At the risk of being too cynical...

Octomom Bikini Pics...Coming soon to photoshop disaster.

2010-01-19T01:26:00.003-05:00

Can someone please tell me, after clicking this image to view it full size, why this woman's ENTIRE MIDSECTION looks like it was copy pasted from MS paint and her navel looks like a friggin coin slot!?

You would think they could hire someone talented for a digital spackling of this magnitude. Can't wait to see the raw pics.

This cannot stand!

2010-01-07T11:05:00.000-05:00

One year later

2009-12-22T17:28:00.004-05:00

365 days ago I was involved in a car accident on Highway 85 Southbound. My car was totaled and it was a shitty and nerve racking experience all around. This is where Metastatic Carnage came from.

I think it only fitting to start recording the audio for this tonight.

Hail, Serpentia!

2009-12-19T22:47:00.003-05:00

This is the working prologue for the sci-fi epic. It's a little sampling from the holy book of the sleazy ass priesthood of the 'evil' country of Perentia.

It's basically an easy way for me to intro the world, get some geography in your head and outline the sense that things work very different on the world of Mirabilis. I would also note that writing with a semi-scriptural style is incredibly laborious and mind numbingly tedious.

Like listening to music through a brick wall. Such is life I suppose, kudos to the crazy old goatherds who wrote the bible though. Must have been quite a chore.

Heigh ho, let us begin!

**************************

Serpentia

Book I: The Fall of Deas

In the darkness before time and life there was only Deas. From niether egg nor womb did Deas come. He simply was and always had been. Alone in the void he gave birth to Order. Through Order Deas created time to mark his passing and drew a circle in the void which he could fill. To the vast boundaries of reality he pointed his finger and commanded "This far, and for this long."

Order grew weary in the darkness and pleaded with Deas to create light to guide them. Though Deas thrived in the Darkness he created angels and appointed to each a glowing star in the ether. Numbered beyond reckoning the shining stars filled all of creation with pure and unwavering light. Thus was the power of Deas lessened.

He created the world and the seas also.

Upon the world Deas placed all manner of creature. Mena he placed highest for they shared his love of the stars and disdain for chaos. To each Mena he gave no star but a soul to thrive and hunger for life, truth and all that is good. As the Mena multiplied so to did the number and power of their souls.

Thus was the power of Deas regained.

Deas loved the Mena and bestowed riches upon them. All the stars dwindled and flickered as Deas tended to the Mena and neglected his angels. Every Mena had food, drink, cloth and shelter. Life was long and good for many lifetimes. As Mena became strong and happy the stars grew so dim that Deas had to spend half the day tending to his angels. Thus night came to the world.

When day kissed the face of the world mena hungered for light and goodness, as was their wont. Darkness proved too great a temptation for the mena to resist. Wickedness ruled the mena as soon as Deas turned his back to them. Thus did Deas soon weary of his favored creation.

It was then that an angel called Legion beseeched Order to save and protect the mena from their angry father. However, Order was a slave to his master's will and could not. Thus did Legion intercede to save the mena from destruction.

Mirabilis was the greatest and purest star that shone, brighter than the star of Legion. When Mirabilis learned that Deas intended to destroy the Mena she wept until water covered much of her face. To Legion she gave her light and offered herself as sanctuary to any mena that could be saved.

Seeing her noble sacrifice, Cala gave her light to Legion as did her sisters Bria and Streya. Legion outshined all darkness. And though the lights of Mirabilis, Cala, Bria and Streya were extinguished Legion reflected upon their diminished faces with gratitude.

"For we are many," he proclaimed. Thus was Deas made wrathful. All mena suffered terribly for an age.

Though celestial lights shine eternal the mena lived and died beneath them. Faced with this end the mena turned their love away from the stars and towards their children. However bleak and fragile the world became it was children who shouldered the burden of Hope.

Deas sought to undo that hope and poured his vengeance upon the world.

Knowing his place above the mena Legion appointed a champion to counter Deas in his jealous rage. Thus did Ander Perenti arise in his twenty-fifth year. And though the lights of heaven shook and shattered in the battle Legion overcame Deas and Ander rescued what mena Legion deemed worthy.

They left the world and came to Mirabilis in a mighty ship of silver, through the waves of darkness riding the winds of light. Legion, in his great struggle to destroy Deas, had grown weary. At the sight of Ander waving from his silver ship Legion felt renewed and cast the ruined body of Deas onto the face of Mirabilis. In shadow and sickness Deas cast off his body and hid himself in the night.

Having lived for so long in the light Deas plotted his revenge, sowing chaos and fire throughout the night. Mena could not comprehend the terrors of poverty and illness that Deas wrought. Again, Ander was called to fight.

Enough light and life had been granted for Ander to rule the mena in peace for as long as the stars could shine. In the darkness he lead his people against the evils of Deas. For one hundred and fifty years Ander ruled and strengthened the mena. He stood as a shield between the mena and the evils found in the darkness.

Despite the unwavering light of Legion and the uncanny strength of their king there remained one fear that has ever haunted the mena. Using the fear of death Deas poisoned Ander's followers and advisors against their king and their god, who is Legion. Since Deas could not incite the mena to challenge the light of day they instead rebelled against their noble king.

Ander fled his kingdom though the borders of Perentia stretched across the entire mainland. His shame and sorrow covered a much vaster territory, wider than all of Mirabilis and deeper than any sea.

So great was Legion's wrath that he fell upon the night and tore his father off the face of Mirabilis. Great mountains stand now where Deas clung to the world. Into the darkness Deas fled to sow his discord among the heavens.

In scorn Legion pursued Deas, slaughtering any angel who dared give refuge to their traitorous creator. All the while the mena were left alone in the permanent night. Crops and animals fell to death and madness. Nine of every ten of all the mena on Mirabilis perished in the struggle for what little food remained.

Upon the face of the void Legion captured and destroyed his father, scattering his ruin across the heavens in great globs and smears. None could challenge the might or goodness of Legion, and none ever will.

Upon his return Legion saw the desolation and chaos that had come to his realm during his absence. He wept deeply and swelled the seas ever deeper. To calm his grief Legion sought for his favored champion but Ander of Perentia could not be found.

Disaster loomed for all who yet lived and the mena might have perished forever. However, just as Legion always illuminated those who had served him well, he broke himself apart and showered life back onto the face of Mirabilis, last sanctuary of the mena.

Mia rained from the heavens and filled the bellies of all who remained. Though it gave life to the hopes of many all wondered why Legion's voice was silent when they called for Him in song and prayer.

Thus was Legion's voice divided into all that gives life, including his star. This sacrifice, greater than any other star, allowed the mena to survive even though it meant he would remain forever invisible.

The last words heard by the great light were these: "Where is Ander of Perentia that the world might be healed and its peoples united again? I leave you now, my children, as stewards of your own fates in the hope that you will grow and wise enough again to rule yourselves as Ander once ruled you. Though my voice falls silent now your eyes will never greet the day without my light, my love, and my favor.

Let us raise our voices in anger...

2009-12-14T12:26:00.000-05:00

My friends and loyal readership (Kayla, Robb, Mary) a great and terrible misfortune has befallen the patron saint of this blog and my sci-fi authorship endeavor.

Peter Watts was beaten and arrested.

Original Article here: http://www.examiner.com/x-13081-Specu...

PW's Blog post about the event: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932

Link to Donate: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

Link to his free stuff: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsigh... (my favorite novel)
http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm (everything)

PW's email address: GiantSquid@rifters.com

I hate Sleaze!!!!!!

2009-11-12T21:43:00.002-05:00

I'm typing this from Hickory, NC at a holiday inn express (near furniture mart) after encountering one of the dumbest clusterfucks in the clusterfucking history of clusterfucks.

Raid 1 is a way to set up two hard drives of identical size in such a way that everything written to one is also written to the other. It's also called "mirroring" and it's common to run across this setup in servers.

The nice thing about Raid 1 is that you get a layer of redundancy and a little extra read performance because you can pull data off both drives simultaneously. Raid has its place in the world but it IS NOT A BACKUP SCHEME.

Worse, if the raid card dies in a server the array is lost and you're boned x2. Now, onto the sleaze.

The backup 'solution' encountered tonight was the ultimate dick move in the IT world. First the array was split between an internal fixed drive and a hot swap hard drive sitting in the front bay. Nothing wrong with that. However every night the office was removing the hot swap drive, replacing it with an identical drive and letting the raid array rebuild itself. Every night, they were rebuilding the fucking array.

That's like walking around giving yourself an emergency medical procedure every night just to get to sleep. Worse, the point of failure would be exactly the same without an array.

If they had a single hard drive, no array, and the thing died they would have to restore from their backup. This would be a hassle but no huge deal. With the existing setup a failure of the raid card OR the primary drive would require opening the case and doing some surgery to resolve the problem.

What kills me is that whoever cooked this solution up HAD to have some degree of technical expertise to even do it. He should have known better and it's absolutely ridiculous that they didn't just have a simpler solution. In IT simple often means durable and adding complexity always means adding risk or maintenance costs.

My own company did not fare much better during the assessment. We ran HDMI cables for some monitors and had planned to convert the HDMI to DVI but there was only VGA available at the computer so...we lost about 5 hours on the job while my coworked reran VGA through the walls.

We couldn't even use the HDMI to pull the cable through because we had to drill bigger holes and the ceiling was full of dust and crickets, and we're pretty sure the crickets had been eating asbestos and crapping it out all over the place.

Nasty job. I was able to clone the array and knock out about 90% of the software so I consider it mostly successful. We still had to work until 8pm which is fucking retarded.

So it goes.

More nanowrimo stuff to be posted soon.

In the flesh...

2009-11-02T12:24:00.000-05:00

Pretty damn funny, eh?

Brute Finesse (The Nanowrimo thing) Part1

2009-11-01T17:27:00.000-05:00

So I am going to be posting some bits and pieces of the nanowrimo story as I go. I have about 4k done so far, today. This should be pretty obvious but the format is that the story is going to be told in snippets from the protagonists journal, letters, tapped phone calls and IM chat logs, basically the kind of crap that someone spying on the prot would have to compile to get things together.

That investigation ties into the story but not at first and not until you get to know Cecil a little better.

Enough of that shit, read on, and remember this is only about 80% polished because of the time limit. If the story plays out well enough I'll be going back to spackle and scrape this thing into a real novel.

*************************

[Pages from a ruined journal]

January 2nd,

The year is 2012 and the war is going badly. Resolved to keep a journal but still failed to get an entry for the day of, that being the first day of 2012. Resolution to quit smoking lasted 3 whole hours after I woke up. It almost lasted about 3 minutes because I am used to just walking outside the tent and lighting up.

It's quiet now and the next engagement starts four hours from now. So maybe I will just start with who I am and what I am doing in this god forsaken fuck hole of a country. My name is [redacted] and I am something of a legend around these parts. Never mind that 'these parts' are a no name mountain in the iced over ass crack of [redacted].

I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to fill the rest of this in so I just want to start by writing down a secret plan of mine.

When my tour of duty ends, just a few months from now I plan to marry the sweetest, funniest and most wholesome girl I have ever met. I just sent Elise a letter home today. Not an email, mind you, an honest to god flake of dead tree and ink on a plane back home.

There was a key inside that letter and it just so happens to open a small lock box under my bed back home. Inside the box is the ring I plan to give her when the time comes. For now she'll just have to live with the mystery. I didn't tell her what the key was for, only that it was important.

I can't wait to see her again. The way she smells is about fifty thousand times better than these unwashed cretins sweating energy drink and orange cheese flavoring. Anyway, I am on deck for another 16 hour stint as a townie down in [redacted] and need to get some sleep.

Even Cecil doesn't know. Hard to keep secrets from your best friend but the look on his face will be worth it.

[Letter addressed to Elise Marie Connor, postmarked January 6th, 2012]

Elise,

I'm sure by now news has reached you. Whatever comfort I have to offer is lost amid my own wailing and the empty cavern in my chest where a heart used to beat. [redacted] is gone. I was two feet away and didn't even have time to say goodbye. It was over before I even knew what happened.

We have known each other far too long for me not to tell you the truth of how he died, and perhaps you are as numb as me and this will come as no shock to you. Perhaps the scars will fade more quickly this way.

The official report no doubt says that [redacted] was killed by a roadside IED on January 3rd, 2012. I doubt that it will mention how much you and I loved him, how senseless this whole war and everything in it has become, and just how badly he will be missed.

I am torn between wanting to spare you further agony, if such a thing is possible, but you deserve to know. I lied in the report about his last words being "Tell Elise that I love her." I hope you can forgive me for wanting to spare my best friend the indignity of becoming a joke, or worse a meme for countless pimpled brats to snicker over.

You and I know too well that he loved you, I don't think he mentioned your name once without mentioning how much he missed you or how badly he wanted to get home to see you again.

Yet the last words out of his mouth were "Say Cecil? You think if I grow my beard out you still think your mom will let me eat her out?"

Believe me I have tried to laugh about it. I tell myself every hour, every minute that it's the funniest thing I have ever heard in my life. In a way it is. In a million ways it just makes me wish that I was riding shotgun that day. I blame myself. I don't know how I could have known but every second I have drawn breath is a needle reminding me that I lived only because my friend was there to shield me.

He was always protecting me. Ever since I was a kid he was my armor and my parachute. I always thought someday I would return the favor, repay all the years of kindness and somehow make things even between us. What can I do now? Who can I be without a friend in the world to call my own?

I am so sorry for everything that's happened, Elise. I wish I could change it, fix it or just...something.

There's nothing else for me to say except that no matter how deep and dark your loss, I am suffering as well. [Redacted] was the closest thing I ever had to a soul mate. And I would trade every girl I ever met just to have a few seconds, a moment, to say goodbye to my best friend.

Whatever I can do for you, I will. Whatever I can say and wherever you need me I will be there for you for as long as you need me. And when the time comes for you to move on with your life I will be there to say good bye.

Love, Cecil

[pages from a ruined journal]

January 18, 2012

[redacted] is dead. And I have taken up this journal in his name.

The camp shrink has told me that I have moved from bargaining to depression in the five stages of grief. The only upshot is that the fucking chaplain has given up on me for now. I've had enough platitudes and pats on the back to last me a fucking lifetime.

But this entry is not for me it is for [redacted], he was my best friend and I have known him all my life. I suppose it is only fitting that I take up the pen. So much of our life, through coincidence or company, has evolved in eerie synchrony.

We were born 3 days apart, in the same hospital, under very different circumstances. Though he was born healthy enough I was ripped from my mother in a gory rush that probably lead to a busy day at the hospital laundry. As such I was kept under observation and strictly monitored. My heart stopped twice and my lungs are shitty to this day as a result.

Something about being crammed through a birth canal squeezes out the goo in ways that modern medicine struggles to emulate.

Anyway. If not for my prolonged stay it is unlikely that my parents would have met [redacted]'s parents at all. It was their friendship, brief and tenuous though it was, that ensured our destinies would intertwine once more. On the day he died we were as close as brothers, and tightly wound as DNA itself.

Until age 6 we were inseparable, and so were our parents. Then he moved, and life turned somewhat shitty for a long time. It was hard for me, having invested so much time into the friendship and finding none of my peers as worthy a companion as he.

But I lived. Time went on, and so did we.

Middle school was hell. The usual cliques and bullshit made things more than a little miserable but life was bearable. It wasn't until about 3 months into 6th grade that things changed for me. This was the stretch of time it took four boys in my grade to become comfortable enough as friends to start beating the crap out of me on a regular basis.

Things were bad enough before hand, my asthma made me something of an outcast because I could barely control it. Several times I had to hear "Eeew, I don't wanna sit near Cecil he's nasty." Even this humiliation I could bear. Fuck what they say about words not hurting, I'd set them on balance with sticks and stones any day of the week.

So these four twats, Shane, Marcus, Sam and Eddie, were all bigger dumber and meaner than me. The thing that put me in their crosshairs: not helping Eddie cheat on a test. It wasn't a multiple choice or a true/false ordeal it was a fucking essay question on the important role of malleability in modern living.

How the fuck do you whisper something like a coherent paragraph without getting caught? Apparently these guys were dumb enough not to even see the futility in the asking. A pity, but not one that went unpunished.

Weeks passed. Injuries accumulated. None of the teachers seemed to notice or care. Trying to show them my bruises or that I was being ganged up on usually ended with scoldings like "you boys need to stop fighting" and "please Cecil, this is recess go and have fun and stop bothering us."

So twats were beating me, while other twats were too busy gossiping to step in and help. My parents offered similarly worthless advice: "Try being really nice to them," Mom would say. Fucking brilliant in whatever shiny world she grew up in. I actually tried it and got a cracked rib for my trouble. Thanks mom.

At a time when I felt that the whole world had sunk into this unending syncline of misery and every authority figure around me seemed to be in complete denial I wrote my friend a letter. He called me the day he got it and we talked for an hour about what to do.

Being four hours away I could not count on him to actually help. He might as well have lived on the moon. Still, he managed to help in the weirdest way possible. [Redacted] mailed me his father's pistol and a handful of bullets.

Luckily my dad intercepted the package before I ever saw it. Luckily because I would be writing my memoirs from inside a padded cell if I had been given time to use it. I told dad it was a CD player that [redacted] was going to let me borrow. Dad thought it had been stolen or something and opened it up. Needless to say, things changed drastically after that.

School officials got involved, finally, and the gang of four ceased their daily beatings. Well, at least they moved to weekly beatings and daily verbal abuse. Still, progress.

Things improved further the next year when two of the guys moved away. Four on one is a dirty slaughter, but two on one makes evasion almost easy. And by this time I had hit a little growth spurt so I was more or less on equal fitting with Eddie. Sam could still thrash me any day of the week but he was slow and chubbier than me so I could usually stay beyond pummeling range.

If I am harping on this incident too much, allow me to explain the significance.

[Redacted] gave me enough slack to escape from my usual torment. And he did it at the expense of being grounded for the rest of the school year. Can you even imagine that? What 11 year old kid could devise a plan, and he swore it was his intention all along to provoke intervention from the parents, execute it and bear the punishment faithfully for a friend he barely ever saw and lived hours away from?

My best friend did that for me. God damn it I miss him.

The time for tears will come again. If I must laud him further consider the aftermath. The hole, opened by my friend, widened by circumstance and at last I could fight the battle for myself. Any day when Sam and Eddie were both in school I was a ghost. If one of them was sick, or didn't make it because their stupid redneck dads were too hung over to give them a ride I made life hell for the other.

Eddie was the nastier of the two. You could write up a nice little case study about this creep and his eagerness to pass on the abuse he suffered at home to anyone and anything around him. One day he told me that his cat had kittens and he ran them over with a lawnmower because it was funny.

Serious sociopathic shit, right?

The day I snapped was shortly after that anecdotal atrocity came to light in the lunchroom. He was sick or something and didn't have the spirit to really lay into me. So he just half-heartedly hit me with his canvas lunch bag. There was a metal fork inside and the tines really did a number on my little skull. I didn't even think twice I just calmly unslung my backpack, took out the heaviest book I could find and slammed it into Eddie's face.

He couldn't even move out of the way he was so surprised. I didn't stop there. You can't bottle up a year and a half's worth of rage and fear into one event but I did my utmost. After a few more solid whacks broke Eddie's nose and jaw I wrapped my little fingers around his neck and tried to murder this boy.

Luckily for me and my tender young anus a teacher intervened and spared the life of this little bastard. I was almost expelled from school. Almost if not for the scrupulous notes I had kept of every single little slap and insult made by Eddie and the remnants of his gang since day 1 of the beatings.

Three teachers were fired, Eddie was expelled and Sam and I were both given ten day suspensions.

My journal made for a compelling enough narrative to spare my expulsion and landed me in counseling for much of my adolescence. I tried, time and time again, to explain that I wasn't crazy and that there was nothing fucking wrong with me. I was just pushed one too many times. That's it. Sometimes it's the fucking world with the problem.

January 18, 2012

I don't know how I can go on. Only a shift ago I managed to write pages about the minutia of my history with [redacted] and now I have been staring at this damn book for an hour with nothing to show for it.

Except for this. And twenty-three enemy kills. A new squad record. My parents probably heard about it on the radio and fretted.

January 19, 2012

Another fucking day I wish I could unlive. July cannot come fast enough.

The game is afoot!

2009-11-01T00:15:00.002-04:00

It's mother fucking Nanowrimo time and "Brute Finesse" is already underway!!

Ah people...

2009-10-07T15:15:00.000-04:00

"Today a friend tried to sucker me in with a clip of a girl that turned out to be a tranny. Once I realized what was going on I stopped the vid and went downstairs for a drink. I almost broke my neck when I slipped on a little bottle of lip balm. Now all I can think about is that if I had died they would have found tranny porn on my computer. And probably would have drawn the worst conclusion."

Nanowrimo...

2009-10-05T17:00:00.001-04:00

The title of this blog is a contraction of National Novel Writing Month. Link here.

Without being to quick to describe the challenge it's basically an attempt to write a 50,000 word (minimum) novel starting Nov. 1st and ending when the month ends.

The catch being you're not supposed to start writing UNTIL Nov. 1 so for now all I have is a few rough notes and the opening line:

"The year is 2012 and the war is not going well."

(Yes I stole that from TheoWarner but he stole it from Ben Franklin so it's public domain.)

The story as I imagine it will play out as a series of recorded logs, journal entries, IM conversations and maybe even tweets. It will essentially be the collections of an unknown or unidentified (yes there's a difference) third party about an individual and his adventures with a certain piece of exotic technology.

It will begin in 2012 and end no more than a few years later and feature all or most of the following.

1) Cornucopia technology
2) Time/Alternate universe travel
3) A strong AI character with limited communication abilities.
4) Gratuitous fantasies involving what I or someone like me would do with a sudden and inordinate amount of access to highly advanced technology.
5) No chase scenes!
6) Kirk Cameron will certainly die
7) FTLC (faster than light communication)

I am envisioning a story that may peter out around 5 thousand words or explode into a whole new and strange territory that will allow me to complete the length requirement. My only worry is that I will either fall miserably short or shoot too far to actually complete the mother fucker.

Only time will tell. Until then I will gather my strength and start outlining but until Nov. 1st I will not stray beyond the opening line. Should be interesting.

Especially since I have no name, title, character development or ending. I should listen to Peter Watts and make sure I have at least an idea of an ending so I don't get bogged down like hell or just meander around and stop at some point.

Blasphemy day, mutha bitches!!!

2009-09-30T10:23:00.000-04:00

Because it's never ok to murder someone for drawing a cartoon. On that note here's my latest vid for you to enjoy.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd! Here's a bonus. It's a picture of mohammed with a penis right on his face.

Now get out there and OFFEND SOME PEOPLE!

Something retarded for the HTWW shenanigans

2009-09-23T10:00:00.002-04:00

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Mu video and pics

2009-09-22T13:27:00.001-04:00

As promised, for anyone that wants them.

Overspill from the Answers Vid

2009-09-16T17:02:00.000-04:00

If you haven't watched it already I invite you to either 1) jump in front of a truck or 2) take a look right here.

Regarding video games there is a lot to be said and a lot I will leave unsaid. Suffice to say they have been an integral part of my life for about as long as I can remember. From age 5 when I figured out how to pwn this crappy ascii game on our vintage 1982 64k ram and no hard drive computer, to the three gut wrenching attempts to make it over the first goomba in the original mario brothers, to the epic struggle to beat Street Fighter II with Zangief... They have always been close to my heart and have inspired a number of fantasies and fictions that no doubt linger on in my writing and thinking.

Regarding alcohol I don't do a lot of drinking anymore but when I do a nice warming glass of red wine usually takes the edge off and an ice cold beer is still very much welcome to the tastebuds. But my favorite liquor drink remains "The Naughty Brown Cow" as first decanted by my good friend Tom.

Naughty Brown Cow Recipe:

1 oz Kahlua
1 oz Silver Rum
4 oz Chocolate milk

Shake with ice and to make the milk nice and frothy and then serve on the rocks. It's heavenly. Actually its better than heaven because it's real!

Regarding people who post first I think I am with the majority on this one: death by melon baller is far to kind a fate

Now I know some of you will stumble over here from youtube thinking something along the lines of 'man that guy is a dick' or something but I wanted to share a little about my philosophy of humor (for Krensharpaw) and to explain my point of view.

If you've read Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" you know that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to really become world class at something like playing an instrument or a sport. The more you do it, the better you get. Easy money.

However for things like writing, and stand up comedy there's probably some distinction. Being a good, or at least an interesting writer demands more than practice. You have to have experience of your own, insight into the world, a unique perspective or a story to tell that is rare among people. Its almost a meta-talent and any number of factors can influence quality beyond putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

And I think humor is very much like that. It's not simple, it's very nuanced and very context specific. Jokes that are topical and awesome in one culture fall flat as hell in others. Like writing I think humor can be influenced by a number of factors and there's always the element of practice for delivery if nothing else.

But when it comes to when it is appropriate to make a joke or who to make a joke about I draw very little distinction. If the opportunity presents itself I feel compelled to make the joke regardless of who will find themselves the butt. Be it a good friend or a respected elder or some prole on the street...humor should be blind to its subjects.

That's how I feel on the matter anyways.

Being sick sucks

2009-09-11T12:04:00.002-04:00

Nothing informative today just a tired little announcement that my entire body has decided to counter the nasty microbe invasion of my throat by repurposing all of my vital organs and systems into squeezing my skull and producing inhuman quantities of mucus. I can speak, barely, and every word hurts like a fistful of caltrops raking around my trachea.

However I am grateful that even my shitty employer based medical insurance covered the visit and the anti-biotics to MURDER AND DESTROY the microbial malcontents for a measley 30 dollars. Thats probably the amount of money I have saved by eating mostly liquid and coffee for the past 72 hours so it all works out well.

If I had gone to the emergency room it would have cost me like 1 grand without insurance and 150 with. Remind me again why universal health care is such a bad idea?

Hero Complex

2009-09-06T20:58:00.003-04:00

Last night I lay down to sleep after a long day of rollercoasters, beer and video games. It was Tristan's bachelor party and I, for the first in a very long while, know what it must be like when Alex crashes out after a long day of playing.

Even as my head rested on pillow I could literally still feel the jolts and jerks of our days activities. The right spiraling downward motion of Afterburner, the time-stopping lurch of Drop Zone and the bone shattering tumult of The Hurler rocked my vision like phantom waves after a long day at the beach.

It was a good day, full of thrills and excitement. It was a pleasant evening as well full of beers, shuffleboard (of all things,) and the aforementioned video games. Splashing virtual zombies was nice but the most fun for me was the unique joy that comes from getting a headshot on a galloping giraffe during "Big Buck Safari"

And that all made for a fine Saturday, I was pretty well beat up and worn out. My pelvis still feels slightly detached by the wooden roller coasters but the lift in spirits more than counterbalances the physical damage.

And today, a bonus! While tightening that damned errant nut that always makes the back right wheel of the push mower fall off every 1.5 yard mowings or so I got to placate my hero complex. And yes, I have something of a hero complex.

Perhaps I should preface. One of the redeeming virtues of humanity is that altruism comes naturally and often a sense of well being and purpose follows it. To a degree I suppose that's where the HC comes into play.

Without blowing my own horn I have to mention that this stems almost purely from psychology classes and the statistical apathy that also comes very naturally to most people. It's a bit like the woman who was stabbed to death in broad daylight and no one intervened. I hate stories like that and strangely part of me wants that opportunity to be the person who DOES intervene.

Today I got my chance, well, one chance among the many moments that come and go throughout life. I was dragging the mower out onto the driveway when I noticed a boy walking down the street with a large white pipeish looking thing with a pointy end. It looked a bit like a spear made of PVC pipe and just seeing it brought to mind some of the more dumb and violent chapters from my youth.

I watched boy #1 join up with a friend, we'll call him boy #2 down the road. They were shouting at someone further up the road who I would soon learn was boy #3.

What played out was that boys #1 and 2, each much bigger/older than boy #3 proceeded to chase down the smaller boy and use the big white pipe thingy to hose him down with water. Tears and crying shot out of boy #3 and he fled down the road, coming towards me and past the house, while boys #1 and 2 gave chase on foot.

Enter boy #4, armed with a pipe wrench, that's me. As the boys made it just about even with the driveway I stopped their punk asses in their tracks with a little use of what I call "the Dad voice."

It's not quite screaming but it's pretty close to how state troopers sound after finding a severed head or a bag of cocaine in someone's trunk. Long story short, the chase ended not with the merriment of beating the crap out of boy #3 but with two shattered egos limping back home to mommy.

Bless their hearts. I should have made them mow the lawn for me it was hot as fuck today.

Translation Party FTW!!!

2009-08-20T10:59:00.002-04:00

My very first translation party victory.

Music for my loyal viewers

2009-08-13T22:59:00.005-04:00

Gentlefolk and merry people!

Bookmark this page for it will be here, nigh unto the dying of the planet.

As promised here are links for downloading any and all songs 'composed' by me.

All files are hosted in my public dropbox folder. Dropbox is a kick ass little program that allows for free online storage. Default is 2 gigs, or you can pay for 50+ if you're interested.

Use this link to sign up for an additional 250mb of space. https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTk0MTc2Mzk

Ambient
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/Ambient1.MP3

Synthdeath
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/synthdeath1.MP3

Spritely
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/Spritely.MP3

Robot Trombones
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/Robot%20Trombones.MP3

Stack
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/stack1a.MP3

War Chorus
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/War%20Chorus.MP3

War Chorus (fast and scratchy version)
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/warchorusfast.MP3

Slide Keys
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/Slidekeys.MP3

Sonic Emulsion
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/941763/SonicEmulsion.MP3

Jealosy does not become us...

2009-08-01T18:13:00.005-04:00

I am writing this from my office. I am in here, locked away from the rest of the house because the wife wanted to have a friend over to watch a movie.

The friend is recently seperated so I was told that I could not stay and watch it with them. The friend is also a cute blonde girl who just got out of a marriage. She's cute, single and vulnerable and I am sitting up in my office.

To make it worse the DVD player downstairs was acting up so they watched the movie upstairs, in our bedroom, in our bed. With beers.

So while I am sitting her clacking on my 6 year old keyboard with naught for company my wife is drinking beer in bed with a cute blonde girl.

Fuck.

I get PM's...

2009-07-28T08:31:00.002-04:00

As I awoke and began my normal work duties I couldn't resist a YT bump this early and something caught my eye.

Normally when I get a youtube PM it's either because someone subscribed and is giving me a shout out or someone is replying to me for posting/flaming something. It's all good.

And now to my repertoire I add: sometimes I get super long, mostly copy pasta PM's from people who are long winded and mostly batshit instead *also semi literate*

No response needed, just wanted to share with my loyal readership of none.

[Original message follows:]

I saw your trailer about game called Heaven and trailer is preety good exept of you in the
background yapping and talking like you just know every thing on this planet and universe

like u ate all the brains of the smartest people,like u create universe,nay like u created and hated

any way,visualisation and graphic in game is beautyful,all those things like river of life,
pearly gates,golden streets,its simbolic and its all written in bible

i dont know what is game about and what u have to do,but they took a loooooooot of things
and vis.from the good book.

its in Revelation,almost in the end,but it is mentioned a lot of time in all the Bible

i presume by your talking and words that you are one of the people that thing
that the earth and all the univers creates by its self just like that.

i gotta tell you something
or you are a hater,or you are some fals prophet or
you dont have enough knoledge and experience in and about life

for example; let say that one of the factorys of watches in some contry explode,massive explosion,and on that same place creates (thousands or just one) perfect working watch,...
is that possible and what are the odds that could happened.

example two; can you go if you have a garden or in some park,and just take one leaf or some plant,flower,if you have a microscope,or you can just look at it with naked eye,..
do you see how many cells and vessels and functions have just one flower,...
now imagine a some animal,or a man,...
and they functions,...
check out nature,sky,day and night,..
its all working like its been set by some large space clock.
day and night,...day sets sun sets,and in the miliseconds night and the moon and the stars
take over.

a man need for oxygen a plants need for carbon dioxide,..
man is oozing carbon dioxide and need oxygen,plants and flowers oozing carbon dioxide.

why sun doesnt freez us,...because sun has been set to get us warm.

lets took a humans,why they have 5 fingers and five toes on each arm,why not 8 fingers and
3 toes,

you can check human inner organs,..lunges,heart,livers,brain,..
and its all connected yet they have diferent functions

they are all consuming that red liquid called blood.

you gotta thing a litte bit and explore and you will see.

every thing has his own creator,
car has his own creator,mechanics etc.

in factorys,someone has to put computer together,or they are man or woman or robots programed and created by man or woman.

you have to water the plant if you wanna see it grow,
and plant need light,earth and water.
but why not some other liquid,why water,why light,why not dark?
why can i put pepsi or some orange juice and expect to see plant grow?

how come that you didnt came to earth just like that,how come someone needed to made you?
how come you just didnt flew from somewhere and start to be alive and growin and how
come you dont just say i wanna some burger and burger just creates in front of your eyes
from nothing ?

last words:
man,open your eyes,i know that life is hard,and there is a lot of people evil people that works
for they own pleasure,telling us what they wanna for us to thing.

there are some animals less bloodsucking than peoples,
peoples are powerfull,they can be what ever they want,but can they fly without airplane,
can the go in to deept of deepest seas and live there,can they go to the farest star and galaxies
in universe?
no,but people are made for reason,and reason is somewhere far from earth but so close to
us.

why we live per say 70 years and just die,leaving behind so much created things,so we can never go back.
why are we made so complicated,and so full of love,emocions,hates,knowledge,
ideas,emaginations,where does those things coming from and who put that in our brains and
hearts.

why we building lives,careers ,jobs, playing instruments for years, carring for one another,
why are we even breathe?

so that we die for 70 years and thats it,game over,,no no my friend,
where is sense,i make no sense man,...

there is something bigger than this little life of ours

for another example,lets say demo game and full game,
why demo games exist?

its like preview of something more bigger and better and more lasting,right?

last words
-----------------
just sit one evening in chair,lazyboy or on some meadow,balcony,...and watch the stars,
they are soooo far,its so many of them,amazing,look at that infinite space,and
if is not,we will never go there unless someone take us and carrie there,
i wish to go there,one day i wanna fly thru those galaxies and visit other planets and stars
without getting sun burn:), or swallow by black hole :).

i wannt this,i wanna full game man.
--------------------

a question for darwin fans:
what did and how did it create the first of the first of the first of the first molecule,
before every one, before big bang(big bang have to start from something,also that molecule
that has been encouraging big bang,needs to be create frome something,and so on and on and
on,to the first of the first) ?

where how and why?

man took bible in your hands,say a pray,test good to help you with something,(not now like,
"God i want mercedes right now",) not like that, but u never know,maybe you get merc. to,but
you have to show loyalty and faith tore Him,
example:
you ask your friend to help you clean your car,
how will you ask him,would you say"hey man clean car with me"
or " hey,(name),would you please help me to clean my car"
?????

so dedication and thrust is also playing role,..if you dont belive your friend and you getting all suspicious and cocky and rude friend will not help you,unless its your butler or slave :).

about lets say Christ and his talk "this is my blood this is my boody" eat it and drink it
you probably red that or heard in churches or on the tv.

any way,lot of people ar just like faithless Tom, "i dont believe unless i see right away"

so,people are interpreting in materialistic way cuz let be real,people are made from materia
and the are very materialistic.

so people without help from above or shallow minded or non believers(atheists believe in nothing so you are believer to,anyone could be believer and believe in any thing so,..you gotta believe in right and tested thing) didnt understand those words.

those words where symbols for the cruisafixtion and death of jesus
Jesus was half man half god,actuali he was god,but...

example:a mother and little son walking thru some park,a kid saw anthill and a lot of ants,
he got closer,but,they flee and run away,...after he ask his mother,..
mom,..why those ants ran away from me,and mother said,..
because they dont know you.

so god or creator or someone who understand how everything works and functioning,needed to
came down,because he was only with out limits so he could only gave life to they creatures that he game life in the first place.

so "drink my blood eat my boody" was the simbolic for "Il give you life again".

people where very very smart and poetic before,you wouldnt believe,
just look all those wonders of the worlds that they create,and we will be fools to
thing that they was like monkeys or peoples from caves that they dont know if
they are alive or not.

of course,if today exist people wich dont know to write,obviously they existed in the past,
but they had knoledge of and from nature.

but who create that nature from whom people did so beautyful things,
it is impossible to think that something explode and on the same place something
beautyful and builded so complicated has been created.

look,if you believe in Jesus and Bible(whole bible) you cant lose anything,you could just
gain a new life,in here and one day somewhere else(not on the cloud with harp like lot of
people say,..you know there s a lot of people that kills and to bad things in the name of God,but
they arent good,they are false,cuz God like bible says never changes,but people,..
like the wind blow...) so,better to check for your self,you can not lose,only gain,

but...if you go with aproach like,.."i dont believe"..well lets say it ends your way and you are wright,but what if dont?

believers are insured and but non believer , not so

lets say that all people are turned in to atheist,..where is the future,..
earth is falling appart day by day,...
nuclear war could begin tomorrow..
again, lost..

what is the point to all of this....

something must change,just like goverments over the centurys are overthroned,
this missery must be overthrone to...

if we can save our selves,..
only our designer(who know how we functionate) can do that
patch us,create us a new,all to new.

situation in the world is worse day by day,theres been trouble in the world,but
not that often like in our days and time.

every day go by,troubles are bigger and dangerous,faster and without mercy.

something gotta give,or the earth will exploade(but earth is not guilty, wicked people
tourtured her a lot and still they countinue,with load of garbage,nuklear bomb tests,
oil etc.)

or someone will save us

read Revelation,in the New Testamen,at the end of the bible(bible is like a guide thru life,she stood a test of time,a lot of people wanned to change her ,denied her,"kill" her so no one
knows about her,but she is still here and every where,...what is that telling you,..hm?)

about coming of the creator and savior of his creatures.
Jesus came first time like poor hard working man,to show us how to live and obey commandments cuz without commandments we will not know what is good and what is wrong
so we will go by our on hearts,but our hearts are full of false sincerity and empty headed insticts so without 10 commandments we will be like sheeps.

and without bible(you know why lot of world leaders forbid bible,...cuz "knoledge is power"
and bible is full of knoledge,believe it,its true,try to readed,but first say a pray to Jesus,
nevertheless he inspired people and prophets to write it..,....and after start to read it.

it is amazing,you will found out so much things,..
but be careful, dont be inpatient, you need patient and faith ,

example:
why one swiss guy who is building clocks, (back to clocks again :)) hand maded,why they are the best and most expensive?

per say better than clock that some chinese kid witch is one of the many things that kid assembled that day,
he now doing clocks,(he learned building them an our ago, while swiss guy building them for decades).

why is clock from swiss guy better than from chi.kid,?

because swiss guy building one clock for years,while chinese kid make them a whole bunch i an hour.

example 2

witch is better and healthier: junk food,fast food instant food ,instant drinks etc.
or food that need time and preparation to made it right,using by better and healthier
groceries.

so about reading we continue,...
Revelation or one of the gospels
it says
in last days will be wars and famines,and brother will raise hand on his brother for nothing,..
(im just saying of witch i remember i read,i apologize if i miss some parts but everything is in
the Bible,everything)

and there wil be more and more of those things like i said in the beginning of text,
there will be a lot of people wich will present theyself like saviors,financion saviors,Christs,
saviors of the planet,and the envoirement,and chrysis situation,but all they will do
will be broking commandments ,sitting in theyr big mansiones,driving big cars,and
some of the will do miracles but they will be just for entertaintmant or no use or after something
like it looks like miracles but after man will feel even wors.

like curing people with touch of hands and so...
last people wich could do that is Jesus Himself and his apostoles.

no one from the day that last apostol died,till today,...no one,not pope,not blaine,not copperfield,
no one,...they came from evil factory to deceive and abuse ,cuz satan hates god because
satan was angel before called Lucifer ,Lightbringer,the biggest and the preetyes
angel,..but he got proud at bit too much,he wanned to be like god ,actualy bigger than god who created him,without whom he wouldnt even exist.

word prIde got I in it, I will lift my self above whole universe,said Lucifer,....and it said in the
Bible,check by your self,....

on the last day of the earth,the satan himself (before jesus return) will show to people as
jesus and beautyful,cuz he aint no more,he showed his nature when he slauthered inocent
man to the cross.

and he will seduce a lot of christians and non christians,...

"he will make fire come down to earth just to seduce"
a lot or miracles but for nothing

jesus feed people and helped people with his miracles,
but today its all about money prIde, and power.

anthicrist is real,...but where is copy there is original,..right?

bible says that second coming of Jesus will see every eye every man,saiz in the Bible,..
its true,..
antichrist,satan him self, will look like Jesus,speak like Jesus but,doing miracles like Jesus,
(cuz lucifer doesnt care how he will take you down,long as you down)

but remember,he will not came as Jesus!

"every eye will see him"

television :) isnt that funny how powerful got tv

if every eye will see him,for the liar (lIar-capital i) and false creature,tv is only solution.

but Jesus ,first he came like poor man,to show how and that we could live in peace in god and
obey the law of life.

"i saw someone sitting on the shiny cloud on the sky with thousands apon thousands angels around him"

Jesus will came on the cloud in his full glory,with all his angels,not as poor man ,but the king of the universe.

but remember,he will not get down to earth,he will be on the sky all the time,and remember
with thousand appon thousand angels,not alone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i wish you all the best in life and
...ask any thing il try to answer you

btw,Jesus-God is only being that need to be worshiped
no human,cuz today are and tomorow are aint,like a flower in the strong wind,he
disapear just like that,..no animals or photos,..

ten commandments saiz you all
Bible saiz you everything

cheers

So that's it. Take it home, you dirty atheists. Bible saiz you everything!

Some FUCKED UP FUNNY stuff for the readers.

2009-07-26T22:58:00.003-04:00

So I am working on a new video and right now i'm in the process of collecting clips of religious folk claiming that 'god is love.'

I suspected the cheesiest, whiniest folk would be my best bet so I did a google search for the following phrase "god is love joel osteen" since he's the corniest corn dog of them all.

Results popped, I clicked on videos hoping to find something useful BUT I found something way way better.

Here's a screenie, I did some surgery on the pic because I didn't want this post to be X-rated but check it out yourself.

Be sure to click on the image for the full effect.

A lot mo' video

2009-07-25T22:53:00.002-04:00

I have neglected my readers, pardon me. But I have been busy elsewhere, so if you get sick of no updates here check Youtube every 48 hours for a new vid. My cadence and frequency have been pretty good so far.

Here's Part II of the Pdunn response

Heaven the Game!

Starfedrogue shoutout

Glenn Beck's radio meltdown

And finally Parts I through III of the CSE Pwnage series!

Part I

Part II

Part III

Some stills I have been using for YT videos

2009-07-14T00:12:00.005-04:00

All of these pictures were created by me, and only me and as I have posted them here they fall under the Creative Commons License, like all things here.

In short, use the shit out of them simply add a link back to this blog.

Or, and to be honest I don't really care one way or another, you can also link to my youtube channel.

Here it goes: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keippernicus

Yes, yes it is.
I will comfort thee with my rod and staff. Giggity.
This one is actually something of a wuzzle, the irony is overwhelming.
And yo mama to!
A logo I was playing with for the now defunct Brute Finesse site
One of my first attempts, pretty ugly but so shiny...
You remember this from the Pdunn Pwnage vids right?
Nintendo style, what what!

Now the final logo makes me giggle and I am in the process of turning it into a tshirt/hoodie. I'll throw up a link when I get to a point where it's ready.

The problem over at cafepress.com is that uploaded logos are really finicky when it comes to edges and gradients so its hard to find the right balance of size and clarity. Fingers crossed though, my people.

Adapting to My new Fish Bowl

2009-07-13T16:38:00.005-04:00

It's a strange feeling when 50 strangers willingly submit themselves to view your creative offerings. And yet, as of right now today I have added about 50 subscribers on my youtube channel. Incidentally if anyone comes from youtube to the blog then welcome and enjoy yourself, there's plenty of fun stuff to be had.

Here's the latest offerings, I plan to make a post with some stills of the graphics and logos I have made for recent videos. Hope everyone enjoys watching them as much as I have enjoyed making them.

Debunking ESP using computers

2009-07-10T21:26:00.003-04:00

I decided to take my youtube video selection in a slightly different direction. Right now I am working on a few videos for a new series: Computers Show Us The Way

My intent is to use our lovable electronic devices and use them as a foil for human brains to expose the weakness of various nonsensical beliefs and practices.

Superstition, prayer and homeopathy are all planned but the order/timeline in which they are produce is still uncertain. For now, content yourself with the very first of many: ESP!

****Update, the original video got cut off during processing so here's the full 6 minute video in all its glory****

Brian Kilmeade better get fired for this!

2009-07-09T11:05:00.002-04:00

Imagine my surprise when I came across a video of a fox news personality saying that an Alzheimer's study shouldn't apply to Americans because...

We marry other species and ethnicities[sic]

I know you don't think anyone on TV could be that dumb, except for...well I take that back its about what we should expect from such a douche.

Enjoy the vid, I am sure you'll love hearing about it later on the cable news networks.

Glad I bought a Honda!

2009-07-08T12:25:00.001-04:00

So I ran across this, a prime example of consumer pwnage that I just had to share.

This should sum it up nicely.

The first two times Jason brought his truck in to his local Toyota dealership for service, he noticed that someone had taken quarters from his change compartment. He complained both times, but was ignored. So the third time he brought his truck in, he placed a video camera on the passenger side. The dealership didn't ignore him this time.
Jason was originally only concerned about the missing quarters, but his camera also captured Hampton Toyota employees sifting through his medication, using racial slurs, and watching porn in Jason's truck. Jason emailed us a copy of the letter he sent the owner of Hampton Toyota.

What's crazy about this, and reading Jason's email will rip your gut up a little, is the youtube clips embedded towards the bottom. I mean the behavior of both guys stealing coins and examining the pill carrier are so frickin' ROTE that you know these goons have been up to much worse.

I'm gonna have to start counting my change before I take my car in now.

Some beef with JaguarJ0nes on youtube.

2009-07-03T11:18:00.001-04:00

Ok not really beef per se but just an objection. Here's a link to JJ's channel he's got some really funny videos about pwning YEC's and their arguments. Something about his video voice/expressions really sunk in and I laughed my ass off at some of his references.

But he insists that pangolins are totally gay. Which is crazy, pangolins are totally awesome!

I mean it's a freakin' mammal with scales, freakishly overdeveloped claws, near immunity to ant bites *food source* and it can curl into a spiky ball when threatened. Its kind of like an armadillo but so much cooler.

Link to Original.

So anyway I made a little video, slammed it together from clips and nearly pulled my hair out because camtasia kept crashing and the audio splice was absurdly counter intuitive. At any rate, I got her done and present, in full glory, for your viewing pleasure.

Jaguarj0nes LOVES Pangolins

Why isn't this on the front page of EVERY FUCKING NEWSPAPER ON THE PLANET!?!?!?

2009-06-30T10:34:00.003-04:00

John Singleton figured out how to make radio waves travel faster than the speed of light.

FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

Are you fucking kidding me? Everyone on planet earth is worried about Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Farrah Fawcett and the crap going on in Iran when this...THIS has been announced!?!?!!?

Read the article.

And for buddha's sake remember today, I know I will.

Mo' video!

2009-06-29T14:53:00.005-04:00

Granted this does meet the excellent standards of my fiction writing but I dropped another video on Pdunn's apologetic rectum recently. It's worth checking out on youtube but views here still count so whatev. It's just funny what people will believe.

Upcoming story: Dark Brigade

2009-06-28T23:51:00.004-04:00

Here's a fiblet for my loyal fans. This is a pretty damned rough cut chunk from the latest story. Tentative title:

Dark Brigade

*****************************

Overhead the UAV’s are negative stars on blue backdrop. Look directly at one and they disappear, gaze ever so slightly aside and there it is. These pixels account for more human casualties than both world wars combined. Something like twenty thousand patrol around the continent, sipping power from their ventral photovoltaic cells during the day and guzzling ground based laser light at night.

Thousands of aimbots garrison the countryside. Each holds a sphere of territory, stopped only by the earth boundary of air and earth. I imagine transparent blue domes, like a force shield that doesn’t just block out attacks but actively seeks and destroys. Anything human or human built crossing into the killspheres has about one tenth of a second for acquisition plus travel time of 40mm hypersonic grenades. Aimbots look like plumbing, just a bunch of tubes surrounded by a giant canopy of solar cells. Don’t be fooled, these things can vaporize a chicken at their nominal effective range. Semi-intelligent rounds can track and intercept anything on the ground. I have seen moving light armor slagged with zero warning.

The UAV’s assist the aimbots by guiding munitions beyond and through obstacles the aimbot itself cannot see. Everything in our LPS network created by bases, aimbots, UAV’s gets flung to the heavens up to the unmanned orbital weapons platforms and out to the encrypted GPS network.

And then there was us, frontline soldiers in the Dark Operations Theatre. Only six hundred actual people had boots on the ground. Most of these are Base and maintenance personnel. Even us chosen few are largely superfluous as a fighting force. The machines react and kill faster than I or any other human could even blink.

Our opponents are new have little time to learn the art of war. Every soldier and device in the DOT knows the art of killing as deeply as our native language. GM’s hold local omnipotence within MMO’s but we hold that sway over huge swaths of Africa. Killing a handful or a hundred people isn’t scary or thrilling, it’s just work. Our domination of this war is so complete that we have yet to suffer a single casualty from enemy fire.

“Orders came in,” Wren says. Well, he signs it out since he doesn’t have vocal cords. His modded suit monitors both gloves and translates his sign language into text which appears on my HUD. Wren loves war, it’s the only time in his life where he can easily talk to other people. Our latest assignment scrolls in brilliant green text across the faceplate heads up display. This screen, crafted from some arcane meta-material in the hellish evolved design labs by DOT scientists, tells me more about the world than my eyes, ears and skin ever could. Fist sized chunks of shrapnel ricochet of it without leaving a scratch, leaving the glossy proteins of my eyes free to prosecute immediate retaliation.

“We’re going back into the city,” I say. Wren’s head wiggles his Mark III into a nod. So much quicker to subtext, I think.

“You think we can snag another thousand kills, and still be back to base in time for dinner?” Wren holds his thumb up; I don’t need tactile text protocols to interpret. We do a gear check and the two of us walk towards a city populated entirely by people that would sell a thousand souls to see us dead.

“You know what’s funny,” I say to Wren. “We have the safest job on earth.”

Close, but no cigar for Mr. Sanford

2009-06-25T11:00:00.003-04:00

Last night I made a bet with the wife that South Carolina governor Sanford was off visiting his gay lover out in Utah.

I was wrong.

Turns out he was out of country slappin' his pasty conservative thighs against some Argentinian boo-tay! 2012 isn't the end of the world, just any hope you might have had at running the big show, Mark.

Read all about it here.

My favorite part:

ATLANTA (Reuters) - South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford tearfully admitted on Wednesday he had been unfaithful to his wife, likely ending any chance he might be a Republican contender for the U.S. presidency in 2012.

Sanford resigned as chairman of the Republican Governors' Association and was replaced by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, another possible 2012 candidate.

"Any aspirations for 2012, if he had any, are certainly out of the question," said Robert Oldendick, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina.

Sanford's confession at a tumultuous news conference ended days of speculation over his whereabouts. After he disappeared last week, his staff first said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. It later emerged he had traveled to Argentina to be with his lover, leaving his family over Father's Day weekend.

"I spent the last five days of my life crying in Argentina," he said.

***

You are going to be crying over the death of your career and the end of your family as you know it for a lot longer than that. Fucking douchebag had nothing but invective for Craigslist prostitution. Mark Sanford should have had more sympathy for his fellow whores.

Pdunn Pwnage

2009-06-24T14:30:00.005-04:00

So, I'll just come right out and say it. I made a response video.

But listen, it had to be done. You remember this post from a while back? Homeboy's comments could NOT stand and I can't work within the constraints of 500 character answers to some pretty subtle and nuanced questions.

So I made this video, posted it as a response, and consider it a mediocre debut onto the youtube scene (at best.)

Anyway, enjoy the slaughter and sorry about the audio quality (Marshall Brain is super loud, Pdunn is super quiet and I ping pong back and forth somewhere in the middle.)

Enjoy!

Some silliness for the god-whallopers

2009-06-23T22:04:00.002-04:00

It's short and cheesy but I made a video today after some hilarity with igod. Someone, somewhere might find it amusing.

Dulce Periculum, Baby: A Meatspace Adventure from the past

2009-06-20T22:27:00.004-04:00

Names, dates and *some* locations have been changed. I also left out a good bit of background info and context around this time of my life. Likewise I neglected to mention the girl I had just broken up with and any other females that shared my attentions lately at the time. When I was single it was always at least 2-3 on the brain at any given time.

Anyways, this little look at my life lead me to write some of the more inspired parts of "Fair Coin" my first, worst and ugliest novel which buddha willing will not see the light of day until I am long dead and cremated. But let us not dwell on fire, for this is an aquatically themed story.

Enjoy. And as always don't forget to check the Meatspace Omnibus if you want more demented adventures from my life.

**********************************************

Dulce Periculum, baby.

(Summer 2003)

Life as a Student Patrolman is good. Summer school takes up a big chunk of my week but two classes 4 days a week is easy money. Campus is largely deserted, no lines and no fucking pedestrian obstructions.

Just the kind of time for a guy like me.

While day time soaks up a lot of homework the nights are all business. There are only 3 of us in the area, 2 per shift so I work 4 nights a week. Tonight is pretty typical. We haven’t had an escort call in 2 weeks.

Most nights we just hung out and watched movies or TV after a few token patrols. We don’t get paid much but we hardly do anything. Campus population drops an order of mag and a half during the summer break. There just aren’t enough people around to meet even our meager supply of potential escorts. Fine by me.

This fine summer evening falls on a Thursday. It will gleam like a nova in my memory for months to come due to a fortunate Confluence of Events. I am the only one working, most of the students are getting hammered off campus and the cops are running a skeleton crew. Perfect time for some mischief.

To get the full effect you need to know a little about what we do and more importantly what we have access to: basically everything. Right now on my belt I have a million dollar keyring. It’s not that the keys themselves are so valuable but they literally open every door on campus. My dorm uses the K key for suite doors, L key for individual rooms. Most of the psych buildings use N1 for exterior doors and N2 for interior.

When in doubt the M key works for almost everything else. It’s a lot of power, who could resist just a little abuse? Now barring a few of the labs (they had combination locks) I could go anywhere and do anything on campus that suited my fancy.

A less imaginative mind might have turned thoughts towards pillaging. After all there were hundreds or thousands of computers, projectors or various other valuables for the taking. As I stand outside the library I smile at Harrison Hall’s UFO-like round exterior. Second floor utility closet has a stack of brand new laptops awaiting distribution. A little backpack work could yield significant financial gain.

There are more chemicals and reagents waiting in the bio and chem labs just across the brickyard. While I wouldn’t mind walking home with a huge chunk of sodium metal or maybe some DNA sequencing equipment my heart just isn’t up for theft.

I want entertainment and if my guess is right I should have some soon. For now I just compose myself on a vast expanse of shadowed brick and await my quarry.

Sure enough around 9pm Jackie walks out of the library and peels left up the hill. I plot a course to intercept about halfway to her car. She hasn’t seen me yet so I fall in step behind her. I try not to chuckle as I notice her speed up.

“Hey little girl,” I say in my creepiest oh-god-there’s-a-stalker-behind-me voice. Wide eyes turn towards me but soon narrow and brighten.

“I should have known it was you,” she says with a chuckle. Jackie’s a knock out when she smiles. When she gets steely eyed she can be nothing short of terrifying.

“Couldn’t resist the chance to give you a little thrill,” I tell her. “After all my night is shaping up to be utterly and totally boring. How was the study group?”

Oh yeah. I knew Jackie was going to be there because we were having a study group that night. I got to exempt myself because I was working. See it’s not as creepy as you thought.

“I learned some stuff,” she says. “It just wasn’t the same without your sarcasm. We ran into those Diffy Q guys again and no one could say stuff to them.” I smile.

Last time we had to commandeer half of a table from a trio of engineering guys. We were taking statistics for psych and they felt the need to turn up their noses at the ‘soft math.’ I spent a few minutes scraping the paint off of their souls before they got up and left. Then we had the whole table to ourselves. Good ol’ social engineering is a powerful tool. And they say humanities are worthless majors.

I tell Jackie about my plight, that I am all alone for the evening and have no safe haven to park my listless posterior for the evening. I am pleasantly surprised by her response.

“You can have me for half an hour,” she says slyly. “Maybe more if you buy me coffee.”

I do and we sit in the East Campus Courtyard talking about constellations and the scary people in our classes. It’s a pleasant enough time but I keep getting distracted.

Jackie’s a classic case of the pretty ugly-girl. She grew up in a rough house with a bunch of alcoholics and fuckheads. Got married at 18, divorced at 21 and now at age 23 was going back to school to make something out of herself. Somewhere along the line she blossomed and after the divorce she lost 20 pounds. This took her from mildly doable to start-a-war-with-the-greeks hot. It wasn’t fair. She was slender and well proportioned but never needed to diet or exercise.

One of the chosen. If she could see herself through my eyes there is no way in hell she’d be sitting there goofing off with me.

“Can I see it?” she says to me at one point. I pause mid-sip and raise an eyebrow. “The key ring, you perv.”

“Happy to accommodate,” I say. I unclip it from my carabineer and plop it in her lap. I have already given her the million dollar key ring speech and she was interested but polite enough to show me I was being humored.

“Funny that you’re bored with all this . . . potential.” Now she raises an eyebrow at me. Her teeth are perfect and the way her lips frame them is helplessly fetching. Admring her haloed jaw line under the street lights gives pause to my response. I can’t say anything because all my hormones are doing the biological equivalent of a mosh pit in my veins.

“Trust me,” I say eventually. “There’s a lot of fun to be had with that item but since all of it is illegal by definition it forces you to reprioritize. Every idea that pops up has to make it through the cost benefit analysis. Is this fun enough to merit jail time? Or is the risk to being caught so low that I should have no fear?”

She hands them back and mutters ‘pussy’ under her breath.

“I beg pardon?” I say. “Were you accusing or offering just now?”

“Accusing,” she ripostes. “I can’t believe you never do anything. You literally have the keys to the kingdom but you’re too scared to sit on the throne while no one is looking.”

I hate being goaded to bragging but I have already done some nefarious deeds with the key ring at my side. I take a nibble at the bait.

“We climbed up on Jordan hall a while back, easy roof access. No rails or walls either so it’s trippy being so close to the edge with nothing but 90 feet of air between you and the parking lot.”

Jackie feigned a yawn.

“We also watched a movie on one of the big screens in the chemistry building. You going to turn up your nose at a personal IMAX theatre?” Jackie perked up.

“Let’s do that,” she said excitedly. “Right now let’s go.” Subcon hands me a memo and I feel like screaming.

“Can’t tonight, there’s some event going on in that building. We would definitely get busted.”

“That’s too bad,” she says. “You don’t have much time with me left and what are you going to do for the rest of the night all by yourself?” Another note from Subcon. This time elation hits me like freefall.

“You remember that thing we talked about a while back?” I ask her. “You said you had never been to the campus pool and we started talking about…”

“Oh I remember,” she interupts. “What’s your point?”

“How about I make that happen for you tonight. But not right now, we have to wait until midnight at least. Interested?”

“That depends,” she says mischievously. And don’t worry I will give the details out later I’m just creating a little suspense. “You already offered so I know this meets the cost/benefit analysis. But does that mean we’re unlikely to get caught or the prospect is so exciting that it’s worth the risk.”

I choose my words carefully.

“I could definitely lose my job over it,” I say truthfully. “And I consider it worth the risk.”

“I’m flattered,” she says. “Where should we meet at midnight? I twitch, all the way down. I can’t believe she’s actually into this. My inner cynic warns me she might just say yes and then cancel. That would be unfortunate. Subcon cracks his knuckles in case some mental self-abuse has to go down later.

“Park at Wood Hall and then meet me behind the gym, near the basketball courts. I’ll be somewhere visible.”

“See you at midnight,” she says. Normally we hug goodbye but I let her go untouched tonight.

When she’s out of range I whisper ‘for now’ and laugh maniacally. A pair of girls gives me a dirty look so I mosey down to south campus.

Kill a few hours and then let the good times roll.

Jackie arrives a few minutes before midnight. As I pinpoint her silhouette I can only imagine what she must be thinking. I’m leaned against the post of a halogen streetlight. My dorky student patrol baseball cap blocks out the glare. She steps lightly through the night air like it’s broad fucking daylight in some picturesque vista.

I wave once I can make out the impish smile on her face. I lean towards my radio and put a finger on transmit.

“This is 804, I’m gonna be taking my 10-22. Back in 30.” I clip it on my belt and escort the lady to the appointed destination.

“Scared?” she asks me.

“Only that you’ll punk out on me once we’re inside.”

“I’ll have you know I shaved for this. Just don’t disappoint me and all your wildest dreams will come true.”

I smile but don’t point out the obvious flaw in the statement. In my wildest dreams I would be omnipotent. I’ll settle for a scandalous evening with Jackie until the Djinn season picks back up.

We have to hang around for a few seconds to make sure the coast is clear. I’ve got the M key at the ready. My hands shake once we determine that there are no meddlesome folk about. A thrust and a little twist and bingo. We’re inside the gym and no alarms are blaring yet.

“Dulce Periculum,” I say to myself.

“Dool say what? Man you are strange sometimes. Guess I can’t talk since we just broke into the gym. Is that latin?”

“Oh yeah,” I say. We start the long dreadful walk down the dark hallways that converge on the locker rooms, aerobic spaces and of course the aquatic complex.

“Genetically my last name should be McCalla,” I explain. “My dad’s biological dad was a McCalla. He got killed right after WWII and later my dad took the last name of his step dad. It’s one of those things that I have always wondered about had things been different. What would life be like if that damned steam pipe hadn’t exploded . . .?”

“Wow,” Jackie says. We grab the pile of towels I secreted away while I was waiting for her. Time’s a factor and less prep means more of the good stuff. “That was a really long explanation and you didn’t even explain your little cryptic phrase.

“Dulce Periculum,” I continued with a sharp inhale through gritted teeth. “Is the phrase on the McCalla coat of arms. Literally it means ‘danger is sweet’ and this occasion it seemed doubly appropriate.

“Ooh,” Jackie said with a laugh. “Does that mean I am sweet or dangerous?”

“Both. Follow me.”

I lead her to the pool. Well technically there are two pools arranged in a T. The big pool is surrounded by windows and is for lap swimming and all that. The smaller pool is where the swim team and diving teams practice. It’s usually ten degrees warmer and off limits unless you’re on the team. More importantly any one walking past the gym who looked inside would be hard pressed to spot someone in there.

Silence and stillness weigh down the mood. We skulk up to the pool and take another look around. I plop all of the towels down in a pile. Jackie seems to be glowing in the faint light.

“Moment of truth,” she says. “You up for it?”

I answer by unbuckling my belt, setting down the key ring and my radio. As I am pulling my red work polo over my head I notice that Jackie’s taken off her tank top. She’s wearing a bikini.

Now the deal was ‘I’ll provide a secluded body of water for us if you’ll go skinny dipping with me.’ A bikini was totally out of the question.

“You’re about to disappoint me,” I said. My voice betrays that I am already prepared to mope.

“Keep your pants…well never mind. Once you’re done I’ll finish getting undressed.” Jackie plants her hands on firm hips. I step out of my shoes and pants.

“Why does it matter if I am going to see you naked anyways?” I ask.

“Because the deal was nudity,” she says. It’s like she’s explaining why the sky is blue to a slow child. “Nudity isn’t sexual. I’m not doing a strip tease for you. We’re just friends, remember?”

Fair enough.

My glasses are the last thing to go, I nearly dive in wearing them. That would have been bad. Instead I dive in, keenly aware that I am fully nude and half blind while in the midst of breaking and entering. It’s a fucking rush like you wouldn’t believe.

A tight splash lets me know that Jackie’s joined me in the water. Now I see a crucial flaw in my plan has been exposed. In the dim light, sans glasses I can’t even tell if she’s fully naked or not.

“Wow, this feels really weird. It’s like being more naked than naked,” she says jerkily treading water. “Have you taken a lot of girls here?”

“You’re the first,” I say. “And if it helps I can’t really see you anyway so you get all the rush without any of the ocular molestation.”

“So now what?”

That’s a damn good question. I wonder if she feels like doing me. No? Guess we’ll just swim around then.

“Have fun,” I say. I take the time to push off the wall and angle myself towards the bottom. Both hands are out and stiff to prevent the ridiculously poor visibility from bashing my head into concrete. I sink down, touch, and push off to breach. Jackie seems to be struggling with something.

“Ok over there?” I ask.

“No,” she says floundering and making what sounds like a tremendous racket. “Come over and help me.”

You got it.

“What can I do?” I ask. Even point blank she’s just dark skin. The rippling refraction turns the underwater parts of her into an erratic mosaic of half-seen skin.

“I want to be weightless but I can’t get myself to float. How do I do that?”

“Just lie on your back, take a deep breath in and spread out.” I demonstrate, keenly aware that my junk is thrust upwards into full view. She probably can’t see and the water’s warm enough that I don’t care.

Jackie makes a few attempts but just doesn’t have the buoyancy (ie fat) that I do. She appears a little distressed by this. In an admirably selfless gesture I decide to help her out.

“Stretch out and lie on your back,” I tell her. “I’ll hold you up by your lower back so you can float.”

“Just be careful where you decide my lower back is,” she warns me sternly. Even in the blue soup I can see that she’s smiling. I take her by the waist and pull her backwards until she’s gliding over the water. With some aquatic grace I slide my right hand under her rib cage and use my left to hold her legs behind the knees.

“Comfy?” I ask. She shushes me.

“Just let me be free for a minute,” she chides me. I hold her in silence, taking in the warmth of her skin and the ambience of the place. The whole complex is a blackened tangle of wet blue silk. Jackie wanted to be weightless and she feels that way to me. I barely need functioning arms to keep her floating peacefully. Her eyes are closed and a serene smile covers her face.

Ok I also took the opportunity to check out her naked body but it was literally right under my nose. How could I resist? Better yet why would I want to?

“Thank you,” she says eventually. “You can let me go now.”

I don’t think I could if I tried.

Instead of letting her go I shift my stance bringing my right arm around to her shoulder and my pulling my left up. If that’s hard to imagine just think ‘groom carrying bride over the threshold’ only we were naked and supersaturated.

“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask, stalling for time and noticing she hasn’t moved or protested.

“As long as that secrete doesn’t relate to you and me and whether we are ever going to go out that’s fine,” she says. And now for the ultimate mixed message she puts her arm around my neck and begins to stroke behind my ear.

“It’s not that,” I lie. I would tell her that I’m descended from Julius Fucking Caesar’s retarded nephew if that kept her in my arms. “I just like that this particular night I asked if you wanted to do something. You could have done a million other things but you didn’t. Instead of doing homework or crashing early or going out drinking you chose to come hang out naked with a geek from your psychology class.”

“Well I already knew that,” Jackie said softly. She moved her hand to smooth out my disheveled eyebrows. “Doesn’t really qualify as a secret.”

“It does,” I tell her. “And it’s the best kind of secret because no matter what happens you and I are here now, and we don’t have to share with anyone else if we don’t want to. I kind of like the idea that someday 20 years from now you might think back to college and the time you went skinny dipping with the single greatest author of the 21^st century.” We chuckle, it’s an old running joke.

“You know that’s why we can’t be together,” she said. “You’re just too modest and withdrawn, not enough ego for my taste.” Just then part of me brushed against the outer curve of Jackie’s buttocks. You can guess which part. “Was that?”

“Yep,” I confess. “That was my weiner just now.”

Jackie laughed and wriggled away from me. She didn’t go far, just kept enough space between me and her to prevent a reoccurrence. (So you know she was at least 18 inches away, yuk yuk yuk. Ok, try 6.)

“Why are you attracted to me, Seth?”

Ooh, she used my name. That’s serious business.

“You’re a charming and attractive girl, err, lady? Hell I don’t need to quantify I just like you because when we hang out I tend to remember it more so than most of the girls in my life. You should know the significance of emotional response and memory formation.”

“So romantic,” she said. I suspect there was an eye roll or a funny face made but it was too dark to be sure.

“Here’s a better question,” I say. “Why are you attracted to me as a friend but not a romantic interest? And no jokes because there’s no one else here to impress or placate and I just want to hear it from you straight up and sans sugar coating.”

Damn that got heavy pretty quick.

“Two reasons,” she tells me. “And don’t get pouty because the first is that I am not physically attracted to you.”

Fuck.

“You make me laugh and I love that.”

Fucking fuck balls.

“And you’re not terrible looking.”

Felching assfuck.

“But you don’t dance, and you’re not into my kind of music.”

Shitraping assock.”

“Basically I like you enough to be friends with you but . . .”

And twist it just a little deeper.

“You understand what I mean, and you know that you feel the same once you cut past my body and your hormonal urge to fuck me right?”

“Sure,” I say. I think about what it would be like to drown myself.

“Now the second reason is a little more complex.” Jackie moves in closer and puts her hands on my shoulders. Despite just immolating my self-esteem and salting the charred carnage there is a look of vulnerability all over her. She’s trembling as she speaks.

“You know me well enough to know about my dick ex and my asshole dad. I hope you see that I trust you and that has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting to fuck you. But getting out of a situation like that makes you a little paranoid. One of the things that made me thinking about taking a bottle of sleeping pills or slitting my wrists was that I had no control over anything going on in my life. Do you know what that’s like?”

I shook my head. I had my own suicide story but decided to just let the woman talk. Despite her words forbidding me I wanted so much to comfort and console her. However you don’t try to cuddle with a tornado so I just let her speak.

“Now you’re a pretty sharp guy. Hell you make me feel like an idiot sometimes. I know you don’t mean too but you just know stuff about the world that kills me because I am jealous. You have traveled and met awesome people and I want that for myself and not just by proxy through you. I can’t be with you because I can’t control you. I wouldn’t want you even if I could there’s just something missing in you.”

Oh great, like I haven’t heard that from enough girls already. Souls are so overrated, no matter what they say.

As if reading my mind Jackie corrects herself.

“That’s not really what I mean,” she jumps a little in frustration. “There’s just something…oh fuck I’ll just say it. I believe in soul mates. And I believe that one of the few chances we are given in life is to pick who we get to be with. And you have already chosen someone else and I’ve been through too much bullshit to spend my life wondering if I really measure up to her.”

Her. That would be Natalie. Damn me and my big mouth going off about that girl. She’s been dating that douche rag for over a year now and no matter how hard I try I can’t pull the shrapnel out of my bones that she left behind. Fuck.

“Tonight’s gone a little differently than I expected,” I tell her. Jackie smiles at me. She knows I can take the harsh words, and I can. Never mind how much they sting, I’m not allergic to reality. Just sensitive at times.

“Are you ok? I hope that didn’t sound mean or bitchy. But you did ask . . .”

“I can take it. So I guess my dark side’s a little more obvious than I thought. Cripes.”

“Don’t be sad,” she says and gives me a playful slap. “You’ve got a hot naked girl in the pool. Just because you don’t get to take her home doesn’t mean it’s not a great story.”

“Like I give a fuck,” I snap. “I just wanted to be here with you, yes naked and yes I was hoping for something to happen because I like you. I really like you. But you’re right. We could probably have some fun but once we washed it off there wouldn’t be enough to continue on forever.” I chew on my lip for a few seconds. “Love is a sick fucking joke, you know that?”

“Harsh,” she says. “I think love is wonderful we just don’t have it. And it sucks because we have the anatomy and the opportunity just not that quintessential part that would make it worthwhile. At least we’ve got each other.”

This is the moment when I see the end of our friendship. It won’t take much after tonight. The first guy she mentions going out with will snap off my affections for her and I’ll sacrifice a piece of my heart so the rest can get away. That’s my romantic strategy. I realize I am just a blue-tailed skinks ready to ditch my tail at the slightest sign of trouble.

“Are you having fun at least?” I ask. The sheer weirdness of the event sinks in hard. “Strike that, we should be having more fun. Since you’ve already raped my self esteem is there anything else I should know before I have your door in the spank bank welded shut?”

“Am I really in your ‘bank?’” My eyes have adjusted enough to notice the sharp contrast of tanlines exactly where I expect them. The added detail is just lemon juice on a paper cut. I want to say something like ‘you could have your own branch’ but I don’t want to be gross.

“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore,” I say. “Once the hope is gone the fantasy tends to go along with it.”

Nothing is said or done for ten agonizing seconds. Jackie is looking at me, her eyes are locked with mine in some inscrutable combat.

“Put your fucking hands behind your back,” she says. “You move more than a statue and I am out of here.”

Subcon drops me a memo. It just says: ??? I do a mental shrug and lean back against the wall. Left hand is cupping the right and I stand as still as I can. Jackie, sweet Jackie, dips her hair under the water for a second.

For whatever reason the next sensation is her naked slippery back oozing and wiggling all over my chest. Fingernails rake down my thighs as she leans into me. A hand touches my twitching face. I can feel her skin all the way down to my feet as she writhes over me.

Most of the details are there, far to vivid and pornographic to bother writing down. It’s just a tease but it might as well be a preview of heaven from my standpoint. I noticed the rough edges of her tanlines, a little stubble under the arm and an unprecedented amount of local blood pressure in my nether region.

Subcon opens a data stream commanding me to grab her and fuck her until her eyes bleed. I don’t move voluntarily. Jackie grinds against me with the skill of a club veteran though without clothing or friction to get in the way it’s an order of mag above my fantasies of her. My eyes do somersaults and my jaw oscillates, rattling my teeth with intensely bittersweet pleasure.

Subcon remains stalwart commanding me to do awful things. Worse I find the commands harder and harder to ignore. After all a quick move and I could be inside her, hands wrapped around her neck and breasts, hips shuddering into my groin.

Yet I resist. Though the urge has never been stronger I resist with every synaptic bit of restraint I possess. Maybe 30 seconds pass. She moves off, reality descends back into awareness. The surreal events ends with a warm kiss on my cheek.

My hands move unbidden and wrap around her back. I hold her firmly but I am ready to let her go at any moment.

“Was it good for you?” she whispers. I sigh into a chuckle.

“I would take a human life if you asked me too right now.” Before any more levity can come between me and the testosterone bonfire now raging through my cortex the radio squawks.

“Dispatch to closest officer, be advised we have a potential break in at Carmichael gymnasium.” My blood freezes for a second. Subcon shoves Jackie out of the water and hauls over to the towels. That guy can put gravity on hold in an emergency.

“What the hell?” she asks. If you don’t know to listen to radio it just sounds like garbled gobblety gook. Jackie had no idea we just went from sweet and dangerous to get-out-before-it-puts-a-serious-dent-in-your-corporeal-existence.

My hands fly over towels and skin, rushing to get myself back into my uniform. Jackie is dressed much sooner than me, few pieces to worry about, no belt or socks. I grab my shoes and clutch them to my chest. We start to move towards the entrance where we came in when a door slams open.

“Oh fuck,” I whisper. “We need to go another way, follow me.”

She grabs my hand and I half drag her to the side door on the south side of the gym. It’s an emergency exit but if you have the key. . .

The door creaks, no alarms sound. Earlier we snuck in with the greatest of ease now we burst out like a handful of grapeshot. There are several people around but no one close enough to identify us or really notice. I look behind us and see flashlights sweeping the pool area. Thirty seconds earlier we would have been caught with our pants down.

“Holy shit, we need to get out of here. Seth we need to get the fuck out . . .”

“Come with me,” I command. She falls in behind me and we start towards the intramural field just south of the gym. A millesecond before we step out into the street lit area I notice one of the cops, on a bike, hauling ass over the field directly towards us.

“What are you waiting for?” Jackie hisses at me. “Let’s just run for it.”

“If you want to run that’s fine, I’m going to get out of this without getting busted thanks.” I double back towards the woods near our exit. A placid creek carves an ugly brown path through the trees.

“Where are you going?” I point towards the creek and proceed. There’s no time to explain so I just go and she follows. I’m still barefoot and the dried leaves and twigs maul me a little as we slide down the bank of the creek. There’s a tunnel that allows the creek to flow under the nearby basketball courts and we are going through it.

I help Jackie into the mouth of the tunnel, keeping her flip flops dry for the run ahead. She’s a country girl and handles herself well. I can’t help but file that under ‘stuff I like about this girl’ as we enter the tunnel.

Imagine a tube about 6 feet in diameter stretching 100 yards under two very darkly lit sections of campus. Each end is a pinhole camera pointed at a shadow. I have no flashlight, no lighter and no means of generating light but for the ultra feeble glow of my radio’s LED.

While we’re still close to the lip I point to the brackish water flowing down the middle.

“I need you to trust me,” I tell her. Jackie is shivering with fear but I look her in the eyes. “We are going to get out of this, the hard part is already over with. Right now we just need to make it through this tunnel and we’ll be home free.

Jackie nods. Flickering red and blue light filters down from on high. The cops are close enough to hear them speak.

“Come with me now, run a few steps on one side and then hop to the other so you don’t get wet. It’s a smooth pipe all the way down. If you trip or fall try not to scream, I will hear you and I will not leave you alone ok?”

“I’m fucking terrified right now,” she says.

“Me too. Let’s go.”

We trot through the pipe, skirting from side to side to avoid the water. About halfway through I notice one of the bright blue lights from the campus emergency phones on the other side. It’s bright enough to scatter some light off the water and brings visibility from zero up to about 5 feet.

Jackie’s panting and jogging right behind me. I couldn’t help but wax sarcastic that she looks like she’s in great shape but hates working out with a passion. One hundred years through inky blackness and we arrive on the other side of the tunnel. More importantly we’re across the road and far enough away from the gym to risk popping out in plain sight.

Before we do I get myself situated, finally covering my raw feet in socks and shoes. I do a gear check and find I still have my shirt, pants, belt, keys, radio and . . .no hat.

Oh that’s fucking tragic. No reason to bring Jackie along for THAT ride though.

I escort the lady out of the tunnel and take her through the woods to the parking lot near Wood Hall. That’s where I had her park if you remember. We walk the last part of the way out in the open and with a forced calm and cadence. Both Jackie and I are nervous, exhilarated and riding on a bolus of pure adrenaline. We have been clutching hands since we left the tunnel and don’t let go until we arrive at her car.

“Well,” I say. “That was an adventure.”

She kisses me, fiercely sucking my tongue into her mouth. I pull her towards me, cupping her face in my left hand, doing something naughty with my right. We claw at each other for a few moments hungrily devouring each other. It ends with my holding a tangle of her hair, gasping for breath. Her teeth leave a faint red ellipse on my neck. I feel her breath pulsing against my throat in perfect synchrony with my own.

“Even though we can’t be together I want you to know something,” Jackie whispers in my ear. I feel her pulling away and it’s like gravity subliming away into nothing. “I am going to go home and masturbate for an hour thinking about you.

We kiss again, long slow and powerful. The raving cannibalism is gone, this is more like patiently quenching a deep thirst. I don’t want it to end but even now, face to face with this mysterious siren in my arms I know that it will and it must. When she pulls away my hand slides from her collarbone to her chin and then caresses nothing but the summer breeze. She winks at me and turns to leave. It’s the last time I hear her outside of the classroom.

“Dulce Periculum, baby.”

Later that night, towards the end of my shift, I get an interesting request via my radio.

“804, can you meet me in the brickyard?” I recognize the voice. It’s Ned. Ned used to be on Student Patrol when I first started. Now he’s a cop, a rookie but still a cop. I confirm with a 10-4 and a smile and chug my away over to meet him.

“Been a while, young man.” Ned’s 28. He was in the Marine Corps before he came back to school.

“Yes sir,” I say. “What can I do for you?”

“Anything you feel like sharing?” he asks. My fear impulse twitches off but I wrestle it down.

“Nothing comes to mind,” I lie. Ned just smiles.

Oh Christ he knows something. Ned’s a lot of things but he’s sharp as a fucking nanotube hypodermic. I am about to get pricked.

“I notice you’re out of uniform,” he says. He looks down meaningfully at my attire. “Not wearing a hat would get you a verbal warning back when I was 801.” Last year Ned was running Student Patrol as the senior officer. He knew the campus better than anyone.

“I’m a little surprised,” he said. “I mean you took your lunch break at midnight and then 20 minutes later some girl out for a run hears laughing from inside the gym. Apparently some people were doing a little skinny dipping.”

“Guess that’s what all the fuss was about. I was over at Wood at the time.”

“I bet,” Ned smiled. “So imagine my surprise as I was looking around the pool when I found this.” My hat appears and lands at my feet. I stare at it for a long time not daring to pick it up. It isn’t personalized or anything but I am the only one working tonight. Circumstantial or not this is a damning bit of evidence.

“Interesting,” I say. Ned and I lock eyes for a moment. He’s smiling but he’s always been hard to read. Anger and happiness have exactly the same precursor expressions.

“You need to get some better hair gel,” he says finally. “Makes it look like your hair is wet.” I don’t say anything or move a muscle. I have just been busted open like a condom full of nitro. Yet no handcuffs or Miranda rights seem to be forth coming.

“You have a good night, Seth.” Ned saunters off looking like ten times as much of a badass as I could hope to be. “Hope you had fun with your girl,” he fires over his shoulder.

“She’s just a friend,” I whisper. Ned’s too far away to hear my reply or the scrape of my hat on brick. I still have two hours to kill before the end of my shift and already my mind is racing. Of course I dwell on Jackie for a bit and what she said about soul mates and how that’s one thing we really get to choose on our own.

So of course my mind turns to Natalie, the latest in an endless iteration of self-inflicted torments. While Jackie’s just left my life at least she did so on good terms and I never doubted the outcome. With Natalie it was always different, some false hope refused to die no matter how many fights, no matter how many bad or brazen outcomes. There was torment in not knowing, and refusing to settle things by just letting her go.

Perhaps things would have turned out differently if I knew then I had only wait another two years before my soulmate returned to me.

The thing is dead, long live the thing...

2009-06-20T02:34:00.004-04:00

So my beta-reading task is complete and man I am fucking glad to be done with it. Editing is a multi-layered activity and might even merit recognition as a meta-talent. Writing is so much simpler in so many ways.

When I design a story I am the lord and master of the universe. I don't just lay the bricks and plant the seeds of my garden I whip them out of the cosmos, fully formed with ribs intact. Whole worlds, cultures and journeys coalesce from the bricked off catacombs of my conscious mind and words escape into reality through my fingertips.

Writing is awesome, and I constantly tell myself I need to do more with it, immerse myself deeper, obsess even further over that one killer line, that singular phrase which will elevate an interesting read to the caliber of literature that haunts my dreams and causes me dissatisfaction with my brain in its current form.

Yes I know that was one giant sentence/paragraph but that's license baby, suck it if you don't like it.

Now editing, well there's a pickle I don't want in my pot. Editing is like playing an action game with a non-destructible environment. You can nudge and explore, poke into the secret hidey holes left by the author and pillage whatever hidden treasures you may find. But you can't change the rules, the scope or the tone of it all.

That's what bothers me. Sometimes a suggestion just isn't as good as a sledgehammer, and sometimes you don't have to hide the fucking hammer 5 caves deep behind a thousand armored gun emplacements. It's maddening, the inertia and infrastructure to which you are confined. Reading is different, you can drop a book or close a browser at any time.

Editing demands getting your hands dirty, pausing to scoop and scrutinize, point fingers at soft spots in the apple and scream when a stone is left unturned. It is poetry to create and poison to execute one's duty upon another's fantasy.

Sheer effort is not enough, mere spell checking and syntax algorithm's do not suffice. You only get the output but have to suggest changes to the underlying code, the real binary shit behind the glossy GUI of the work. I am exhausted, mentally and physically from tearing my teeth through a mere 7300 words.

I truly pity whatever soul bears the misfortune of digesting 300,000 or more of mine.

Something silly for the stumble folks...

2009-06-19T10:07:00.001-04:00

What more can I say?

Week 19 Update: Losing ground

2009-06-18T22:45:00.003-04:00

Fuck!

Fucking fuckity fuck fucks!

I had such high hopes for week 19, especially since week 18 was such a pisser of a back slide. Yet here it is, Thursday night and it's the first time I have made it to the gym all week.

Granted Monday I was still recovering from a steak/beer/adrenaline fueled weekend and sleep deprivation.

Tuesday I wanted to spend time with the wife and daughter because they had been at the beach since Friday.

Yesterday I just plain punked out because I didn't feel like busting my muscle fibers for a few hours then coming home to the backup report AND two hours of work so I just spent my time sitting at my desk and watching the daily show on hulu while I wittled away at 20+ servers.

But today, despite it being hellacious and grandiose in its grotesquery, I managed to haul out my resolve, shake loose the moth balls and suffer mightily in the pursuit of fitness. That sentiment rings a little hollow considering the abysmal quality of my diet over the past few days. Luckily I still have a 13000 MC buffer which still gives me about 24 days before I start falling behind the average.

It's amazing how I find myself in the same situation yet again, not even 10% of the way through the project, and how gods damned easy it is to fall behind and not be able to catch up. Pathetic sounding as it may be that's sort of a recurring them in my life since graduating college. Years pass with little to show for them and as galling as it is I still find it nearly impossible to counter 'just getting by' with meaningful events and useful activity like writing.

However I have hauled out some notebooks and started working earnestly on the sci-fi epic yet again. I try to make sure I write at least SOMETHING every day and when creativity fails I transcribe/edit what I have written previously.

It's amazing how after 7 years of intermittent work and nearly constant thought about this piece of literary history I intend to compose some parts are pristine and glorious as I wrote them so long ago. Others have to be picked apart for choice phrases or ideas and largely immolated to make room for better and bigger ideas.

Structure is still a massive problem since about half the story is written in present tense and the other half was conceived as a past tense endeavor. No matter how hard I try it seems like I always default to intermingling the two and its hell to catch and repair as I go.

At any rate, progress continues but not tonight.

Tonight I am Beta-reading a short story for one Peter Watts. I wish I could share the details but alas I cannot.

Proof of God Video Addendum

2009-06-18T09:25:00.005-04:00

Here's your embedded goodness.

I also started the channel "Keippernicus" so if anyone wants to subscribe there's still a chance that you could be the first.

Two comments already, probably both from seeing the links over in the comments of Pharyngula.

***Update, I now have 2 subscribers as well. Huzzah! We'll see how long that lasts but I will laugh my ass off if I accidentally become a youtube personality. Everyone who gives a rats should probably watch the video here because it looks a lot better when its not embedded and you can rate all over it if you like.

Sweet.

Oh good they proved it...nyaaaaaat!

2009-06-17T15:45:00.007-04:00

200 Posts and this one's a winner!

Thanks once again to PZ Myers for bringing me to inanity via the straight and narrow.

Check this stupid gang bang of nonsense out at: http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/thinkaboutit.php

You start on the 'think about it' screen where you are presented with 4 choices, shown here.

So we have a diagram of 4 possible choices. We'll start bottom right and choose 'I don't care'

Result:
Wow that was easy, they just gave up. Though to be fair the main page of the 'proof' section claims that it does not provide persuasion just logic. I thought this was going to be a challenge but...lets try some other options.

Both 'I don't know' and 'trust does not exist' lead to the same stupid question, posted here.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict this sort of minimalist strong arming is going to dominate the whole proof section. After all if you don't know whether or not absolute truth exists you are forced either admit that it does or go back to the main screen. No argument, no discussion, binary answers to really bad questions.

Now the final of the 4 choices is top left, sitting in for good information we are forced to admit that 'absolute truth exists.' I should amend that its a ridiculous choice but I always liked to diagram the choose your own adventure books to see where your path would inevitably lead.

Allow me to elaborate one step further as, at this point, I have not looked at any of the questions afterwards but I can predict that this whole thing is some variant of what my childhood self dubbed 'a loopy funnel.' We all know where the proof supposedly goes, the only question is how the choices we make or answers we provide will get us there.

In the two or three CYOA games that I plotted out there were certain situations you could run into from multiple paths. One such, that always stuck with me, was walking past a bubbling mud hole where you could jump in, rub some on wounds, throw in a coin or keep walking. And this same stupid mudhole was after a cave, inside the enchanted forest and along the path to the ocean.

Let's see how things progress from here, shall we. If you go with 'Absolute Truth' you come to this screen and get to begin the journey to 'prove' god exists. Heigh-ho, I can't wait.

Let's see how Step 1 enriches our lives, shall we?

******************

I was going to do this point by point but that turned into WAY to many screenshots so I will just diagram it out for you in simple terms and throw a few caps in along the way.

Here's the basic gist of the 'proof' you'll have to click on the image to make any sense of it because it goes across 3 screens.

I know it looks tiny but that image is 3000 pixels long.

The basic format is actually far simpler than I envisioned. Lamentably I was ABSOLUTELY correct in my presupposition that its just a bunch of forced choices. No loops, no redundancies and absolutely no elegance to the whole thing.

Wait, that sounds about right for religious thinking.

Anyway things are pretty tame up until the last part, after step 7 you get a teaser for the penultimate and final proof.

And finally we arrive at...ah fuck it here's the ultra disappointing reveal...

Goats and gonads what a mother lovin' waste of time. That's not a proof its not even a sound idea let alone earth shattering or mind-bending.

I'll get to why it's stupid in a second (besides the obvious) but you have to love the irony of this whole test saying that the immutability of physical law proves the existence of a supernatural deity unbeholden to any such laws.

Actually, I think I am just going to make a video with Camtasia and rip this thing to shreds.

Week 18 Update: Injury and misery

2009-06-09T23:19:00.003-04:00

It was a sad week, just a hair under my typical quota. 3.550 MC which isn't terrible and it would have been much better but my frickin' knee flipped out on me on Friday.

I got in a decent 1500 on Tuesday, 1200 on Thursday and I was well on my way to somewhere in between on Friday when a constant ache in my knee started to fuck up my concentration. Around 600 it got to the point where I couldn't stand the thought of keeping it up.

Sacrificing a body part, especially one connected to my quadriceps (my biggest source of calorie output other than my brain perhaps) just isn't worth losing for a single workout.

The good news is that I have already banged out 2450 for the week which means another good workout or 3 decent walks will get me back up to speed. Hopefully I can get a couple good ones in before Friday and the drunken debauchery of this weekend won't offset my progress too badly.

I plan to consume roughly 5 MC of alcoholic beverages and the only exercise I will be getting will include carrying my computer roughly 50 feet, swigging said alcoholic beverages and jumping out of my chair to scream obscenities during the LAN party portion of the festivities.

Good times, good times.

Don't these people know better?

2009-06-09T10:26:00.003-04:00

Oh Todd Friel, sad sad man.

When you throw up a poll on the internet, the wide open non-scientific internet there are really only two possible outcomes:

Your target audience gets to agree with itself
You get crashed by 4chan or Pharyngula.

Luckily Mr. Friel's idiotic radio program received the latter. Congrats on your #2 Mr. Friel.

This is why you should be nice to atheists, because we are fucking scary.

Chuckleheads on Youtube...

2009-06-08T15:16:00.004-04:00

***Updated tonight at 1032pm***

So about two years ago I stumbled across the following video on Youtube:

10 questions that every intelligent question must answer

It's an excellent video pointing out some of the more glaring problems with christianity and the christian faith in general. The video is associated with the ever popular whywontgodhealamputees.com and godisimaginary.com

And it was with a sense of mirth that I stumbled across this next video which seeks to refute the original video and fails miserably to do so.

Now I comment, rate and favorite videos pretty often and I am occasionally guilty of spouting off some bullshit for no good reason. I've reviewed some of my comments and found them hasty, tacky, stupid or incoherent but its pretty rare that anyone actually bothers to reply.

Not so today, dear readers. The creator of the video got a little nasty with me about the issue so I will post my original comment and his replies in chronological order for your amusement.

Toledosteal: (that's me) Failed to answer question #1. If running the universe involves miraculously healing SOME ailments then on at least one occasion this would require healing an ailment that is outside the scope of the human immune system/genetic inability to regenerate limbs.

You can't say god heals sick people without healing amputees because sometimes sick people get better on their own. The point is that miracles do not happen or amputees would spontaneously heal if god wanted them to. Ass

Reply #1

Patrickdunnevant: ///The point is that miracles do not happen or amputees would spontaneously heal if god wanted them to.///

Well, that's a very important final clause: "if god wanted them to."

Suppose he doesn't. What does your argument do then?

Riposte #1 (from me)

Very simple, I suppose god doesn't want to heal people despite infinite power/skill/intelligence on his part.

That makes your god a giant asshole answerable to every second of human misery throughout existence. I am glad your god doesn't exist because if he did then all of 'his creation' would be a giant nightmare for a few years and then an eternity of obesiance or agony.

Lucky for us rational folk you guys are wrong.

Reply #2

Then I suppose you are also a "giant asshole", too. After all, what in the world are you doing to fund research that would help amputees? Are you doing everything in your power to help people like that, or are you sitting passively on the sideline?

You certainly can do a great deal to help, but I suppose you merely "don't want" to make that extra financial commitment, right?

You evil, evil person.

***(part 2)

I got an idea. How about, instead of blowing up propane tanks like an idiot, you donate that money you used for destruction to a medical technology organization instead?

Riposte #2

Three things:

You're being spiteful instead of turning the other cheek.

I don't donate money to fund amputee healing research but I have donated bone marrow 4 times in the last 3 years. It hurts like an unholy bitch slap and I am sore for a month afterwards but its something almost anyone can do to help.

Also I am not an omnipotent deity. If I were then I would certainly do everything in my power to fix this rotten mess of a planet, end human suffering and prove how lame your idea of god is

***(part2)

Also every time I reply to your comments I am adding a 1 star rating to this video. Just doing my part for the greater good.

********************
Updated comments here:

Reply3:How am I being spiteful in pointing out the obvious conclusion of your argument? And perhaps you should check out Matthew 23.

Well, that's a start. But there's still a great deal that you obviously COULD be doing. And since you aren't doing all of that, you are therefore evil by your own logic. It doesn't matter that you're not omnipotent. That doesn't mean anything. What matters is that you COULD do something, and you choose not to. Evil.

Out of curiosity, how would you "end human suffering?"

Part2: (pretty frickin' annoying how short 500 characters really is)
Thanks for admitting that you're the atheist equivalent of a creationist votebot, Toledosteal. At least you're honest in spite of your despicable evil nature.

Right? Or will you renounce your argument?

Riposte3: Calling me an idiot and a destructive time waster (propane tanks cost about 5 bucks each) is being spiteful. Calling me an asshole for any reason is spiteful.

I am doing something vital for humanity, not for amputees but for people that need help via a healthy blood forming system I am there.

By calling me evil you are also calling god evil, you're really to lump in the big guy just to take down a random youtube atheist? I am human, not evil. You and everyone else is evil by that logic too.

Part2: I'm not votebotting, I told you I only vote when answering your replies. That's what ratings are for. And I believe in honesty which is why i disbelieve in your and every other god. Also, to end human suffering would be simple, meet all human needs and ensure justice and fairness for all people.

If you're omnipotent how F'in hard would that be? The fact that your god would send a single soul to hell is proof beyond doubt that god is invented by people. Because only people could be so cruel

Part3: Also, the 500 character format is impossible to respond adequately. Send me a PM and we can take it to long form email if you care to continue this.

Reply4: What ratings are for is to give your opinion about the video in question, not to continually do in such a way as to lower the overall ranking. You are indeed votebotting.

How would you "meet all human needs?" Would you put everyone in a world and make it impossible to do bad things? Where does free will fit into the equation? How would you ensure justice and fairness for all without, say, divine judgment, which you seem to take issue with, or removing human will entirely?

It's not that simple.

Riposte5: Your logic was to apply my argument about GAWD to ME, a non-omnipotent human. That is where you seem to be missing the point.

And all I admit is that everyone on earth is human. Your deity is remarkably human as well. So how about instead of your little false dichotomy strawman I conclude that because god shares the characteristics of man he/she/it must in fact be human.

Reply6: The fact that God is omnipotent means absolutely nothing in this argument.

Your argument is still that because he isn't doing everything he possibly can to stop evil from happening, he is therefore evil. Using subject substitution, because YOU aren't doing everything in your power to stop evil, you are also evil. Though an omnipotent being could do much more than you could, the fact that you're doing practically nothing says a great deal.

Back up your claim about how God is "remarkably human."

I cannot comment because I guess there's a limit on how many times you can comment in a certain period of time to cut down on spam/trolling so I'll wait a bit and see how that goes.

Oh good its back on, things are getting a bit muddled now but i'll keep it chronological.

Riposte6: Omnipotence is a key factor because unlike me god doesn't have needs/a job/a wife that take up time. If he has infinite power he should be able to manage creation and still have infinite power left over for extra stuff.

If I had infinite power I would cure every disease RIGHT NOW. I would even cure your inability to think critically.

What are you doing that's so great for humanity? You think you're saving souls by making youtube videos? Really, what else you got?

(response to the jab about being a votebot)
Ratings are there to indicate quality and in your case lack thereof.

You wouldn't have to take care of everything just the basics of biology and education. If someone tries to commit a crime you don't let them carry it out, if they try to rape you prevent it and fix whatever psychosis they have to cause that behavior in the first place.

The only reason faith is exalted by you theists is because a real god wouldn't need it. Without a real deity you HAVE to have faith because it's all fake.

Spicy stuff, right? I hope that C word replies because I would love to eviscerate him without the constraints of 500 character nonsense and filet his brain for the entertainment of my 3 loyal fans. (Mary, Veko and Nats you guys rock!)

Also I did check out Mathew 23 and there's an awful lot of shit to wade through. This verse caught my eye for Irony's sake.

²⁷^AX)">(AX) "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like^AY)">(AY) whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and^AZ)">(AZ) all uncleanness. ²⁸So you also^BA)">(BA) outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of^BB)">(BB) hypocrisy and lawlessness.

********End update

That's the state of things right now.

Here's what cracks me up about the whole thing from the outset. This chucklehead patrickdunnevant decides he's going to refute the video but just dodges questions, ignores facts and distorts reality throughout.

For example in 'answering' the first question he basically says "well yeah god coulda fixed them amputees but he don't want to"

But the author of the reply video also talks about how medical professionals believe in miracles and all this crap just like he does. While I am highly skeptical of the reliability of his statistics he puts forth the claim that 3/4 doctors believe in miracles.

Really.

Now as the son of physician I can argue that even in the deep dirty south it is unlikely that 3/4 doctors believe that god lends a hand during surgery or highlights deformities during xrays or anything like that. If you lump in nurses, aides, reception people and sales reps for the big pharm then I have no doubt you'd be a lot closer.

But patrickdunnevant ignores the simple, inescapable premise of the original video. Amputees are never healed spontaneously, there is absolutely no current method of a human reproducing or regenerating a limb.

Humans however CAN naturally recover from stuff like Cancer, heart disease, kidney stones, tumors, difficult births etc. But NOT amputation.

The claim that miraculous healings have occurred when it comes to stuff like Cancer, heart disease, kidney stones, tumors, difficult births etc is a moot point because there is some probability that the body will win a few of these battles despite a grim prognosis. If anyone ever regenerated a limb that would be darn near miraculous.

But it has never happened and without some advanced medical technology to bump things along will never happen in reality. We as organisms simply do not possess the means or ability to regenerate an arm or a leg. It's a fundamental part of our biology just like we can't breathe underwater or fly through the air.

"But god COULD do it, he just don't want to..." This is not an argument. God could have prevented the holocaust but he didn't not because he is evil or lazy or impotent but because he is IMAGINARY.

There's no getting around it and if patrickdunnevant had half brain he'd stop rationalizing his way into looking like a tool and figure that out.

Also if anyone was curious about his comment about blowing up propane tanks he was referring to the these:

Convenant Eyes...muahahaha

2009-06-02T16:33:00.003-04:00

A client asked me to call these guys to make sure it was compatible with their setup. I checked out their site and it was hilarious.

I mean with a picture like this...

Oh man it was funny talking to tech support about what kind of porn/images their software will filter out.

Gingi Edmonds is a sociopath.

2009-06-02T12:11:00.011-04:00

I submit proof of her status here and now with a link to an article penned by her regarding the fate of one Dr. George Tiller. The article was written one day after said doctor was murdered during church services, just in case you haven't been paying attention.

Several things caught my eye about this craven witch's attempt to justify no moral outrage over the man's murder.

In addition to being a hit man for hire, Tiller also offered funerary services to mothers that paid him to off their kids. While most clinics in the nation are content to just rape and scrape, Tiller took his practice leaps and bounds beyond the norm and peddled abortion packages that included photographing, footprinting, handprinting, baptism, cremation, and arrangement for autopsy.

Oh, god forbid the man actually help his patients (the mom's) by sparing them the trouble of making arrangements seperately. Not every baby that was aborted was brought in by some cracked out mom on meth laughing about gettin' her baby sucked out. Late term abortions are often carried out because they represent a threat to the mother.

So finding out your 8 month baby will kill you unless it is aborted is bad, having to make the choice to save your own life is worse and then wanting to see that it is interred according to your wishes before you have even seen it's little face is probably a fucking nightmare from which I am glad to have been spared. Gingi, you cunt, why can't you think about anything besides your own miserable preconceptions?

My second point of contention comes from this section:

Murder is murder, and it is something that we pro-lifers inherently deplore. But I can't help but note - and my history is rusty so pardon me here - I'm trying to remember, did anyone mourn Lee Harvey Oswald when Jack Ruby gunned him down?

Allow me to translate this segment into rational person thought: Group A abhors action M except when Action M is committed against practioners of Action M.

Allow me to translate this into how my brain parses such a nonsensical statement: I Gingi Edmonds, pro-life cunt, do hereby announce that my hypocrisy is not some quiet error in judgement but a bold and contradictory proof that my brain does not work correctly. After all how can you inherently deplore an act SELECTIVELY.

If I denounce racism *except against people who are themselves racist* then I am a hypocrite. The way to unravel this is simple, and Ms. Edmonds the sea witch could take a hint by applying some logic to her own views. IE racists are assholes, however being an asshole racist does not justify asshole racism towards you (the asshole racist) but nor does it preclude the fact that you are a racist asshole.

I mean, think about it. Someone just shot a Nazi guard manning the gas chamber at Aushwitz. I should feel bad about this? George Tiller the Baby Killer's acts are every bit as vile as the Nazi war criminals who were hunted down, tried, and sentenced after they participated in the "legal" murder of the Jews that fell into their hands.

Asinine, short-sighted, never-read-a-fucking-psychology-or-history-book drivel! You say you oppose murder, inherently, yet you can just shrug it off so easily? I daresay you ought to amend your beliefs and opinions or you SHOULD oppose the murder of a nazi warcriminal. After all murder is murder, right Gingi?

No, because your opinion trumps rationality and fairness and any sort of intellectual effort to actually grasp the complexities of the abortion debate. Sorry Gingi wingi, don't hurt your little bwain cells by actually using them.

Now nevermind the implications of groupthink or the fact that most of the nazi's who committed warcrimes were every day folk I just wanted to further elucidate the hypocrisy before we reach the crown jewel of Gingi's stupidity.

Instead of scrambling to feverishly denounce the pro-life community ("Anyone who thinks Tiller's death is in any way a positive thing is not a true pro-lifer"... huh?) we should be looking at a very serious fact: If every single pro-lifer who is currently falling all over themselves to publicly mourn the "loss" of this abortionist displayed just a fraction of that outrage over just ONE of the children Tiller murdered on a regular nine to five, Baby Killer Tiller would have been put out of business long ago and he would not be dead today.

Yes this article goes on but this part bears special mention. Tiller was not a murderer, period. He was a doctor. Doctors perform procedures and prescribe medicines for the health of their patients. What the anti-choice folk don't realize is that bronze age conceptions of life/death, right/wrong and good/evil should not be universally applied to anyone who disagrees. America is not a christian nation, we are bound by secular law and not your craven theocratic nonsense.

Now I acknowledge that their should be limits and checks on abortion (as there are with ANY other medical procedure) but forcing a woman to bear a child that will put her in personal danger is wrong. Forcing a teenage girl who got knocked up by her boyfriend because her parents wouldn't spring for birth control is WRONG. After all if a mother does not want a child what hope does that poor child have without a mother's love?

It gets worse. Much worse.

I know this is a huge loss for Tiller's family and they need our prayer and support. I'm sure they are grieving bitterly, and it is heartbreaking to think of the pain that they must be feeling. It is ultimately tragic that Tiller did not have an opportunity to properly prepare his soul to face his Maker. Unless some miracle happened, he left this life with his hands drenched with innocent blood.

So much worse. Yes let's console the family by posting screeds saying that he deserved it (Tiller's family can fucking read your article, she devil) and that having not 'prepared his soul' is now burning in the anguish of eternal hellfire. It's dumbfounding she can so brazenly condemn this man for acts of supposed barbarity and then righteously announce that god will allow him to suffer for an infinite period of time. Even if every aborted fetus came to term, lived to be 100 years old and suffered being beaten or raped every day for that span of time the misery inflicted on a single soul in hell would be infinitely worse and for an infinitely longer time.

Yes, the wrath of Gingi Edmonds is tame compared to that of her imaginary sociopathic deity.

The man chose his fate the moment he dismembered his first infant. I'm not embarrassed to say what the punishment for the crime is anymore than I'm embarrassed to admit that child killing is a crime.

And so much much worse... Let's take another look at the supposed mercy of the christian god. During Noah's year long boat ride the 'source of morality' drowned every human being, man, woman, child and unborn alike. Put your fucking god on trial if you're so against abortion.

And yes, somehow it gets EVEN worse than I could believe possible.

Did I want him to be gunned down in church - even a hypocritical, Molech-worshiping fraud of a church like the one he was attending while shot? No. I would have much preferred him being tried and convicted in a court of law that is consistent with medical science and personhood as defined in our Constitution. We can prevent the atrocious acts of violence against abortionists by holding them accountable to their actions.

Yeah, we can protect doctors who perform abortions (side note what is with dickhole religious nuts throwing 'ist' onto words they don't like to describe people. darwinist, evolutionist, abortionist...lame) all we have to do is prosecute them for murder. Take a look at their orderly medical records to prove their guilt and lock them away or have the government execute them for us. Not safe, not freedom, not in my fucking country, bitch.

There is no doubt that Tiller deserved to be executed for his crimes. I just would have preferred a state sanctioned lethal injection, hanging, firing squad, electric chair, good old fashioned stoning, what have you.u.

What odious pit of hell coughed you forth, gingi edmonds. What vile pool of satan's smegma did you climb out of to plague this world? How in the motherfuck can you A) Justify death penalty but not Abortion, B) Consider 'good old fashioned' stoning better than being shot to death?

You are sick as fuck if you honestly think that anyone deserves to be bludgeoned to death from flying rocks.

Observe, if you dare, what a stoning looks like.

If that video doesn't sicken and scare the shit out of you I suggest you go talk to a psychologist.

I mean, I personally would not shoot an abortionist, but who am I to impose my morality on someone else? If you are against shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one, right? Hmm, suddenly pro-choice rhetoric doesn't sound so warm and fuzzy and virtuous, does it?

Thank sweet buddha that this is almost over. Gingi you ass, what fucking world do you live in where the odious spew that comes out of your mouth and your fingers actually makes sense?

People like you are why people like me despise organized religion and its practioners with such passion. You are an evil woman for suggesting that murder, stoning and hell are all justice in your eyes. And you make these claims simply for political points despite the fact that a man is dead for the crime of doing his job.

Tiller was killed by a pro-choice act. Pro-lifers need make no apologies. Both men are guilty of bloodshed and this tragedy is a sad but all-too-real testament to the biblical truth that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

Finally we reach the end. I bolded two phrases here because they stand out to me. Reading this article has made me sick to my stomach and I am tired of even processing the words because to do is causing me physical harm. I do not think that pro-lifers should apologize, they should examine. Really examine their beliefs and what they truly hold as moral and virtuous. Should it not give you pause that you want fetuses to live but are prepared to allow full grown people to die whether by vengenance, the state or some divine retribution?

I empathize and I know the idea of baby-murder turns the stomach of every rational human being but fetuses are not humans. The life of the mother should take precedent over her unborn children and a victim of rape should not have to endure the curse of raising her attacker's child.

The second bold phrase is there not as a call to examine but a call to action. Doctors, even abortion doctors, have saved more lives than every priest of every sect who ever walked this earth. Medicine, anti-biotics in particular, has allowed the human population to swell and grow like never before. Literally half of everyone on earth could not survive without our current understanding of science and the progress it has brought us.

Only claims of indignation and scorn can come to those who deny that secular knowledge is a far greater force for good than any religion cooked up on a mountain or through the smoke of some chemical hallucinogen. Science, knowledge and rational thought are the pillars upon which our civilization stands.

Will you side with those who are laying the bricks or those with the hammers, wearing crucifixes around their necks?

Day 120: 4 months of FUCK YEAH

2009-06-01T00:51:00.002-04:00

The journey so far:

120 days since Feb. 1st.
62 gym workouts
100+ miles walked around the neighborhood

Net loss so far 18 pounds since Feb 1st. Net loss since last year is approximately 32 pounds.

Now I can say that but it doesn't really convey a tangible sense of the progress so far. Here's a little math and then a more visual example.

1 pound of butter (4 sticks) carries 3200 calories. If you're up to scratch on your nutrition you know that one pound of fat has about 3500 calories. The difference comes from some water and milk solids in said butter.

Now 18 pounds of fat in the body are sure to include some water, protein and bloodvessels so we'll use it as an analog for body fat. 18 pounds of butter is 72 sticks of net fat loss over the span of 16 weeks.

That's about .6 sticks of butter PER DAY for about 4 months.

Oh and here's a picture of 20 pounds of fat for comparison.

Mmm, bacon. At my current level of progress, despite the 2 week slow down, I could probably live on bacon and still lose weight.

People leave weird comments...

2009-05-30T00:22:00.002-04:00

This one's a bit old because I lost it during a recent swath of moving data from Rorschach over to Octane.

The original posting was related to a Microsoft Video about what life will be like in 2019. Check it out here.

I know you'll have to click on the pic to see it in all its glory but it is definitely something that caught me off guard for sheer WTFness. Enjoy!

80's style FAIL!!!

2009-05-30T00:16:00.002-04:00

Here's a doozy of a picture I came across while scanning some of my old childhood memories.

So many things wrong here it's not even funny.

Microsoft is full of jerks and Live Search blows!!!

2009-05-29T00:08:00.005-04:00

I submit the following example, a little bit close to home perhaps but I was just about furious when I did a little experiment earlier today. First, a smidgen of back story to set the tone for this curious anomaly.

My desk sports a triple screen display, 3x 19 inch Hanns-G monitors on a horizontal span. That makes my desktop area something like 3840x1024 pixels. My job necessitates keeping up a MINIMUM of one firefox window, one Remote desktop session to our server for our CRM software as well as keeping track of email, instant messages (also work related) and any programs or windows I happen to need for experimenting or testing.

For a long time I thought two screens was enough. I was wrong.

Today, a client called in with an issue that was happening through IE but not Firefox and I wanted to see if it would affect my own experience. So I slapped up IE, took a look and out of habit I decided to check on the blog. I didn't have it bookmarked or anything so I just typed 'at the risk of being too cynical' ***That's the title of the blog*** and the live search came up totally and utterly empty.

What in the black bedeviled hills of hell? The exact same phrase from Google always pops up an entry as the first result. So, in the spirit of experimentation I tried the same thing through Firefox. End result?

Google Search:

MSFT Search:

Great scraping lolbutter what am I to think of this. I know that Google and MSFT are blood rivals in the search/ads world but still. Now I was really interested so I tried a phrase that would likely turn up the blog no matter what simply due to its unique quality.

This time the phrase was "Gigacalorie Project"

Google:

MSFT:

Oh come on you freaks that's not even fair. I was so pissed that I checked every single one of the 198 search results and does my little blog appear anywhere? Hell no.

Finally I tried a phrase that is unmistakeably and permanently tied to this blog.

Keippernicus:

No screen shot because it only turns up links to A: Youtube, B: Sites where I have made comments under the name "Keippernicus"

Now mudslinging is fine and dandy but I find this a little short-sighted even for Microsoft. I get that they are interested in keeping their ad revenue stream going but hiding access to their own user's personal blogs? Really?

Guess what, MSFT. You just lost the game.

Nudity on Youtube

2009-05-28T13:06:00.003-04:00

I just don't get it Youtube. You can have all the body parts present and its nudity but not censored. You can have girls playing with their breasts playfully prior to the breast exam but post the same girls doing the same thing without the exam and it's censored. Penile manipulation, testicle man handling and vaginal penetration is all ok as long as its posted as a medical thing.

Yet you can also have tons of scantily clad females doing webcam dances wearing thongs and see through shirts, actin' all slutty and that's cool.

I just don't get censorship, yet despite all that I am glad that youtube does it simply because it would turn into a porn site otherwise. Or maybe they could keep it R but not X rated like Metacafe.

Breast Exam

Vagina Exam

Penile Exam

Medical Fingering

Ball Cancer Check

Something for the stumblers...

2009-05-27T23:01:00.003-04:00

Something a little different for the geekier side.

Not listed but still worth mentioning is the Stumbleupon toolbar. You'll want to snag Firefox first, my favorite browser (and I have tested all of them to some extent.) Be sure to give the blog/this post a thumbs up if you like the list.

23 things no IT guy or girl should ever live without.

Azureus/Vuze - Ah, the wellspring from which my torrents flow. I used to use uTorrent but find the interface and performance of Vuze just kick tail.
Open Office - Mo' bettah than MS Office unless you're using some proprietary CRM or PM software that requires Outlook for mail or letter merging from Word. I love that it's a full featured software suite that's tiny compared to its bloated MSFT counterpart.
AVG - It's free anti-virus software. What's not to like about that. It's also fairly unobtrusive and acts as a vigilant sentinel without spamming you with notifications or eating all your RAM while you're trying to work. Not as good at killing as I would prefer but it serves as an excellent vaccine against viruses and rootkits
Malwarebytes - My single favorite Anti-Malware program EVER. Only about 3 megabytes but packs the punch of a tactical nuke in close quarter combat.
Ad-Aware - The spyware equivalent of AVG. Also free and better as a deterrent than a cleanup tool.
CCleaner - This program is tight. Scrapes all the junk out of your system and cleans up the registry with little or no fuss. Really useful if you're cleaning up your box or shredding a lot of programs that leave crap behind.
Smart Defrag - Faster than windows BS defragging capability and can be scheduled or run continuously in the background.
SIW - Useful for spying on people...err, I mean for digging out information about a system's mobo, pci devices, memory capacity and type and passwords.
Asterisk Password - A limited range of functions but really good for dumb asses that forget their password to certain programs. Also neat for spying though I would never do that myself...really.
Logmein - This program is a staple of my existence. It's really handy for keeping track of all the systems that I have to look after or maintain (ie those of friends, family and friends of friends who don't seem to understand the concept of work boundaries)
Real VNC - Another tiny ass kicker, this is best for remote access within a LAN. I install it on every PC I work on so all I need is a power cord and some Cat6 cable to access stuff in the office.
Crossloop - Handy for situations where you can't pre-install Logmein or VNC. Relatively easy to walk people through in a pinch.
7-Zip - My favorite compression tool. Try it, use it, love it! Or don't, this is fucking America and you can do whatever.
VLC Media Player - All I can say is you need to try this for movies, HD or otherwise because it fucking rocks the house.
Robocopy - Windows Resource Kit Tools - NTbackup is a rusty spoon that ladles out your data to a backup drive. Robocopy is a tungsten-bladed nuclear powered steam shovel that muscles your stuff at relativistic speed. Super handy when combined with either Dropbox or Hamachi for an easy, reliable remote backup solution.
Hamachi - Need a VPN in about 2 minutes and don't have/want/need the hardware. All you need is Hamachi and an internet connection. Useful for intranet over the web, COD4 games, remote backups with robocopy, and much much more.
Ventrilo - Good for gaming but also good for remote meetings/conference calls in a pinch.
Filezilla - The best FTP client available. The server is pretty good but the client is just unmatched.
Google Chrome - I'm going to elaborate on this more so than the other programs because every dude on earth can benefit. I like Firefox much better but Chrome has a neat feature where you can activate an 'incognito' mode that doesn't keep track of history, saved forms or passwords. Best used for porn but other, shadier, pursuits could be sought along this avenue as well. Worth playing with but still not ready to replace Mozilla's warhorse in the browser arena.
GIMP - Free, small (notice a trend) and capable of doing a hell of a lot more photo editing than I will ever need. Much easier than fucking around with MS Paint and cheaper than Photoshop
Virtual PC - Another of my favorites for various reasons. And before anyone starts crying about VMware that's on my linux list. VPC is free, easy to use and handy for software evaluation, discrete data storage without the need for encryption and the saved state feature makes time-limited trial software no obstacle. My primary use of this is evaluating programs from shady parts of the web to see if they're really spyware/trojans. Call it ghetto sandboxing if you will, if everyone used a little more prudence this would be no problem.
Pidgin - Cross platform messenging program. Very useful for keeping tabs on friends that use different IM programs than you are used to.
Dropbox - Free online storage that is accessible from anywhere with excellent download speeds? Hellz yeah! I used to keep a bunch of stuff on our company FTP site in case I needed say, any of the programs on this list all in a handy spot. Now I use dropbox for speed, ease of use and easy customization. I definitely recommend everyone give this a shot for easy access, backing up documents and small files/programs. Also if you sign up via my referral link you get an extra 250 megs for free. Then you can coerce your friends into signing up for additional space up to 5 gigs.

Just click here and install it, takes about 2-3 minutes. Easy money. Also if you really like any of these programs a number are free but its nice for people to donate to the creators or to purchase at least one copy. Free software is wicked awesome and minor contributions can go a long way towards keeping a healthy FOSS ecosystem.

Week 15/16 Update: Still alive, somehow still on track

2009-05-27T01:01:00.003-04:00

I'm too lazy to type this crap out again or copy pasta it for ya but here's a screenie.

I believe I am now in the phase where the sexy aspects of the project have worn off, the cheering crowds at the base of the hill are long behind and I have emerged from the treeline only to stare at a vertical climb that will take another (projected) 56 months to complete.

The attrition of late and suffering motivation are proving to be greater hindrances than anticipated though I am still performing at a comfortable margin above the necessary level. How this is possible I do not know.

Needless to say the effort is ongoing and swinging over into maintenance mode is taking some real adjustments, mental and physical. When you're not excited and seeing that first burst of weightloss its hard to stay supercharged for a protracted period of time. However there is hope and as of today's mad session and extra long walk I am already more than halfway done for the week.

Tomorrow shall bring fresh challenges, perhaps defeat and perhaps still another step towards victory.

The world economy is negatively affecting my sex life.

2009-05-24T13:21:00.003-04:00

Yes the all-pervasive negative effects of a massive economic system undergoing self-correction have managed to find their way into my bedroom/couch/handy countertop spaces. As if the depreciation on the house, fear for my job and general moodiness of the population were not enough.

Allow me to explain for Veko and any hapless stumblers who find themselves on this page.

Right now I am going through the biological experiment I have dubbed The Gigacalorie Project which necessitates burning 3800 calories via cardiovascular exercise per week. This entails 3-4 trips per week to the local YMCA.

Until a few weeks ago this was not a major problem however the local establishment is itself negatively affected by the world recession in highly visible ways. Allow me to enumerate a few of them for you:

The towel service has been indefinitely suspended. Therefore if you swim or shower you must bring your own linens. Also if you sweat enough to merit a little hand towel you are stuck bringing your own.
Excercise classes have been thinned out, some eliminated entirely. The pool schedule has never been freer once they trimmed off 8 of the 22 weekly water aerobics classes. Which is nice but all the flabby people still show up and take up both of the two available lanes. Bastards.
Shower time is limited to 5 minutes, which is fine but they've actually started having people periodically roam through and announce the limit. It's not exactly enforcement but it's enough to kill your enjoyment whilst cleaning.
Finally the worst and most egregious of the cuts has been to the air conditioning. This time last year, close to my failure of the last attempt at a gigacalorie the cardio room was kept around 70 degrees even when the outside ambient was above 90.

Nowadays the outside temp will be in the low 80's and the cardio room hovers around the 88-90 degree mark. I guess that's fine if you don't mind toiling through temperatures that make the third circle of hell seem downright breezy but this has had an immediate detrimental effect on my ability to lose weight.

A month ago I could easily crank out a 1500 calorie workout with exertion but still feeling pretty good once I got half an hour of sedentary fluid reclamation. Now it's a freaking miracle if I can crack 1200 and I feel like asscock for hours after. More on that later.

For now I interject a bit more bitching about the pool situation. Previously going was difficult because of the distribution of water aerobic classes and the constriction of the 2 available lanes. This only lead to three available slots when working out was possible and then there was always the fear that both lanes would be occupied.

Now, with lingering demand for the portly denizens of the indoor pool the schedule appears freer but is totally unpredictable. Somedays there is no one in sight, other days the place is packed to the rafters. It doesn't help that the outdoor pool hasn't opened to relieve some of the pressure for the locals to take their kids to swim.

But I am ok with that. I am no longer a swimmer and have made my peace with that.

Back to the sex life, here's the causal chain that leads from wall-street to my bedroom. In the spirit of brevity I have trunked the first few links into a simpler form.

Economy gets fucked>people spend less money>YMCA gets less revenue, less visitors>YMCA cuts costs to match the lack of funds>AC gets cut>workouts become harder, take longer>longer recovery times are needed to acheive normal operations>since I work out in the evening this narrows the windows when the time/opportunity to get jiggy with my wife are diminished.

Fucking economy!!

The price of connectivity

2009-05-23T01:34:00.004-04:00

Even when you're a cult legend, a top notch artist in a field that eats Legions of soft-science types there is always a danger to be had . . .

I submit the Peter Watts lolcat experience:

102 Days: Can't even keep my damn milestones...

2009-05-12T22:52:00.003-04:00

So it's been a fucked up sort of fortnight. Stretching back over the week I found myself nearly single for a while, crashing my reluctant coworker's pad in raleigh and discussing the finer points of end game raiding whilst put up by a former roomate in Cary.

I have been slack as hell on the project though I remain adamant that last weeks shortfall will be reclaimed in short time. I'm still way above my projected average though its been harder and harder to drag myself out to the gym.

Also my nightly constitutionals just seem to drag on and on. Maybe I need a new neighborhood to tramp around in. Who knows.

I also started a new plan to do some terrestrial modifications to the woods behind my house. It started as an ambitious plan to clean the forest of dangerous poisonous plants, sharp pointy rocks and anything that might harbor the dreaded copperhead. So I started hacking and slashing my way through the foliage and some ideas started creeping into my head about water conservation and some much needed surgery for the yard.

Tomorrow I will make a short video detailing my progress thus far and possibly outlining the scope of the new endeavor. There are a number of obstacles to consider: a giant dead tree and me with no handy way to dismantle it, innumerable rocks, roots and creepers and of course good old fashioned North Carolina RED CLAY. I swear the shit halts time and space whenever a shovel hits it.

Plenty of good fodder for the compost heap at least. Now content yourself with some stats.

Current Status: 66+ MC (projected average is 54.3) Daily average remains in the 600 range and the weekly average is hovering at 4.8 MC.

Also my weight is now about 220 though after the Papa John's it is probably higher. Damn your better ingredients and gut-destroying business model!!!!

A quick word about living in the Southern USA

2009-04-19T15:32:00.001-04:00

Friends there's no escaping the bigotry and the hatred, nor the scornful glares of those people who think their purported moral superiority transcends basic human decency. Even a mild dose of this bullshit is enough to ratchet my mood from slightly anxious to seething cynicism.

An anecdote to highlight my frustration:

Yesterday at a gathering of friends my wife and I shared a conversation with a youngish grandmother, aged around 50 or so.

The event was to commemorate the recovery of a neighbor's daughter whose foot had been crushed in a car accident. The injured girl was projected to be off her feet completely for 20 weeks and at just over 10 was able to hobble around with a brace on.

Sunshine and the cool sweat-covered drinks made the affair pleasant and calm. Though most of those in attendance were strangers I felt like I was in the company of friends. Now the young grandmother was interested in sharing stories of travel and adventure.

She talked about a 6 week journey across 30 states with her grandparents. We spoke of the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas on the honey moon. We shared with this woman the taste of noodle soup in Bangkok, the mangrove swamps of Costa Rica, our various trips to Europe and a certain midnight stroll across the dark continent.

As we shared I made an off hand remark that our honeymoon was last year. Our two and a half year old daughter ran around on the grass making people smile and soaking up attention like a sponge, as usual. The wheels began to turn in the head of our fellow story teller and rather than have her struggle with the implications I explained.

"We were only married last year, and Alex was born before that."

Straight, simple and perfectly mundane.

"But is she your daughter or?" The woman asked.

"As far as I know," I joked. Her expression turned sour and she did not laugh.

From that moment the lady who had spoken with us, who had been delighted to hear about our lives turned utterly indifferent and quickly shifted her attentions to every other party guest EXCEPT for my self, my wife and our daughter.

This is why atheists get angry at christians.

18in4 is BULLSHIT!!!

2009-04-15T23:53:00.002-04:00

You hear me? 18in4 is a scam, a total scam, an utterly vapid attempt to shill people out of their hard earned cash in exchange for false promises and a physical impossibility.

The guy that runs 18in4 is apparently having some success because the mother fucker's ads are showing up on my blag!!!

Let me break down the sheer physical impossibility of this feat:

The Task: Lose 18 lbs of body mass
The Time: 96 hours

Now a guy my size burns roughly 2500 calories per day just to maintain my weight. Over 4 days that adds up to 10,000 calories or a little UNDER 3 pounds of fat even if I ate absolutely nothing.

If you wanted to kill (legitimately) 18 pounds of fat, which is far better to do over the course of a few months instead of days, you would need to burn a NET of 63,000 calories. In 96 hours. That's a freaky ass 656.25 calories PER HOUR for the entire duration assuming no food and no sleep.

For reference during the course of the Gigacalorie project I have burned on average 710 calories per DAY as of day 73 (which incidentally is today) and this has lead to a net weight loss of about 13 pounds.

In order to burn the full 18 lbs you would literally have to be on the treadmill at jogging pace for 96 hours with no food and no sleep and i can't even imagine the collateral damage to your joints, liver, kidneys and sanity by the end of such an evil (though grandiose) plan.

Allow me to reiterate. The 18in4 DIET PLAN IS A PIECE OF SHIT SCAM AND YOU ARE A GULLIBLE ASSHOLE if you fall for it. Yes it's only about 20 bucks but for fuck's sake KEEP YOUR CASH.

But let's consider what would happen if you wanted to lose such an amount of weight in such a short amount of time. While I doubt you could hit the full 18lbs you could probably reasonably burn 3-4 with serious effort and a very limited caloric intake. We're still talking 5 hours of exercise per day or a serious bout of high altitude hiking but that's doable. You could subtract some pounds by lowering the amount of water in your system though that's not safe or really productive (water is weight but it's not something to try and live without.)

All in all the thing to remember about any sort of weight loss endeavor is this: slower pace that you can manage and maintain is always better than a crash diet followed by a rapid weight gain. Progress that lasts is REAL progress and gimmicks that strip away a few pounds in a short amount of time will always revert back to your old self (or worse) unless proper care is taken to maintain your losses.

Don't waste your money on this 18in4 bullshit, get a month of gym membership and make a real change in your life instead.

Or buy a tapeworm.

****************Update***************

I did some more digging and wasn't able to find a full break down of the plan but I was able to infer some interesting stuff.

Now I mentioned water as a way to shed some pounds (to no lasting effect) but I neglected to consider FECES as a possible source of neutral poundage as well.

Apparently this is leaning towards one of those detoxifying plans that makes you flush out your intestines and the several pounds of fecal matter contained herein.

So in essence the plan is telling you that by emptying your septic tank you now produce less shit. Brilliant.

Week 9 Update: Only one more weight update per month from now on.

2009-04-05T22:52:00.003-04:00

So I marked the occasion, this being the 64th day of the Gigacalorie project by tidying up my progress marker. It's just a simple Excel spreadsheet that tallies up my daily contributions, weekly totals and my average progress per day and per week.

It was interesting to look back at the past 2 months, for which sweaty rides home and constantly aching muscles have dominated my schedule. Beyond the initial 'breaking' of my daily routine I have consumed 4 containers of protein powder, 12 gallons of milk (skim all the way baby!) and my workout/post-workout water consumption is probably something like 14 gallons of water.

Now granularity is nice but there's no real secret to what I am doing. You push the body hard enough and primal forces carry you the rest of the way. There are a few additional forces that make the task at hand both easier and harder. I'll start with the bottlenecks and conclude with the boons.

First and foremost, as I have said before, the enormity of burning 1 million kilocalories is as daunting and vast as the horizon inside the eye of a hurricane. Every day that I work out I come home and gleefully tally my progress like a pasty gamer tracking his experience points onto worn out graph paper.

Today the total stands at 42,930. Two months of cardiovascular brutality and anerobic malevolence done to my person has brought me 4.293% of the way to my goal. Or you could say I only have 95.707% to go until I am done.

Hell and damnation it's almost unbelievable. I could have moved a volume of bricks the size of my house (solid mass, not hollow) BY HAND in the same interval. Or I could have walked to texas and back by now. That would be a decent workout in and of itself but no, I am making scandalousy slow progress by the usual standards. It's terrifying of itself but when you consider that I am actually 8 Mcals AHEAD of schedule (more than 2 weeks progress at the alloted rate) it is all the more frustrating.

So there's that, and the physical toll is not much better. My arms, legs and back ache more or less constantly. My hands tremble at the keyboard and my voice is strained when speaking to clients, my wife and my daughter. I am the alarm clock whose snooze button has been pressed many thousand times too many.

Finally there's the whole body image issue to consider. My current progress (assuming naively that it's all net calories) equals about 12 pounds of body mass. My actual weight loss dipped down to ten pounds a few weeks ago and has since flatlined at around 8. Maybe that's positive because I am growing muscle or my bones are miraculousy hardening into granite from my considerable intake of bovine lactose but I sure as shit don't 'feel' like I am much lighter.

Natalie and friends swear I look different but my mental self portrait as a chubby guy with moderate body hair has yet to be at odds with its optical counterpart. I try to assuage my anxiety with the intellectual notion that even if I'm not flinging fat particles at escape velocity that at least I'm getting healthy and that's a noble goal without the secondary side effects of increased social acceptability.

There's just not enough positive reinforcement. But there is some, which I will outline now before things get too depressing.

Perks include getting to see scantily clad sweaty chicks of various levels of attractiveness on a tri-weekly basis. This might sound shady coming from a married dude but it's nice to add a simple addendum to my mental assessments of the girls around town. For years it has just been 'well i'm not gonna bang that girl' and hopefully in a year or so i'll be able to append: 'but I could if I really wanted to.'

I guess that sounds shady from any perspective but it motivates and I need all the momentum I can muster.

Secondly food tastes so fucking good when you're starving that it's not even funny. My second greatest meal of all time was a hot bowl of noodle soup on the fringe of Bangkok's red light district in no small part because I was ravenous at the time. Don't get me wrong if I could get it that soup would be my breakfast every day that I didn't feel like fresh pad thai but being hungry as hell made it all the better. Now thanks to my jacked up metabolism I am more or less constantly hungry so most of what I eat tastes great.

Some might consider that a negative aspect but I try to see it as a constant opportunity to make the right choice and reach for the banana instead of the bacon. (Side note: I have actually had banana wrapped in bacon and it's quite good)

Finally, and I know this was included in the negatives already, but what little progress I am able to measure cheers me greatly. It never ceases to amaze me how much effort, will and saline go into my weekly regimen and I need look no further than my bicep for proof that I am doing something right.

What once lay undefined amidst a slab of adipose tissue I can now trace with a finger or pinpoint with my eyes. It's not that much, a little crest of whipcord rising above a sea of pudge. Yet however much the body and mind wail for attention and results I can take solace that my little friend is already there to greet me.

All I need to do is keep feeding him and he will grow to dominate my self-image. I'll also need every scrap of muscle fiber I can wield to hold up my own ego when I triumphantly announce my victory in some format or another.

According to the projected outcome that date will be Feb. 1 2014. However at my current rate I will be toasting my victory with a frothy protein shake more than one year early. If I can sustain this rate of expenditure I may just modify the terms of the project.

I think I'll wait a year or two before I make that canonical though.

Short Task is AWESOME!!!

2009-04-03T16:06:00.003-04:00

So I came across Short Task the other day and found myself intrigued by the setup. Here's a brief explanation of how it works.

Solvers: get paid small amounts of money for doing relatively small tasks. Bigger tasks, or more tedious tasks, get paid more.

Seekers: Supply tasks to be completed in exchange for money.

Now I did some perusing and there were a lot of .02 and .05 dollar tasks that required bookmarking or voting on certain sites to increase up thumbing and popularity. There were also more that asked for positive reviews on certain sites and organizations.

Solvers: Pay small amounts for small tasks that aren't really compatible with hourly pay structure.

It's kind of like an alternative botnet. Instead of assuming the risks and infrastructure to usurp PC's and then bend them to your will in order to commit click fraud or inflate traffic to a site you just micro-transact the whole thing. It's paid crowdsourcing!

Seems pretty easy but I am a little concerned because the registration page is not at all encrypted so I am hesitant to actually sign up with legit info. Maybe I'll sign up one of my alter egos to take it for a spin.

Update later once I have the opportunity to do it some justice.

*************

Well ho-ly shit, for once my skepticism has failed me. I just spent 5 minutes doing an article for one of the short tasks about posting an article on blogger.com (on my sock account, since they haven't secured the info page yet) and here's the results.

2.50$ for less than 10 minutes of work. That's what I call a score!

I highly recommend that others take a look and try it out for themselves. It's not a get rich quick scheme BUT for all the out of work people this could be a serious boon for scraping together some quick cash between gigs or just something to supplement with during off hours.

Thumbs up on stumbleupon and high marks via word of mouth. This one's on me, Short Task.

How the World Works...You poor bastard

2009-03-30T11:45:00.003-04:00

Much to my amusement I tuned into not one but TWO of my favorite youtube personalities. Thunderf00t and TheAmazingAtheist have been staples of my online entertainment regimen for some time but this...oh this is fresh and beautiful all on its own.

They have both turned their ire onto a glassy eyed talking head who goes by Howtheworldworks. This is the intellectual equivalent of dipping your ballsack into a tank full of hungry pirannha. Hence the 'you poor bastard' line.

Hilarity ensues? Oh yes. Here's the chronological progression as it unfolds.

TJ's opening Salvo

The 'rebuttal'

Strike one: TJ

Strike two: Thunderf00t

Second 'rebuttal'

Strike three: TJ

Day 57: Not your usual update

2009-03-29T00:07:00.003-04:00

Nearly two months time separate this moment and the day I grabbed destiny by the sack and yanked down hard. Things have changed, I daresay things have improved somewhat.

Since the reboot I have struggled through pain and sweat for hours on end. I have heated and cooled myself beyond comfort and conscience. Every day I inhale the immolation and sparks of the furnace that has become my life. Every day is a hammerstroke.

My labors demand tremendous sacrifice, and I feed them well. My body hardens and shrinks, slowly but surely the impurities peel and flake away. I am an asteroid cruising atmo to shed off my dirty accumulated exterior to reveal the iron core beneath.

Today I have surpassed my previous endeavor. I do not consider it a victory, just an imaginary line passed on a long journey. Most of my endeavor remains ahead and not behind.

Now I can quote numbers and figures, catalog the minutia of this experiment but I will refrain. Instead I feel the need to express a change in both form and function. Instead of feeling like a fat guy on the skinnier side I now feel like a skinny guy on the fat side of the line.

It's all arbitrary of course. It's also the most real quantum of data I have yet acquired. I mark the occasion with a single asterisk on my spreadsheet. No further explanation will be offered.

Conventional updates will follow shortly.

Galactica is dead, Cathy should be.

2009-03-21T03:23:00.005-04:00

Point 1: An ejaculation (not the fun kind)

All I will say is this: FUCKING ANGELS THAT IS THE GREAT BIG CYLON SECRET WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL THESE YEARS!?!?!

I am crushed by the christpunching finale. Yet I found myself tickled shortly thereafter and it momentarily distracted me from epic let down.

Point 2: A Condemnation

Cathy's Teeth Whitening Success is a scam. Let me reiterate that. It's a flim-flammin' con job. Allow me to articulate how I came to this conclusion (other than subcon lighting up the skeptical parts of my brain and allocating omega-level neural bandwidth to the task.)

I saw this ad for "Cathy's Teeth Whitening" and knew it was a scam, it had to be. All the symptoms were there but I wanted to put forth some proof positive. I glimpsed at the page in question for about 2.3 nanoseconds before noticing that 'Cathy' was from Charlotte. . .

Well dayum if that ain't where I live right now, hurka durka dur dur.

Geolocation is nothing new so I decided to run a little experiment to see if Cathy, by some coincidence, really was from my my current state and city of residence or if it was all part of the psychological trap.

If you're reading this post you can already infer the results. Here's a screen cap of the original page view from my home computer:

And when I checked out the exact same link from one of our computers (In a HIGHLY ANONYMOUS LOCATION) I got a slightly different result.

Now it's a pretty long drive to Chesapeake, VA from Charlotte so it is impressive that she was able to move so quickly from my home town to the purely coincidental location that I checked the link from the next time.

Apparently Cathy needs to be selling her secret of:

Omnipresence
Teleportation

So whatever she's selling you, don't fucking buy it. Trust me if there was an easy way to 'combine two products' for instant teeth whitening success someone would have posted it online for free by now.

Stop feeding these filthy parasites and they will go away and die. I'm looking at YOU middle america.

Crunched some numbers tonight

2009-03-18T00:28:00.003-04:00

As of this evening, despite it being March 18th already, I have completed 27.240 MC in my long journey towards a healthier version of myself.

Over the course of the project I will require a rate of about 3.83 MC per week for the entire 5 year duration. Yes I'm counting Feb 29, 2012. So far, 45 days into the reboot I have averaged 4.24 MC per week.

So I'm about 10% up so far. However by duration I am less than 3% of the way through. By time it's only 2.5% so progress is being made.

Again, and this has become a daily occurrence, the sheer magnitude of the undertaking is at once agonizingly slow and dauntingly massive. In some way I feel like a prisoner digging a tunnel with a spoon or a patient engineer melting a glacier with a blow torch.

Guess I'll just keep at it and keep my records as I go.

An interesting bit of trivia though. During the last 2 years of high school I was averaging 15 miles per week of swimming. Those 104 weeks, if I had been tracking my expenditures at the time, would account for about 800 MC.

Granted I was younger and had a LOT more free time so that sort of activity level is no longer practical. The GC project only demands 200 MC per year instead of 400+ like my rage fueled aquatic endeavor.

All I can say now is bring on the endorphins and neurotrophins, baby.

Gigacalorie Update

2009-03-16T16:54:00.002-04:00

25790 be the final count for Week 6.

That includes an unprecedented 5.8 Mc for the week. This should be considered doubly impressive considering the misery inflicted on Nat and me by this freaking cold that's going around. And considering the rather lamentable performance last week I feel pretty confident that Week 6 can and will be duplicated in the future.

I mean that I will be able to turn this from an outlier week to a sustainable burn rate. This may prove problematic, or perhaps just take longer than I would hope. I suspect this because of the anomalous quantity of exercise I was able to perform this week.

Part of the success may or may not relate to the quantity of cough syrup consumed lately. Each dose contains a giant belt of acetaminophen. Standard dose is equivalent to a few Tylenol. Might be artificially expanding my threshold of pain and allow extended duration of activity.

It's nice for this week but also worrisome as it may prove to be a temptation in the future.

Chronicles of Craigslist: A Meatspace Adventure, Part II

2009-03-09T22:55:00.004-04:00

Long overdue, but delivered as promised.

I give you the second part and thrilling conclusion...to the Chronicles of Craigslist.

Check it out from the Omnibus
**********************************************

Jerry met me at the door. I walked past his white Saturn, noting the ominous presence of a huge muffler. It wasn't just aftermarket huge it was redneck spent money on this instead of his mortgage huge. Jerry's ‘house’ was the bottom floor *cough, basement, cough* of a modest home on the ragged edge of the wasteland that is Kannapolis, NC. It reminded me a lot of our basement back at the Overbrook house.

Floor coverings included some of the TP-thin gray carpet you would find at any state sponsored college dorm room. There was also a weird patchwork quilt of red and yellow deep pile shag that described a sawed off circle around the bed. The sheer amount of random crap laying around was staggering and it took a few minutes to take it all in.

Jerry was there with his wife, two fierce looking husky type dogs with pale blue eyes and the vacant affect of furry feral killers heightened the mood nicely. His wife had long straw colored hair. She was seated in front of the computer with about 4 feet of the stuff dangling down the back. No bra, holding a lit cigarette as I arrived. Didn't even glance at the newcomer as he stood there trembling.

Jerry was my height, significantly built with some of the most venal looking forearms I have seen on a human being. He beckoned me inside. Strike that, he was looking intently through the window when I stepped into line of sight. So already he caught me smugly chuckling at his personal conveyance.

Great first impression.

Beyond the dogs, the lazily unaware wife and Jerry’s machine gun fire talking there were action figures, empty aquariums, unstuffed bean bags and a tremendous collection of literature *ok it was mostly comic books and old playboys* around the place. A cardboard box full of computer stuff lay on the bed. A huge pile of similar looking boxes lay off to the side.

Man this guy has even more esoteric tech crap than I do. See, why would anyone need a whole box full of external 56k modems?

“This here’s yer shit,” he said. “I threw in a 2.4 celeron…(burp)…case you need it.”

“Always collecting,” I said. Bad move. He spent ten minutes trying to sell me external modems, PCI video cards and 10/100 low profile Ethernet cards. 10 bucks a pop each. There is no fucking way I am going to touch this crap but I try to be polite about it.

“If you sold that stuff on ebay you’d have a couple hundred bucks,” the wife says. I can see she's working on a PowerPoint presentation of some sort. My attention sweeps her profile, call it a typical male scan for viability, and notice what she’s smoking. It’s a Virginia slim 120 and 6 inches of little white tube dangle from her lip. I said her hair was straw colored. Her face makes me want to grab a pitchfork for...other reasons.

“I think I’ll just stick with the motherboards I need,” I say. She shrugs and goes back to her powerpoint.

“She’s going back to school,” Jerry tells me. “Me I’m a self taught man. Half the shit in here comes from all these fuckin’ rednecks we got around here. Man I love making money off those idiots but ho-lee SHIT are they dumb. God I hate them rednecks.”

Oh god. The irony is paralyzing. Must not laugh hysterically. Hold it together now, it’s all good.

“School for what?” I ask. I have to fake a cough and bury my hand in a smile. I wish he could see how ironic this was.

“I want to teach English to middle schoolers,” she says. A long drag on that 120 later and she points it at me. “I am really good with kids. “

I nod and open my mouth to get the transaction going. A millisecond sooner and I could have pinched the whole snafu off right there. Before a word escapes I hear the dreaded words of a redneck in denial, who fancies himself an expert in technology.

“I wanna show you sumthin.”

Crap.

This ‘sumthin’ turns out to be a whole menagerie of pointless broken crap acquired via craigslist. I get to watch him show off an old projection TV without a mirror. That’s cool, I lie. He’s also got the back half of a speed boat and a massive multifunction printer/copier circa 1995. It’s about the size of a walk-in fridge tipped over prone. I can’t imagine how he managed to get it in there.

“Also, you’ll wanna check this out.” He beckons me over to bend down and check out something tucked away in a cardboard box. I squat next to him, glancing over at the escape r…door. One of the dogs is staring at me. A chill runs down my spine and jerry rips open the cardboard. I notice something tucked into the back of his pants.

It’s a .38 special. I am going to die here.

He catches me staring and looks back, as if he couldn’t feel the 4 pound hunk of steel stuffed down the posterior side of his ultra-tight jeans. Like the dogs, for a moment his face goes slack and unreadable. I truly think my heart stopped for a second or two.

“You like it?” he says. Up close his breath is like exhaust from a chewing tobacco-fueled dump truck full of burning manure. “My deddy gev it to me just before he died.” He reaches back with a smile.

I should be choking him or something. God damn rednecks.

Jerry pops the wheel and shows me that it’s empty. He laughs long and hard, slapping at his thighs all the while.

“Gawd damn, son. I thought you was gonna shit yerself. Hey honey!”

“What?” the wife called.

“This boy thought I’s gonna shoot him, he he he.” If she responds I don’t hear it through the torrent of blood foaming through my skull. I want out, I’m getting out. I stand up to leave.

“I gotta get going,” I say. Subcon tweaked my accent towards the southern drawl. I only notice after I speak and it annoys me. “Can I grab those…” Jerry shakes his head.

“If you go now, you gonna miss the best part. Check this out.” He gestures at the box, it’s in the shadow of the mirror free tv so I have to squat back down to see inside.

Oh, well that’s normal. Let’s see: stuffed crow with no feet; antique bottles of some brownish liquid; allen wrench; empty shotgun shell casings and a plastic bag full of gold. . . teeth! Those are fucking teeth.

“Guess where them teeth came from?” Jerry asks. All eight of his teeth are showing as he grins ear to ear.

“I am so sure that I don’t want to find out,” I say. Hopefully he has a dentist friend but…

“Them’s teeth from the jews. Dubya dubya two my grandeddy drove a tank right over hitler’s personal car. Lifted these here teeth from one of them…concentrational camps.” I nod slowly.

“You’re so full of shit,” the wife says. I hear her lighter flick again. She's something of a chain smoker. No wonder the air visibly agitates when home boy and his freak show move around.

We go back to the main room and I take another look through the box of stuff. It’s all older socket 478 mobos, exactly what I need. I rifle around and notice that jerry threw in a couple extra parts for the heck of it. Easier than taking them out to dump I guess.

Now an interesting smell catches my attention and I turn back to the wife. Instead of a massive narrow cigarette she’s puffing on a fucking joint. Her left hand holds it above an ashtray while the right works out some tricky text spacing for her power point project. The topic of the presentation is “Innovative Methods of Education for Preteens.” The irony is like a vise I can’t squirm out of.

Luckily for me the tale ends pretty much here. Yes there was a moment when Jerry tossed his .38 onto the bed which caused the dogs to freak out and growl at me. But I paid my 40 bucks, took my box of parts and stuff and headed out. The wife popped out for a second. Jerry watched her intently from the window.

“Hey kid, you wanna buy some weed before you go?”

“Fuck no,” I say. That’s it. I throw it into reverse and haul backwards ass out into the road, barely looking or stopping and put as much fucking distance as I can manage. I was more than a little freaked out until I got home and started testing the stuff.

Not a single piece of equipment works.

Fucking rednecks.

Week 5 Update: Ragged patch, low point in the project so far

2009-03-09T16:43:00.004-04:00

I know it's Monday and I never really posted a week 4 summary but here's the current count.

As of yesterday, March 8th 2009 I have completed: 19.974 MC

I cracked the 20MC barrier this morning, though it caused great distress for a number of reasons.

Here's the general outline of the events.

Woke up at 5am (FUCKING daylight savings time!!!) drove to gym. Ate toast in the car. Puked up toast in the parking lot, joyful. Tried to do my regular workout but after an hour or so I nearly fainted and puked a few more times in the family locker room.

So I left in a hurry and in my haste I left my wedding ring in the drink holder of the elliptical. Had to swing a hard U to drive back and reclaim it. Ring was found but no longer possesses the power to make me invisible to other females. Drat.

Came home, puked a few more times and tried to get back in bed. Dozed for a little bit. Phone rang, some yakoff wanted to sell me consolidated student loans. Kept phone on speaker while I threw up a few more times. Telemarketer hung up. Called in sick to work and clawed my way back into bed.

Slept til noon, tried to eat something and almost barfed it up. Managed to hold onto some prison food (bread and water) and slept again until 3pm. Got up, took shower and brushed teeth. Watched a little TV and started to feel normal again.

Later, call it 445 I decided to update the GC spreadsheet and write this post. Hopefully I will be able to function tomorrow.