Dark Tower
Topic: Daily Info

So I finished the Dark Tower last night.

'Twas good. Heart-wrenching the way a good long group of books should be, and he avoids the saccharine-sweet-Hollywood ending. A lot of good characters go to the clearing, and the way they go is very appropriate. Felt like the end of the LOTR. And there is a nifty little twist to it, something that'll catch you out of the blue.

A good book indeed. Thanks, Mr. King.

I fucking hate Texas
Topic: Rambling

I know I should try and go to bed, but insomnia is funny that way. So instead, I'll tell you of a little thought I had as I walked out of the bathroom about two hours ago.

Simply, I really do not know my family. That is, I am disconnected from them. As I think of it, I always have been disconnected from them. My brother may feel slightly more connected, but I do not. I have spent most of my life separated from them by more miles than a man could comfortably walk in a day.

Remember, I have not lived in Mankato/Blue Earth since I was around 18 months old. That was nearly 20 years ago. My older cousins are distant from me in age, 12 years and more, hell, I have cousins almost old enough to be a grandfathers.

But I was never there, growing up. I did not really know my family: they were names and faces, nothing more. The only one I ever really knew was my mother's mother. And she has gone on ... to somewhere better than this crappy little world with its hateful people who would not offer a hand to a single mother and her child, nor give care to the sick. But anyways, I don't know them. My only cousin of my age is better connected with them (although I think the girl's head is full of fools thoughts, hopefully she'll wake up and shake the damn thoughts out before she winds up with a kid before she ever finishes school), she knows them like they know each other.

The only other part of my family separated like mine is my Uncle Larry's branch o' the family tree. Larry lives out by that big wide ocean, although the ocean is not really warm where he lives. If I remember correctly, his son lives in Oklahoma (Kansas maybe?) and his daughter lives near him in Washington. I have the feeling they feel disconnected as well.

I have always been an outsider, though those that know me would say otherwise, I think. James has had few friends in some strange lands. And so has his brother, since the move to that fuck wad land of Texas. If I never see that state again in my life, it'll be too soon. I don't care the cost: it cost my brother his time and his friends, most important at his age at the time.

Texas ... a fucking waste of time then, and a waste of time ever more. I hate it. I blame that place and the businesses there for disconnecting me from my family. I am very happy that I get along with my immediate family so well, but I wish I could do the same with the other family.

My father's brother had died last year in February. And honestly, there was so much I didn't know about him. For me, he was always my Dad's oldest brother and a happy face behind a beard. Some things, I did know, but there are some things I wish I knew more.

I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying here. Though I may be only 10 feet from where my parents sleep, I may as well be the only man for a hundred miles for how I feel.

Fucking Texas. I don't care what anyone else thinks of that place, or my derision of it. For me, it is forever the breaker, the divider, the wedge, the place of wasted time, the place of disjoint friends, the cause of loneliness.

I really do think it's because of Texas, and this nice little gulag they call Shakopee, that I feel so remote from people that have most of the same blood as that which runs in my veins.

Good night. Except Texas. Texas can really on it's own luck, and it shall never have any of mine again.

Frohe Weihnachten
Topic: Daily Info

A Merry Christmas to you all /

Or a good yule /

Or whatever you shall do on this holiday.

I think the most important thing is to find your friends and family, and be with them more than you should be concerned with a gift from the here and now.

I shall come back after some massive coding and family gathering.

Steel
Topic: Daily Info

Well, thus far, I have done really well after a hell of a semester. I have two B- and A with one grade yet to come in. This proves it: I am made of steel.

I have come through the crucible intact.

No more finals
Topic: Daily Info

Well, I almost didn't make my last final today. I woke up at one by accident, but luckily I made it to the final only 15 minutes late. Let's just say I'm setting two alarms during finals week from now on.

Ayah.

I'll have a little bit of opinon on Christmas tomorrow sometime.

Bing and Frank
Topic: Daily Info

One more quick thing before I pass out:

Jessica Simpson, you are not Frank Sinatra nor are your Bing Crosby, so stop singing the Christmas Carols, they did it first, and in this case, the best. People remember Bing and Frank, not you and your Boy Bander.

Long live the Chairman and the Crooner.

"I'll be dreaming of a White Christmas..."

Especially one without commercials for crap.

So tired......
Topic: Daily Info

Two down, two to go. One more morning at 5:30. Come Wednesday, I may need to be spoon fed.

Good luck to the rest of you.

Live next to forever
Topic: Rambling

You know, I was reading this thing in the BBC the other day, and just saw it in my copy of PopSci about a guy with a plan for super-extending human life. We're talking living for a thousand years or more. And I got to thinking, would I want to live that long?

At first, I thought that it would be great, that I could learn all that I want to learn. It also extends: research does not need to be so hurriedly transferred from one generation to the next, and people would actually think in the long term (such that we could actually build and live in mega-structures). It would be a boon to all mankind, and we could seriously move forward as a species.

Then I began to think of the ramifications.

First, what of the people who cannot afford such things? There will be tremendous resentment when some country prospers because its citizenry can work on such large-scales while they strive to keep up. This definitely would no bring humanity closer together. If we fight over such petty and insignificant genetic differences today, can you imagine how brutal this kind of fighting would be?

Second, what if people I know voluntarily opt-out or cannot afford it? People that I care about? Can you imagine how hard that will be to know that your friends died hundreds of years before you did? I mean, if people have such a hard time living just 20-30 years after their same-aged love ones pass, I have to think the melancholy would be severe. Think about, one day, say 500 years after your best friend died, you end up doing something you used to do together, and you remember as you do when remembering something 5 years ago. Can you imagine that kind of heartache? Or how about watching your friends age and die?

I'm not sure I would want to live that long unless I was assured everyone else would live that long. While people can get over losses from the past, there are still memories, and those are powerful devices, especially magnified on that time-scale.

Frankly, I'm still exploring the idea in my story of the two AI's, and the further I progress, the more lonely the existence seems. To get perspective, I think about ancient peoples that are long gone, people that lived just mere thousands of years ago. That's another thing, can you imagine having remembered the middle of the dark ages up through and beyond men landing on the moon?

Needless to say, there are some serious psychological ramifications involved that no one has ever really thought about.

Anyway, I now finish my rambling, and once again attempt sleep.

Rend the rift wider, we are never far enough from them
Topic: Rant

I think I am becoming more violent for some reason. As I was driving home this evening from some Christmas shopping, I wound up behind a person in an SUV. These vehicles normally only irk me a little, but what was going on inside the damn thing and what was plastered to their bumper just tripped some kind of switch. They had videos on inside, this irks me because it makes children unimaginative, therefore they grow up to be drones incapable of doing anything beyond tedium. The thing plastered on their bumper? Take a guess. Haven't figured it out? It was one of those fucking "W '04" stickers. Seeing that, with the video and the SUV, something inside my head went "click". I began to rage alone in my car (if I had passengers, I may have caused a heart attack). I became so pissed that I seriously contemplated cutting the fuck-stick off, forcing them to stop, dragging the douche bag out of his vehicle and proceed to beat the living shit out of him. Now, mind you, I didn't do this, but I felt all the classic fight symptoms.

I'm tired of these fuckers. Really tired. These ass backwards, dumb shit, douche bag, mother fuckers and their stupid "moralism" and "valueism". Honestly. These fuckers have their head so far in the ground they're finding coal. Terrorism? You voted based on a persons stance on terrorism? In this fucking state? What's a terrorist target? The Mall of America? There are hundreds of other places that are more likely for a strike. And guess what, the two states that suffered? They didn't vote for your douche-in-suit. Gay marriage? They weren't asking that their marriages be mandatory in your precious churches. They were asking for a simple legal right. Fuck off. Just fuck off, you idiots. I'm tired of you. You people and your offspring are the ones that have tormented people like me for ages. Screw you and your half-assed situational morals (why is abortion wrong, but daleth penalties and war right?). I would call you idiots Cro-Magnon, but at least Cro-Magnons thought and created. No, you are more like parasites, leeching off others. It's not the man on welfare who needs to reform, it's you. You with your fucking tax-breaks and your gas guzzling SUV's (12 miles-per-gallon on the EPA highway test is not efficient).

You conservative fucks. I hate you all with all my passion. You people who one minute ridicule and profane my science with pseudo-science and then the next minute co-opt it for your trillion dollar safety blanket that will never work. You who mocked the kids good in math and science, and then ask them to figure out how to save you. We have taken all your punishment, and in naive hope of the bettering of all, we get screwed.

This is my call. I call that all good scientists abandon these people. Leave them with their pollution and their disease. Let them fall. Let their seed begone from this Earth lest we all go with them. All they have ever done is hold humanity back. They were the ones reluctant to hunt or forage when their tribe needed it the most, yet claimed their help in better time. They are the ones that forced Socrates to drink the hemlock. They were the one who supported the Roman practice of crucifixion for political dissenters. They were the ones that plunged Western Europe into an intellectual black-hole for a thousand years. They are the ones who persecuted Galileo Galilie. They are the ones that hounded Darwin. They are the ones who forced that stupid law in Tennessee that Scopes fought against. They are the ones who fought effective contraception. They are always there, alway fucking meddling when so many are trying to push humanity forward.

Their very nature denies humanity. They refuse change, and in doing so, refuse that essential element of human existence. They cease to be human, and instead become something less, something truly profane.

So fuck them. Cut them loose. Let them go. If they like intolerance so much, let's give them some of their own medicine.

Build no more bombs for them. Build no more security blankets. Build no machines. The world will be better for it when they are gone.

<personal>
I will suffer the attacks of these fools no more. Ever since I first showed imagination in school, I have been hounded. I was in detention for fighting back against these ass-clowns more than I can properly remember. I refused their world, their model, their relegation of me to the host for the parasites. I refused to play their game and refused their petty structure. I shattered their conceptions and challenged their authority. And for it I received beatings and death threats. But I said no. I refused to help these people. I turned the other cheek, and in doing so, asked them to hit me as an equal if they were going to fight me.

But these ass-hats refuse to accept me as equal, they want to treat me as some kind of servant. I wish not to serve men who send people my own age off to die needlessly. I wish not to serve men who would saddle the coming generations with a world sick with pollution, strife and debt. I wish not to serve men who would deny the rights of others. I wish not to serve men who see science as a political tool, men who profane a pure and clean practice.

It isn't the science that is good or evil, it is neutral. It is those who practice it that are capable of good and evil.
</personal>

Only 7 days
Topic: Daily Info

I would use the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s line, but I respect his work and general philosophy, and so won't profane it by using it as a humorous expression of my relief.

Instead: feels damn good to be homework free.

I also had a nice long rant abotu a lot of things, but I decided that little fire-starter should stay put at its present entry in the NTFS on this box.