Chuckie!

My apartment’s management office sent over a maintenance crew today to fix a faulty power outlet in my kitchen. They came by some time during the day, when I was away at work, and did the deed and left. They left me a note, wedged in the crack of my front door, to let me know that they had been there.
Pretty innocuous so far, eh? On the note were printed the words, “Someone was in your apartment today.” Not in a particularly large font, but in what, to my tired eyes, seemed like a very, very creepy font. This voice kept saying those words in my head, a creepy child’s voice, from a horror movie, “Someone was in your apartment today”…And then I read the rest. “Fixed outlet in kitchen and replaced switch. Fixed shower head.” The creepy voice tried saying that. It faltered on “Outlet in the kitchen”, stumbled over “switch,” and then encountering “shower-head,” gave up on the entire matter as a bad job and repaired to the nearest bar for a stiff one.
So yeah, apparently the creepy voice that haunts my apartment complex (not my head) is a weak willed alcoholic.
They never make movies about the alcoholic creepy voices. The creepy voices that are accountants, or code monkeys or stapler salesmen. These are the salt of the creepy voice earth. But do they get any acknowledgment? No, all the credit and the stardom goes to those voices that tell people to jump of cliffs or go postal in a supermarket or invent telephonic customer service numbers (Please for fucks sake do not make me push one and then three and then seventy five followed by six while balanceing on my left toe and wearing a tutu.). these are the rock stars of the creepy voice world. They get all the chicks and the money and the fame while the rest toil in anonymity.

Voices of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Five hours of sleep a night for five nights in a row can lay waste to your system. And mine. but mostly mine. I got back from a vacation and I’m ready for my next one.
Drinking seven cups of coffee a day is bad for your system. I speak from personal experience. It leaves one with the urge to throw up all day, and makes the computer monitor swim alarmingly. As opposed to when the computer monitor swims reassuringly, humming softly under its breath.

My computer is so fucked right now. Everything crashes and hangs with a cheery alacrity and merry abandon. Word is stuck in an infinite feedback loop where it crashes and relaunches and crashes and relaunches ad infinitum. The Start menu is fucking there to stay. Let other lesser menus disappear and reappear, slaves to the users whims and fancies. Not this one. Fuck you and fuck the world. It’s here, it’s going nowhere. Get used to it.

Aaargh. No I do not want to reboo…

French toast.

So, you do know it’s fucking impossible for anyone to look halfway normal in a portrait photograph. (I do not by that statement mean that it is possible for people to look normal, but impossible for them to look halfway normal. I mean to say that normalcy is a goal that is unachievable under any circumstance, and, and, the point halfway normalcy, encountered by travelers on the road to normalcy, and which through a strange quirk of the space time continuum is one third of the way to normalcy, is just as unachievable. So, to conclude, fucking run on sentences are the bomb. Shout out to someone who, in my presence, called his significant other a firecracker. That someone then rapidly begged for mercy at the significant other’s reaction.)

Anyway, so, yeah, normalcy impossible. It is a portrait photograph and therefore the subject needs to look freaky, and spaced out. Like someone who went on a fifteen day meth binge, breaking only to swig large quantities of bootleg alcohol and read the comics page in the newspaper. You know, I’m not even sure that a person can survive a fifteen day meth binge supplemented by large quantities of bootleg lubrication, but lets assume that they can. They need to photograph one for those folks for a portrait. Freakiness compounded. Too much of a good thing.

So, yeah, normalcy impossible. You have the, “Oh look, theres something in the distance that is fascinating” look on the subjects face. I like imagining that hordes of rampaging cannibals have popped up behind the photographer and are eyeing him/her with a predatory gleam, while pulling out the good silverware and fighting over seating at the table. Naturally, the subject believes that this occurrence is slightly fascinating and observes it, calmly, but with keen interest. This is the closest that we come to normalcy.

Yes it is that bad. The look that a person might give a horde of ambulatory Homo-Sapien-ovores is the best we can do. It’s all downhill from there. (Or uphill, if you’re a cyclist who is slightly winded and then looks at the acclivity(did not look that word up) and goes “Who the fuck came up with the notion that going downhill was a bad idea. Show me that cretin and I will ride my bicycle over him a few times. Three or four times. Five times if he is downhill from me.”)

So, yeah, “The ooh fascinating etc, etc” look, followed by the. “I have a live frog in my mouth and it feels gooooood,” look. Mildly disturbing. It might be another amphibian, a salamander, a toad, a semi aquatic toaster. Any one of these might do in a pinch. But since frogs are the most readily available, let us, for the sake of this paragraph, assume that the subject did infact have a frog in his or her mouth, and that the presence of the aforementioned frog felt gooooood.

Then there’s that “I am a robot, see no emotion,” look. I object to this one. As a geek of epic proportions, I know that robots have emotions. The Terminators wanted to kill, destroy, be really cool and liquid metal. Maybe not healthy emotions, but emotions none the less. R2D2’s beeps were signs of deep, meaningful emotion. (Hey…he had a thing for x-wings, something phallic I’m sure. The logical connection here is too easy. I w ill not even go there. It is left to the reader as a trivial exercise.). I insist that this look be replaced by, the “Oh, I’m a plank of wood, feel my um no emotion state?” look.

And then there’s the other extreme. “The I’m dripping with emotion,” look. Yeah, stop fucking grinning so hard. You’re dimming out the lights. My eyes are starting to bleed. The sun is fading away. Oh, wait. It isn’t. That’s just my retinas melting away.

So, yeah, deep fried frog’s legs. Yummy.

Kermit

It started with this, and that led to me reading this. Now, the entire topic is very, very gross… But one wonders, and by one I mean me, what did lead them down this path? How the fuck did anyone decide that this was the way to go?

Head shrinking isn’t exactly the first idea that pops into a persons mind when faced with the body of a fallen foe man or with the remains of a random victim and the issue of its disposal. If the um…deceased is located conveniently far away then one can I suppose ignore the matter and let nature take its course. The world however, is far from perfect and follow up measures need to be taken.

Humans have been doing this since humans have been human, and even before that I suppose. Bury, burn, entomb, cover with a ton of rocks, heave into the ocean…all logical and efficient in the most part. The head shrinking…not so much. That comes under the inspired bit of stupidity, (Also know as “What in fuck’s name were they thinking”, and “You are fucking kidding me”. Colloquially known as, “Please, fucking tell me they did not do that.” (In that last sentence the word fucking is used as a verbal, a verb used as an adjective. I had to look that up, but now I know, and knowledge is always a good fucking thing.))

And so I thought about that a little more. And then there was light. A committee came up with this approach. That is the most logical explanation.

Circa…whenever. 400BC, or 1600 AD or yeah, whenever.

“Well, Gentlemen and Ladies, here we are, and there are ahem the yes, you know the recently departed from the mortal coil because of the harrumph actions of um us. lets…umm…ummm…Suggestions any body?”

“I know I know boss! Let’s shrink them. We’ll save on space and it’s good for the environment.

“Why, that’s a capital Idea Rupert, with a capital I, give yourself a raise.”

(Rupert the headshrinker. Mentioned in the Doomsday Book and in Ye Olde Reader’s Digeste. True fact.)

“And boss, let’s not shrink the whole thing. Let’s just shrink the head. Why? Because it makes no fucking sense and you know that we’ll never run out of conversation topics at parties.”

(And that’s true, mention that you are a headshrinker at any party and immediately find yourself the center of attention. In much the same way that Kaa was at the bi-annual Bandar Log conference.

Unless of course, it is a party comprised solely of headshrinkers, because, they’d all go, “Whatever, yeah, and for your next act you will be exhaling and then inhaling? Puh-lease” (Headshrinkers in groups larger than five or six are a surly bunch.) Kaa at the biannual meeting of Snakes Created by Kipling lacks any kind of dramatic impact. He’s just a face in the crowd.)

“Rupert double that raise. And you’re promoted. That is a fantastic idea. We have a course of action. Go forth my brethren, shrink away. Rupert, lead them.”

So, apparently I snarl when I’m lifting weights in the gym. Some people grunt. Loudly. They’re called the grunters. Some people count out their repetitions really, really loudly. If they’re on their fifth rep, they want every fucking person in the gym to know that and share in their joy. One lady literally sounds like she’s having an orgasm. No literally. I’m not exaggerating in the least bit. Honest. Believe me! The whole moaning bit get old when you’re trying not to drop that dumbbell on your head.

I snarl. I did not realize this until someone pointed this out. That didn’t stop me from snarling, but now I have the good grace to look slightly embarrassed when I do snarl. I originally conveyed the impression of a werewolf on a full moon night with the scent of fresh blood in the air snarling merrily as he hunts his prey. The embarrassed look changes it all. I now convey the impression of a werewolf who’s given up the hunt for nobler pursuits and organic meat from the local grocers, but whose ears still occasionally perk up when it is a full moon and the scent of hemoglobin permeates the ether, and who then realizes that this reaction is wrong and hopes that no one else has seen his ears twitching.

So, yeah, fucking headshrinkers. Weird shit.

The Joy of Music

Someone stop the world. I want to get off. I think this is my stop. It says so on my ticket. Look, “Dude this is your stop. Get off.” You can’t get any more explicit than that. Well I suppose you could get a lot more explicit if you played suggestive, mood music in the background, but I will not even go there. Spoils the whole illusion of deep, brooding thought. Nothing ruins the semblance of seriousness more than suggestive music. A speech about world hunger, global warming and incipient Armageddon. Your audience riveted by the impending doom, and then softly in the background, “Pyaunchikipyaunyaun pyaunchikipyaun yaun.” There ends your noble endeavour to rescue the masses from their fate…Coz’ y’know, suggestive music screws things up. In more ways than one.

That, sadly enough, is my Google Talk status message. I claimed that it was a stream of consciousness rant. And maybe it was. But doesn’t everybody do it? Play um questionable music in their heads when they’re stuck doing something boring.

And it works every single time.

Cleaning the Kitchen…Oddly suggestive music

Debugging code…Oddly suggestive music

Making yourself a nice cup of tea…Oddly suggestive music

Reading a book…Oddly suggestive music

Renewing your license…Oddly suggestive music

Shopping for groceries…Oddly suggestive music


Which only goes to show that everything is better with porn. It’s like cheesecake. You cannot go wrong with porn. Porn is like Superman, but without the underwear worn on the outside. Actually, without underwear period. Porn is like the first rain, that causes life to burst forth from the ground…except I think they use condoms. Unless it’s all women. In which case it’s all good.

So, yeah. I had absolutely nothing to say.

Driving home late one night, I realized that I hadn’t checked the back seat for stowaway axe murderers. That clearly meant that there was a stowaway axe murderer in the back seat and he/she would continue to be there until I glanced back and reassured myself that he/she had left. So I glanced back.

And nearly ran off the road.

Gigantic, Huge…

Update.

No. Really. Believe me. This is a huge post. I’ve just used a really small font.

…Rim shot?

Apparently not.

The worst thing in the world is being sarcastic and not having people get your sarcasm. “We have turned off the sarcasm meters. Your sarcasm no longer registers. Now roll over and die because your barbs cannot make it past our armor.”

Bleh.

Back to your regularly scheduled blankness.

Ten, nine, eight, seven…

Hotel rooms can be cold and impersonal…but, but I get someone to clean up after me, make my bed and breakfast isn’t cold cereal. Cold and impersonal. Call me R. Daneel Olivaw (I did not have to Google that reference).

So Windows has this little shield thingy in the status bar telling me that I need to install stuff. (And I do not, the Doom will descend upon me and fire shall rain from the heavens, and there will be a hail of frogs and a flurry of toads and scattered showers of other assorted amphibians.)

I love how Express Install has this whole spiel accompanying it and Custom Install has absolutely nothing other than an ominous paranthasis-ized Advanced. An Advanced that manages to convey all the menace that would emanate from a large heavily armed and more than slightly deranged religious fanatic (Deranged and religious fanatic, redundant, I know.). That Advanced is saying, “Click me and you’re fucked. Really. Fucked. In an unpleasant manner. Not in a manner involving supermodels and butter. Click the Express Install and you will not have to see you villages burning and hear the lamentations of your women.”

Not feeling up to the task of braving the Express Option. I chose custom and went back to coding. The Update Manager thing works quietly in the background (Insert mental image of a quiet psychopath who has a well founded dislike of the spotlight and prefers the shadows.). In a half hour it is done and up pops this dialog…

That isn’t a notification as much as it is a threat. “Fucking click now or I will fucking restart on your ass in five fucking minutes.” Later, I click. Begone vile dialog. Leave me be. I am busy coding. I do not want a restart interrupting the flow of my thoughts. Later. Go away. Come back in an hour or two.

Ten minutes later.

Mother fucker. Go the fuck away.

Ten minutes later.

Aaaargh. Bastard fucking spawn of the Devil!

“Restart. Or will in five minutes. I need to restart. The ritual need to be completed. I so not think you are capable of sentient, intelligent thought or action. When you click later, you clearly fucking mean that you will change your mind in ten minutes. I need to show you the countdown. Five minutes motherfucker and then I take the decision away from you. You will bend to m y will. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

Later. Later. Later. Late…

(Three minutes have passed. Tab and Enter. Bad idea.)

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Droplets

Fucking head cold.

Gah.

Nose completely blocked. I sound like an asthmatic, kettle as I gasp for air.

The cold did not roll into town alone. Unobtrusively following it was its cold, evil friend the flus. That sneaky bastard. Sunday last, I had an inkling that something was wrong. I sneezed once, twice, thrice…and then I lost count. I felt a tickle in the back of my throat. Not a good sign. Fuck!

In due course Monday appeared, (Like a particularly unpleasant dark cloud on the horizon. (Not a pleasant dark cloud, one of those that you see on the National Geographic channel, or on B.B.C. Wildlife documentary, the cloud that heralds the ending of the dry season and the arrival of the rains. In the background a voice, a reassuring, friendly voice, describes the scene as it unfolds. “The animals look up. They can sense that change is in the air, that the seasons have turned. The harshness of the dry season is about to end. Life in all its myriad forms is about to explode.”…Cut to scene of flowers blossoming, tender shoots bursting out of the moist soils, subjects of the documentary enthusiastically humping (The Bloodhound Gang-The Bad Touch).) A particularly unpleasant dark cloud composed of equal parts of noxious smoke and papayas) and I staggered off to work..

Now, I know that I always say that I’m staggering along. But this time I literally staggered to my car and then staggered out to work. This was beginning to resemble the “Week Of Looking at Bright Lights”, but in a far, far more unpleasant way. Showing exceptional fortitude I soldiered through the day. Ss evening approached, I actually began to feel a bit better.

And then I made my fatal (figuratively) mistake. I decided to go work out. Yeah, bad idea. Having lasted a grand total of ten minutes there, I staggered back out and staggered to bed. Staggering with style takes energy. I had none. So I staggered in the least cool way possible.

Tuesday dawned. Like the Monday, but meaner. The cloud was darker and was decidedly acidic.

Wednesday I succumbed and refused to get out off bed.

Thursday I got out of bed and took up my new position as the office’s latest disease vector. Sadly everyone else around me seems disgustingly healthy.

Friday. Finally.

Fucking Head Cold.

Does not mourning someone I should have been close to, but was not close to, make me a bad…fine, bad-der person?

11100 or I, for one, welcome our new cephalopod overlords.

A few interesting (Here, I play fast and loose with the adjective “interesting”, stretching the meaning of the word, patting it down and coaxing it into a new shape, the shape known to some as mind numbingly boring.) facts about the number 28 (Source: Shamelessly ripped from Wikipedia and then despicably edited):

  • The number of letters in the Danish and Swedish alphabets (not counting W).
  • Part of the title of a zombie movie 28 Days Later.
  • The number of normal human teeth, not including the third molars (wisdom teeth).
  • The postal code of the province of Madrid, in Spain.
  • The only two digit number, both of whose halves rhyme with shwenty and weight respectively.
  • The only number that is twenty seven plus one.
  • The number of malfunctioning staplers in a box of thirty.
  • The only number that is twenty nine minus one.
  • The average number of explosions in any action movie.
  • One fifth the temperature of my trusted hangover remedy (soup) that I poured over my cell phone this past Sunday.
  • One fourth the number of ab-crunches I did to avoid talking to someone at the gym this past Wednesday. (No, I do not exaggerate that number. That number does come with the disclaimer that for me doing an ab-crunch involves scrunching my eyes, grimacing and twitching slightly. Occasionally a stray abdominal muscle may be involved. Usually not.)
  • Number of hours I was hunched over like Gollum because of those exercises. (I did caress my mouse a few times and go “Myyyyy presciousssssss, my prescioussssss.”)The hisses are good for the lungs.
  • The number of years (and six days) that I have been on this planet.

And that last bullet point sucks. I’m closer to thirty than I am to twenty five and that’s scary. Not in a “Scary footsteps following you in a dark, lonely parking lot,” kind of way but in a …actually precisely in a “Scary footsteps following you in a dark, lonely parking lot,” kind of way. Except that the footsteps are very real. And they belong to this huge, misshapen brute known as middle age. You can hear him muttering under his breath, “…Responsibilities, Family, Commitment, Retirement, Settle Down…”.

That last bit there is the most frightening. “Settle Down.” Who the fuck wants to settle down? Settling down is what happens when a badly constructed pastry implodes in on itself. Dust settles down. Settlers, in an ideal world, settle down. I looked at my résumé. At no point does it assert that I am good at settling down. It says “Programming Experience”, and “Educational Background” and “Previous Experience”, but no fucking mention of settling down. Notably absent are the words settle and down in that order. I does say that I have experience using blankets filled with down, and that if I ever sued a stapler manufacturer, I would be willing to settle out of court. (Yes, I do have a weird résumé.) The phrase “Settle Down” is in my case counterproductive. It unsettles me, flusters me and leaves me in need of a strong drink.

I’ve come to the conclusion that only one thing can save me from people telling me to “Settle Down.”

The earth needs to be attacked and conquered by vicious, viscous aliens. There’ll be no time for settling down and related nonsense when I’m fighting in the Resistance, striking small but vital blows against the enemy’s military industrial mega-complex.

Assorted relatives may say, “You’re twenty eight. Isn’t it time you settled down?”

I’d reply, “I’m fighting a goddamn underground war against our alien oppressors. I have no time for such trifles,” and that, that undeniable truth, would silence them completely.

Because it is true. You cannot settle down when you are fighting evil alien oppressors. It only encourages them and causes them to preen and give speeches at parties and carry on like a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. Where are the members of the resistance? Why are they not crashing the party dressed as members of the catering staff, lying in wait to eliminate the upper echelon of the alien hierarchy? Why, they’re settling down and having children and working towards their retirements.

Fuck that. Death to our viscous alien oppressors. Once they get here. They need to get here to preempt this talk of settling down and then we’ll (I’ll) get rid of them.

I should probably make a donation to SETI.

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Blogger makes signing up for Google’s AdSense very, very convenient. The link’s right there on the settings page, begging for you to click on it and enter a world of money, money, money. And for a moment there I was very nearly tempted. Making easy money has always appealed to my mercenary, money grubbing soul. Yes, yes, very nearly tempted for all of two seconds.

It took me half a second out of those two seconds to come to the realization that with the amount of traffic I get on this blog, it would take me roughly four years, seven months and twenty three days to make just about enough money to buy half a doughnut. Without adjusting for inflation. How did I come up with that figure? I used the well known web traffic estimation method, P.T.N.R.O.M.A., which, of course, stands for Pulled The Numbers Right Outta My Ass. An honored and widely respected metric. Usually used by politicians and advertising agencies.

And in the other second and a half, well, in their own words “Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money”. Yes indeed. Content based advertisements. Anybody else see the problem here?

Here are the advertisements I could expect (Neatly bulleted and stuff.)

  • Bright Lights at BrightLights.com
  • Fuckityfuckfuckfuck. We Teach YOU how to use the f-bomb gratuitously.
  • Staplers and Toaster. How semi-Intelligent machines from the industrial age are planning to bring down civilization
  • PaperWeight KamaSutra: We got it.
  • Handcuffs: Handcuffs for all occasions. We got them, you need them.
  • Butter too.
  • And supermodels.

Ads by goooooooooooofuckingle.

And if you thought those were freaky, take a look at these.

The sheer diversity of content on that page, that caused AdSense to come up with those particular ads is mind boggling. Advertisements for bottled water, athletic shoes, and…Japanese brides…and…Female Prison Pen Pals…and a video by an Indian Business Leader…Probably doused in bottled water and wearing nothing but those athletic shoes and a smile.

For the life of me, I cannot come up with any content that would cause those advertisements to appear together. It is quite possible that…um yeah…I have no fucking theories. Japanese brides to female prisoners to water to shoes to commerce. And no, I do not remember what the content was on that page. Perhaps because, this, this collage of links was so arresting that it captured my attention leaving very, very little room for anything else.

Granted, on a normal page I would mock OGO for setting new standards in bottled water. “We are wetter. We are water-ier. We hydrate, mother-fuckas, like nobody’s ever fuckin’ hydrated before. OGO fucking the gold fucking standard in bottled water.” But…but it fades into insignificance on that page. The beauty of the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.

That’s about it. Revel in the sheer beauty of that image, wrought by no human hands, but by the glorious genius of AdSense.