I'm disappointed in the delivery of the information. The narrative flow is choppy. The focus jumps around from an IBM water processing plant to Galveston, then later back to IBM. Ideas are never explored fully, presented, then dismissed in a natural segue to move onto the next logical topic. They just sort of weakly bob up and down, listlessly waiting for you to bring them up again later.

An author's responsibility, particularly with a subject like science writing that can be hard to approach from a layman's perspective, is to make his subject interesting, motivating, even captivating. A capable author will deliver education as well as entertainment. He fails if either of these is missing in his finished work. This requires a finesse of writing to make the material more digestible. The gold standard of this kind of conceptual translation is Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". Bryson's book is a concise explanation of science, the history behind how our society has learned what we know, and the consequences of overconsumption of natural resources. My mistake was believing that "The Big Thirst" would be a similar work.

The end result is that the novel is filled with numbers and numerical tangents that break the flow of the storytelling, barely better than spreadsheets and tables. Flipping to a page at random (page 68 of the hardcover edition) I find this passage: "...turf emitters, spraying wide areas of grass, run at 30 gallons per minute; the drip irrigation heads run at about 1 gallon an hour. Replacing seventy-six acres of grass with rocks, gravel, and desert plants, says Rohret, he hoped to save 80 million gallons of water a year. 'Last year, we were down 120 million gallons, way more than I dreamed.' That takes $280,000 off Angel Park's water bill (Angel Park pays $2.33 per thousand gallons of recycled water)." It goes on, on page 68 alone, mentioning "$3 a gallon" of this, "120,000 pounds of grass seed a year, down from 160,000 pounds", "$45,000 an acre", and so on. Am I reading a business proposal? An agricultural academic paper? An SEC filing? It sure seems like it. Where is the substance? I am completely emotionally unattached to these facts and figures. The thread that ties these absolute values together and gives an impactful insight is totally absent.

In case you're feeling that I'm asking for oversimplification, I'm not. In another section you state that a town in Pennsylvania was under a boiling restriction for 273 days. You also state that this is long enough to conceive a child and bring it to term. I'm no doctor, but I know how long 273 days is. The analogy to childbearing is superfluous at best, patronizing at worst. Similar analogies appear everywhere. A twenty-foot water pipe is wider than the cross-section of a Boeing 747. The supposition you make here is that I don't know how wide twenty feet is. If Earth were as big as a Honda Odyssey minivan, then such-and-such. If a circuit path were as wide as a sidewalk a water molecule would be the size of an M&M. The analogies are clearly trying to take complicated concepts and distill relative and relational understanding from them, but they just plod on and on and bog the entire thing down. The plot of the book, if one can in fact be found, is compelling on the occasion when you actually bring it forward and let it flourish. I had no idea that Las Vegas has undergone a water conservation renaissance and Patricia Mulroy is an amazing, albeit reluctant, hero for your story. Her experiences are amazing, but sure enough they're broken up with more asides and stilted comparisons until it's almost unrecognizable.

I'm on page 130 right now, right at the comparison of IBM's conceptualization of water management to Apple iTunes. I don't think I have the strength to try to keep barreling through this. Narrative jumps around. Tense changes from past to present and back. Parts of it are written like you're trying to emulate an action novel. Parts of it are written like it's your memoir. First person perspective pops in for a few pages, then vanishes. Who are the protagonists? It's clear to me from your writing style that you're very data-driven; a "show me the numbers" kind of guy who is intelligent enough to derive your own conclusions from the raw facts of a situation. I understand and appreciate that you respect your readers enough to believe that they, too, can derive their own opinions from a sea of figures and chopped up vignettes of first- and third-person accounts of water utility woes. Sadly, I don't turn to my non-fiction pile to be inundated with a torrent of numbers and waves upon waves of superfluous analogies. The message that you were intending to deliver is lost. Puns intended: the underlying story is dry and the delivery is all washed up. So in summary, I feel that this book fails to deliver its message, promote awareness of water usage and conservation, or motivate me to rethink what goes on whenever I turn on the faucet. I'm sorry, I really tried to like this book. The subject matter means a lot to me. I just can't force myself to finish it, and the text itself isn't making me care.

Toby

There's more that I wanted to say in this mail, but I'd have to get foul-mouthed, which I don't think is entirely appropriate when you're trying to give feedback to an author who is already defensive but still willing to hear your criticism. Credit must go to Fishman for being brave enough to ask me, a stranger online, to give him a piece of my mind.

As my mom says, "Shit or get off the pot." If you're going to tell a story, tell it. If you're going to present facts, present them. "A, then B, then C." You can dress it up, but don't lose sight of your goal, whether it be to convey information, to entertain, or both. It is maddening to have someone fumble through telling a story in a choppy and aimless manner: "C. Oh, but A, I should mention A, too. And C again. Don't forget C just because I'm talking about A now. I'll get to B, but first I need you to know that A comes before C. OK, now B. B comes after A. But B also comes before C...." Argh. When you're preaching to the choir and someone in the choir stands up and leaves because of you, there is something wrong with the way you preach.

Fishman wrote me back. Typographical errors are left intact with [sic]:

Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:38:27 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: Charles Fishman <cnfish@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: On The Big Thirst

I'm sorry. You clearly do not like the way I write.

That's too bad, but also fine. I can't bear William Faulkner. Just can't get into him. That doesn't make me a bad reader; it certainly doesn't make Faulkner a bad writer.

But I have many smart, astute readers who looks [sic] at my work well in advance — and I'm not going to change how I write dramatically at this point, any more than I'm going to change how I walk. Alas.

My only response to you would be that I actually did do all the things you ask — just not in a way you connect with. I've done years of deep research; and I've tried to present that in a way that connects with people. You find the analogy — the pipe to the 747, the length of the boil water order to pregnancy — insulting and patronizing. I've gotten many notes from people who say precisely the opposite. I can't imagine what a 20' wide pipe is like — but comparing it to an airplane fuselage makes it vivid for me.

That is, I don't believe I abdicated my responsbilities [sic] as an author. The book isn't inaccurate, it isn't superficial, it is not in fact randomly organized — it has an organization that is well-thought-out. You just don't see it or like. [sic] In all, I've told a story told [sic] in a way you find completely off-putting. If you read the Amazon reviews, and the journalism reviews, there are people who clearly feel differently.

That's just a difference in taste. I will say that the numbers passage from Las Vegas, that you picked out, is definitely an example of too much. I will take that criticism to heart. Too many numbers is simply impossible to absorb — you're right.

If you'll send me your address, I'll be happy to send you back whatever you spent on the book (I appreciate that's not the point, of course). I'm sorry the book doesn't capture you — in fact, aggravates you.

Please don't torture yourself any more. There's nothing worse than plowing through something that is aggravating you. And the thought of you reading my sentences, which are ticking you off in every paragraph, truly makes me wince. So I hope you'll stop — with joy and relief.

Thanks for taking the time to write, and to read what you did. (One small correction: That was NOT me in The Daily Show — the was a guy named Alex Prud'homme, author of a book called "The Ripple Effect," also about the current state of water, also out this year. My manner is nothing like his. His book aside, I thought he was actually quite snippy and rude to Jon Stewart, which is pretty uncalled for.)

Best to you.

Charles Fishman cnfish@mindspring.com

My bad, Fishman is right. The interview I saw on The Daily Show was, in fact, Alex Prud'homme. In retrospect I must have gotten the name of this book from someplace I find reputable and it escapes me now. I didn't just search for "book about water", I specifically sought out The Big Thirst. No matter. I was not familiar with either author until today and I don't want anyone thinking I'm mad because I mistook a cookbook written by someone unfortunately named "Steven King" as a scary novel by the master of horror "Stephen King". I am judging this book on its own merit, not the faults of my believing it to have been something else. Fishman concedes that my given excerpt of his, being nothing but a rambling of numbers and comma-delimited thought fragments, is "too much". He neglects to admit that the entire book is written in this way. I don't take issue with page 68. I used page 68 as an example of the larger problem. I responded:

Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:58:11 -0800 Subject: Re: On The Big Thirst To: Charles Fishman <cnfish@mindspring.com>

Hi Charles,

With the heartfelt joy felt only by myself and children who have learned that school is ending early today, I have moved my bookmark into Samuel Shem's "The House of God". No refund necessary. Have a nice day.

Toby

Then I wrote this whole thing up into an Amazon.com review that's currently pending approval. I have never been so happy to put a book down in all my life. I'm positively giddy.

On a side note, William Faulkner was a literary prize-winning machine: he won a Nobel Prize and at least a couple of Pulitzers. This fact doesn't make him a good writer. He experimented heavily with narrative structure in As I Lay Dying, which is a work of fiction. He probably wouldn't give a damn if you got what he was trying to say or not because the journey is the worthier part. The Big Thirst, in contrast, is intended to be a popular non-fiction work about an allegedly important topic: water conservation. Readability and coherence suddenly become much more important, wouldn't you say?

Setting up an encrypted iodine tunnel on OpenBSD and Windows

2011-11-14T21:11:00.000-08:00

I was never completely convinced that TCP-over-DNS was anything more than a lark. Upon an old recommendation from a former coworker, I finally took a look today at iodine. iodine has average-quality documentation, but the code is portable. What this means is that I can compile it on an OpenBSD box and figure it out on my own.

Notes for getting this set up:

Fetch the tarball and build it on your SSH server. I put it under /usr/local/iodined/bin for no real reason.
Make a new group, "iodine".
Make two new users, "_iodined" and "_iodinelog".
Make a new directory, /usr/local/iodined/env. Create files with correct values for:
- echo _iodined > /usr/local/iodined/env/USER
- echo 192.168.0.53 > /usr/local/iodined/env/IP
- echo 3IGnrin7 > /usr/local/iodined/env/PASSWORD
- echo 172.16.0.1 > /usr/local/iodined/env/TUNNELIP
- echo tunnel.domain.dom > /usr/local/iodined/env/DOMAIN
"USER" is the name of the user account that iodine will run under after dropping privileges. "IP" is the listening IP address upon which the iodine server will run on port 53/udp. "PASSWORD" is a shared password that any clients that use the tunnel must know. "TUNNELIP" is the IP of the server that will be used by any tunnel connections. It must be a different network than your normal network. If you use 10.0.0.0/24 for your internal network, use 192.168.0.1. If you use 192.168.0.0/16, use 10.0.0.1. If you use both, use 172.16.0.1. If you use all of the major RFC-1918 networks, you're on your own. "DOMAIN" is a specific subdomain that you have chosen to use to distinguish your tunnel traffic.

Make a new /usr/local/iodined/run:

#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1
exec envdir ./env sh -c '
  exec ./bin/iodined -DD -u $USER -t /service/iodined -f -l $IP -P $PASSWORD $TUNNELIP $DOMAIN
'

Make a new /usr/local/iodined/log/run:

#!/bin/sh
exec setuidgid _iodinelog multilog t ./main

ln -sf /usr/local/iodined /service
Install the OpenVPN TAP driver on your Windows client.
Fetch the iodine Win32 binaries to your Windows client.
In an elevated command prompt: iodine.exe -f -P <password> -I 999 <ip> <domain>.
The values for <password>, <ip>, and <domain> must match the same values used in the ./run file.
Add this to your SSH server's /etc/pf.conf:
pass in quick on <if0> inet proto tcp from <tunnelip> to any port 22 rdr-to <sship>
<if0> is the interface of your iodine server, <tunnelip> is the tunnel IP address of the iodine server, and <sship> is the IP that's running sshd.
Run pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf.
Set up your SSH SOCKS proxy: ssh -2vTND <clienttunnelip>:9050 <user>@<tunnelip>
<clienttunnelip> is the IP address assigned to your client by the iodine server. <user> is your SSH server's user account. <tunnelip> is the tunnel IP address of the iodine server.
Put this line in your Privoxy config.txt:
forward-socks5 / <clienttunnelip>:9050 .
Restart Privoxy.
Profit!

I haven't gotten this working as an inline DNS proxy that can redirect non-tunnel traffic to a real authoritative DNS service, which is kind of the whole point, but at least I've gotten basic end-to-end validation that an SSH SOCKS proxy over a TCP-over-DNS proxy is functional. Which is nice.

Dear Dad

2011-11-10T22:46:00.000-08:00

Joe Paterno ended his career at Penn State in disgrace. He and the university president were fired by the board of trustees and several more officials have undergone an embarrassing scandal. Upon hearing the news of Paterno's termination a bunch of students rioted and flipped over a news van. Most everyone affiliated with Penn State has a huge black eye and the whole thing has made the entire university look wicked, shortsighted, and petty. You'd have been so proud.

Love you. Miss you.

Toby

A "review" of HUMP! 7

2011-11-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

Blag Hag gave you her review, now it's time for mine. Unlike last year, where the titles of the films of HUMP! 6 were never officially released, I had the good sense to grab an extra voting ballot so I could keep track of the entries for later.

KEGAWA SEKKUSU "FURRY SEX" - As Japanese as they get. People in full-body animal costumes mock hump a girl doing that gogo dancing thing that you see on Asian TV commercials. No sex, but yay if you enjoy watching a topless Asian girl get coated with Silly String.

GOLD PENIS - The first James Bond parody. Credit for naming the evil henchman "Handjob". Debit for using an actor who could not look or sound less like James Bond if you tried. I was reminded more of The Hills Have Eyes. The only bi scene as far as I could tell.

ONE NIGHT ONLY - I love Waxie Moon. Waxie is the tall, Y-chromosome-having unit of Dance Belt, and he is always fabulous in every sense of the word. No sex, but entertaining just because I don't think Waxie lets himself have bad days.

DONUT - People called this the only lesbian film, but it turns out both actors are trans and use the pronoun "he" according to a "Dan Savage says so" Slog post quoting one of the the filmmakers. Brits call this sort of thing sploshing, but frankly I found the donut creme-filling facial funny, though the rest of the picture was, ahem, unappetizing.

ROTOSCOPE MYSELF - Someone rotoscoped herself. Slowly and laboriously. It must have been time-consuming and she was brave to do it and submit it for inclusion in HUMP!, though it has the merit of an art school project more than as a piece of erotica.

MASTER COTTONMOUTH'S OPERATE - You want to get into HUMP!? Here's how: make your soundtrack entirely a heavy/thrash/death metal song. No other audio. Then make three minutes of footage to sort of go with the song. Options include: women in slutty nurse outfits, electro-stimulation of wangle-dangles, and lots and lots of simulated chest and thoracic surgery. Remember to use lots of Karo syrup and red food coloring and make nothing about it sexy in the slightest. See you at HUMP! 8.

GO FUCK YOURSELF - If not for another entry on this list, "Go Fuck Yourself" would have gotten my vote in the humor category. If not for a another, different, entry on this list, "Go Fuck Yourself" would have gotten my vote for Best in Show. A man finds that his future self has traveled back in time to save the world. In order to do this, they have to have sex. Extra credit goes to the dialogue: "So... Do you want to go do something today?" "Yeah, I'd love to, but, y'know. Paradoxes and shit."

KILL SCREEN - Retrotacular. Where did they get the original 1980s era bottle of Aqua Net? No matter, it's time for two girls to sexually stimulate themselves with Atari 2600 controllers.

SEXBOX 360 - Modernastic. If you masturbate while playing Grand Theft Auto IV, you unlock the Boner Bonus and a competent Nico Bellic impersonator materializes in your room to sodomize you with an Atari 2600 controller. Synchronicity was the theme of this year's HUMP! Bonus point for including the phrase "molested by Atari".

DON'T CALL ME MISSY - Simple enough, a man and a women slapping the shit out of each other. Best part: the old bruises you can see on her legs.

NIGHT OF THE GIVING HEAD - A simple zombie love story. There's karaoke, a picnic, and oh yeah: zombie fellatio.

SIX FEET UNDER - I found this to be the most conventional of this year's HUMP! entries. Man dies, priest eulogizes, but it turns out his last day on earth was spent covertly having lots and lots of gay sex. Entertaining but derivative. I actually found the priest ditching the dead guy in a church pew distasteful, but posing his hands to look like he died in prayer did elicit a hearty chuckle out of me.

KNIFE - This one freaked people out. I thought it was awesome. Yes, the knife was obviously dull. No, it doesn't matter because it was still being dragged across a woman's body. And frankly I'd never watched someone get knifefucked before.

MILLER'S DAUGHTER - The original title of this one was, I think, "Der Mueller's Dochter". Add umlauts where appropriate. It was a beautiful piece that tells the story of a late night seduction in a windmill somewhere in Holland I suppose. Performed entirely with shadow puppets. Good music. Almost got my vote for Best Sex.

THE ONE WHERE THE GIRL IS PUSHED AGAINST THE DOOR - Yes, that's the actual title. A girl wakes up and is pushed against the door. Then they have sex. It doesn't get any better than that.

A DAY AT THE BEACH - Hilarious if not repetitive. Man goes to a clothing optional beach, gay sex ensues. Amazingly good animation. I agree with the comment someone made that it looked like it belonged at a Spike and Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation screening, since at the time I was reminded of Beyond Grandpa.

PEDAL TO PLEASURE - I've now seen a woman fuck a bike.

DICK SABER - If anyone can make lightsaber special effects these days, is it still called a special effect? I got a laugh out of the line, "Yeah? Well you look like an old whore to me."

DOUBLE 0 SEXY - If you've ever wondered if the carpet matches the drapes, the answer is a resounding yes. Even if the drapes are a big curly blonde wig.

MYTHICAL PROPORTIONS - Knee-slappingly hilarious. No sex, at least none that isn't crude stop-motion clay animation. #2 on my list this year of "wish they'd release this online". So many great lines in this one: "He says something like 'Not now, woman. I must spill the blood of the orc hoard.'" "He kills all the bandits. Then he fucks me. He sort of clears the dead bodies away and makes a space. Then he fucks me." Winner phrase: "I do things with the carrot. He likes this, too."

YOU'LL FIND IT - I did not recall this one in the slightest. I had to check the HUMP! ballot: kink, sex. No humor option. Huh? Oh yeah. Dude gets wrapped head to toe in black duct tape and has things done to him. Spoiler: the piss scene is staged. God bless movie magic.

MUSIC FOR 2 HUMANS - No dialogue, just soft music and copulation. Tender, even. They looked like they were having fun.

TEENAGE DREAM - OK, I have to confess: I hadn't heard this song before this short, but it's apparently a Glee cover of a Katy Perry song, which I had also not heard. A dork hits his head in the locker room after gym class and wakes up to a song and dance routine starring his other classmates. Top notch execution, choreography, cinematography, lighting, and sound. Best in Show, #1 on the wish list. Highly recommend. If you only watch one short at HUMP! this year, make it this one. Even though it's lacking in any sex and very little kink, unless you have a thing for jock straps I guess, this one takes the prize just for an amazingly fun romp and you can tell everyone put a lot of work into making it.

What a Day That Was

2011-10-05T18:57:00.001-07:00

When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.

I awoke this morning to an impromptu invite by a high-level manager to have a "quick sync" later in the afternoon. Typically this manager never asks me for a "quick sync", so I presumed that there was news abrewing.

There was.

This in and of itself would be fine, save for the fact that I then had a meeting where folks weren't firing on all cylinders.

And on top of that, the worst thing of all time happened today. This morning I found out that my old Hotmail account has been suspended for alleged Terms of Service violations. I had to open a support case to be told this, but they refuse to discuss what term I may have violated.

I've had that account since 1996. It's like I had an old friend taken from me, not to mention my data.

Also, I hear Steve Jobs died today.

Currently sitting on the couch nursing a glass of Auchentoshan and trying to figure out how to make tomorrow better.

Spam Connections

2011-08-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

Over a recent 24-hour period of time, SMTP connections to one box had this breakdown:

61.76% legitimate mail
35.29% unsolicited connections
2.94% uncertain / could not be buggered to find out

That's very nearly two-to-one ham/spam connectivity. Some sources put the average spam/ham ratio in global e-mail trends at about 75% in 2008. For every four messages received, one was legitimate. Now keep in mind I'm looking at just connections from sources I can clearly identify based on personal sending behaviors of those who mail me on a regular basis.

No sooner than I'd posted my "spam's going down" post, I got a very nice but grammatically poor message from a woman who'd found my lost ATM card and paid the expiration fees on it for me. How nice! All I needed to do was send some contact information to DHL in order to reimburse her and get the card returned to me.

Also, her address was from gmail.com but the connection came from Yahoo!.

Yeah, I'm sure that's legit. I trained the message as spam and moved it to the appropriate quarantine folder.

Simply put, these numbers and stats aren't trying to measure spam quality or content, only how often a real mail server (even one owned by Google or Yahoo) tries to send me garbage instead of an infected PC on a home network somewhere. Those numbers are going down. This could just as legitimately occur if spam levels remain constant and spammers just figured out how to use "real" channels: Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google, and such.

But that doesn't seem to be what's happening. In any event, it bears a little more observation that inboxes are trending cleaner and volumes are relatively down from where they were a year or more ago.

On Spam Levels

2011-08-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

There's a lot less spam in the world right now than we've grown accustomed to having. Terry Zink says so. Somewhere around 2008 a major control node in the spamoverse called McColo was forced offline in a hostile act of white hattery. Almost immediately overall spam output dropped to a fraction of their prior levels. Pinocchio's strings had been cut. After about a week the teams who work on making spam cheap and plentiful had built new nodes and learned a valuable lesson about decentralization.

There's been a similar drop in spam levels this summer, though I'm not sure if this is due to a single McColo-type incident or a changing attitude amongst advertisers in how they want to market their knockoff wristwatches and erectile enhancers. The weird thing is that I'm seeing a drop in the amount of unsolicited SMTP traffic in my mail logs. Even the hardcore spammers who never give up on dialing me up every hour on the hour and hoping that I won't 4xx them this time with my spamd-inspired deferral daemon have gone away.

Don't get me wrong, I still get connections. Most are from IPs that don't have an associated PTR record in DNS, and a few are from infected home users with broadband connections in India, but that's about it. Most or all of the old-timers are gone: bots inside of wanadoo.fr, Brasil Telecom, and ISPs in Estonia and Russia are all taking a breather. It's serene and a little unnerving, like the last 60 seconds of Friday the 13th.

tmux vs. screen

2011-08-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

To the anonymous commenter who asked why I, a dyed in the wool OpenBSD lover, would choose GNU screen over the built-in tmux:

I'd never heard of such a thing. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

I've been using GNU screen since my early Linux consulting days. 2005? Maybe 2006. It was installed by default on most of the common distros of the time and came in uproariously handy when running long-running processes on shaky connections, when the customer's machine was dodgy.

I don't use GNU screen so much as my fingers do.

Now that's not to say I refuse to learn new tricks. I tried out tmux, and I'll be honest. It needs some work. The resource utilization appears to be higher in my highly unscientific comparisons, but I haven't tried scaling it to dozens and dozens of windows. I dig that tmux has the Emacsian ability to split the screen into two windows, over-under, and I can keep that on a single quote-unquote tab.

tmux has a nice client-server setup, but I have yet to find a way to get the tmux server component to stay in the foreground. This makes it unsuitable for my favorite brand of active process supervision. I've also got a problem with its built-in UTF8 support: -u from the command line is fine, but setting the documented UTF8 flags in the .tmux.conf file doesn't yield the same behavior.

I'm sure there are solutions to these problems, but it requires a bit more TLC straight out of the box than GNU screen did when I first started using it.

Starting GNU Screen Automatically at System Startup

2011-08-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this is so intuitive the instructions are just easily inferred from existing documentation. Perhaps this is so useless that no one before me has ever wondered how to accomplish it. In any case, I was having problems finding out how to get GNU screen to start automatically when my machine boots. People have documented online that it's quite easy to include a call to screen in their login scripts: SSH into your system and screen will automatically fire up if it's not running, or reattach to an existing screen session if you've logged in before. This is a nice feature, but I don't want to have to login first.

Why? Because I keep a persistent screen around tailored with information I care about, tailing logs and such, and I want that information to begin accumulating as soon as the machine comes up and not based on my schedule or memory to make sure I login after every time the machine restarts.

If I go on vacation and there's a power outage, I think that technology in the 21st century has evolved to the point where my machine is smart enough to automatically go through all the steps I'd ask it to do without me, were I there and if I gave it my username and password. I want screen to be an always-up system service that I happen to use by connecting to it when I can. Finding out how to set this up was surprisingly tricky.

I started by reviewing as much documentation as I could find about pty-4.0 and ptyget-0.50, two pseudo-terminal packages developed by D. J. Bernstein in the 1990s. Neither of these packages is really complete. ptyget-0.50 replaced pty-4.0, but never left alpha testing status and isn't even mentioned on the author's website beyond a link to sign up to the mailing list. The archive for this mailing list totals 40 messages last I checked, the last message being about 3 years ago.

Reading up on ptyget led me to An introduction to session management, a paper penned by Bernstein that outlines the workings of a vaporware package called "sess" for reliable and secure user session management.

Reliable and secure user session management is exactly what I want.

I opted to use GNU screen as the basis for my session manager. It's a great utility for running and maintaining multiple concurrent windows and keeping them all persistent in the event of a network disconnect. As I mentioned, I use GNU screen daily for watching logs, reading mail, and doing all sorts of network stuff, both random and specific. GNU screen has several options for allowing you to start and resume existing instances, but there wasn't any obvious way to hook GNU screen into my system's startup scripts such that it would always be there for me.

I use Bernstein's daemontools to run local and network services on my OpenBSD system, so I knew I was going to have to figure out how to stitch the supervise program and GNU screen together. I went through lots of different permutations of the service trying to start screen inside of a ptyget pseudo-terminal. This had no positive results.

Instead, I eventually trial-and-errored my way to a functional setup that, though not perfect, functions how I need it to function well enough to use.

The permanent screen service I've configured uses this as its ./run file:

#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1
exec envdir ./env sh -c '
  exec setuidgid $USER screen -U -m -A -D -S mail -c /service/screen/screenrc
'

./env contains values for HOME PATH SHELL and USER. I haven't found a way to pull this information from ~/.profile and not treat the service shell like an interactive login. Whenever I login, I have a little mail-checking application tell me how much mail I have and what kind it is. I don't want my screen session service logs to fill up with lines saying "No new messages" or, worse, my actual mail statistics.

The name of my user account is in the $USER variable of course. I could remove the need to run screen inside of an extra /bin/sh if I hard-coded it into the script.

This simple script works because of what the flags "-m -D -S" do in screen. I found that -S was really important and I couldn't make "-m -D" work as I'd anticipated without it. /service/screen/screenrc is the full path to this specific screen's config file. Basically, I can do this:

chdir

# syntax: screen -t label order command
screen -t qmail-send 0
stuff "tail -f /var/log/qmail/current | tai64nlocal \012"

screen -t qmail-smtpd 1
stuff "tail -f /var/log/qmail/smtpd/current | tai64nlocal \012"

screen -t dnscache 2
stuff "tail -f /service/dnscache/log/main/current | tai64nlocal \012"

screen -t irssi 3
stuff "irssi \012"

screen -t scratch 4

The contents of a .screenrc file are pretty well documented. In this case, when screen is started by supervise, it will open 5 windows automatically: two for tailing qmail logs, one for tailing a dnscache log, one for launching irrsi, and one will just be totally blank when I first connect. The "\012" character is a newline. It is necessary to tell GNU screen to not just paste the given stuff text into the appropriate window, but to press the enter key afterwards.

There's more to this, of course. The service should have logging configured, and there are several improvements I'm going to make to this setup as I figure out how. This simple set of configs though is more than I've been able to find after digging into the problem and should get you on your way.

Simple Perl Pre-commit Hook for git

2011-07-07T00:26:00.000-07:00

This seems to work:

#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1

# <URL:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2412450/git-pre-commit-hook-changed-added-files>
# Find Perl files and compile them to test for valid syntax
git diff --cached --name-status -- *.pl *.pm | while read status file; do
  # Skip files that are going away
  if [ "XD" = "X$status" ]; then
    continue
  fi
  
  if ! perl -c $file; then
    exit 111
  fi
done

Save this script as .git/hooks/pre-commit and you should prevent yourself from checking in any Perl script or module that doesn't pass the "perl -c" compile test.

Schneier on Security: Decline in Cursive Writing Leads to Increase in Forgery Risk?

2011-05-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Schneier on Security: Decline in Cursive Writing Leads to Increase in Forgery Risk?

I've wondered about this myself. Namely, the thought occurred to me the other day of all those wasted hours I spent being forced to learn cursive and, as a warm-up exercise, almost a year of slanted-letter penmanship. I imagined having to explain to a youngster today what — and why — cursive writing ever existed. "Well, Johnny, a capital 'Q' is written like the number '2'. No, I don't know why. I can't tell you why a 'G' is shaped the way it is, either. And don't get me started on a lowercase 'z'."

It's not that I resent wasting my precious, unrecoverable youth indoors scrawling symbols onto dead trees in the era before recycling was even a thing that people knew about and ignored anyway. Far from it. Penmanship class gave me a great signature, one that I have been repeatedly told by several folks is the most legible they've seen. It is, I suppose, because the only thing I remember about cursive writing is how to form a signature, neatly rolling the pen around to form e-a-c-h l-e-t-t-e-r u-n-i-q-u-e-l-y. It is so very legible because it remains locked in exactly as it has since ninth grade: formed cautiously and carefully by the unsure and unskilled hand of a boy who would much rather use block letters or, for a retro feeling, mark an 'X'.

I suppose if I hadn't spent the time learning to sign my name, it would be harder to steal my things today. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that hand-written signatures are fast becoming a formality. It began with the use of PIN numbers for debit card purchases at brick & mortar locations. Now, they don't even ask for a signature in about 20 to 30 percent of the places I visit. If I do sign something, they rarely if ever verify if the signature matches the back of the card.

Brownies

2011-03-20T12:50:00.001-07:00

Ingredients:

1/3 c Dutch-process cocoa
1½ tsp instant espresso (optional)
½ c plus 2 Tbsp boiling water
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
4 Tbsp (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted
½ c plus 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract
2½ c sugar
1¾ c unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ tsp table salt
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, cut into ½-inch pieces

Instructions:

Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Make sling using the following steps:
- Cut 18-inch length foil and fold lengthwise to 8-inch width.
- Fit foil into length of 13x9-inch baking pan, pushing it into corners and up sides of pan, allow excess to overhang pan edges
- Cut 14-inch length foil and fit into width of pan in the same manner, perpendicular to first sheet (if using extra-wide foil, fold second sheet lengthwise to 12-inch width)
- Spray with non-stick cooking spray.
Whisk cocoa, espresso powder (if using), and boiling water together in large bowl until smooth. Add unsweetened chocolate and whisk until chocolate is melted. Whisk in melted butter and oil. (Mixture may look curdled.) Add eggs, yolks, and vanilla and continue to whisk until smooth and homogeneous. Whisk in sugar until fully incorporated. Add flour and salt and mix with rubber spatula until combined. Fold in bittersweet chocolate pieces.
Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted halfway between edge and center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 30-35 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack and cool 1½ hours.
Using foil overhang, lift brownies from pan. Return brownies to wire rack and let cool completely, about 1 hour. Cut into 2-inch squares and serve.

My Notes:

It is possible to substitute parchment paper for foil. This precludes the need for non-stick cooking spray.
Brownies seem to be really soft if baked for only 30 minutes. I baked them for 45-to-50 minutes and they still had a good texture.
Cooling brownies for 2½ hours is only possible if you have incredible willpower.

Sources:

Recipe online
Appeared in print in Cook's Illustrated, March 2010

Still Alive

2011-02-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

What? Yes. I'm still around, still doing things and still amazed at the world around me. At times it seems to be an unrelenting whirlwind, a merry-go-round I can't get off of, and at other times it seems to be a single instant forever frozen in time.

In any regard, I have the slightest wish and want to get back into writing, but for the life of me I can't think of what I'd be writing about if I did. A blog is a place for capturing thoughts and ideas, and to be fair, Twitter and Facebook are great at stealing the spark in the moment that would otherwise become a full-fledged blog post about how much I hate standing in line at the Post Office or such.

The best writing comes from isolation, when you don't have any bars and you can't tweet and you can't upload and your only choice is to either whip out a notebook and capture the moment with a pen, or a laptop, or you just drink in the situation with your eyes and ears and command yourself: "remember this". I haven't been isolated in a while, truly isolated, and able to be alone with my thoughts.

Until such a time occurs, I remain mute and the naggling urge to write remains.

Reflecting on 2010.

2011-01-01T00:51:00.001-08:00

Every year it seems, I make an entry on the last day of December and reflect upon how the previous 364 days were somehow unbearably shitty.

This year though, I seem to recall things being pretty much all right. I give it a B+.

Christmas Notes

2010-12-31T14:08:00.001-08:00

(These are some random notes that I took during my trip back to Pennsylvania.)

2010-12-22 03:24 EST:

Everything in this house is broken and my familiy is basically living in squalor. I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was this bad. My sister is a surrogate mom for seven cats, three I remember from a few years ago. Every single room, including the basement but not the attic, has been adapted to fit into the busy lifestyle of cats. Most if not all rooms contain litter boxes, though I am relieved to see that they are practically immaculate.

She asserts at least three times in our first conversation that her cats are her children, but I have never heard of a parent converting their entire home into Disneyland. I grew up inside these walls, and I am familiar with the quirky eccentricities of its plumbing, but I just spent about 2 minutes of my life (that I will never get back) manually rolling up a window blind in the bathroom because it no longer retracts automatically when pulled. It's expected that my childhood home would change in new and unpredictable ways, but I am stricken with sadness to see the home my mother bought in 1970 for a third of what my last car cost turned into a kitty-centric hovel. This is their house now. Mom just lives in it. She used to spend her evenings and weekends repairing this place with her own two hands. Sanding it, painting it, shoveling snow in the winter, gardening in the summer. Now, every nook of every room is strewn with books and greeting cards and boxes and there's no more living room in the living room. The space is no longer hers to use, and she now lives between the places where the cats are, storing away the things they may shred or pee on at any moment.

2010-12-22 13:14 EST:

I don't know what this swill is, but Mom calls it coffee. She made it at 10 and keeps it in a thermos. Heidi has taken a flimsy bread knife she tells me she bought specifically for this purpose and is anxiously sawing open the cardboard tube that used to be the core of a roll of packing tape. If not cut open, there is a potential for an animal to get caught in it. I wonder to myself if she is planning on dumping this former roll of tape in a park or off in the woods, or if she is rather going to put it in the garbage so it can be compacted and dumped into a landfill. Somewhere at the dump right now, a huge rat with a neck as big around as a roll of tape is immensely grateful.

2010-12-22 23:12 EST:

Sister decided that since I brought my leftovers home in a styrofoam container she would punish me by disabling the wifi in the house. It's good to know that the petty spitefulness of our grandmother is alive and well in her, because it means I might still be able to convince her to cut off her nose somehow.

2010-12-25 12:33 EST:

Things my sister has bitched about in the last 45 minutes (abridged):

cooking the carrots too long (twice) (last night it was not cooking potatoes long enough)
using the vegetable steamer without her supervision (see carrot rant)
other people drinking coffee
the quality of cookies a neighbor gave her as a gift
mashing potatoes in a pan and not a bowl
kitchen drain not draining
passing dishes clockwise vs. counterclockwise at the table
turkey having gristle
placement of her keys
people eating too quickly
using the wrong-sized container to store cranberry sauce (this had two follow-up rants: using oatmeal-only containers for not oatmeal; difficulty in putting away aforementioned containers)
setting cookies on the kitchen table
hugging her in a manner that would have touched her earring
the sound of her filing her own fingernail with an emery board
someone applying hand lotion during the gift exchange
the annoyance of having distant family call on Christmas (twice)

After that, I just stopped keeping track. You'd think that this would be an atypically high volume of sample bitching what with it being Christmas dinner and all, but really this is average for when she hasn't isolated herself. She calmed down a bit after she got some gifts to distract her, but after a while she started complaining about the technique of a recipe in a book she'd received.

2010-12-26 22:03 EST:

The sister enjoys collecting movie and TV quotes. She does this by rewinding every scene of what she's watching on her DVR to jot it down, ignorant of how supremely annoying it can be for the other people in the room to be forced to watch the same thing three or four times in a row. I think this is the longest five minutes of Monk I've ever had to sit through, and that's saying something.

2010-12-27 13:36 EST:

I'm told that a water main has broken during the night. Authorities recommend boiling any drinking water before consuming it. They suggest we do this for the next 3 days. I wonder if I can get a hotel.

(I did. It was awesome.)

A Parable of Sorts

2010-11-18T14:58:00.000-08:00

One day in the jungle a cobra slithered up to the river's edge. An alligator swam by and offered to let the cobra ride on his back to the other side.

"No thank you," said the cobra. "If I leave dry land I will be at your mercy, and you will eat me once we are in the middle of the river."

"I promise to you that I will not," said the alligator. Grudingly, the cobra agreed and slithered onto the alligator's back.

"If you try to eat me, it is my nature to defend myself. I will bite you," warned the cobra. "If you do not honor your promise we'll both die."

The alligator pushed off of the bank and began swimming to the other side. At the halfway point, the alligator spun around and trapped the cobra in his jaws. The cobra began biting the alligator, filling him with venom.

"Why?" asked the cobra, bloody and bitten nearly in half. "We are both doomed now because you did not keep your word. Why would you attack me knowing that if you did it would destroy us both?"

The alligator, his veins filled with deadly poison, said simply, "Because it is my nature." He rolled over once weakly and they both floated helplessly downstream.

Russian Tea

2010-10-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

A recipe I got from my mother, who got it in turn from her mother.

Russian Tea
2 c Tang
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c instant tea
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg

I think I've got the measurements correct, as the recipe exists only on the back of a faded yellow 3x5 index card I found in the kitchen cupboard today. It runs in the family, I guess. As is common for my family's methods of record keeping, all the particulars are defined explicitly but contain no real instruction on why they are significant. These ingredients, as I recall, are to be thoroughly mixed and then stored in a jar in your cupboard, forgotten for months on end. When you finally get around to remembering you have it, the sugar crystals will have locked into a solid mass of orange gunk, which you have to break up with a spoon, liberally pour into a ceramic coffee mug, and then dissolve in boiling hot water. Serve with a lemon if you're fancy, Mr. Rockefeller.

The spice in this drink is unforgettable and it was something that mom would always make for me when I was sick, so this became a staple beverage during cold and flu season and became indelibly imprinted in my brain. I happened to have a grown-up version of Russian Tea when I was at The Sapphire Hotel, drinking a cocktail they called The Promise Breaker. It was a whiskey-based concoction served with an orange slice that undoubtedly contained the same notes of clove and ginger I remember growing up.

Drugs are Nice

2010-09-01T14:56:00.001-07:00

I get free ibuprofen at work, as much as my kidneys can tolerate. They're an off-brand type that used to look like little white tablets. In the last month or so, they've switched their fabrication process to make them Advil-ier.

Advil is the king of ibuprofen brands. Everybody knows that those little beveled mauve roundies are what you picture in your head when you think of ibuprofen. I liked the old pills, because they were kind of a small middle finger at big pharma, saying "piss off, ibuprofen doesn't have to be a ruddy red color".

Now I don't know anymore. It seems like my off-brand pain reliever has capitulated to the big guys. I mean, it's just a coating for Christ's sake. The medicine is the invisible bit in the middle. What's worst is that these knockoff Advillitos are individually-wrapped doses, so you can't even see them until you've ripped open the little paper packet.

A "review" of Inception

2010-08-09T01:28:00.000-07:00

Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't dream like I would, that much is for sure. I don't dream, but if I did it would probably be dreams of being a celebrity astronaut/racecar driver who sleeps with a rotating pantheon of big-titty supermodels with names like Anika and Svenska who are open to experimenting on a rotating bed made out of money, moonrocks, and racecar trophies. I sure as hell wouldn't be dreaming of talking to Juno outside of a cafe in Paris about mazes. Perhaps Leo doesn't know how to be imaginative like me.

Christopher Nolan knows how to make a good movie, and I found that his latest film Inception is a great example of his talent as an artist. He's made a film that is visually rich, textured, and delivers a complex storyline that never seems to drag or have an unnecessary scene tacked on somewhere.

As far as film goes, there are some movies so complex that they defy conventional logic. The Conversation comes to mind as a good example of a movie that, though suspenseful, becomes enigmatic and plodding by a series of pacing problems and unclear actions by unknown forces. In The Conversation, I suppose that was the point. The protagonist is a supreme surveillance expert beleaguered by other shadowy surveillance experts due to something he eavesdropped. He never fully understands who he has pissed off and thus you, the observer of his story, suffer along with him through his confusion and sense of helplessness.

In contrast, Inception has a sharp plot that tells you everything you need to know beforehand, so there is little chance that the core elements of the story will exclude you from following along. Simply put, Leonardo DiCaprio is a neuro-cybernetic thief who steals data from targets in their dreams for the purposes of corporate espionage. He has the tell-tale Aluminum Movie Briefcase that contains enough wires to hook five or six people up and share a singular dream.

Dream theft is all well and good until a job goes sour and Leo is forced into doing a little reverse theft on a corporate super-magnate played by Cillian "Old Creepy Eyes" Murphy. Leo warns everyone repeatedly that planting ideas instead of stealing them is possible but gravely dangerous. He states that it requires going deep down into a person's subconscious, which means following them around and sharing dreams inside of dreams. Thus the potential for confusion arises and the viewer is saddled with the responsibility of keeping all of these multiple concurrent traumwelten separate. Nolan here correctly assumes that this is an easy way to confuse people, and so takes great pains to make each dream world visually and viscerally distinct.

The rest of the story plays out like a more suspenseful, less kick-to-the-teethy version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dream worlds don't follow strict laws of physics, so as one dream changes, it affects the dreams held within it. Nolan's matroyshka doll of a plot would be a hopeless soup of arbitrary objectives without his crisp delineation of realities keeping things straight. In one dream there's a kidnapping. In another, it's a hotel caper. The third dream apparently takes place on the icy Russian tundra of the first Severnaya Complex level of GoldenEye for Nintendo 64 and more power to he who thought up that one. I fucking loved that sniper rifle when I was a kid.

While all of this surreality unfolds, there is a touching and tense subplot regarding Leo's dead wife that I can only guess was intended to be more M. Night Shyamalan than it turns out to be. Mrs. Leo keeps turning up in his dreams, usually as an antagonist, which no one can get him to open up about until feisty li'l Ellen Page shows up and finds out that he has never gotten over his wife's untimely death. If this sounds like I might be spoiling something for you, you need to go out and watch more movies. Towards the end of the film things have gone haywire again, and I was left wondering why anyone would bother to hire dream thieves to steal company secrets when it looks like it succeeds far less than 30 or 40 percent of the time. In the midst of the chaos, our heroes have determined that to wake up and save the day they must go into another level of dreamtime and confront Leo's dead wife. In a poignant and painful scene, Leo comes to terms with his wife's death and reveals the shocking twist that is so outrageous and original that you will only have figured it out a full thirty to forty minutes prior.

Inception is a solid story that plays both of its plots well and mixes them rather expertly. Though the potential for confusion was high the actual plot-spaghetti was kept to a minimum, and I stress that anyone who can't follow along with this movie should probably be sterilized by the government to protect our gene pool. There are some quality performances by Leo and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the special effects were appropriately surreal yet believable. This is a movie driven by characters trying to meet their conflicting goals, not by explosions. During a summer when Hollywood is cranking out as many 3D films as they possibly can, I appreciate the fact that Inception adheres to a 2D story where the special effects really own their short time upon the screen, convey the weird dreamscapes of the inner labyrinths of the human psyche, and then leave. As cities bend like clay and reality reshapes itself, the CGI that makes this happen delivers real emotional impact.

In a documentary long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, a young and not-quite-insane-yet George Lucas went on the record to state that a special effect that doesn't help express the story was a hollow thing. Decades later, the search for more money has driven him to pack tauntauns and space traffic into every last frame of all his works until every shot is so absolutely cluttered with computer-generated noise that you can almost forget that there is an accomplished actor like Natalie Portman or Samuel L. Jackson hidden in there somewhere stiffly talking about tariffs or blockades or something. Lucas puts special effects in his movies now for the sake of putting special effects in his movies. Nolan has not yet crossed over to the dark side in this regard. His CGI is direct, targeted, and specifically geared to explain something or make you feel a certain way. It accomplishes the contradictory goals of seeming plausible, and at the same time explaining to you the viewer that you are not experiencing a real thing. Even during an exciting car chase, Nolan can take a short break to drive a real freight train down the middle of a busy city street, just long enough to allow him to give a figuratively sly wink and say "Hey, this is all pretty fluid. So stay on your toes."

Some people may have a problem with the ending to Inception, but I honestly wouldn't have enjoyed it as much any other way. Leo handles his wife, the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun gets to do some sweet zero-G kung fu, and Ellen Page doesn't really domineer the screen like she seems to in most of her movies these days. It's a movie that requires some amount of viewer attention in order to stay on top of things, but it avoids the tired trap of circuitous plot advancement or that awful mystery movie trick of not revealing a critical piece of information until the last five minutes of the film. If anything, Inception hits you over the head with a clue-by-four just once too often, double-checking to make sure you are still following along and haven't gotten lost as to what's happening. It nearly gets to the point where I have to question if the producers didn't eventually reject the idea of naming the main character "Deady McWifey" just so you would be certain to know he was married and that now his wife is no longer living.

Given that most Americans mistake the Galapagos Islands as "Hawai'i" on a map these days, I can understand Nolan's directive to overstate the key plot points: dead wife, dreams within dreams. Underline it. I'd have been happy if Inception were a tad bit more obtuse and unapproachable, but I'm also the kind of guy who digs non-chronological storytelling by directors that are insulted by anyone who understands their films after one screening. It doesn't spell out too much too often, even if it does at times include a short summary like at the end of a chapter in a schoolbook. It's a good movie with a flawed and sympathetic antihero, a compelling bank heist dynamic, and it doesn't insult my intelligence. Think The Italian Job meets The Thirteenth Floor.

This is Not a Repeat From June 2008

2010-07-24T23:18:00.000-07:00

CNN.com - "A dam on an eastern Iowa lake suffered a 'catastrophic' failure Saturday, sending a massive amount of water into nearby communities and forcing residents to flee, officials said."

Swim, bitches, swim.

RIP Rock Bottom Brewery Cleveland

2010-05-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

I'm sure it's been awhile since I've posted. I can't help but feel that this is a good thing. I still enjoy writing, but that's not where my muse is right now. I am sure that some day it will come back. Maybe in another venue, maybe right here.

I wonder if I still have anyone who checks on this tired old blog. I kind of hope I don't.

A friend pointed out to me the fact that my favorite pub in Cleveland, The Rock Bottom Brewery, is closing on May 30. Yes, I am aware that this is a restaurant chain and there are a dozen such places around the country. There are two within a 15-mile radius of where I live.

That is not the goddamned point.

The point is that I spent a lot of time in the Powerhouse when I lived in Cleveland. I had many a pint there, and enough prime rib, asiago cheese dip, pretzels, and fire-roasted pizza to kill a horse. It was undoubtedly a contributing factor to why I had to move across the entire country in order to lose 15 pounds. Still, I did so love that place. Working backwards chronologically:

Rock Bottom brewery is where I practically lived for the entire month of September 2007. I ate most of my meals there, and if they had a shower that they would have let me use, I would probably not have gone back to my dingy, small, ever-emptying apartment to sleep, bathe, and loathe.

Rock Bottom is where Jess gave me my beloved autographed copy of House of Leaves. Long before I heard this disheartening news, I recommended the book to a coworker today who told me he liked psychological suspense novels.

Rock Bottom is where I went after the breakup — the second one. A small group of friends and coworkers: Joe, Matt, and Tod if I can remember it correctly, met me there after one of the most emotional and traumatic nights of my life. We drank until closing, then drove to go sober up in an IHOP or Denny's in the parking lot of a mall built in the bosom of the just-out-of-town industrial district. I was reminded that my secret desire to completely change my life was manifesting.

Rock Bottom is where I enjoyed half a metric ton of brewer's dinners. The other half happened at the Cleveland Chophouse, which is also closing.

The Chophouse is where I met Toni, wife of...

Ryan was working a brewer's dinner, which is how we met. He's probably the nicest vegetarian I know, and he would ultimately end up quitting Rock Bottom to move across the country in order to fulfill his lifelong goal of working at a tiny Centralia microbrewery for a year surrounded by butchered animal flesh. Live the dream, buddy.

Rock Bottom is where I met Scott. Apparently, I am the only person who calls Scott Scott. Most people apparently call him by his last name, but as Monk will attest, it took me years of living with the man before I was comfortable calling him Monk. Scott would keep working there even after I left, but left for greener, sunnier, bike-friendlier pastures not long after.

It's kind of funny, and I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this before. When Ryan left and he had his going away dinner at Sokolowski's, I was convinced that I would likely never see Ryan or Toni ever again. They were moving to Washington state, 1,700 miles away. Washington may as well have been the moon as far as my cemented, round, dense Ohio ass was concerned. Dinner ended. We went to Tremont for lavender martinis and salacious conversation. This was mid-August 2007. I went stag because my girlfriend at the time was in another state, busy cheating on me.

We all have our priorities. I was convinced that I was going to stay in Ohio: depressed as fuck, hoping for an opportunity for a better job and eventually wind up married with some kids growing up in a fixer-upper somewhere far off the water in Lakewood or north of Parma somewhere. I still have those possible futurepictures in my head. They are fading, mercifully, like the photo Marty McFly keeps referring to during the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

Six weeks after the dinner, I was on a plane flying out of that miserable sty forever.

There is virtually nothing — nothing — that I miss about Cleveland. One of the precious few things that I actually liked about that place was the Rock Bottom Brewery. I had a mental picture of going back there, years from now, and checking out who was working the bar, unsurprised that I didn't recognize them and grateful that I didn't have to suffer the ego shock of having them not recognize me. I sidle up to the bar, order the seasonal unless it's an IPA, remark that it tastes different than if Scott would have made it, and flip through a copy of Scene, asking myself how it could possible be better than a Free Times, and then get something with mashed potatoes as a side.

It would have been bittersweet.

I think I'm having a pale imitation of that moment right now. An India pale imitation.

Message in a Bottle

2010-03-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

Wow. I got this message in my inbox a few minutes ago:

From: Me
To: Me
Subject: Drink your Orval!

The 2 bottles of Orval you bought on 2005-11-27 are going to expire on the first of April, 2010! Better drink 'em (if you haven't already)!

And if you haven't, why the hell not?!

I'd all but forgotten that I'd set up a reminder to drink my cellared Orvals back when I owned such a thing in Ohio. In the event that I might have forgotten the beer itself, I apparently took the precaution of setting a timed reminder for myself to drink them before they potentially expired.

This little blast from the past has been sitting dormant for almost four years now, and I can't help but wonder what else is in store for me now that I'm getting these little time capsules. Maybe a reminder to sell all my stock before the economy possibly turns sour? In any event, it occurs to me that if I really did have this kind of power over time and space, I probably shouldn't have wasted it telling myself to drink some beer.

Four years is a long, long time ago. It seems to be an absolute eternity, and memories of then are like those of a distant, bygone era. It feels to me like I am an old veteran, forced by a sudden surge of chemicals to an indifferent amygdala to remember slivers of a war long since fought.

Best Epilogue Ever

2010-01-31T15:46:00.000-08:00

"Design is choice. The theory of the visual display of quantitative information consists of principles that generate design options and that guide choices among options. The principles should not be applied rigidly or in a peevish spirit; they are not logically or mathematically certain; and it is better to violate any principle than to place graceless or inelegant marks on paper. Most principles of design should be greeted with some skepticism, for word authority can dominate our vision, and we may come to see only through the lenses of word authority rather than with our own eyes."

"What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult — that is,"

"the revelation of the complex."
— Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Second Edition

I'm Not So Sure About This

2010-01-05T21:38:00.000-08:00

Sherlock Holmes, fictional character, has gone up against his Victorian London contemporary, actual murderer Jack the Ripper, on multiple occasions. The most recent iteration hit Steam on 2009-12-23.

The last time I remember this happening, it was Electronic Arts and it was fantastic. I'm not sure if any reimagining of this match-up will be as good as the original.

Holmes has also gone up against eldritch horrors from beyond space and time, also from the same developer. I own this game in hard copy, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. On the plus side, it looks like there's a boob in there somewhere.

Failing in All the Husbandly Duties That 1939 Had to Offer

2010-01-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

I am a failure at being a husband. The Art of Manliness recently posted a marriage rating scale, in his and hers varieties, circa 1939. The questions for the men, including my results, are as follows:

Demerits (1 point each unless otherwise marked):

1. Stares at or flirts with other women while out with wife. (5)

Not married, but yeah, I am not capable of resisting the female form when presented in a public forum. 5

2. Reads newspaper at the table.

Does a laptop count? 1

3. Fails to come to table promptly when meal is ready.

Stef would probably agree with me that whenever she says "Dinner's ready," it is usually greeted with a "Woo!" from me and Monk. 0

4. Brings guests home for meals without warning wife.

Usually not. 0

5. Doesn't phone when late for dinner.

If I'm going to be later than usual, I'll send an e-mail. 0

6. Compares wife unfavorably with his mother or other wives. (5)

Maybe this rule only applies to sultans and Mormons. Besides, woman can only truly be compared to their own mothers. 0

7. Publicly praises bachelor days and regrets having married.

Being a bachelor is awesome. 1

8. Criticizes wife in public. (5)

Not married, but I certainly would if I were. 5

9. Belches without apology, or blows nose at table.

I regret nothing. 1

10. Leaves dresser drawers open.

Actually, no. This would bother me. 0

11. Leaves shoes in living room.

What? Maybe if I didn't have a foyer. 0

12. Snores.

Sometimes. Who doesn't? 1

Merits (1 point each unless otherwise marked):

1. Gives wife ample allowance or turns pay check over to her. (5)

Oh, HELL no. 0

2. Courteous to wife's friends.

I would sure hope so. Unless they're dispicable human beings, in which case fuck 'em. 0

3. Frequently compliments wife re looks, cooking, housekeeping, etc. (5)

Stef's cooking is terrific, and I try to inform her of this fact. I don't tell the Roomba when it does a good job, though. 5

4. Remembers birthdays, anniversaries, etc. (5)

That's what Facebook and Outlook reminders are for. 0

5. Helps wife with dishes, caring for children, scrubbing.

Not unless I am kicking and screaming. 0

6. Polite and mannerly even when alone with his wife.

I'm not even polite or mannerly when I'm dealing with senior management or clergy. 0

7. Consults wife's opinion re business and social affairs.

This is quite possibly the worst idea in the entire universe. 0

8. Has date with wife at least once per week. (5/date)

You know, I attempted this, but it didn't really work out as planned. Real dates sometimes result in having sex. 0

9. Reads newspaper, books, or magazines aloud to wife.

Is she blind? 0

10. A good conversationalist.

Oh yeah. I'm a great conversationalist. 1

11. Steady worker and good provider. (5)

I like to think so. 5

12. Leaves car for wife on days she may need it.

I like to think of myself as generous with resources when folks need them. 1

Total:-14 + 12 = -2. So I'm not a terrible husband, just a kind-of-shitty one.

Annual New Year's Eve Post

2009-12-31T19:04:00.000-08:00

Reflecting on 2009, I've been considering how it compares to 2008. Honestly, not quite as good, but I still wouldn't kick it out of bed.

2009 was a little insane, and I am OK with that fact. I am a little worried that 2010 just might be boring by comparison if I'm not careful.

2009 was a year of inner and outer discovery. I am a little sad to see it go, but at the same time I am ready for new challenges. I am keen to know what 2010 will bring.

Munich Pictures are Up

2009-12-23T03:01:00.001-08:00

Go get 'em.

What happens when I spend a week in Germany? It was allegedly a car-buying trip, but really I went along just because I was desperately searching for the finest beer and sausage that crazy rainbow-colored money can buy. What hilarious monkeyshines can a man get into when he doesn't speak the language and holds very little regard for obeying the regional limits of tipping on ten percent of the bill? Find out. I pass all my learnings unto you, O student.

Ken is uploading his pics as well.

The Circus Incident from my Childhood

2009-11-07T17:11:00.000-08:00

I am finally vindicated. The facts are these:

1. Carrolltown is a small town north of Johnstown and Altoona, located in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.

2. Wayne Franzen founded the Franzen Brothers circus. He was killed during a performance in Carrolltown, PA on May 7, 1997 by a Bengal tiger. There are multiple accounts of the spelling of the tiger's name, including "Loo-Kah" and "Lucca".

3. Reports indicate that the circus performance during which Wayne Franzen was killed had an audience of roughly 200 people, including children and family members.

4. The Johnstown-Altoona area is serviced by television station WTAJ, a local NBC affiliate.

5. Season 8, episode 21 of NBC's situational comedy series Wings, "Oedipus Wrecks", had an original airdate of May 7, 1997.

6. The plot synopsis of "Oedipus Wrecks", as summarized by TV.com, is: "Brian is surprised to find out his new girlfriend, Emily has a son that is already in college. Further complications ensue when Casey takes a shine to the younger man. Meanwhile, Joe and Roy go to the circus: Joe to try and deal with his childhood trauma and Roy to demand an apology from the clown who humilated [sic] him in his act." (emphasis added)

Unsubstantiated personal account detail: I remember that WTAJ announced the incident in a scrolling "Breaking News" bar overlayed with their regularly scheduled programming. The alert aired during this exact episode of Wings. You can only imagine how often something like this happens in a lifetime.

On the Future of Music

2009-11-07T03:01:00.000-08:00

Every so often, I like to peruse elbo.ws and see what the hip youngsters are listening to these days. It's surprising to see, for example, that The Raveonettes were in town tonight touring and I missed their show. Damn.

Maybe I should check elbo.ws more often.

In any event, I like to cull random bits of music from the site and get a taste of new sounds. I might not like the song, but I'm willing to give it a shot. It's the classic "try before you buy" dilemma. A potential consumer may listen to what you're selling and walk away without buying anything. Then again, he might like what he's heard and buy an album on the spot. He might not buy the album then and there, but he may listen to the song over and over again and buy the album later. He might talk about the song to his friends. There are a lot of things he might do if he hears your music for free and takes a shine to it.

On the other hand, you're never going to find him if you don't let anyone hear your music in the first place. I consider the number of concerts I've attended where I heard the group play, then bought their album after the fact. (Answer: one and a half. All were opening acts and I didn't pay to come see them play.) On the other hand, I consider the number of times I've heard a single through one channel or another and fell in love enough with the sound to get the album. (Answer: many.)

So I was very dismayed to find that every link to a particular track on elbo.ws had taken the song down by request of the band's label. In the music industry, there's a difference between "music you give away for free" and "music that is stolen from you". Only a lawyer could tell between them, I'm sure. I don't begrudge the record label for protecting the artists' intellectual property, and I don't begrudge the audiophiles for capitulating to that request.

The problem as I see it is that I've never heard of the band and don't know if I would like them or not. I was willing to give it a shot, and the label has decided to decline that possibility.

Now I will probably never hear the band, or buy the album. And the next time they're playing a gig in town? Well, it probably wouldn't even register enough in my synapses to make a note of it. Maybe an established band with tons of recognition and throngs of adoring fans could get away with enforcing strict control of their music online, but for an indie group this is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

A "review" of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

2009-10-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

If this man asks you if you want to be a vampire, you say yes.

Savor Seattle

2009-10-18T17:29:00.001-07:00

We went on a Savor Seattle tour through Pike Place Market today. Having been there many times, it was a very rewarding experience to broaden my horizons and visit some of the places that I have walked by for years and never even noticed were there. Some notes:

Fonté Café & Wine Bar - Excellent Ethiopian Beloya coffee. Sweet, tastes like berries.

The Spanish Table - I was told that there is such a thing as manchego cheese with a rosemary rind. I must find this. Also, manzanilla olives will probably go well in a martini. If I ever start drinking martinis again, this will be important.

World Spice Market - A staple of Seattle's culinary scene. They have a new offering that they are still tweaking: "chider". It's hot apple cider mulled with chai spices (cardamom, pepper, clove, ginger, cinnamon, and star anise). They mix it with roiboos, which gives it just a hint of nuttiness. Will have to try to reproduce their recipe this year before it becomes nog season.

Bavarian Meats - Gut essen. They have lots of Ayinger in their fridge.

Svedala Bakery - Who knew I'd need to find a Swedish bakery in order to teach me that cardamom bread (a) exists and (b) is delicious. Also, aeropress coffee is unbelievably smooth.

Thoa's Restaurant & Lounge - Upscale Vietnamese within convenient walking distance of the SAM. They had a great softshell crab roll.

Pan Africa Market - Entirely vegan, except for the dishes that aren't. They are waiting on their state liquor license, and now so am I.

KuKuRuza Popcorn - Gourmet flavored popcorn in a tiny little store I must have walked by a dozen times. Excellent cheddar cheese popcorn and their rocky road is heavenly.

A "review" of HUMP! 5

2009-10-11T03:01:00.001-07:00

Dan gave you his take on HUMP! 5, now it's time for mine. So without further ado, here's my blow-by-blow of the 2009 offerings:

DANCE BELT - Two girls, one guy, and six golden high heels make for three coordinated, albeit naked dancers. Bonus points for the cameraman being nude, too. Extra bonus points for having each of the dancers having lithe dancer's physiques.

CITIZEN CAME - You'll never look at Voodoo Doughnuts the same way again. Also, you'll think back upon this film the next time you hump a sand butt. A long time ago over on TopFive.com, I read a thought for the day which read like "What do you call a guy who can masturbate ten times in a day? No really, I want to know so I can put it on my resume." Until I saw this short, I thought that was just a joke.

FULL SWAP - Everybody's favorite scene from A Clockwork Orange? The William Tell Overture. Alex was an amateur if he only pulled off a three-way. This film, quite literally, consists of a full swap.

BOYS BEWARE - Except for the sex, I really dug this throwback to the mental hygiene films from the 50s and 60s. The sex itself was pretty incongruous when considered in the context of the setup.

READ MY LIPS - Oh, Powell's Books. You get people laid.

I'M HARD - You can never go wrong with a giant anthropomorphic rapping penis. Bonus points for Washington governor Christine Gregoire dominating Seattle mayor Greg Nickles.

THE GOOD BOOK - Aside from the fact that priests don't have mohawks (usually), and that the outfits were bought from a plastic bag in a costume shop, this was probably the most sensual and realistic couple of the set.

HOW TO PLEASE YOUR MAN - I give credit to any girl who isn't afraid to blow someone with gusto. Even if it's on Larry King Live. Excellent editing makes it really seem like witnessing on-air fellatio is one of the Suspendered One's main news and views.

BEYOND GAY - Probably my favorite shorts in HUMP! are the non-graphic, non-explicit humor entries. Last year had "Monkey Business" and "Butthole Lickin'", and this year offers the tale of a lesbian and a gay man at their most desperate ready-to-get-hetero-for-a-minute worst.

INCUBUS - As Stef puts it, "Like Ringu for porn". If that girl from Let the Right One In grew up, pissed herself, and then got locked in a one-car garage for the rest of her life? Yeah. Absolutely gorgeous cinematography and totally professional production makes this horror film look polished and clean. (Clean from a technical point of view only.) Dear lady: my dick is scared of you.

DUMPSTER HUMPSTERS - One of the few HUMP! roles I could play myself: guy who goes to throw trash away, but can't because people are inside the dumpster having sex. If "Incubus" didn't make me want a tetanus shot afterward (P.S. It did.), then this short would have clinched it.

SEX MOVES 102 - Funny and explicit, which is a hard combination and not many people try it. I have to learn the "Clark Kent".

VIOLET UPRISING - HUMP! 4 had balloon porn. This is much the same. Bonus points for making a Victorian doll's house that Jane Eyre or Oliver Twist would love. I take away points for the nipple clamps on the old dude in the wheelchair.

MAXIMUM OVERLOAD - I'm sure Aerosmith wanted the video for "Amazing" to be like this. Plus, it's a nice (albeit derivative) twist ending.

TROLLEY TRYST - I can't ride the SLUT now because of these two. Mega bonus points for admitting they got busted by a transit cop.

GUESS WHO'S CUMMING TO DINNER - A fairly formulaic comedy that unfortunately, wasn't funny. A good premise (the grocery boy shows up with a big load he wants to put in your pantry), but it didn't seem to go anywhere other than some sex. Nice use of the apron at the end, though.

THE PASSWORD - I will not discuss this film. It is the new reason for me to want to invent eye bleach. Dear lady: my dick is terrified of you, now put the cigarillo away.

THE MODERN HOUSEWIFE - I think I might know the announcer, which is one of the fun things about watching HUMP!. Excellent costumes, and I think I might have seen one of those old-timey 1950s torpedo-tit bras. Those things make me wonder how women were built during the Red Scare, 'cause that ain't how they're built now.

I WENT TO A PARTY AND HAD A DREAM - This is why I never pass out at sex parties; someone may deem it necessary to wake me up by squirting on me.

OUR RUINOUS LOVE - First, put the meat hook down. Second, put the mouthwash back where you found it. Lastly, there is nothing to whisk up there, lady, so stop trying. I didn't see any traffic cones. I saw something bigger and blunter. Ouch.

FUCK - Too short for a parody. Too short, even, to justify making the same joke twice. Bonus points for including the line "All I need is three holes, two tits, and a pulse!"

CYCLUST - Quiet, beautiful, and poignant. Proof once again that a photo is worth a thousand words, and a photo of a person's eyes is worth a thousand more.

ET2: DARK TERRITORY - I believe this is from the same guy who made "Penis Gun Cop" last year. E.T. was a beloved childhood character of mine. I had the ET bedsheets, the ET shampoo bottle, and the ET bar of bath soap I could never bring myself to use. So seeing Elliott and ET in flagrante delicto touched some of the most sacred neurons that formed when I was just a bairn. Not cool.

Life in a Post-Terrorist Attack World

2009-09-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

In September 2001, Islamic extremists hijacked four commercial jets and coordinated simultaneous attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City.

The ensuing years of the collective American psyche have been beset by fear and irrationality. There have been overreactions on the small and large scale, everything from the waterboarding of suspected terrorists in secret prisons to the day-after effect of very shocked, very scared people not wanting to stand next to a man in a turban at a bus stop.

In many ways, the American populace lost its innocence that day. For years before the attacks, people enjoyed the idea that the U.S. government was some kind of big nefarious entity with shadowy three-letter acronymed organizations hellbent on deceiving the American public and pulling wool over eyes. It was a simplistic viewpoint, one reminiscent of the classic tinfoil-capped conspiracy theorist telling us the moon landing was faked and Oswald had help. In this old era, there were no real bad guys, so people naturally went about inventing them. In the absence of an actual threat, the human mind will create a perceived threat. It is how we operate and is intrinsic to our nature.

Then, suddenly, there was a very real threat and we grew aware that there were people from somewhere else who very much wanted to hurt us. Without much resistance, the idea that Uncle Sam was the bad guy fell out of fashion. Though the conspiracy theorists were still around, it was not appropriate to disparage the government that, provably, wanted to protect you and defend the American way of life.

So now we find ourselves in 2009, mired in an endless war against terrorism and chronically unable to free ourselves from occupying Iraq. The terrorists are still out there and there is much debate over how well we've handled the treatment of our various suspects and persons-of-interest. Is now the right climate for an X-Files porn parody?

Back in the 1990s, when Jon Stewart had his own goofy cable (non-news) talk show, having an X-Files porn parody would have been timely and appropriate. Now, however, the world is a very different place. I have my doubts that the American people have fully recovered from that ill-fated day in 2001. Assuredly, Americans are impatient. We want very badly to have won by now, and our disdain for our government stems from that wish for haste and heavy action. Perhaps in that narrow channel of irritation with our leaders there is just barely enough room to nestle a film that expertly fuses a healthy mistrust of the federal government with big-titted girls who need to be fucked and fucked hard.

I'm not sure the population is ready for this, but I am optimistic. I want to believe.

How to solve 9 sleep problems - CNN.com

2009-09-26T17:28:00.000-07:00

I fit into five of these categories. Thank God I haven't hit menopause yet.

How to solve 9 sleep problems - CNN.com

You Know, Like the USS Intrepid

2009-09-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

It would seem that persons of a female persuasion aren't allowed on US Navy boats.

Newt Gingrich famously had his arguments for why womenfolk in the armed forces shouldn't be serving in trenches. Seriously, trenches? What national army still uses foxholes and trenches anymore? I'm inclined to support the notion that women serving active duty overseas shouldn't be put in a situation where they are surrounded by seamen for months on end. It's not that girls can't pilot a sub so much as it is the fact that if and when they are sexually assaulted — or consentually knocked up — getting them out of their environs and taking them to safe harbor is difficult or impossible without compromising the mission.

As a counteroffer, I propose that we have a nuclear submarine manned entirely by women. Female captain, female XO, female engineers, and female sonar ops. Every single one aboard a woman, from chief to chaplain. Crowding a ton of girls onto a Los Angeles-class sub or better is the only way to ensure that you can have women on a boat and none are at risk of getting impregnated. Unless of course the woman are partially infused with genes of some species of fish and amphibian that can switch gender when deprived of the presence of a dominant male.

And if that were to happen, I think it would be totally hot.

The idea of an all-girl nuclear submarine in the Navy also calls into question a bunch of trite questions about whether or not women are capable of acting as officers, technicians, and so forth. I think developing a no-boys-allowed boat would put an end to all such nonsense. If the girls can steer a sub, they've got to be doing something right. Right? Then again, any kind of Exxon Valdez behavior would put the women's equality movement back a few decades, so it is of paramount importance that the women selected to serve on the sub are competent and capable. You know, just like regular crew selection for nuclear-capable ships. How's that for equality? If we don't have enough top-tier women in the Navy to crew an entire submarine yet, we are doing something gravely wrong.

And I am quite proud of myself that I have gotten thus far on the topic and still have eschewed any mention of naming the boat Red October or Crimson Tide. That would be crass.

All Things Polymorphic and Otherwise Shapeshifty

2009-09-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

Its first three episodes were "The Galaxy Being", then The Hundred Days of the Dragon, then "The Architects of Fear". Man, The Outer Limits really started with a bang. Sure, there were some pretty weak episodes later on, but wow. Three for three.

Necrophilia

2009-09-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, please.

Sacre Bleu!

2009-09-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

Celebrities Who Date Porn Stars | The Frisky: "Rumor has it that Alfonso Ribeiro, otherwise known as Carlton Banks from The French Prince of Bel-Air, dated adult star Ashlynn Brooke, whose resume includes Seinfeld: A XXX Parody and Pop Goes the Weasel 2."

Mon dieu, le petit prince!

Born with a Weak Heart? You Ain't Whistling Dixie

2009-09-19T00:24:00.000-07:00

Monk put Cashback on the telly tonight. Aside from being one of the best films ever made on the subject of using time control to get a look at Keely Hazell's goods, it reminded me of how people can grow over time.

Until about a month ago there was a particular tune that, if I were to hear it, would make me feel physically ill. Psychologically, it was the equivalent of giving Superman a Kryptonite suppository. It used to be one of my favorite songs, full of nothing but good feelings and warm fuzzies. Funny how such a simple thing as a song on the radio can flip around and do a complete one-eighty like that. So the years passed, and the song remained forbidden to traipse across my cochlea under any circumstances.

It was verbotenmusik.

Then at some point in the second half of this summer, it all changed. It was a cover of that song, a radical departure from the old familiar tracks beaten deep and detailed into my neural pathways. I don't think that this alone would have been enough to tip the scales, but it turns out that the music video is slightly kind of awesome.

It's a picture-perfect homage to the feature film version of American Psycho.

Now, everybody has a pretty good recollection of what American Psycho looks like. Limousines, whores, that scene with the see-through parka. The video for Miles Fisher's cover of "This Must Be the Place" touches upon them all, and with an incredible eye for detail.

This is the video I'd make if I had to remake American Psycho and had nothing else better to do.

I took the liberty of doing some shot-for-shot comparisons of the actual film starring Christian "I Loved You in Empire of the Sun" Bale and Miles Fisher's loving homage. As I was making these shots I started to lose track of which shot had which origin.

In the original film, Patrick Bateman works out while watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In lieu of getting sued, they did a really nice replacement for what's on Fisher's TV.

Patrick loves to analyze contemporary music, to the point where you'd swear that Phil Collins was some kind of bard, a touchstone of whimsy and poetry unrivaled by Shakespeare or Byron. Fisher has a similar love for deconstructing the influences of David Byrne's early works, but in contrast to the ultra-wealthy Bateman, he must use the same stereo in his living room as he does in his bedroom when it's time to videotape some whores.

And who doesn't like a good double decker?

Note that instead of blood, they've used crimson ribbon. You know, because the original subject matter's trifecta of being decadent, homicidal, and gory was just a tad too much to roll into one music video.

In all, I was pretty much blown away by this video. Not because it was clever or well-crafted, but because it carved out a totally new channel inside my head and made an unlistentoable song listenable to once more. (It's a word. Look it up.) I give it seven thumbs up for that alone. Plus, it makes me want to watch American Psycho again.

The Future Is Then

2009-09-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Things you can't say on TV 2009: "WTF?!? I loathe tobacco smoke as much as anyone, but censoring old movies to remove smoking references is a terrible, terrible idea. Especially classics like Die Hard."

Arthur C. Clarke used this as a backdrop for characters in his out-of-print gem The Ghost from the Grand Banks. They ran a company that digitally edited all existence of tobacco and smoking out of vintage films from the 20th century.

It seemed far-fetched at the time.

Bang!

2009-09-15T00:03:00.000-07:00

"Is your rulebook a fuckin' novel, man?"

Holy Flurping Shnit

2009-09-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

In Fable II, there is a demon door. You know the one.

Behind this demon door, there is a lodge. You know the one.

This lodge is a tranquil little cabin, a chalet nestled in a peaceful forest and blanketed by a deep layer of pure, driven snow.

You know the one.

If you enter into this bucolic little lodge, a Kinkade-ian little cottage not out of place inside an ornate snowglobe, you will literally piss your pants.

I shat myself the first time I encountered the winter lodge. Literally, shit flew out of my body like Keiko the whale jumping for freedom at the end of Free Willy.

So it's interesting that tonight, for the first time ever, I see the cover of Nick Cave's Murder Ballads.

The resemblance is staggering.

Wait'll You Get to "Age of Apocalypse"

2009-09-14T00:46:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder if there might possibly be a wiki for a game that no one owns anymore?

Well there is. And I still remember my last level code, so I'm debating if I should start from the beginning or not. At least, I would if I still had a copy.

Which I don't.

Beatles References in "Meet the Beat-Alls"

2009-09-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

Your favorite episode of The Powerpuff Girls and mine has so many Beatles references you'd need a web page just to keep track of them all.

Someday monkey won't play piano song.

Play piano song.

You Can't Rewind This Offer

2009-09-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

If you don't buy Braid for $5 on Steam right now, you are fucking retarded.

Toulouse-Lautrec is One of My Favorite Artists

2009-09-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

If you ever wonder why I enjoyed what Playboy Magazine used to represent, take a look at this comic from the February 1979 issue.

I bought a bunch of old issues off of eBay, and I've been enjoying going through them and seeing what the top-end cassette deck advertisements used to look like when I was zero.

Also, I am enthralled by what women looked like during the Bush administration, if you know what I mean.

Two Reasons to Learn Italian

2009-09-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

From what I can piece together, the conversation is thus:

Man Violently Grabbing Woman's Breasts: "And I love this meat. So maneuverable!"
Italian Woman (Who is Therefore Used to This Kind of Behavior): "Um... In that case, sir..."

A few things bother me about this panel. One, the girl's bosom looks like soft-serve ice cream. And not in a supple and succulent way. No, the girl looks unhealthy, and her feminine contours look like they are riddled with tumors. She needs to see La Oncologista right away. Two, the man is clearly breaking Italian Spiderman's most important rule. He is failing to rispetto le donne.

Three, check out the man's left thumb. I think the woman's vanilla-swirl breasticles have dislocated it. This comic was clearly sketched by someone with as much knowledge of human anatomy as — if not less than — Rob Liefeld.

In a Heartbeat

2009-09-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

On their last day in town, we took the gang to see the Science Fiction Museum. The Jim Henson exhibit had moved on, but I still enjoy going there because every time I visit I get to see something new, whether it's a fresh addition to the collection or I just happen to look with better eyes.

PAXurday

2009-09-06T03:19:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure I'm either in this shot, or just very slightly out of frame of it.

JoCo rocked and he rocked hard. Three encores, three cover songs, and two botched verses of "Birdhouse in Your Soul". It was a great night.

In Reply to a Late-Night SMS I Got Yesterday

2009-09-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

You know that you enjoy the thought of a Garfunkel and Oates T-shirt that literally reads "Garfunkel and Oates T-shirt" on it. But you probably wouldn't justify the expense because, let's face it, though it's clever, it's not twenty-dollars clever.

When I buy a G & O shirt, it will probably say "I like my hair like I like my girl's drinks".

When asked what my shirt means, I can reply with great enthusiasm, "Spiked as fuck!"

Though my shaved head will probably not clarify matters much for the sad sack who seeks to question my folk-comedy duo apparel.

A proper comedy shirt is obscure in reference enough that only the true fans really get it. Exhibit A: Flight of the Conchords' Team Building Exercise '99.

Deconstructing Obama

2009-09-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

I woke up this afternoon, put a clean shirt on over an unclean torso, and read this article speculating about how Obama's personality works: "When you are President, you can make your staff follow your schedule (until you burn them out), but you can't do public events in the wee hours of the morning. If you are going to give a big speech at the National Convention of Whatevers, they'll want you to give it some time between 9am and 9pm. Another problem with being a night person is insomnia (which is common among people who get more energetic as the day goes on), which doesn't fit well with living a Big Life with a Big Schedule."

It's true. My life isn't nearly as big or as scheduled as the Commander-in-Chief's day-to-day routine, and when I go for a burger run it isn't a 13-car motorcade of generosity. The man is under a ton of pressure, chief, and now we're all wondering how long he will be able to continue prolonging the magic.

Fashion nugget.

I can speak to the problems outlined of insomnia and a difficulty synchronizing with a world that seems to have no problems getting up between 6 and 9 AM. At work, I am universally known as not being in the office before 11, a fact that causes my managers a decent amount of friction. It's not that I'm lazy or tired, it's that I'm up until the wee hours of the morning (last night: 4:51 AM) and I am totally unproductive before noon.

Despite my busy schedule and high workload there is, to be frank, nothing for me to do at the office at 9 AM. The point of coming in at 9 is to justify that you can leave at five, which most people do where I work. Yet I and a contingent of other workers routinely stay until 6 or 7 PM, and often later, or we will go home and continue to work from the comforts of our couches.

I'd prefer to go to bed at a sane hour like 11 PM, but I've got too much going through my head at that point to be able to fall asleep without some sedatives to help me along, and I often find myself working on a problem at 1 AM that really isn't worth my staying up (Perl's "use Inline", anyone?), yet it's a problem, a puzzle, and it interests me to the point of denying me sleep until I get to a good stopping point.

I feel bad for Obama if he is limited by the sleep schedules of the citizens of his country. I kind of like the thought that we have a night owl in charge.

Wow.

2009-09-05T04:28:00.001-07:00

At some point during the evening while I was totally getting hit on by a bunch of single white men in black T-shirts at the MC Frontalot concert, my Progress Quest character[0] finally hit level 70.

This is not as big an event as it would be in, say, World of Warcraft, but still it's quite fitting. And don't we all just love round numbers like that?

[0] Mr. Thundercleese, Enchanted Motorcycle Robot Monk (motto: "I will DESTROY you!")

Hey Toby, Who Ya Schmoozin'?

2009-09-04T16:14:00.001-07:00

Got to meet Anthony and Ashley Burch at PAX this year. Good times.

She Say One and One and One is Three

2009-09-04T00:38:00.000-07:00

Mail Online: "British men consistently claim to have had more partners than women - the current average is 13, while women claim to have had only nine. Plainly, someone is lying here. While men might exaggerate their sexual conquests, the bigger liars are women. When studies about sexual partners or fidelity use a mixture of face-to-face interviews and anonymous computer questionnaires, men will give the same answers to both, but women will report much higher numbers when the answers are anonymous."

Aside from the obvious, that being that no woman can ever be trusted to reliably tell you exactly how many people she's boned, I believe there was a theory put forth that I can't place right now outlining a clever theory why men and women don't claim equal — or even remotely similar — sexual partner metrics.

Prostitution. So a small percentage of women compensate for the difference, and they are either not consulted in the survey outright or their numbers are dismissed for being statistically abnormal.

Figures.

On Martinis

2009-09-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

Found on RulesofThumb.org: The Rule of Martinis: "One is too many, two are just right, and three are not enough."

Close.

I prefer it the way a kindly waitress once explained it to me at the Rocky River Brewing Co. It must have been a Wednesday, because their martinis were always on sale on Wednesdays. I'd had two vodka martinis, and she asked if I wanted a third. "No thanks, I'm good," I told her. She approved.

"Martinis are like breasts," she said. "One isn't enough and three is too many." I never forgot this sage wisdom.

I agreed with her, but refrained from adding "...and they should be big, smooth, and pressed up against my face."

A Different Kind of Cubism

2009-09-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

I dig the Boing Boing-iliciousness of papercraft. Especially when it pertains to characters from one of my most favorite video games.

Digital Photo Editing

2009-08-30T23:44:00.000-07:00

The one on the left is Suicide Girls' original, but I didn't think it looked right to have a ten-fingered model. I'm sure that SG could and would find a girl with eleven or more fingers, but I'm guessing that they had a time constraint.

Clearly, digital photo manipulation was in order. Too subtle?

E. S. S.

2009-08-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Bacteria selectively kill males: "Males cannot transmit infection to their offspring because, while egg cells are large and have lots of cytoplasm, sperm cells are comparatively tiny and have very little cytoplasm, she explained. Dr Zeh continued: 'Males are an evolutionary dead end for the bacteria. So they engage in gender manipulation to bias sex ratio in favour of females.' But this selective killing is very damaging for the host. 'Infected hosts give birth to only 62% as many nymphs (or offspring) as tetracycline-cured females,' said Dr Zeh."

The simple math says that a bacteria that only propagates through females would want the highest number of females to be put into the next generation, but Mother Nature has figured out that 62% is a better outcome. I wonder if this means that there is a gestational aspect to the infection that would be hampered if male larvae were to consume more of the mother's incubational resources.

When "-e" Just Doesn't Cut It Anymore

2009-08-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

In Perl5 if you want to check that a file exists, you can use the syntax if (-e $filename). This is ridiculously handy, but it doesn't extend to modules. Modules are seldom single files, and I was never able to piece together an easy way to run something like this:

if (is_installed( "Module::Name" )) { use Module::Name; }
else { use Other::Module; }

Some of the Perl I write is run on multiple heterogeneous platforms: a Windows box here, a BSD box there, some Linux boxes somewhere far, far away. I can write a Perl script to perform some action the easy way or the hard way, but what I really want is a script that is intelligent enough to figure out if it has the tools necessary on the local host to do it the easy way, and optionally fail over and do it the hard way if there's no other choice. It's self-evident that you can do a quick-and-dirty check from the commandline on any single host:

$ perl -MModule -e "print $Module::VERSION;"

If the module isn't installed, you'll get an error message. But this isn't always a command that you, the coder, can personally run on every system that will house your script. Futhermore, there's no way to factor this kind of check into your software and keep on truckin' if you find that the module doesn't exist. There has to be a way to programatically do a similar check, and tailor the execution of your application accordingly.

The key to today's discovery was that the use keyword was syntactically equivalent to a sequential require and import. This is documented in perlmod:

use Module;

is shorthand for

BEGIN { require Module; import Module; }

I have had more luck doing error-checking on the require instruction than on the use: require can return a value. use doesn't. So it's pretty easy to wrap the require in an eval block and react accordingly.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Math::BigInt;

# Not sure if Math::BigFloat is installed? Better check.
# use Math::BigFloat;

sub main {

  my $mod_check = undef;

  eval { $mod_check = require Math::BigFloat; };
  if (@!) { die("eval error: $!\n"); }
  if (!defined($mod_check)) { die("module not installed"); }

  import Math::BigFloat;
  my $mbf = Math::BigFloat->new(1.2);
  print $mbf, "\n"; # print the number "1.2"
}

main();
exit();
die("NOT REACHED");

Up next? Evaluating if I should be switching from die to croak in all my scripts.

elbo.ws II

2009-08-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

Ruby Isle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "In January 2009 they started the project again this time also making videos for the covers which were posted on YouTube:

1. 'White Winter Hymnal' (Fleet Foxes)
2. 'Skinny Love' (Bon Iver)
3. 'The Rake's Song' (The Decemberists)
4. 'My Girls (Animal Collective)
5. 'Short Fuse' (Black Lips)
6. 'Now We Can See' (The Thermals)"

This is the part where I spittake.

I was aware that Ruby Isle had covered The Decemberists, but I was not aware they'd fired up the elbo.ws covers project again, and I was most certainly not aware of the other entries.

I guess I mucked up the Kindercore RSS feed between now and then.

Oh Two One Three 411

2009-08-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

OK, so maybe I didn't watch Zoom when I was growing up. Maybe I watched it in college.

A lot. Like, I watched Zoom to an unhealthy degree.

It's no surprise that I was thrilled to find out where they are now. Now so much a "what are they doing" update, but you can definitely see how the kids have grown.

Buzz is skinny now. Keiko isn't. Zoe is a party animal, apparently (and if I remember correctly, still barebackin' it due to a latex allergy). Jared was killed in a car accident in New Hampshire during his third year at Julliard.

I've got a strong kind of Stand By Me vibe going right now as a result of this page.

I Just Need to Chop Off Both My Arms This Weekend

2009-08-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

It's true.

"Hale! Get in There!"

2009-08-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

Terminally Incoherent: "You know what is my other pet peeve, besides mini games? When the game constantly dangles a carrot in front of you, and then takes it away at the last second, sending you on a fetch quest instead. Bioshock is notorious for this — it happens every single fucking time you approach and exit from the level, a quest goal or an important character. Something always happens — there are no exceptions."

Don't ever let this guy play Dead Space. Or any of the Resistance titles. I would, however, like to see Luke take on System Shock 2 for old time's sake, though since he's just finished Bioshock so recently, he's probably Shocked out for a bit.

Commended as Being Strongly Vaginal

2009-08-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due."
— Hob Gadling

I'd say that I give Silent Hill 2 a hard time, but the fact of the matter is that I like it just fine. There's nothing wrong with, as Yahtzee puts it, Jaaaaaaaaaames Sunderland or his adventure through Fogville.

Aside from the obvious, of course.

I suppose that my admiration for the original PS1 game stems from its clear lineage of inspiration of great horror novelists. The street names in Silent Hill include King, Bachman, Bloch, Koontz, Ellroy, and Bradbury. The school is called Midwich Elementary. You have to give kudos to the creative minds who built their creepy little castle on those cornerstones. The fact that they used the same terrain for the sequel doesn't really diminish the second story, but it forces the game to stand more solidly on its own two legs, which I feel it does. Admirably, in point of fact.

The real divide between Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 is that of man vs. nature and man vs. self. In Silent Hill your protagonist is pretty much removed from the events of the story. He's an outside observer who just wants to get his daughter back. James, in contrast, is only ever really confronting himself. He is clearly beset on all sides by monsters, but the dark world of Silent Hill is truly one that has been tailor-made to his own very special kind of penance. He has brought this on himself. His story is one of self-revelation as he comes to terms with his past and gains clarity into what has happened and when. His perspective on seemingly incontrovertible facts changes as he puts the pieces together and realizes that maybe, just maybe, things didn't happen quite how he thought they did.

Is it a better story than the original? It depends on your opinion: is man truly the greatest possible evil, or do lost gods really lurk in sleepy resort towns waiting to be reborn into a world that has forgotten them? I like the work of H. P. Lovecraft, so it's obvious that I dig the kind of story that entertains the possibility of creepy crawlies and something big and unrepentantly evil waiting to come bursting through the door and devour your soul. Sure enough, both games offer monsters and dank, terrifying ambiance. As James puts together the pieces, the symbolism of his torment becomes much clearer. It becomes rather obvious to you, the player, why all the bad guys in Silent Hill 2 look the way they do. It's more of a stretch to put together why the monsters in Silent Hill are doctors and nurses, dogs, beetles, dinosaurs, a lizard, a caterpillar, and a big moth. Once you get it, though, it locks in and you have a real "oh my God" sort of epiphany, the kind that James never really has for himself.

In fact, in at least one of the endings, you are left to wonder if James has really learned anything about his experience. Maybe you could wonder such a thing after any of the endings. Like I said before, he's a dolt and a douchebag. It's up to you to keep him alive long enough to find out why you should hate him so much.

Personally, I don't have that kind of patience. I just skipped to the good parts and saved myself the agony of listening to radio static for twelve hours.

A Cat with a Drinking Problem

2009-08-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

I used to make fun of Spaz for getting a lot of water splashed on his face whenever he would drink from the burbling water fountain that's set up for him in the kitchen.

No more.

I Didn't Promise Anybody Anything

2009-08-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

Yahtzee reviews Silent Hill 2, a game he actually likes.

It's funny. For all the credit that Silent Hill 2 gets, I still prefer the story of the original. This is not to say that James's wife problems aren't interesting — they are — it's just that I can't really empathize for the protagonist. James is a total dolt, and a douchebag, and he's not flawed in that "aw shucks I can't stay mad at you" kind of way.

He's just plain flawed, distasteful backstory notwithstanding. If your dead wife writes you a letter telling you to go to a spooky resort town and if you actually go there looking for her, then you deserve to have acid-spewing dessicated rejects from Los Straightjackets chomp on your ass.

"I lived there once, it was nice up until some guy lost his daughter. He kept running around screaming something about monsters. He ended up raiding a school, several homes, and a hospital...beat the shit outta some people. Dude was sick man, his daughter was down the street at the Starbucks."

Sea Cow

2009-08-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

Charlotte Sun: "While it's too early to tell whether the mortality rate will reach or surpass the 2006 record of 417 deaths in one year, as of Aug. 14 researchers accounted for 324 dead manatees discovered in Florida waters. The deaths surpass the number of manatee deaths during the same time period for every year since 2004."

As Maria Bamford puts it so eloquently: "I know the motor boats are gonna hit me, but this is where I fucking swim."

All I Can Think to Say is "Wa Ha!"

2009-08-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

It appears as though lemurs are almost as delicious as the schadenfreude I'm feeling right now.

A Sense of Well-Being and Contentment

2009-08-20T01:44:00.000-07:00

Tumblr giveth, and Tumblr taketh away. Behold the alpha and the omega of happiness: Dear Old Love and FuckYeahBoobies.com. Your call which is which.

Not to be outdone, Casey McKinnon has christened Fuck Yeah Shopping Carts, but I think that it needs an added element of wistfulness. Maybe if the shopping cart photos had captions containing all the little things the carts regretted about their lives.

Curse You, Reality

2009-08-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

You seem to be quite busy thwarting my hopes and dreams along with everybody else's.

At least this sentimental movie marathon has taught us one thing.

More On Girl Glands

2009-08-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago we discussed glands of Montgomery, a.k.a. "a type of lady lump".

While reading up on Gardasil tonight, I ran across another new gland I've never noticed before: Bartholin's gland. As is the case with most parts of a woman's body, this one has been with the ladies for tens of thousands of years and yet is named after a dude who prodded in just the right place back in the 1600s.

Publish or perish, I guess.

Much like Montgomery's finding, the Bartholin's glands are used to secrete lubrication, only they do so just prior to female orgasm. Since I've never seen what one of those looks like, I can only assume that the Bartholin's glands are vestigial, like an appendix, or the webbing between your toes.

I Am Going to Have Trace Amounts of Blow on My Sheets for Weeks to Come

2009-08-18T00:11:00.000-07:00

Way back in the day when I was still hooked on Guiding Light, I saw a girl frolicking around on a bed full of money. I think it may have been related to some heist that Jenna Bradshaw pulled off. She so feisty.

Regardless, I thought to myself, "Who in their right mind would ever have enough cash money to put it all on a bed and have a sizable pile?" At no point did I question the frolicking. Of course if you have a bunch of cash, you're going to put it on a bed and roll around on it. Ditto moon rocks, so cash is just a given bedside aid, right?

Well thanks to a smartass remark I made a couple weeks back, I have a debt repaid in cash money. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some rolling around to do.

It's Time to Get Things Started

2009-08-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

I went to the Science Fiction Museum today to see the "Jim Henson's Fantastic Worlds" traveling exhibit. You haven't lived until you've been able to rub your body against a huge wall made of muppet fur.

After that, it was dinner at a Hawaiian place I never knew existed, then we journeyed to Melinda and Eldan's place to bottle the beer we started brewing just a day or so before the huge heatwave that baked the entire Pacific Northwest.

Given the wild surge in temperature, it turned out really well. It's now contained in seven growlers and five or so sampling bottles.

It turned out much darker than I was anticipating, even for an Irish red. I even put the roasted barley in for a shorter period of time than indicated in the recipe, so that was pretty surprising.

The Wisdom of Norm

2009-08-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

Norm from Cheers once put it best, I think: "Women. Can't live with em. Pass the beer nuts."

I have to wonder sometimes just what the deep, inner clockwork design of the female mind is up to, and how it can react so predictably. By this, I mean to say that you can reliably conclude that the female mind can and will behave in an irrational and erratic manner pretty much constantly throughout the duration of a relationship. The mind of woman is complex terrain indeed.

Especially when it's trying to cope with its ignorance of the fact that the boyfriend is in Europe for two weeks.

Part of me really feels badly for this girl, part of me is embarrassed for her. Part of me wonders when in her life she started reacting to her environment so rashly. Part of me already knows the answer.

WTF Ted Turner?

2009-08-14T19:13:00.001-07:00

I really hate going to CNN.com every morning. I wish it weren't such an easy URL to type. Today's top three popular news stories: "Is it OK to live together before marriage?", "I am married to 'Mr. Clean'", and "Nude photos cause cop trouble".

Maybe one of those things is legitimate news. This saddens me to no end. Thank God I still have news.bbc.co.uk.

I'm Impartial

2009-08-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

Many moons ago, I had a phone screen. In this particular interview, the interviewer asked me a question that, from my perspective, was quite odd:

How would you go about partially sorting an array of integers?

"Partial" in this case meant grouping all the integers in the array from beginning to end according to their sign: negative numbers first, then the positive numbers. I thought this question was weird because you could simply fully sort the array and call the problem solved. Why would you care about sign but not want to go to the extra effort to fully fix the array?

Off the top of my head, I started piecing together a pretty simple algorithm: start two pointers, one at the front of the array and walking forward, another at the end and walking backward. Compare the two values and conditionally swap.

It was an OK idea.

Then I made the mistake of asking the interviewer what should happen to the zeros. He said that they should be properly sorted as well. That is, the layout of a fully partially sorted array would be: negative numbers, zeros, positive numbers.

This threw my naive algorithm out of wack. I bombed the question. I obviously didn't get the job.

This simple problem bugged me for years, and I would spend a little bit of time tinkering. This nagging interview question goes as far back as my old Python days, and I would tinker and tweak little test programs to try to create a practical solution to the issue, but zeros always needed some kind of special attention. Though the finished program was functional, even in my opinion my solutions were ugly.

I'm just not a programmer, OK?

Last night I couldn't sleep, and in the still air of the night, this problem came back to me. What makes this different from any other night is that the solution came first, and it was actually quite simple.

I got out of bed and started jotting things down on a notepad. This morning I still had the bug in my ear, so I started coding up a little test script. It dawned on me that this is probably one of the few times when the C code would be shorter and more elegant than the equivalent Perl version (Thanks, pointers!).

This script sacrifices efficiency for simplicity: a high-performance solution would detect noops, copy operations that aren't necessary, and so forth. It grows a new, partially-sorted array out of the unsorted base array. In order to insert a new value at the correct location, it shifts-by-one every value between the end of the new array and the insertion point. The CS students of the world might call this kind of inefficiency "bubblesort". It's quite easy to program and in practice isn't a real performance killer until you start bubbling through about 10,000 items or more (on 386 hardware, at least).

My original approach maintained a pointer for inserting negative values and a pointer for inserting positive values. The genius part? Zeros get inserted at the negative pointer, but the negative pointer doesn't get incremented afterward. After about five minutes of coding this up this morning, it quickly dawned on me that a side-effect of this approach is that the positive values would naturally accumulate on the far side where they belong. Thus, a pointer for inserting positive values was unnecessary: if a value is positive, skip it.

I find this solution quick and elegant, in the sense that the lack of a positive value insertion point is a little "A-ha!" moment in the script where something necessary to the specification of the problem just sort of happens because of how everything else is designed. I consider this matter officially closed now.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings FATAL => 'all';

sub print_array {
  my ($aref) = shift;
  print join(' ', @{$aref}), "\n";
}

sub insert_into {
  my ($aref, $ptr, $index, $value) = @_;
  
  while ($ptr < $index) {
    $aref->[$index] = $aref->[$index - 1];
    $index--;
  }
  $aref->[$ptr] = $value;
}

sub main {
  my @a = (0, 3, 0, -17, 0, 3, -2, 0, -6, 8, -6, 55, 3, 2);
  my $neg = 0;

  print_array(\@a);

  for(my $i = 0; $i < scalar @a; $i++) {
    my $tmp = $a[ $i ];
 
    if (1 > $tmp) {
      insert_into(\@a, $neg, $i, $tmp);
      if (0 > $tmp) { $neg++; }
    }
  }

  print_array(\@a);
}

main();
exit();
die("NOT REACHED");

Justify My Love (of Distilled Spirits)

2009-08-13T23:23:00.000-07:00

I've gotten some questions lately about my selection of alcohol, so I'm hoping to clear up a couple of misconceptions about it.

First, yes. There's a great big bottle of Bushmills and a wee teeny bottle of Bushmills.

Second, yes. I like the ten year olds. I don't ordinarily drink them, but this was special. It was a birthday present. From me to me.

Thirdly, the big jug o' vodka in the back is not Kamchatka. Kamchatka is exclusively intended to be a gateway territory bridging North America and Asia in Risk. It's Monarch.

Why would I invest in a relatively small quantity of Belvedere, and in a large quantity of Monarch? Because I like to infuse my vodkas, and if I screw up an infusion of something, I don't want to end up with a full, ruined bottle of Grey Goose.

They say there are no mistakes when it comes to mixing alcohols, but let's face it: there really are. (Scotch and Kahlua? Not a real drink.) I want something cost-effective that I can partition into jam jars to allow for more simultaneous infusions without a lot of risk in messing up one or two of them.

Finally, and I was surprised by this one, but some folks aren't boozehounds the way I am: yes, you can mix rum and Coke. I had to explain that to a coworker today. She's not much of a drinker, I take it.

Twiddydinkies Confession

2009-08-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

As it turns out, I guess Crazy Dave has the same predilections in Plants vs. Zombies as I had when I was Vice-President in The Sims 3.

Boy I Have Been There

2009-08-11T01:07:00.000-07:00

Emotional meltdown aside, I actually enjoyed my unemployed time. Without too much qualification, I'd do it again. It's really spiritually nourishing to be able to sleep in as late as you want and then spend a few hours at a coffeeshop toggling back and forth between watching people and getting engrossed in a book.

Of course, I had some extenuating circumstances. I was voluntarily unemployed and I had $10,000 to float on before I needed to find a place to land. I highly recommend both of those options when choosing the exciting career of unemployment.

Regardless of whether or not I'm drawing a salary, it's always a pleasure to be able to wake up, optionally check the clock, and then make the decision as to whether or not to go back to sleep. Priceless.

3PS: On Unemployment

Look Me Over I'm the Cap'm

2009-08-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

Do you think there's somebody out there
Someone else who's better than the one you've got?
Well there's not
There's not

When I talk you keep looking away from me
Because you probably think that I'm high on pot
But I'm not
I'm not

Look me over I'm the Cap'm
You say it's such a joke
But I don't see you laughing

People seem to think you can't be called the Cap'm
Unless you drive a boat
Well I don't
I don't

There Really Are Too Many Puns Here to Just Pick One for a Title

2009-08-09T00:10:00.000-07:00

I believe that the sole purpose of mankind may indeed be to form a giant, comprehensive singular consciousness. If each human could relate the sum total of their knowledge to every other human and have the knowledge of every other human available to them, we couldn't really ask for anything more than that. That would be the end of Homo sapiens as a species, and the start of some other entity that would need a new classification.

The Internet is a big part of this vision. It brings people all around the world together and gives them constant updates on the most important facet of social interaction:

"That is the ugliest <whatever> I have ever seen in my entire life."

We have sites that alert us to the dangers of cakes, family photographs, and Craigslist ads. I'm certain that there are more such sites out there dedicated to their own niche markets. Each of them exists to quantify and categorize just how awful any given cake/picture/giveaway description can be.

But there's also one about tattoos. Ugly, ugly tattoos. It's really not my place to judge what people choose to do insofar as they can decorate their own skin for all eternity. It's not my place, but I'll do it anyway.

In this particular instance, I'm most concerned with the tattoo that a girl has gotten of the Death Star from Star Wars on her uterus.

It kind of gives new meaning to the phrase "trench run".

I hope her exhaust port isn't two meters wide.

She probably douches with bacta.

Say it with me now: "I thought these things smelled bad on the outside."

And so on.

Genesis 19, Total Insanity

2009-08-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

"And they called Lot, and said to him: 'Where are the men that came in to thee at night? Bring them out hither that we may know them.' Lot went out to them, and shut the door after him, and said: 'Do not so, I beseech you, my brethren, do not commit this evil. I have two daughters who as yet have not known man. I will bring them out to you, and abuse you them as it shall please you, so that you do no evil to these men, because they are come in under the shadow of my roof.'"

You know, when you actually sit down and read the particulars of that story, it turns out that footbaths were in fact involved. Footbaths? Yes!

The Mute Shall Inherit the Earth

2009-08-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

I disagree with part of io9's recent list of "Silent But Deadly Characters". Not that G.I. Joe's own Snake Eyes isn't totally awesome, but that they misinterpreted something pretty key in my opinion about Erich Zann. To quote:

"Erich Zann ('The Music of Erich Zann' by H.P. Lovecraft)
Silent? Yes. Zann is a mute viola virtuoso.
Deadly? Because this is a Lovecraft story, naturally Zann's music summons monstrous creatures from another dimension."

Au contraire. Zann lives in a dilapidated tenement on a street that doesn't really exist, but I take exception at saying that his music summons monstrous creatures. In fact, the story is pretty clear from my recollection of it that Zann's otherworldly music, feverishly performed night after night alone in his room, is the only thing keeping a good deal of nefarious elder things from emerging out into our relatively slime-free dimension. Zann is one of the good guys who single-handedly keeps the creepy crawlies at bay with his own unique brand of psychotraumatizing paranormal fiddlin'.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Last year Pseudopod did a reading of the story for its 100th episode. For a nice change of pace, Yog-Sothoth shows up later in the flash fiction story Stepfathers.

Green Cheese

2009-08-06T23:37:00.001-07:00

The last time I was in Portland, I was getting blotto at the Horse Brass on the east side and I had some kind of a bizarre green cheese I hadn't seen before.

I was getting increasingly inebriated at the time and had just stumbled out of a French patisserie after ordering something called an "opera", so consuming green cheese was not entirely out of the ordinary for me at the time.

I thought nothing of it after I'd sobered up, but Stef points out tonight that what I had was actually Sage Derby, one of a more obscure variety of cheese, complete with an atypical pronunciation.

Also of interest: the Moon and Sixpence, which is apparently also an English pub in Portland. I presume there's a lot of wooden interior there as God and nature intended.

Awwww....

2009-08-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

I find that it's actually quite touching when a porn star is in love. Ashley Blue's blog is a unique fusion of words and pictures unduplicated by any of her contemporaries or peers. It's not overt (or even covert) advertising. It's not even particularly raunchy.

It's just her thoughts on any of a variety of subjects, broken into the simplest atoms of intent and combined with photos. They've been in love for a very long time and I wish them the best.

Please Not to Be Disrespecting the Grey Goose

2009-08-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

So ordinarily I'd post something like this over at the other blog, but I just posted "One Night Stand" there last night and I don't want to get terribly repetitive.

In any event, this song pairs nicely with Hot Chicks with Douchebags. When the duo gets to the part about how they like their girls' drinks like they like their hair, please give a thought, as I did, to 'Splosionhead.

He's Got to Be Up to Lot 50 By Now

2009-08-04T22:11:00.000-07:00

I'm conflicted: go straight out and buy Pynchon's new novel Inherent Vice, get it from Amazon with 2-day shipping, or wait until the local library gets a copy?

These are the kinds of problems I like having. Let's see what the ol' electronic card catalog has to say on the matter:

"67 holds on first copy returned of 1 copy."

Yeah....

It Got My Vote

2009-08-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

It's hard to know who the winners are in The Stranger's annual HUMP amateur erotic film festival. It's hard enough to get tickets for one screening, let alone figure out when and where all votes from all screenings will be tallied and tabulated.

I'm glad to finally know that last year's winner in the humor category was the one I voted for. It was a really close race between the winner, Butthole Lickin', and two other very high-quality entries: Monkey Business and Douche: Dry and Sandy.

What's Next? A Flavor of Herpes Exclusive to Baboons?

2009-08-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

It bothers me when I read news stories about people in Cameroon presenting with infections of HIV strains that are only found in gorillas.

Seriously, you lackwits. I lose faith in humanity as a whole when I find out that you are going into the jungles and raping lesser primates. I could do the coarse thing here and ask aloud what, if anything, Africans won't rape, but I'm afraid that I wouldn't get an answer back.

Why, EHLO There, Gorgeous.

2009-08-02T01:11:00.000-07:00

What?

The Title Says it All

2009-08-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

Erotic Garden: Nigella Lawson: "I like my men hairy"

Où est la boobie?

2009-08-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

BBC NEWS | Breast practice on the riviera: "Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe has slapped a ban on topless sunbathing at Paris-Plage, the artificial beach installed along the Seine every summer - leading many feminists to comment that France seems to be slipping in terms of women's right to reveal what they please. Interestingly, no other French beach has actually banned toplessness. It seems simply to be fading away like a suntan in autumn...."

Note to self: Buy time machine, take summer vacation in France in 1964.

Moving

2009-08-01T01:09:00.000-07:00

It's funny sometimes. Even in the 21st century, we don't really have a reliable way of moving a lot of bits around quickly.

I have been trying to push some data between two boxes for about two or three days now, and due to the standard Murphy's Law events of spurious "Access denied" errors, timeouts, and other TCP/IP effluvia, I haven't really found a robust way to get my data from Point A to Point B.

First I tried Rich Copy, which was touted with the slogan "Trust me when I tell you, this is the answer to all your file copying needs." Indeed, Rich Copy is probably great for moving files around. I've had some minor success with it in the past. But I quickly discovered that Rich Copy was failing to give me a rich experience in the area of restartability.

Restartability is incredibly important for data transfer. See sentence #1. I am completely certain that at some point, any transfer of more than a handful of files can and will be interrupted. What then? A smart application picks up where it leaves off. For whatever reason, Rich Copy was starting from scratch every time, which probably is because of an oversight on my part somewhere in the unintuitive configuration settings.

No matter, because there's always Robocopy. Robocopy has proven itself pretty smart with restartability...most of the time. In this case, it found itself alternating between calling the destination file older and newer than the source file, despite the fact they were identical files on two NTFS partitions. This suggests that maybe the root cause is something as simple as one of the clocks on one of the servers was off. See sentence #1.

So Robocopy would also restart the transfer from scratch. No es bueno.

Finally, I tried my old standby, rsync. I was really hoping that I could leverage a utility that had some sane looping concepts built into it; something that could spot that there was a problem, work around it, and keep chugging along. Alas, rsync is good for many things, but synchronizing isn't one of them: the word "retry" appears nowhere in the rsync(1) man page.

No need to fear, I kludged something together with spit and bailing wire. The oh-so-amazing twenty-first technology that will reliably move files from A to B? A batch script.

@ECHO ON
:DOIT
rsync -avP --modify-window=5 /src/dir /dst/
IF 0 == %ERRORLEVEL% GOTO EXIT

:ERROR
GOTO DOIT

:EXIT
EXIT /B

It really makes me wonder sometimes. Is this the best we can do for easy, reliable file copy operations? It's ugly and it's slow. On the other hand, the big sophisticated applications that are designed to work around this aren't going to be any faster if they can't figure out how to avoid copying what they've already copied before.

Also considered, but dismissed due to its immaturity: SharpBITS.NET. And nothing that involves typing "Import-Module BITSTransfer" is ready for hundreds of files yet, nor have I been convinced that it persists after a reboot.

Thoughts from the Oregon Brewers Festival Weekend - Seattle Beer News

2009-07-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

Thoughts from the Oregon Brewers Festival Weekend - Seattle Beer News

At Midnight All the Agents

2009-07-28T23:39:00.001-07:00

It's not quite midnight, but I still looked at the numbers that Core Temp recorded in the last 24 hours.

Seattle is in the middle of a heat wave right now, and with CPU highs between 53-62 degrees C, I'd be smarter just to turn the damned thing off for a few days.

I hear Portland, OR has been hitting into the triple digits since Monday.

Interesting

2009-07-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Extreme consequences of pairbonding as it pertains to a moral society, with this boat first rocked by economist Robin Hanson. For later study:

here

and here.