July 16, 2003

Happy E2 Birthday to Me
Happy E2 Birthday to Me

Wow. A whole year. 12 nodes. I must create more. Friends? A few...Maybe... Only 12 nodes. I can't believe it. In hindsight it looks as if most of them were written half-assed after 10 minutes of google. Only two from experience, written from the heart. Is that all I know, Sniping and piracy? Surely my life consists of something more worth sharing with you beautiful people. Poetry? Intricately written literary masterpieces?

No.

Am I soulless, unable to feel the things that move us all? Certainly not. I do need an outlet for the love I feel. E2? No. I cannot, no matter how I try, make any text convey emotion. Maybe someday I will be gifted enough with the words of the English language. Perhaps a fellow noder? Perhaps someday...but not today, not yet.

I've taken more than I've given. Much more. What do I want to be? What can I help E2 become? I must write, complement the great masterpieces already in place. My homenode must be something that I can display with pride, something which allows all of you to understand the deepest parts of me, not just the naked stats of my subdued noding career.

My writing skills are humbled by yours. I can only hope I will know and do 1% of the things you've done in 4 short years before I die. It won't be easy, but in the end, I know it's worth every last bit.

I look at the headlines and hope that America is finally waking up, that Lincoln was right in that "...you can't fool all of the people, all of the time." The news cattle have finally started to pick their heads up out of the trough full of the synthetic crap Bush and his ilk has been shoveling out. Hopefully, we will wake up in time.

Bush and co has been riding America like a cheap whore, and we’ve been taking it without a squeal. He has alienated our allies, driven us deeply into debt in a poorly-concealed effort to eliminate Social Security and other entitlement programs by beggaring the bureaucracy.

I was against the war from the very start, and suffered insult and questions about my patriotism. We have ostracized those that said from the beginning that this was just a great big snipe hunt, a ploy to richen his friends and avenge his father under the guise of “the war on terrorism”. Half the terrorists and whack-jobs in the world were trained and supplied by the US. Hussein was (is?) an evil quasi-human, but he was not involved in 9/11. Using that tragedy to fearmonger and justify war smacks of the Reichstag Fire and Operation Northwoods.

Bush has been lying to the public with every breath, a “good ol’ boy” who has skated through life on his connections, who was given anything he ever had of value and then pissed it away. Now he is doing it with this country.

But maybe people are waking up to the fact that Bush lied, and people died, and we have alienated an entire planet in the process. We need to vote this warmonger out of office.

Something's wrong today.

Next to my Bernoulli curves, I looked up and saw the leaves and the branches and the prismic light that was falling through fingered meshes.

Something was wrong. The top of my head started to hurt, and I started to calculate how high an object had to be if it would take five minutes to fall. Five minutes later I would be on a bus, I reasoned. The wafer machine, I just noticed then, was actually off.

I stepped off the bus. Something itched. It was too strong to ignore, and I didn't pass it off as paranoia.

I'm still waiting for something to happen. Everything seems like an omen, the boy who fell down on rollerblades, the woman who dropped a coin into the gutter. Everything seems to be waiting for some convenient event, some radical 'happening' to come and to unite these events into a glorified television broadcast, with flashing captions and a deep-throated announcer's voice. "Little did these people know that their very own lives were being endangered. On the fateful day of July 16, 2003, mere minutes before this tragic event rocked the world..."

A month ago I was packing up, and in the back of one of my desk drawers, I found this candle. It was about four inches long, red with a white wick, and I noticed that it had writing in black, all over the side. It read 'September 11, 2001 -- remember'. It was my handwriting and it was my felt-tipped magic marker. It was from a school-wide candlelight ceremony on the night of "that fateful day".

I was about to toss the candle into the smoky-white trashbag when I saw the neglected flap of tape on the edge and stopped. The piece of tape was obscuring the bottom of the candle, no doubt put there to prevent the writing underneath from becoming smeared. I lifted it off. The whole thing read 'September 11, 2001 -- remember our hate'.

My foot almost stepped in a puddle, and I wobbled forward, narrowly missing a large obtuse elephant that zoomed past, honking and complaining. Something was still wrong.

Perhaps it was the sheets of pouring rain that weren't dripping on my nonexistent umbrella. Perhaps it was the current lack of English in my life, and the red book that said 'communism' clutched in my hand like a five-year old grabs his favorite Gameboy Advance cartridge like a dying man clutches at thirst to drink. Perhaps it was the obligation that I would have to spend three more hours moving myself in transit to get ready to move. Perhaps it was the fact that I still didn't care about this new revelationary message and still threw the candle away, along with a Emily Dickinson book and a 'European Kings' themed deck of cards that I used to practice my back palm with. Perhaps it was because today, I realized that I already left from the dot.

Maybe it's because I should be somewhere else than I already am. Maybe it's because my moleskine book isn't providing and/or provoking thought and instead is being ripped of precious sheets of lined paper to line the walls of my pin-up collection. I collect pictures of chairs, especially at night under yellow streetlamps, the flavor I like best. Apple Green lamps taste too sweet, and Raspberry Red-light district lamps taste too thick and gaudy.

Maybe it's because I'm still in this endless recursive loop of repetition. Triple redundancy. Like having two raid controllers.

Maybe it's because I've failed to care. Maybe it's because it's really funny how the US keeps bitching about North Korea as if its their problem, and how South Korea is wondering what the trigger-happy fuss is all about and chanting 'Stop the War' in candlelight protests and on black t-shirts. Maybe it's because I've almost forgotten why Bush bombed Iraq and that I need to remind myself why. Maybe it's because people are only now becoming all aglow about headlines and Bush being wrong, and how news trends are like fashion trends; they're becoming shorter and more revealing.

Maybe it's because I keep using 'maybe' to say things that I shouldn't. Maybe it's because I sing obladishly, and maybe it's because we get so tired about being excited than being exhausted.

---

Wordplay. Wordpun. I can't help but still think that something's wrong, but still.. whenever I look up at my grayish-blue sky, and whenever I see these fantastic ironic sunsets, I can't help but think that I'm still living. And that we're still loving and hitting and yelling and kissing and punching and killing and making and fucking and shitting and living.

This is what I live for, every single day.

This is now.

Well, my nearly naked all summer long routine is still skinny dipping along, although usually in the wondrous beams of a full moon (no pun intended, really) or the gauzey half-light of dawn. Rarely lately does the sun shine where it normaly doesn't. Alas, I'm still a cottontail.

That may change soon enough. I have 10 days off after Saturday, a vacation I completely forgot I requested. Supervixen reminded me yesterday about it while committing me to one day of garage cleaning during that time:

Isn't it great that after Saturday you'll have ten days off? For one of those days I need you and me, as a team to work on this garage...

Between maintaining two houses (pool cleaning, lawn mowing, tree trimming, general gardening), doing the garage and adjusting ever-so-slowly to my mother-in-law living with us, hopefully I'll be able to slip away for a morning to the local nude beach or at least have a few hours of peace at my own. Alone.

Thankfully, running in the morning guarantees my alone-time fix. Each day adds a few more drops of fitness to a deepening well of endurance. I'm not anywhere near the shape I was in a few years ago, but I've run more in that last week than I have in the past two years combined. At 35 pounds over my racing weight (been powerlifting for the past two years), I'm waiting for something to give, but I've already lost a few lbs., and the miles come easily. I don't know whether I want to run 5Ks or 10Ks or ultramarathons or to even bother with them. Right now, I'm enjoying running every day, contentedly going nowhere. If I finish out the week the way I want to, giving me over 30 miles, I'll reward myself with some new running shoes.

Now that I think about it, I may do it anyway, based upon this morning. As I'm leaving my dark and cluttered bedroom at 5:30, wifey groggily said, "I think I broke the computer. It says to reinstall Windows." This would be OK, except that the CD drive is hosed so I have to fix (probably replace) that first. Then when I get to work, I anxiously open an inter-office envelope containing a letter informing me that I don't have the necessary chops for the network position I applied for. (This is just as well since I'd rather program.)

This just in. My boss told me that I'll have to come in for a half day one of my vacation days to attend a training class.

So it's settled. After class, I'm putting on my new shoes and running my unclothed cottontail on the beach.

Two of the most important things when you are about to take on something is to make plans and to be prepared. Yesterday I did the latter in order to do the former, as well as a fruitless venture into preparing for a trip. To be honest, it wasn't really a useless thing to do, it only appeared to be that way half four this morning.

The planning left me with a red hot ear and no actual plan, and the preparation robbed me of half a night of sleep. If you think this sounds a little on the gung-ho side, please be advised that I am currently spending from my allotted holiday weeks and have no responsibilities other than to make it to the airport tomorrow.

So, me and tingo decided to go to this nodermeet in Bristol. Bristol is in a different country than our motherland which forced us to buy all sorts of strange tickets in order to cross the ripples of the North Sea in an efficient manner. We found out that we should have no plan once we got there.

But, as in all other tales involving people, things does not work out the way they are planned. Especially when you have no plan.

The people in green clothes taught me many many moons ago (and still tries to hammer it home every year) that in order to improvise, you absolutely must be thoroughly prepared. I'll bet you a fiver that Dave Brubeck wouldn't be able to ad-lib as well as he does if he couldn't actually play the piano.

You still with me?

Good.

I'll only say this about the planning: a very very long and thoroughly enjoyable phone call culminated in a text message the following day containing the name of a pub. 90 minutes on the phone versus a 60 character SMS? I'm anything but efficient.

Efficient bad. Holiday good.

The preparation however was supposed to be very professional, leaving nothing to chance. tingo and me got crash space in Bristol; a couple of square metres each to stretch out our sleeping bags for a probably slightly restless night. When it comes to sleeping bags, we Norwegians tend to be very no-nonsense about them. After all, the summers are extremely short and cold and the winters are extremely long and cold. Hence, our sleeping bags invariably have specified comfort temperatures well below zero degrees centigrade. Mine, an Ajungilak Igloo (which should easily clue you in to the usefullness of the thing in a British city supposedly known for its delightful climate) is marked thusly:

Komforttemperatur: -9°C, Ekstremtemperatur: -15°C.

I have never been to Bristol before, but I sincerely hope they will never experience these kind of temperatures. If that ever happens, we will be making our way to the Brittlenoders next year.

At bedtime, I ended up in my aforementioned sleeping bag on the floor of my living room so I could emulate staying at a nodermeet. Little did I know of the grand plans of the weather gods, and not at one time did I even stop to think about what I had been prancing around in all day; just my shorts. You know, the type of trousers with nary any legs on them. Just that.

I think I fell asleep at one point, but at 0330 in the morning I had to get out of that bloody thing since I was on the verge of drowning in my own sweat. Sounds uncomfortable doesn't it? I tell you, it was. Getting out of a sleeping bag in that particular condition was ... err ... problematic, but I learnt myself a couple of new and inventive curses and swearwords while I was wrestling my blue and yellow fibre filled opponent, wriggling desperately to free myself from its death grip.

Heaving for air, I watched my now slain sleeping bag fiend curled up on the floor, its knell of parting tolling from the nearby church. I was the victor, the killer of sleeping bags.

The body condom found itself turned inside out soon thereafter, hanging out in the humid breeze in an attempt to dry up while I retreated to the bed proper.

In the newspaper today I read the following:

Warmest night so far in Oslo. Minimum temperature at 21.2°C.

The first and probably the only tropical night in Norway in 2003.

Bastards.

I feel I should apologise to the ages. Another daylog I'm afraid.

I have a partially valid reason at the moment though, which is that I'm somewhere in the middle of moving house. Well, I say moving house but in reality I'm moving my paltry belongings from the bijou room I have perhaps mentioned previously, to new, mansionesque surrounds.

If I wanted to, I could swing an enormous great cat all over the place, it's that big, although I probably wouldn't be able to keep the exercise up for too long given that the room is also acting as a makeshift sauna during this temporary heatwave. This is a very British way of explaining that it's been slightly hotter this week than the norm for this time of year. Its something we are curiously unable to cope with - railway lines are in danger of buckling, roads melt, and pale fatties are taking their tops off and turning crimson. Apart from the fat nudity, it's not altogether unpleasant.

So last Sunday I went to look at the room, and promptly wrote a large cheque to secure it. Wednesday I moved a few things in, Thursday some more, and then on Friday I played homemaker. Bedding isn't cheap, but it is necessary, as are shelves and wine. This meant a series of weary trips on foot between the house and town and a weary time constructing shelves.

And then, joy of joy, the girlfriend (if she doesn't mind me calling her that) turned up and said how nice it all was. Hurrah!

Its even nicer now I've blown most of my pay cheque on a rather sexy Sony Widescreen tv. I wasn't sure about spending too much on a telly, but with a bit of persuasion, and some remarkably convenient logic - once I'd seen the 21 inch flatscreen, nothing else seemed quite worthy, but it was a bit pricey. Just along the shelf, however, was a 24 inch Widescreen. More expensive, naturally, but not by much. And reduced to clear, thus making it a bargain. Only a fool wouldn't have snapped it up!

Tonight's home adventure will be part two of a game called "Why is my motherboard so cr*p?" in which I will hopefully, thanks to the tracking down of a manual online, be able to persuade my PC to boot.

Not that there's much I'll want to do with it other than use it as a cumbersome jukebox. Not only do I not have broadband any more, but I don't even have a telephone line (and no digital telly, neither). I mean what kind of a life is this for a 21st Century boy?

The saddest thing is that I haven't played poker for a week, and it's starting to get to me. I made a pretty healthy profit last month - even watching Rounders couldn't put me off my game - so I might just have to bite the bullet and get connected again. Ideally I want to keep expenses down, but I usually find there's a logical justification for most outgoings, and in this case I'm pretty much guaranteed to make more at the tables than the cost of any monthly package I could find.

I mean, how could it go wrong?

My notes from this morning's meeting:

• Shutting down old server -- monkeys will be involved in any apps migration. When it's been decommissioned we will all pee on it.
• I wish I had some crunchy tacos. BEEF.
• We need a fleet of flying robots with missles.
• I bet the inside of my skull is really wet and slippery.
• Ooh, she just said "onus".
• Then she said "wiggle room". Dirty!
• I really like the phrase "staging area".

Maybe everyone's notes are like this, and I just assume that unlike me they are conscientiously writing down what is actually being said.

Woman Amplified by the Forced Engorgement of Ratatouille (WAFER)

Earlier today I was instructed by an adjudicator, through my headphones, to insert a 'little comma in the air' between the word 'appellant' and the letter 's'. He means apostrophe, of course, but I believe that 'little comma in the air' is a far better description. It's so poetic, and expressive; and in a way, we are all little commas in the air, little pauses in God's firmament.

distant voices sing
"little comma in the air"
deep ocean sounding

below the crush depth
there is beauty all around
in every season

We are Jupiter
and beyond the infinite
commas in the air

God's creation is a timesharing environment - there is one God, but he gives us all equal time, albeit measured in millionths of a millionth of a second. Carrying this further, I believe that the more people there are, the less time God has for us individually, and the more Godless we become. London is an example of this. If there was only one person in the world, he would have God's undivided attention; he would be as close to God as it would be possible to be, and indeed he might even become God himself. I think the Church of England should ponder this weighty matter rather than the homosexuality thing.

God does not care what we do with our cocks, or into which orifice or fold of flesh we insert them, or whether we only ever touch them when going to the toilet and to wash them in the sink, or even not then, as it's possible to direct the flow of urine 'hands free', as it were, and cleaning is not a problem if you have taken a vow of celibacy because nobody else is going to even *see* your cock, let alone get close enough to smell it.

Thinking about it, it would make more social sense if, when a man becomes erect, his entire body stiffens and becomes immobile. This would prevent sexual violence and would allow the woman to direct things to her satisfaction. Evolutionarily the opposite would be more appropriate - or even if women were generally immobile - but nature is a harsh thing which we have to resist.

A friend of mine once saw a man in a toilet in Grand Central Station, New York, clean his cock by splashing it with the water that flushes the urinal. He wasn't looking, as such, he just happened to see this.

~

Another thing struck me at work; lasers - you know how a laser works? Well, the boss where I work sits in an office at the end of the room, and the office is like a chamber, in fact it is a chamber, and I was thinking that if we covered her walls with mirrors, fed her with lots of food, locked the door and drilled a tiny, tiny hole in it, and gave her some paperwork, she'd get working and the mirrors would amplify her, and there'd be a 'boss laser'.

Out of the hole would come a focussed beam/wave of pure command, capable of cutting through three - no, FIVE - inches of solid steel, or even Solid Snake. A person's stomach could also be the chamber for a laser, provided he or she ate rubies and mirrors and calorific food - such as lasagne, a British invention, apparently - in advance, and then jumped up and down on the spot. Out would come light! From which orifice, I know not. It would be the ultimate enema.

And now the 16th of July, 2003, is almost done. Not a day I will look back on.