white space the archives about black |
today i have to say: ----------------------------------- efficient japanese am i really a big nerd? yes. yes i am. the '92 miata is a fun little car to drive. since january i've been keeping tabs on how often and how much i fill up, by way of a small notebook kept in the car which i use to jot down info while i refuel. let's take a look at the numbers:
you can slowly see the gas prices (PPG) creep up. (these are a reverse calculation based on gas volume and total sale, NOT the numbers from the station signs). on 3/28 i drove to houson, and then 2 days later i drove back. perhaps my favorite category is the miles/$1. although the value of currency may fluctuate on the global market, it's all the same here in america. this category, then, shows exactly what you get for a dollar; it's the true indicator of good vs. bad. note the jump in my MPG and miles/$1 around the begining of may: this was after i saw a documentary on hyper-miling. my new driving behaviors include: 1)not turing on the car until i need to, 2)coasting whenever possible, 3)shutting off the car at long stop lights, 4)keeping the tires fully inflated, 5)keeping the airfilter clean, and 6)openly mocking people who own suvs and trucks. i experienced an immediate 8 mpg increase. however, even with my new and improved driving habits maximizing the efficiency of gas burn, i still can't get the value out of the fuel that i was getting earlier in the year. finally, on a sad note, it's horrible to see commercials for brand new cars touting 24 mpg as if it were some new feature. if a 16 year old car is getting 26-32 mpg, why aren't we in the 35-40-45 mpg range today? last time i said: ----------------------------------- 500 / 10
- KSYM San Antonio (and internet!) Radio - KRTU San Antonio (and internet!) Radio - Erowid.org - My Aunt Mary Lou in Mali, who collects money and radios to distribute to people. - Linux i really can't decide how best to give, since it's such a distributed collective. i'll either give to the linux fund or spi, or i'll hand-pick a bunch of different projects. - 21st Century Tiger - The Nature Conservancy - Electronic Frontier Foundation - ISOHunt Torrent Search Engine ISOHunt in turn donated that money to several organizations, including - MercyCorps: China Earthquake - America Red Cross: China Earthquake - International Federation of Red Cross: Sichuan Earthquake Disaster Response
last time i said: ----------------------------------- sex and candy now, there are so many reasons why i could say that i'd title a post like this. truely, i will tell you that it's the title of one of those catchy songs from the '90s which i heard on my birthday that titherto got stuck in my head. however, if anyone asks, i'm going to say that i'm referencing a rather interesting form of dichotomy, analogous to meat and liquor, fire and water, kenetic and potential.  master of ceremonies lighting the ceremonial flame. but it was an eventful night (that thing i write about): my birthday. it was on a monday this year, a most horrible night for a party. so in accomodation with many of my friends who i expected would come, i decided that the friday a few days before would be the right day to celebrate. i had a few plans in mind for how to make it great, like: hookas!, a swimming pool and jacuzzi, lots of booze, the latest video gaming systems. shoot, i even busted out some christmas lights, this thing was going to be rad.
i did some fandangaling and convinced my brother to hold the thing at his house. it had the pool and the space, and would accomodate nicely. the first step was cleaning the pool, but this proved a lost cause for several different reasons. luckily, it's not yet prime pool party weather in texas right now and the location did not sour. without worrying about the hookas too much, they proved to be one of my favorite parts of the evening. i picked them up from the turkish cafe near my work, where i've gone for lunch quite often. i'd planned to buy just one or two boxes of flavored tobacco, but the guy who works there is really cool and made up for me a half dozen flavors (some his own mix) in tiny hummus-to-go cups.
last time i said: ----------------------------------- a year of difficult work weeeeee! i'm really very excited. today couldn't have been more pleasant. despite the dead battery in the car this morning when i tried to go to work, it seems as if the day was filled very agreeable things. so the dead car battery this morning did not end that bad, because it randomly came to life after i turned the engine a few times. the door had been left ajar overnight. since i'd already called in late to work i took my time, which was nice becuase traffic is always a pain in the morning. for lunch i met my brother. we had planned to have pizza at a new fancy little-known restaurant, but when we arrived the crowds were so thick our waiting time actually exceeded my alloted lunch time. we happened upon a tiny little korean restaurant in the same neighborhood, and were encouraged when we saw it filled with what looked like regular clientel. we had some delicious exotic food and the waitress was especially nice too. after i got back to the office the boss left early for the day for some reason or another.. nobody really knows where he disapears to in the afternoons. so i got my job done at my own pace - because contrary to other, 'normal' people, i can sometimes be erratic and get a good deal of work done in short spurts rather than those times when someone is constantly monitoring my progress. then i got home and found that this had come:   so i'm pretty psyched about it, and i don't really know what i plan to do with it, but i like it and i think i'm going to keep it. 
last time i said: ----------------------------------- holy shit! i just won something off the radio! this is so awesome. i have to go to the radio station on wednesday to pick it up. this is the first time i've ever won ANYTHING! ok, not true. one time at quake con i won a pretty rad video card, but at the time i had been seriosly looking into buying a new video card, so i don't see it as winning as much as destiny forcing its' choice of graphics card into my hands. now, i've entered into raffels and drawings and competitions enough times before to be discouraged by my lotto-luck, but this time, BAM! i was on my game. it all happened while i was doing the dishes. the station i was listening to was playing a pretty good indie show (which they do just about every night), and the dj had a guest in the studio and together they were providing playful and interesting banter between sets of music and commercials. i had been listening half-heartedly to their wit when the dj mentioned that he'd be giving away a free prize. i figured someone else might want the prize more than me - because i didn't really know what he was talking about - so i passed up my chance to be caller 10. HOWEVER, at the very next music break the dj announced that he had only recieved 9 calls, and that the next person to call that number as the music began to play would be it. so he announced the number, and boy was i quick! i still don't even know what it is i won, some DVD. he gave me directions to the studio at a local university, and he asked me if i wanted to request a victory song. i mentioned a band and he played something off their latest album, although i forget which song exactly it was that he played. i am so cool for winning. i'm going to feel like a winner all week. also, last week during spring break i got to spend some quality time with my sister's 3 dogs. my sis and her family were out in california sking, so i got to dog sit. these are the dogs:
and so with 3 of these dogs, all together, jumping and peeing and pooping and barfing and scratching and barking and pawing and sniffing and eating and begging and looking with giant puppydog eyes all on top of each other all at one time, i believe that i experienced true chaos for the first time. last time i said: ----------------------------------- new mexico zone if you're looking for my snowboarding pictures from new mexico, you should look on the dark side. last time i said: ----------------------------------- 502nd annual leap year day hey kids! long time no post. i bet you are all wondering what the hell is going on with me, but i got nothing really important to say. actually, i doubt that i have all that much important stuff to say at any one time anyways, so we should suffice ourselves with the mundanities of my everyday life. however, i do appreciate readership (read: attention), so here's something for the records: i'm still living with my parents, at their house, in their potato room. after the potatoes began to smell 'off' we removed them, and it seems that i have now turned into the potato. i hope i don't start to smell too. life in sa is a bit slower paced than that of denton, or leiden, or xiangtan, but be that as it may time still manages to fly by, and i'm already really super freaking surprised that we're a nearing nearly a quarter done with 2008. what exactly have i been doing?, i ask myself. a little bit here, a little bit there. shoot, i don't even remember most of it. work is blah. it was blah about 6 months ago, but whatchyagonnado. i try to alleviate my pains by making it up to atx as often as i can. here now is a shout out to my a-town peeps (and those d-town peeps who i always see there): HOLLA! i've started giving money away freely. not to any such and such shmuck, but in a semi-orderly fashion. i haven't given out loads [yet] but i have it in mind to, some day when i'm extraordinarily rich. i have taken to calling what i am doing '500/10', where 500 is the total amount and 10 is the number of organizations - charitable and not, organized and not, etc etc etc - that i think i should give money to. i do foresee this expanding well past the 500 limit i've set at for now, but you gotta start somewhere. i'll go into more detail about this soon. also exorbitantly exciting, for me, is the recent official acknowledgment by the government of the netherlands of my dutch heritage, which will allow me to apply for EU citizenship in the very near future (in a dual sort of conjunction with my current US-ity). i've ALWAYS wanted to own a castle on the continent, and this brings me one step closer to that dream. i thought it necessary to write an updating post up on here because i had planned to do it soon anyways, and also for the reason that for the next 7 days i will be otherwise occupied: as a bachelor party for a friend of mine, and also sort of a birthday party for my dear bro, me and 5 comrades will be driving to northern new mexico for a snowboarding extravaganza. we've carefully planned the event for the past 2 months or so, but much of it will still be decided on the fly. it will be, i should think, a marvelous time. currently, i highly recommend reading the limericks found at the following site, and perhaps even submitting one of your own: the limerickdb and finally, let me say happy 502nd annual leap year day, yesterday! i know it's really saturday right now, the first day of march, but i was too busy celebrating february 29th to get around to wishing you all well on this event. let's always remember that even though it happens only once every 4 years, we should keep the spirit of leap year day with us everyday. be good to yourself, and to others too! last time i said: ----------------------------------- i've lost it! (hint: start clickin..)
last time i said: ----------------------------------- fatty @ urbutt.org oh man i just ate so much bacon. i had it on top of noodles. i put cheese on top of that. then i drizzled oil over everything. i can feel the fat cells congealing in and onto my belly, my arteries coating with waxy grease. don't you hate people who say 'greaze'? i hate that. i'm good at what i do. i glut. i could be one of those people, a 'feeder,' who gets off on getting fat. but i enjoy getting fat so much more than getting off. getting off is such a waste of energy. i'd rather have it padding my belt. i'd rather just leave the belt open than try to close it. it doesn't fit anymore, the belt. i used the last hole on it long ago. even after i used the last hole, i punched another with my knife, but i lost my breath. now i'm too lazy to even take it off of my pants, though it still hangs there like i could use it some day. hah. i COULD. i guess you could say that it's just a gut reaction. i got nothing left to do but glut. last time i said: ----------------------------------- wow, so i don't know what it is, but tonight i've been thinking about a totaly rad bar i used to hang out at in china. this place was the shizzle. i think it was called changsha party city, or something cheesily similar to that. it wasn't in xiangtan, but me and my buddies wouldn't hesitate to hop on the bus and ride the hour up to changsha to party at this place. i don't even remember who introduced it to us first, but it was probably xiao wu, the tattoo artist and good buddy of my buddy zhangyi. (hence forth known as johnny, because the first time i met him was in his own bar, and the music was playing loud. zhangyi sounds a lot like johnny, and it stuck.) xiao wu was a good dude. he did the tattoo on my (british) friend sam. 
sam's tattoo in progress anyhow, xiao wu had introduced us all to another rockin bar in changsha, a punk rock venue called 'si liu jiu ba.' simply a large room with stacks of speakers at one end and a bar at the other, besides the punk-rock chinese crowd, the name was the most interesting thing about the place. literally, it means the '4-6 alcohol bar,' easy enough. but reverse it, and substitute alternate words 9 ('jiu') and 8 ('ba') for alcohol ('jiu') and bar ('ba'), and you get 'ba jiu liu si,' the date of 89/6/4, or june 4th, 1989, the tiananmen square massacre. so one night me and miles and sam and johnny and i don't even know who else head up to changsha for dinner and drinks, and we know we're in for a party. we meet up with xiao wu and pigu and their contingent and we go out. they take us to the bar street, perpendicular to the main walking-and-shopping street of changsha. ok, we've been here before, we say. but then they lead us down a small dark hutong behind a parking garage to the rear entrance of one of the taller buildings on the strip. through the dark alley we walked to a lit hallway with 2 elevators, and we were enough people that we had to take both to the top. 
changsha buildings it was an awesome building. when we got off elevator, we exited into a central rooftop garden which was open to view the city on two ends and enclosed with apartments on the sides that continued up 3 or 4 more stories. except for the sounds of the city and our revelry it was quiet. warm humid smokey air hit us as we walked in a discreet door and through the hundreds of stringed beads that hung in the doorway. it smelled of a bar in good use, and the bass thumped and people laughed. we knew we'd found something good. we entered into a large open double leveled room. to our right side on the ground floor were several small rooms filled with pillows and low tables separated by tasteful japanese bamboo screens, and above that the second floor. to the left was a 2-story mural in black and white, touches of color here and there, done in the style of cartoonish skater-type graffiti, and filled in with pictures of historical chinese figures and characters, psychedelic designs swirling around it all. in front of us the staircase which led to the second floor with its booths and a classy wooden bar. we sat down at a table and ordered drinks. someone knew the owner and he came to greet us. we decided it was a nice place to stay and made ourselves comfortable. again, i'm not sure who did it - probably sam this time, because he likes to get into mischief - but someone said that behind the bar there were more stairs, and they led up. a few of us, maybe me and miles and johnny, said hey, let's go. just past the booths a narrow and steep set of steps went up above the bar where we found some empty rooms. even more interesting though was that we found a door which opened up to a patio on the 19th floor overlooking changsha. 
night time. this picture doesn't even do justice to the view from that patio. i kick myself repeatedly for never having brought my camera to this bar. the patio was filled with plastic funiture, most of which was wet. a light fog hung over the city, but the strip below us illuminated the night, and it was even more spectacular than we had seen from the garden just minutes before. a small bar was set up outside but not in use. dead party lights were strung above our heads, and we all crowded along the railing to look down and spit at the streets below. but sam wasn't done exploring yet. he'd found a central airconditioning structure directly adjacent to the patio, a small building equivilent to another floor on top of the building. on the outside of this were some rusted rungs, which we could jump to. on top of this existed another structure, most likely filled with pipes and all sorts of mechanical things needed to keep a large building like this working, and that too had rungs which we climbed. standing on the very top of the building, the cold wind whipping around us, the night and the fog and the music of the city humming around us, was an indescribable feeling. no railing lined this edge. no worries, we said, just no one fall, ok? one edge of the roof was 4 stories over the garden that we had emerged on. one edge saw the patio, and the one opposite that looked onto another, smaller, private patio. the last edge looked off into the abyss off the side of the building. we realized we were 21 stories off the ground. we took turns getting on our hands and knees and crawling to the edge. it was dizzying looking over the edge, realizing that any freak gust of wind, or loss of nerves, or impulsive suicidal thought could literally drive one over the edge. it was exhilerating. breathtaking. and it had a spectacular view! sam ended up standing on some piping and breaking something, so that water started gushing out from somewhere and causing a mess. we felt bad that we had found this forbidden area, but the owner came and assured us that everything would be ok. we went back down into the bar and enjoyed the evening, eventually finding ourselves splitting up and sleeping on couches at friends houses around the city. but i'll never forget that bar, and the good times we had. last time i said: ----------------------------------- worst timing ever you see, i was supposed to have met her at 8:25 this evening. i couldn't believe my luck when, having a cancelled dinner appointment, i had a whole 3 hours to sit around and wait for the movie which we were going to go see. i burned my finger making baking some bread, and i wolfed down a couple of hot dogs. i cafeully filled my flask with vodka, the new flask i'd gotten for christmas, and i had my evening all planned out. i even sat down to do the sudoku in the paper, though i didn't finish it - fridays are always impossible without some real number crunching. i looked up and it was 8:11. 'it'll only take 10 minutes to get there,' i said. i threw on my sweater and, considering how cold it may be outside as well as in the theater, i grabbed my winter jacket and flung it on too. the cuff caught on my hand where i had some rather large scabs from punching bag class, and, the skin of two of my knuckles ripped right off my right hand. i bled profusely. 'dammit!' i said. i went to the bathroom and stemmed the blood with tissue. i grabbed some ointment and band-aides and applied liberally. perfect, i'll just be on my way. and i looked at the clock and it said 8:20. i knew the road to the theater well, but my route took me past a police station. as i drove i patted my pocket where my phone should have been, and cursed. i'd left it on the kitchen table. i was 7 minutes late to the movie, but it didn't matter, the show was sold out. i couldn't find my friend, and i had no phone number to call and no phone to call with. i went home and considered my fate - things are not unfixable. later that night we did get together, and we played some pool and some chess. i'm still winning, 5-1, and it's all, it appears, in the timing. last time i said: ----------------------------------- idiot pants they're green and nice but_they_just_won't_fit. someone told me i should lose weight. the truth is i haven't been this light since high school, but my pants STILL won't fit. i probably didn't contract any sort of WORM in "the china," but i am still visibly surprised that the pure lipid and carb diet i subsisted on hasn't left me with anything to lose. the only 2 pairs of pants i have currently in my day to day wardrobe i bought in china. see? i can fit into normal clothes. one pair is green. you wouldn't know the difference between those and the new pants (IDIOTS!) except for the silly straps and extra pockets and engrish that says "RUDE BOY" on it. i suppose, however, that they had their market well targeted, because i had not always been nice whilst wearing those pants, and honestly, the fly button fell off about a year and a half ago so i cunningly used the straps to always keep my pants on, even in some of the most awkward times of my life. (try climbing a really tall fence and then getting your pants stuck while people point and laugh at you, you'll know what i mean.) i might still have that button saved somewhere in my toiletry kit, 'for when i get around to mending those pants'. the other pair are jeans, and by default they are blue. i do not agree with jeans that come in other colors. more recently, i also wear scrub pants, which are more like pajama pants except you get to wear them to work. i think someone once thought that when i said i wore scrubs to work i really meant rags or old clothes or something, but these articles of clothing are technologically advanced in almost every way, i can assure you. for example, they are reversable. also, they mostly come in muted pastel colors, and they are easily interchangable. indeed, i am so convinced that they are from the future that everyone in the future must be the same size, because with these pants one size truely does fit all. just when you [i] decide that perhaps, yes, it was about some time for you [me] to start thinking about pants, and you [i] think you've [i've] found a store which proports to carry nothing but mens pants, and you [i] even managed to find some in green, you [i] can't find any that fit. last time i said: ----------------------------------- someone said i should post this? for want of something better, more interesting, or heck, new, i'm posting this email exchange. Reply: last time i said: ----------------------------------- sundays are the best aren't they? the sundays where you wash the car (in my case 3), and that's all the physical exertion you have planned besides perhaps firing up the grill. i think it's something about the weather. to amuse myself, and the rest of you, here are some links which i've seen around: my buddy steve's blog about touring with a puppet troupe this past summer steve's kid's band's song's video (the band's myspace page) the chintendo vii never, NEVER, underestimate the power of asians in groups... (is that a man??) what i just downloaded for fun where i'll be in about 30 minutes last time i said: ----------------------------------- a note to self scribbled on a little piece of paper
She told me not to go. She told me not to getlast time i said: ----------------------------------- Mikele and the elephant In 1986, Mikele Mebembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mikele approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mikele worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Mikele stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Mikele never forgot that elephant or the events of that day. Twenty years later, Mikele was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mikele and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mikele, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man. Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mikele couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mikele summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Mikele's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly. Probably wasn't the same elephant. last time i said: ----------------------------------- august fun  can you find the places that no longer exist? (hint: pre-Sgt. Pepper's)     bats! last time i said: ----------------------------------- good afternoon sir. my name is william, and today we'll be removing your eyes. he's laid out on a gurney in front of me. male, caucasian, 20 years old. self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. his teeth are broken inside his gaping mouth. the exit wound, dripping the odd drop of crimson blood, neatly sown up by the medical examiner, behind his left ear. he was right handed; of course, he's nothing now. he's cold and naked and gray. arms splayed out to the side, stiff with rigor mortis; we had to bring him into the room head first cuz his arms would have caught on all the doors we pulled him through on his way from the freezer. oh god, the freezer. filled with more dead people than i've ever seen before in my life. (i confess, i'd never seen a real live dead person before this job.) fat ones and skinny ones, male and female, old and young. car accidents, cancer, cardiac arrest. we're in a small room off the main corridor, across the hall from the atopsy room. we hear the bone saw in the background. thank god it doesn't smell in this room. outside the doors it reeked of chemicals and.. odors. none of it good, and that's just from the freshly dead. they keep the decomposing bodies off site. thank god. 'dude, you're pacing. don't freak,' the tech tells me. i was pacing. the metaphorical elephant in the room was still laying on the gurney. i couldn't help but peer at him to alleviate my nerves - into his mouth, at his clouded lifeless eyes, across his slim body, at his hands and arms. it was so much like a real person, but it was not. it was a dead person. we prepare the patient. iodine cotton swabs under the eyelids, iodine pads around the face. i help the tech into his sterile gown and gloves, and we lay the sterile surgical sheet over the patient's face. and then we cut his eyes out. not really WHOLE eyes, just the corneas. the eye is an orb composed of several layers. the lens sits behind the iris, that colored part everyone makes the to-do about. over the iris is a clear window, the cornea, which is in fact a part of the white of your eye, the sclera. what we do is cut a circle out of the sclera around the iris, thus obtaining the cornea in condition suitable for transplant as soon as needed. i stand too close to the table. the kid's eye juice drips onto my pants. the eye with a circle cut out of it is awfully strange. the iris sits on the deflated orb, a circle of color surrounded by the black interior of the orb, almost robotic looking, almost artificial. we do the process twice and obtain 2 corneas - within the next few days, two people each will regain the use of an eye. we put the slivers of tissue into small vials filled with orange preservative, and place these in an iced styrofoam box. then there's the paperwork, more work than the cutting, but at least something you can do during lunch. the people back at the office are an interesting bunch - you almost have to be certifiably weird to stick around bodies as much as this bunch does. among them i've found a very receptive crowd for my favorite cannibal jokes. every day as i sit at my desk i wonder who is alive that won't be the next day. it makes me wonder, this job, about how strange it is to be anything at all. did this kid ever think that the morning after he shot himself 2 people would be cutting open his eyes? if he'd have known, would he still have pulled the trigger? who will die tonight, and what would they think if they knew? last time i said: ----------------------------------- croc go to my friend's show up in denton: New Sabbath Festival of Denton! 8/18/07 www.magilumrecords.com or else.....
last time i said: ----------------------------------- setting the record strate i get a lot of questions these days. let's review a few of them, many of which you yourself have probably asked: "hi william, what are you doing these days?" i am doing a whole lot of nothing, usually including (but not limited to) sitting on the couch with my laptop on the wifi, sleeping in my parents garage (aka the potato room), doing the dishes/mowing the lawn, and wondering whether i'll ever have money enough to get a haircut. "dude, where're you going next?" (or "what're your plans?") i have no plans for anything that may come after now. i don't even know what i'll be doing tomorrow, so let's forget about next month. i would LOVE to get off my behind and do something and go somewhere, but unfortunately my interests are fickle and i haven't yet 'found anything' that will pay me money or be incredibly cool or both. i'm working on it though. "do you have a job yet, slacker?" despite nearly 20 years of education under my belt, i do the kinds of manual jobs neanderthals surely would do if h. sapiens hadn't wiped them out and eaten their flesh, such as yard work, basic construction, and cleaning crap off of walls. fortunately, i may be getting a job harvesting the eyes of cadavers for cornea donations soon, and it pays surprisingly well. "what happened to whats-her-name?" heck if i know. i guess we are all really off in our own little worlds. sea lo que sea... =( "whatever happened to that thing you were building?" the thing from the post below? it's finished, but i haven't taken any pictures of the finished product yet. maybe i'll tell you the funny drill story whenever it is that i do. "hey jerk, what time is it?" a quarter to 7 in the evening, central texas time. this morning i engaged in manual labor, this afternoon i ate a solid pound hamburger covered in an inch of cheese (that's half a kilo!), and after that i made sure everyone who pokes me on facebook got poked back. "how can you possibly be so lazy?" i will answer that question with another: how could i possibly be anything else? that about does it for this evenings ambiguous answers to questions that i just now thought up. if you manage to think of anything else that i may have left unanswered, please refer to this site for further answering. that is all. last time i said: ----------------------------------- star spangled values yesterday and today i've been busy building in the backyard. mom wanted the rinky-dink little alleyway gate we had out and a new, more fortified wooden gate put in. we have such a gate already existing on the side of the house, so we thought it would be a simple little ditty to reconstruct in the back. well, a day and a half and not too many problems later (ask me about the drill story), and i'd say it's about half way done. check it out:       update: 6:15 pm saws cut things, like wood and galvanized iron and wrists.  it's not as bad as it looks, really. the saw skipped out of the groove i had going and chewed right into my skin.. it bled a lot because there were 6 or 7 little punctures. there's just something awefully creepy about feeling your own warm blood run down your hand... let's not forget the meat and cheese: australians discover "the secret" china: what, us, censor? bush's supreme court appointees say no free speech if you are a high school student $50,000 or 200,000 lbs of potatoes for the life of this unborn child last time i said: ----------------------------------- fr33 "free as in freedom, not free of charge." so goes the motto or slogan or whatever you call it of a particular community. those who rally the battle cry against domineering interests often state that they do not upset the status quo for economy but rather for the betterment of the options (optional betterment?) for all. arguments for and against have raged for years, and it's interesting when you realize that it sort of affects everyone, even you. i bought a laptop! i'm awaiting it's arrival anxiously. i don't know if this is sad or not, but a good portion of my life has had a computer involved in it somehow: from the black and green monochrome screen of my dad's old kaypro II, to the dialup unix-shell internet i grew up with the internet on, or the ultraviolet and black backlit hyperbox i built in college [sorry, no pictures right now =( ]; the internet accounts i created to keep in touch with my friends as i travled, the website i built so everyone can keep up with me, the friends made and lost and reunited with over the virtual networks: i'm a computer nerd, and i'm quite at home within the electric unreality. free? as of this pre-delivery moment, free of the responsibility this pricey toy brings, yet constrained by having to purchase or schedule my screen time in chinese wang bars* or the family computer. free of charge, freedom included. one of the first things i'll do on my new system will be taking the (non-committal) plunge into the world of unix-like operating systems: ubuntu. having come a long way from the redhat i tried and quickly discarded some 5 years ago, linux is now once again ready for intense william stamp of approval testing, and there are more than a few other linux and bsd-variants that look pretty cool too. free of charge, community supported, ready for download. in the market traditionally dominated by microsoft products and apple systems you might be hearing more about these os's if you haven't already. free to choose, not free of charge. a levy of power which seems to restrict the options we find ourselves choosing from, charge is that domination which we find perpetuated from atomic electrostatic positive and negative, up to the monkey's education and the GDP of entire nations, surely even on up to black holes and quasars as well. freedom will always be reliant on the means to be free, and the best way to ensure equal choice for all is the equal distribution of power of charge. alas, imagine a world where all charge is equal, all choice is equal: it sounds a lot like communism, and it must be quite bland. a haiku: when i was a kid every day had comic books. i still can't sing well. *wang means 'net' in chinese, both in a fishing and internet context. last time i said: ----------------------------------- the potato room in a place where musk and mosquitos, a washer and dryer, stacks of worn family favorite board games, and the paper recycling bin come together, our family keeps the potatoes. this room, obviously, is where we keep the turn-table and old stand-up vacuum cleaner. it smells a bit like concrete and sheet rock in the potato room, not really potatoes. sometimes, after a few loads of laundry have been done the day before, i permeate of freshly washed fabric the next morning. you see, i've spent many nights in this room. contemplating the world as it was 30 years ago - rhodesia and west south africa, israel encroaching on egypt, peking still the capital of china, and a massive USSR covering the wall - it leaves me wondering where i'll be and what i'll be smelling like tomorrow. last time i said: ----------------------------------- in the last throws i find myself stuck between employment. there's just something interesting about the time that i spend listening to jazz music sitting around the house these days, in my underwear looking at the green canopy of the trees outside the windows. the green blinds in my [old] room never struck me as strange until someone pointed them out to me, but i think they make the view all the better. regardless, they've never given me a job besides dusting. but the trees, oh i've worked on those trees. i've opened one of the windows so as to let the breeze through the house, and it seems like the pleasant smells of the rains carry different textures: wet wood fence, soggy dirt beneath the grass, glassy puddles on the street, soaking clouds hanging as if great sponges in the sky. even the cement reacts with the water, and i wonder if it doesn't grow as well. it - it? - it did rain on my birthday. but only a little bit, and not enough to stop the fire from roasting the meat. it and now i conserve energy. i'm "one of those" people, or i pretend to be. the windows are open, the air-conditioner off, but the fan still rocks back and forth above me and i've been in front of this computer for a couple of hours now at least. then i wonder how all these people around me can afford 2, 3, 4 cars and trucks of their own, and then i realize that people must really be in the hole around these parts - but that's ok, it's ok, credit cards come with payment plans, and even debt comes with reward points with for the next special offer. you wouldn't believe the number of times i may have already been pre-approved! last time i said: ----------------------------------- woohoo! it's my birthday! ahh, birthdays.. reminds me of those times when i was born. this'll be my 25th official birthday, and it's gearing up to be a lot like those come before. for starters, i'll be here. that's always crucial ingredient number 1. secondly, it looks like it might rain. being at the begining of the month of may, spring time has a habit of lingering april showers on my day. i remember one time when i was a kid, we threw a barbecue party on what turned out to be the wettest day of the year.. we had the grill smoking away in the garage while my entire 3rd grade class was stuck inside running wild. i'm sure my parents had a great time cleaning up after that. but now that i'm older, i like to pitch in too. like this morning: i cleaned the bathrooms and swept the driveway, and did various other odd jobs around the house. i got some nice blisters on my thumbs, so raw so that when i accidentally splashed some tequilla on my hands whilst pouring margaritas, it burned worse than the jalapeno juice i got in my eye yesterday from some nachos. the final ingredient we're having again is the tex mex con celebration, as it is one of my favorite combinations. how could anybody go wrong with tequilla, chips and pico, barbecued meat, etc?, i ask myself. you can't, and that's why it's awesome. throw a mom-made carrot cake on top, as per tradition, and i win. so happy birthday to myself, and happy cinco de mayo to you all - or chinese workers day, or japanese boys day, or dutch liberation day, or whatever. if for no other reason than for yourself, drink a glass of wine, and hope it doesn't rain. last time i said: ----------------------------------- a blog of my own i've always resisted using the word blog.. even when i used blog software, and when the title at the top of this page said 'william's blog,' and when i would ask people "did you read my blog?" ... i've always felt that it was just a stupid word, this 'blog.' but now i guess i'll embrace it, as a concept that is part of this white space with words. this site - this domain, if you will - is a lot more than that, though right now not by much. i have grand plans and illusions for it, but forgive me: i am slow at things. so here goes; the blog of william; william's blog of the day: i didn't do much today. in fact, i'm not doing much of anything at the moment. i am back home, at the house where i mostly grew up, texas providing entertainment for me in the form of the kid i see out my window who keeps skateboarding up and down the street. in a way, texas is like that kid - managing to go in a straight line and thinking "hey, this is pretty cool." but it ain't no trick, and soon enough you've either got to learn a trick or two, or move on to bikes. i got a hair cut yesterday, and this weekend is my birthday. (there goes that kid again!) last week i went to visit some old friends of mine around various parts of texas, and it put me on a rollercoaster full of memories, a ride that took me way back to my years in university, almost a full twelfth of my lifetime ago, a place where i once roamed free. now, however, i am BACK back at home, where i, while techinically more free than before, am tied down insofar that i await my fate calmly and with much sleeping, keeping myself busy with dreams of keeping myself busy. i guess i'm a bit like that kid (which is ironic, because i secretly think it would be pretty funny if he fell): my brash determination to one day do tricks ousted by being content with maintaining my balance on the board. calculated risks scare me not; i just have yet to find the right balance of equations to add up in my favor, the right equilibrium in my ear to stay on board whilst i do some tricks. last time i said: ----------------------------------- mobiles back here in america they call these things cell phones, though i still can't quite shake the 'mobile' from my vocabulary. i also still say 'university' when i mean college, and 'shenme' when i mean 'what'd you say?' ah, the joys of speaking an english tailored for china. but the drawl is back on command, and i am not in the least ashamed to say that i've used it now already on many occasions. like today, when i got my 'whad yew say?' said the short lady with big hair behind the counter, the texas twang almost comedically thick. 'i said, i would like to buy a sim card for my mobile. i purchased one from your company a few years ago, when i was in university.' she looked at me strangely. 'yew kin buy one'ah these..' she said pointing to the phones under the glass. 'but i want a card for this one!' i waved the phone i was holding. it had been in my hand the whole time. i'd shown it to her when i walked up. it hadn't gone anywhere. 'i dunno if we kin do that.' maybe she couldn't, but they sure could. a nice fat man with a pleasant neutral american accent took over when he saw his colleague wasn't getting a sale. i switched to my best proper texan. 'what can i help you with, brotha?' said the man. 'i was wonderin if ya'll can sell me one'ah them sim cards for this here cell phone. it's unlocked and ever'thing. i jus need uh numba.' 'why, i believe we can do that.' as i was leaving with my new number in pocket, the man said something to my back. '什么?' i asked, casually turning around. damn. chinese instinct. 'what?' he said. 'what?' i said. there was a pause. 'your receipt.' 'oh. thanks man. you have a nice day.' |
