1. the car thing that's supposed to save the world. you see, those awesome batteries occasionally die. and apparently they're awesomely expensive. but i have some good news! i just paid a bunch of money to someone to basically let me keep using what i had already paid for.
2. the iphone. though at&t doesn't know it's an iphone, and that's kind of at the root of the problem. in order to avoid allowing them to ream you on the data plan you have to perform some digital magic, among other steps. but this magic has certain side effects, including people can't call you. ask your doctor if ultrasn0w is right for you—i should have.
3. the roof. it has holes. in it.
4. the stereo of my other vehicle. a long time ago i turned the ignition in my truck a certain number of clicks so i could listen to the radio or whatever, but went one click too far, and then back a click, all in rapid succession, and this let the magic smoke out of the shiny lights of the faceplate. and magic smoke, as any scientist will tell you, is hard to put back in a device after it has escaped.
5. the nail of my left index finger. and now every time i use it it's like the terrorists won their war against the kittens.
6. the dog. i've made clear my thoughts on the matter of sub-sentient life forms. they exude smelly substances and totally ignorant of this fact. they whine for attention. and not one of them has a job.
7. the internet. conservapedia.com will eventually become skynet.
8. my liver. and i have the other items in this list to blame.

(it's all academic, dear reader. you weren't even aware of it. save us both some time and admit the fact.)

in my future i see data mining and analyses and reports, a dancelike feedback loop of things happening, to data, to knowledge, to other things happening. and i'm good at it, dig? so obviously it's what i want to do forever, right?

we come to the point. i tend to do this thing when i encounter something i like: i binge on it, totally saturate myself with it, eventually get turned off, stop liking it. it's an extremely male-brained thing to do. i do it all the time in many and varied parts of my life, but so far, not in any of the really important parts. my fear is that i'll inexorably work my way through all my dream jobs, all those things i'd do for free if i had nothing else to do, in exactly this manner—loved intensely, but shortly, and discarded.

i like my job. i really do. it gives me little fixes of certain things i like (including, not least of which, money). i want to continue liking my job. but the first six weeks of the year are my hell weeks, and i'm definitely smelling the brimstone; i hope this is not the year i discover i forgot to pack my asbestos armor. or my boots of +5 fire resist.

i wonder how long i could string this metaphor along. if i really tried.

do you understand what i'm saying? do you really?

EVERY TIME I DROP MY PANTS, SOMEONE LAUGHS AT ME

this particular second monday started very early with a dream. in this particular dream i was a close personal friend of elliott smith.

elliott smith, it turns out, is a regular guy. i know this because i lived next door to him, and we were mates. he had legos on his bedroom floor, fantasy books on his shelves, an old home-built computer on the desk, a playstation under the television, outdated glasses. a card-carrying geek, if so unimaginative an epithet may be ascribed. he had a set of utterly loving parents and a cat who knew her name.

of course, elliott smith is no longer living in the strictest sense of the word, though this didn't keep him from speaking with me throughout the dream. and listen when i say that he's just like me. in fact, all throughout the dream, he didn't say a single thing that i myself wouldn't have said, were i in his position. the entire experience was eerily similar to talking to myself. i know what this is like because i do it most of the time.

i've long given up on the theory that dreams mean anything, but think about it this way: a good novel is one that lies to tell you the truth.

i'm trying to say something here, i just don't know what. it's been quite a long time since i wrote directly about a dream because it's a pretty cheap source of words, invariably flippant, ridiculous, meaningless, and meritless. it should, then, be regarded as a telling thing when it is about just such a dream that i now write, after such a long hiatus*. exactly why it is telling i leave as an exercise for the reader (hints are red herrings: there are multiple solutions).

*hiatus n. period of laziness. see also: respite, suspension, you have become a boring person

first, you will unwrap your product. you will take everything out of the packaging, place vital components in their long-determined places, drool over them. it shall be christmas-esque.

but wait! where are your speaker cord connectors? here are your speaker cords … here is the spot on the receiver for your speaker cord connectors, into which your speaker cords will inevitably plug …

you will diligently search the original packaging, the trash, under your couch, under your wife, in your hair, in your cat, and in your mailbox. you will not find them. resignedly, you will sit at your desk and type an email to the vendor who sent did not send your four speaker cord connectors.

patiently, and with hands tied, you will wait. for three days you will wait for the following response from the aforementioned vendor:

all missing part inquiries should be sent directly to kenwood at the following email address (…)

resignedly, you will sit at your desk and type an email to the company who sent did not send your four speaker cord connectors in the box they sent to the aforementioned vendor.

patiently, and with hands tied, you will wait. for three days you will wait for the following response from the aforementioned company:

replacement parts may be ordered through the kenwood authorized parts distributors (…)

you will browse through the multitude of options they will provide you. you will be overjoyed to learn that you have the opportunity to pay US$20 plus shipping and handling (no extra charge for dropping and being left in the sun) for four little nubbins of plastic and copper that should have been included with your original shipment. you will be so overjoyed that you will once again sit down at your desk and share your overjoyment with the people of kenwood themselves. you will most profusely thank them for the opportunity.

as you will now be a repeat contact, your message will be placed in a priority queue and beamed to the rings of neptune. there, the text of your message will be compressed and stored as crystals of methane and photographed by amateur astronomer philip drake of new guinea. phil will not at first understand what he sees, but after some analysis will decrypt the message and pass it along to kenwood support. here, it will be accidentally deleted, then accidentally recovered, then ignored, then finally misunderstood. by the fifth day you can expect the following response:

please reply with your mailing address and we will send you the speaker cords at no charge.

you will again sit down at your desk and very precisely explain the difference between the cords themselves and the speaker cord connectors, and clarify that it is not the cords you are missing, but the cord connectors.

as a third-time contact, this message will be printed out and fed to a bear in the san diego zoo while japanese tourists snap photos; the digital copy will then be deleted from the server (and the server itself burned). since no humans actually involved will actually read your most recent email describing the desired change, five days later you will receive two surround sound speaker cables.

you will curse.

now thoroughly miffed, you will call the number on the packing slip. this number, by design, will connect you to a latex factory in south wales. a bully chap whose welsh-accented name you absolutely will not be able to understand will answer, shout gibberish at you, and hang up. you will look up kenwood's number on the internet; you will completely fail to find it.

you will pay a shady figure a large sum of money to hack into the nsa's server farm and locate kenwood's true number, which you will call during their regular business hours of 0517 and 0518. the call will be answered by a finite number of monkeys who will attempt to connect you to the support department (the digits of whose extension map exactly to the letters of shakespeare's hamlet) by pressing number sequences at random. this will take several minutes. at the end you will be in touch with the gentleman who sent you the original emails. you will again explain to him the difference between speaker cords and speaker cord connectors until you are satisfied he sufficiently understands the distinction. you will then kindly ask him to send you four speaker cord connectors. he will concur and say you will have your speaker cord connectors before the week is out.

ten days later you will receive four surround sound speaker cables.

you will blog.

the only really important stuff on it was about (fifty? a hundred?) hours' work on that pesky webcomic that continually occupies my quiet-time thoughts. every once in a while, i'd get a fantastic idea for thus-and-such, plug it into whatever workstation i was currently employing, jot it down, unplug it. and sadly the last time i copied anything from it was, roughly, summer.

balls; i'm not generally good at dealing with my own stupidity, especially when it could have been so easily avoided.

anyone know someone who knows someone?

useful texts:
none, you poor sods.

who heard the alarm only distantly this morning, and slept past his ideal waking time? who over-brewed the tea this morning, turning it into bitter bitter badness that even his ever-loving and -longsuffering wife couldn't choke down? who has a case of the mondays? the answers is me.

it continues. every paper cut I can remember receiving has arrived on a monday. it is a scientifically verifiable fact that, per unit of area of skin affected, a paper cut is the stupidest type of injury allowable by the laws of physics. it must be a monday. I never could get the hang of mondays.

perhaps on the bright side I have figured out what I want for my birthday.

0. 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine. no not really.
1. booba? kiki? yes yes really, but hard to find for sale. (a friend of mine experiences this. when she closes her eyes, my voice is blue, and round.) the machinations of the mind are an utter enigma.
2. some bloody answers. yes yes really but not likely on the scale I'm hoping for. do they even exist? it is an open question.


days go by and in the end no one knows where all the when went. yesterday's rain is this morning's fog; perhaps that has something to do with it.

or perhaps it's just a sodding monday.

this will only occasionally work: in your browser of choice type 68 (dot) 185 (dot) 59 (dot) 147 (colon) 1984. if nothing happens it's because I don't have winamp running, which means I'm in bed (which is a rare (and at very least a horribly unpredictable) thing). unadulterated webternet magic by wwwinamp.


2a. WASTE_PUBLIC_KEY 20 2048 antimatt
EA39157B91FEBD3AFABEFECF952C8C1363DFBC02B24339E6DA5A2816A1DB
3BBA8A85F6DDDAD3F3DBB7C7EDF1A0316B7580D95C2B21BB77E48481EF4D
1200AC84F3C11A1E28B2911321D44489596A1A370E64356AB46B72DC0BE4
139ED1528FBB92684E69D38FBF9A0282B41EAEBBD6844772F483666EA3C8
949633C78D7F820F7ED4F9BA3177DD13F077B10CAB39EE642008EA00BECC
327C5533A023927E9FA0683BAD95A9AF893718BC89BCDE4434B3D06EB85E
52D60C77D644DADECAB11AF9463DA20E7EDF3A65F56AF9264CDAC8D8572B
968EB98740B17F6669CB13A42124B52CFFD40BBC93BB2FE3EF2C4768B0A0
DE6F95D88227FA2D36D181B2999961C30003010001
WASTE_PUBLIC_KEY_END


2b. refer to above spamproof ip address. the one with all the dots.


3. FreeMind is quite probably the neatest piece of software I have ever seen. it is potentially infinite; my fingertips tingle with delight/nerve damage. I hope soon to be able to let you in on some of the things I've done so far. oh what a juicy tidbit. best for last. (java required.)



cheers, luddites.