abfackeln

On the other hand...

2009-04-22T06:18:19Z

"It's a long series and if anyone on either side expected this thing to be over in four, they were/are seriously deluded."

Sorry, guys; it's over in four.

Land of the Greed and the Home of the Slaves

2008-01-06T19:15:54Z

I can't vote but I can still rant about it. Here is my list for who is not going to do well based on the fact that people I like never get votes — except I think Giuliani cheated somehow; there's no way I'd rate him that high:

94% Mike Gravel
94% Dennis Kucinich
81% John Edwards
77% Chris Dodd
77% Barack Obama
75% Hillary Clinton
74% Joe Biden
69% Bill Richardson
42% Rudy Giuliani
34% Ron Paul
30% John McCain
23% Mike Huckabee
21% Mitt Romney
16% Tom Tancredo
9% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Hooray!

2007-11-27T15:57:11Z

Good news, everyone.

Futurama "all-new feature-length direct-to-DVD movie" in stores today.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-12/ff_futurama

abfackeln @ 2007-10-18T00:40:00

2007-10-18T07:40:31Z

"This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvellous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

"My personal experience with Nazi monkey business was limited. There were some vile and lively native American Fascists in my home town of Indianapolis during the thirties, and somebody slipped me a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I remember, which was supposed to be the Jews' secret plan for taking over the world. And I remember some laughs about my aunt, too, who married a German German, and who had to write to Indianapolis for proofs that she had no Jewish blood. The Indianapolis mayor knew her from high school and dancing school, so he had fun putting ribbons and official seals all over the documents the Germans required, which made them look like eighteenth-century peace treaties.

"After a while the war came, and I was in it, and I was captured, so I got to see a little of Germany from the inside while the war was still going on. I was a private, a battalion scout, and, under the terms of the Geneva Convention, I had to work for my keep, which was good, not bad. I didn't have to stay in prison all the time, somewhere out in the countryside. I got to go to a city, which was Dresden, and to see the people and the things they did.

"There were about a hundred of us in our particular work group, and we were put out as contract labour to a factory that was making a vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. It tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke. It was good. I wish I had some right now. And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an "open" city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there.

"But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground.

"And then hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, and became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. And so what?

"We didn't get to see the fire storm. We were in a cool meat-locker under a slaughterhouse with our six guards and ranks and ranks of dressed cadavers of cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep. We heard the bombs walking around up there. Now and then there would be a gentle shower of calcimine. If we had gone above to take a look, we would have been turned into artifacts characteristic of fire storms: seeming pieces of charred firewood two or three feet long – ridiculously small human beings, or jumbo fried grasshoppers, if you will.

"The malt syrup factory was gone. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out. And I got to see many German types of all ages as death had found them, usually with valuables in their laps. Sometimes relatives would come to watch us dig. They were interesting, too.

"So much for Nazis and me.

"If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, wanning myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes.

"There's another clear moral to this tale, now that I think about it: When you're dead you're dead.

"And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you."

— Introduction to Mother Night (1966) by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

Fall back

2007-09-22T01:57:26Z

A couple more days of summer but the weather has decided to be autumn already....

A week or two ago, I was going to post a pool to anyone who might want to guess when the USD will fall to par with the CAD.

Too late.

I suppose that's just as well. Such a geek thing to do. And I wasn't going to offer prizes anyway.

I'm going away for a little while again. Not that I have enough presence in this blog-world that anyone would notice. Going to visit the sun for a while to bid a proper farewell until next spring. Or my next vacation.

See ya.

Dream sequence

2007-08-28T07:55:03Z

(Sequins?)

Strange figures. One female appears to be serving something (food?) (ice cream?) from the centre of the room. She comically has a gelatinous blob land on her head. Older male leaving room hears strange voices/sounds. What does it all mean? I forget. It's connected somehow. (Need to write these things sooner.) The strange sounds were actually clips from another time stream. The man stumbles onto a mystery, though I've forgotten what it was.

(2007-05-15)

Fall back

2007-08-25T21:56:39Z

Six months ago, everything was coming together. Since then, new things have fallen apart. I'm starting to wonder if there is any point in doing it all again.

Significator: King of Cups.
This wraps and surrounds him: Knight of Cups.
This crosses him: Eight of Swords.
This crowns him: Three of Swords, inverted.
This is below him: Queen of Cups, inverted.
This lies behind him: Six of Cups, inverted.
This lies in front of him: Page of Coins, inverted.
This is himself: Knight of Swords.
This is his house and home: Temperance, inverted.
These are his hopes and fears: Nine of Swords, inverted.
This is what will come: Six of Coins, inverted.

7/7/7

2007-07-08T06:24:22Z

Happy number day.

This particular number doesn't mean a lot to me but if you ever wanted to say you did something on 7/7/7, now is your chance!

I already forget which horror movie made a fuss about opening on 6/6/6. There was also a G42 show of some sort tentatively scheduled for that date but it never happened. Maybe 8/8/8 will be more inspiring.

Crazy people

2007-04-29T23:05:24Z

So there's been an industrial Bosun's chair on my patio for about a month now. I'm not sure if anyone is planning on doing anything with it. It's still strapped to the roof of the apartment and looks as though it may be getting settled for permanent residence.

I was thinking of selling it on eBay.

In other news, I finally did my taxes last night. Hooray. An amazing two days before they're due. Incidentally, I learned that the last time I logged in (to do my taxes the year before) was the same time last year, almost to the minute.

And just in case I were to forget that the Canucks are playing today, a very bad live group are performing "I'm a Believer" ouside the stadium with more amplification than I expect the Monkees themselves ever had. Even the newly-built two-and-a-half apartment complexes obscuring my view of the stadium are not doing a very good job of taking the edge off their forced excitement; only adding a cacophony of really bad reverb.

Now they're playing some really bad rasta music.

[Edit: and now a very, very bad version of Bon Jovi's "You give love a bad name" (not that there is a good one)]

Thanks guys.

I was planning to get some quick food at the Costco which is unfortunately located across the street from all this nonsense. I'm going to have to think of something else.

PSA

2007-04-19T08:07:41Z

The best thing to happen to television since sliced bread. For real.

You probably want to see season one first, if you've been living under a rock.

Such a sad internet

2007-04-16T09:31:08Z

I don't know what to make of things anymore. There just isn't enough time in the day to sort out what's going on. Most of my email is from bots. I have more bot friends than people friends. This probably isn't normal. Somehow I'm becoming just as antisocial with the internet as I am in person.

Anyway, this is not a complaint. I'm tired and not feeling well. That's a complaint. Normally, I would write a far more coherent rant. At least, I hope I would. The above lackluster non-complaint was inspired by my latest MySpace "friend" who was obviously not real.

On the brighter side of things, I've discovered an Oxford Dictionary Firefox search plugin. Now I don't have to deal with silly Americanisms and ambiguous definitions. This makes me happy. As sad as that may be.

By the way, due to a serendipitous typo, I've also discovered that a google search for "oxford firebox" yields something everyone should certainly need.

love you jeromie your the best and i am sorry i doubted our relationship and i am not going to let you go muah xoxo [dork] well sadley i dont care what you think about me. i could really care less about you if you arent my friend. i dont talk about you behinde your back because i dont waist my time involving you in my life. i am crazy.random.ditzy.a goof ball. and really oh so sexual [thanks gabexlox] really if you dont know really know me then dont guess things about me. if you have questions ask me or actully get to know me. if not owell your loss people are now calling me an emo. i am going "sadistic" as my parents say. haha if i keep it up i get thearpy. i mean i listen to emo music so what and i wear somewhat emo clothes and i guess i style my hair like that. but trust me i dont lable my self as that lets see people get to lable each other so i label myself as I DONT GIVE A FUCK!!! there so i am not a nerd not a dork not a emo. i am my own lable. so if i hear u call me a nerd/dork/emo i will correct you as i am a" i dont give a fuck" you can either get on my nice side or my bad side. i suggest you leave me alone or get to know me and be on my nice side or trust me your life wont be pleasent knowing me if i am on your bad side after break is over in school i am not taking any bodys shit if i hear people talking about me i wont keep my comments to myself like i di din the past i will yell at you and tell you whats on my mind so w/e i love my friends and b f. but if u mess with them you so mess with me. and trust me you will go down I HATE DRAMA. SO TRUST ME START IT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!!! i see all the preps say they hate drama but yet the bitchs are starting it i find that sadly funny!!! but really you arent important to me. thats why you arent my friend. i find it funny that people dont talk to me but yet theu pay attention to who i date or retardly pay attention to my bullitens.like get a life CHELSIE MARCUM!!! shes my besty. i love her to death. fuck with her and you fuck with me. me and her have had lots of memories. and fun inside things. and me and her pretyt much cause mass chaos xlolx. but we still keep it [xhcx] i miss her lots! luvz ya babes ♥ DAVE ARMSTRONG!!! nope not related to neil.sorry haha. but wow me and this boyy have had lots of good times. hes my besty outta dude friends. i am the cream and hes the twinkie xlolx. he has always been there for me when i need him. and he is the meaning to [xhcx] i love him so much and trust me u fuck with him and u die same goes to if u fuck with chels! love u anal advenger xlolx jeromie i love him so much. we have so many memories. and good times together. i am glad that hes not like most other guys. hes just perfect.hes does all those cutesy things girls wish their bf would do for them. i love him with all my heart. and dont try to interfer with us we are going to be together for a long long while OTHER BESTYS *girls *guys =============== ================ [amber] [phinn] [kasey] [tristan] [diamond] [tida] [kelly] [ace] and other peoples and others i sadly forgotten i forgot mess with them and you will die painfully :) Myspace Layouts and SO much more from WhateverLife.com! ♥ whateverlife.com ♥ ****Cassey_Jean**** ♥ I love my awsome friends so much ? we always have fun ? Music is always the best ? danceing ? singing ? ? $hopping ? Sports ? camp outs ? inside jokes ? luaghing my head off bout stupid things? slushies ? SUMMER ? Smileing =) ? soda pop ? birds ? Tanning wit chels ha the dock ? Swimming ? Fast Foods ? mickkie ds? Ice cream ? my 2 crazy friend groups ? being flirty ? crazy days ? walks ? boys ? hawtties ? Pink ? jewls ? Prettyness ? ambers soft ball games ? pretzles ? the beach ? acting stupid wit friends ? talking on the phone for hours ? make werid noises at random times ? licking ice-cicles ? flip flops and short shorts ? weekends ? Football games ? girls night out ? sleep overs ? glitter ? Lipgloss ? capacinos ? smooothies ? tuckerton ? staying up late till i pass out asleep ? trampolines ? looking pretty for no reason ? curly hair ? sweet talks wit phinn ? blow pops ?nail polish ? summer nights ? butterflys ? summer rain ? mafia movies ? mascara ? posty note fights in phinns closet wit amber ha ? big sunglasses ? presents ? LBI ? parties ? ambers skinny dippen nites wit the boys ha ? playing outside ? sand ? meeting new people ? cute kisses ? telling random peopel i am dutch ? dancing in the rain? blush? secrets ♥ and lots else im me: dutchgurlygurl4 ♥ how to contact me - Im: dutchgurlygurl4 - other Im: doubledutch4 - www.myspace.com/cjv2011 - http://www.mycrib.net/cassey_fuckin_rox - 658-8777 - or call the cell - yep well peace nuckas heres a comment my jeromiei love MySpace Codes

Sweet Jesus!

2007-04-02T00:40:09Z

Religious people are weird.

In other news, it makes me happy to see clocks that are now jumping an extra hour ahead. April fools on them!

Spring forward

2007-03-23T08:18:51Z

If I were a superstitious man, I'd be forced to believe this spring was off to a good start. Today I found $20 soaking in the rain on a busy downtown sidewalk. Several people hustled and bustled past, each absorbed in their own version of reality. No one blinked as I picked it up. I may or may not have been invisible. But I still have it and it's not wet anymore so it must be real.

I think I am very close to figuring out the universe. It's all starting to make sense.

What always happens after two days of rain in Vancouver?

2007-03-15T09:13:22Z

It's that time of year again.

MARCH 18th. Noon. 2nd annual NOISE PANCAKE BREAKFAST.

The perfect St. Patrick's Day hangover cure. For real.

Clicky-click for details

abfackeln @ 2007-03-11T05:20:00

2007-03-11T12:20:35Z

I lost another hour again. I don't know how this keeps happening.

A test of faith

2007-02-25T11:36:52Z

Pop quiz: Which book is the true spiritual guide above all others?

A. The Bible.
B. The KJV Bible.
C. The Koran.
D. The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
E. The Satanic Bible.
F. A Taste of Hawaii: New Cooking from the Crossroads of the Pacific.

"I have selected another book at random, this time from the cookbook aisle of a bookstore. The book is A Taste of Hawaii: New Cooking from the Crossroads of the Pacific. Therein I have discovered an as yet uncelebrated mystical treatise. While it appears to be a recipe for wok-seared fish and shrimp cakes with ogo-tomato relish, we need only study its list of ingredients to know that we are in the presence of an unrivaled spiritual intelligence:

snapper filet, cubed
3 teaspoons chopped scallions
salt and freshly ground black pepper
a dash of cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons chopped fresh ginger
1 teaspoon minced garlic
8 shrimp, peeled, deveined, and cubed
½ cup heavy cream; 2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 teaspoons rice wine; 2 cups bread crumbs
3 tablespoons vegetable oil; 2½ cups ogo tomato relish

The snapper filet, of course, is the individual himself — you and I — awash in the sea of existence. But here we find it cubed, which is to say that our situation must be remedied in all three dimensions of body, mind, and spirit.

Three teaspoons of chopped scallions further partakes of the cubic symmetry, suggesting that that which we need add to each level of our being by way of antidote comes likewise in equal proportions. The import of the passage is clear: the body, mind, and spirit need to be tended to with the same care.

Salt and freshly ground black pepper: here we have the perennial invocation of opposites — the white and the black aspects of our nature. Both good and evil must be understood if we would fulfill the recipe for spiritual life. Nothing, after all, can be excluded from the human experience (this seems to be a Tantric text). What is more, salt and pepper come to us in the form of grains, which is to say that our good and bad qualities are born of the tiniest actions. Thus, we are not good or evil in general, but only by virtue of innumerable moments, which color the stream of our being by force of repetition.

A dash of cayenne pepper: clearly, being of such robust color and flavor, this signifies the spiritual influence of an enlightened adept. What shall we make of the ambiguity of its measurement? How large is a dash? Here we must rely upon the wisdom of the universe at large. The teacher himself will know precisely what we need by way of instruction. And it is at just this point in the text that the ingredients that bespeak the heat of spiritual endeavor are added to the list — for after a dash of cayenne pepper, we find two teaspoons of chopped fresh ginger and one teaspoon of minced garlic. These form an isosceles trinity of sorts, signifying the two sides of our spiritual nature (male and female) united with the object meditation.

Next comes eight shrimp — peeled, deveined, and cubed. The eight shrimp, of course, represent the eight worldly concerns that every spiritual aspirant must decry: fame and shame; loss and gain; pleasure and pain; praise and blame. Each needs to be deveined, peeled, and cubed — that is, purged of its power to entrance us and incorporated on the path of practice.

That such metaphorical acrobatics can be performed on almost any text — and that they are therefore meaningless — should be obvious. Here we have scripture as Rorschach blot: wherein the occultist can find his magical principles perfectly reflected; the conventional mystic can find his recipe for transcendence; and the totalitarian dogmatist can hear God telling him to suppress the intelligence and creativity of others. This is not to say that no author has ever couched spiritual or mystical information in allegory or ever produced a text that requires a strenuous hermeneutical effort to be made sense of. If you pick up a copy of Finnegans Wake, for instance, and imagine that you have found therein allusions to various cosmogonic myths and alchemical schemes, chances are that you have, because Joyce put them there. But to dredge scripture in this manner and discover the occasional pearl is little more than a literary game."

— Sam Harris, from the notes on The End of Faith.

Noise show (tonight)

2007-02-22T17:37:41Z

Late notice. I know. Kill me.

The internet is not as good as it used to be for posting this stuff. So many places to get lost in there now and they don't seem to connect like they should... So I end up posting the same thing a bunch of times... I'm tired of writing about it. Go here if you care:

http://sinusoidal.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39

A stoic nod to Stephen Lautens

2006-10-10T06:54:08Z

A fierce partisan of moderation.
(Taken from The Week Magazine)

I am your typical Canadian radical, said Stephen Lautens in The Calgary Sun. “I’m passionate about my beliefs and I’ll defend them to the end.” But as a Canadian, my passion is for “being moderate.” Moderation in all things really is a radical position in today’s world, where so many people believe they have a monopoly on the truth. And it’s not easy to be moderate. “It takes real effort to try to understand the world in all its complexities and see it in other than black and white.” Extremists are always proposing sweeping solutions for society’s problems—a flat tax, say, or a change of regime. “Moderates are never certain, and know there are no quick fixes.” We support the troops, but we question whether to deploy them in places where the enemy is ill-defined, such as Afghanistan or Iraq. We believe in dialogue and negotiation, but we recognize that you can’t bargain with terrorists. “Live and let live” is our “non-battle cry.” It can be hard, when global problems seem so intractable, to resist the temptation to start shrieking. But we radicals will struggle to remain “fiercely moderate—no matter how nuts the world gets.”

Original article: [http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Lautens_Stephen/2006/09/08/1813723.html]
Stephen Lautens, The Calgary Sun

Game, set, and match

2006-09-24T07:32:12Z

"Capricorns can be extremely rigid and pessimistic in their outlook, being gloomy, depressed and depressing in their interactions with others. They can also be emotionally cold and inhibited. The prudent and cautious side of their nature can be taken to extremes resulting in the unsociable realm of the miser."

http://www.astro-uk.dircon.co.uk/capricorn.html

Ouch.

Eulogy for the Lonely Planet

2006-09-22T07:16:00Z

No, I'm not talking about the travel program.

Our once nine-planet solar system has lost it's youngest member. On August 24th of this year, Pluto was demoted to the status of "dwarf planet" with Ceres and recently-named Eris. Already, school books are being revised to depict the eight-planet solar system -- the next generation of impudent children will probably think you're crazy if you ever talk about nine planets.

I don't even want to think of the impact this will have on all the sci-fi written to date. All those ill-fated futuristic programs -- you'd think they'd have enough to worry about trying to foresee all the new gadgets we would have invented in the future without having to predict the rewritten past as well.

Oh Pluto, you've given me so many memories. Your icy mystery was an inspiration to me. Your eccentric orbit which had you technically alternate between being the ninth and eighth planet fascinated my eager young mind. Your moon which was almost your equal in size delighted and confused me. I was going to write you a haiku but there's only so much you can fit into one of those damn things so instead, I will toast your memory with a nice stiff drink:

Pluto is dead!
Long live (134340) Pluto!

R.I.P.
Pluto
1930 - 2006

Sappy holidays

2006-09-12T06:45:14Z

I don't give a damn about your "9/11" "Patriot Day" crap.

There, I said it.

Keep your fear to yourselves. kthx.

I am officially on terror-homeland-they're-gonna-kill-us threat level "Warm and fuzzy Blue" so stay out of my sandbox.

A requiem for a 24" tube

2006-08-21T00:12:13Z

My old RCA television that was inherited many moons ago from arishlea and has prooved faithful for longer than I can remember is now on its last legs. The funny lines on the top of the screen had become tolerable and I didn't really even notice them anymore but the imperative white-blue blasts of saturated blur which started a couple of weeks ago were not so easy to ignore.

It is always terrible to watch a loved ones passing but it might be even more terrible to watch too many more movies without any blue.

I'm thinking 47" LCD.

What to do with the old beast, though. Its heavy faux-wood-panelled bulk is not going to be carried around without great will and clever planning. I suspect it will be finding a final resting place soon. Perhaps I will place it on the patio to weather naturally with the decaying deck table and chairs.

WTS

2006-07-25T07:12:03Z

New G42 merch for sale.

$15 if I like you; $20 if I don't.

Extremely limited quantity. Don't delay.

WTF

2006-07-13T02:47:33Z

Am I the only one who is seeing this barbaric new version of LiveJournal? The one where you can't view anything in threads, the menus are wonky and all the stylesheets are busted?

At first I figured it was just one of the new kids at Six Apart trying to learn how to code... But if that were the case I would assume someone with more sense would have tested the site by now and gave him the scathing scolding he or she so well deserves.

Even viewing anonymously still does the same thing, so it's not my settings (which I didn't change.) Of course, it could also be that it "works fine in MSIE," in which case the new executypes probably will never notice.

Whatever. If it keeps looking this ugly I'm just not going to look at it anymore. Myspace seems more interesting these days anyway.

Good job, guys.

abfackeln @ 2006-06-06T00:00:00

2006-06-06T07:00:38Z

Happy Satan Day!