Gism Butter

And nothing else happened. This was the most disturbing part for me. No cops. No phone calls. No lights on. No squealing tires. Just two live rounds fired off to scare someone, and no one seemed to notice.

Wed, 30 Mar 2005

Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus

It's not my habit to break copyright laws. I Am n fan of them, but generally, I have no reason nor opportunity to break them. However, today, i am going to break one, and break it completely. I am going to make available episode 1 of Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus. This is the first of two episodes that Monty Python created for German television in 1971 and 1972.

This is seemingly not available anywhere else. I've not seen it on DVD, and only on a haphazardly made British VHS tape I found at Amoeba for $4.00.

So, for posterity's sake, here is episode one. Please build a bit torrent and send this out into the net. I cannot bare the load of being the only host.

Links removed, ya missed yer chances. This never happened!

Tue, 29 Mar 2005

Wigger

I hate this term. Wigger. It's a sick play on nigger, of course, a term used to identify white folks who think they are, in fact, black folks. Typically, my reaction to this type of person is "OK, whatever, fine. To each his own." And maybe, if I'm in a bad mood, it's "pull you pants up."

But there is this dude who is now basically living in our building that fits this term perfectly, and I can think of no other way to describe him then as a skinny, weak white dude who desperately wants to be black. Now, Vincent and Rolondo and Cornelius, the three black brothers next door, know this and they play off of it constantly. In all of my dealings with them, I've discovered that they can immediately tell if someone is affraid of them because of their skin color. Vincent in particular likes to play off of this, esspecially with women. VIncent will see a woman 4 blocks away and begin shouting at the top of his lungs at her "come 'ere!" like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat. It's an advantage he and his brothers have, and they exploit it.

Consequently, they also know when someone is deriving personal worth from their presence. Vincent and Rolondo both feel this way when around me, as is evidenced by the fact that when we hang out at bars or on the street, they're always pointing me out to their friends and girls as "our hacker dude," despite my protests. I am not a hacker.

But this dude who's now living in V's old apartment... This wigger gives Vince and Rolondo silly confidence. The actual person living up in apartment 8 is named Travis, and while Travis certainly wishes to be black, he's not what I'd call a wigger. He's pre-med at Berkeley, and yes, he does like to play up the fact that he lives in the ghetto a bit too much. And yes, his dad pays the rent, thus vaguely ruining his ghetto cred...

But this dude who's now living with Travis is driving me nuts. First of all, he takes up yet another of our vanishing parking spaces with his tiny Honda. Second, he wears lots of bling bling and black clothing. Third, he keeps his seat tilted way back in the car. Fourth, he blasts bad rap music outside my window when I'm trying to write. Fifth, he makes Vincent feel over confident and thugish, a bad mix since Vincenet is sometimes right on the edge of slipping back into his gangsterish past.

Chief among these offenses is the rap music this wigger plays. I don't mind rap when it's good. Jay-Z, Black Eyed Pees (eh... they're OK, but dancey), Blackalicius, Bus Driver, even Big Punisher, Biggie Smalls, and Tupac. But I cannot abide by 50 Cent and other half-assed, using the same word over and over again to rhyme with itself, no-talent, I-got-shot-and-was-in-jail-so-therefore-I-am-a-good-rapper, busters. Maybe I am overly sensative, and maybe I am indicting a decent rapper with this rant, but this wigger only plays one song in his Honda, and he only plays it at full volume when I am trying desperately to meet a deadline.

The contents of this song are basically about a neighborhood, belonging to the singer, and being defended against outsiders by caps which will be busted. And the rapper says these things repeatedly, particularly the parts about how this is his neighborhood. His hood. And this wigger walks around rooting in his trunk, fixing his car, and such, all while this one song plays. He seems to be working at the shelter for homeless kids on the corner, a place that is inhabited by teenaged urban youth. Great, I admire his commitment to this excellent non-profit, but I can't help but feel that he's presenting himself there as some sort of reformed gangster, and showing off this block as his own particular hood.

Look, white dude, this ain't yer hood. Yer sleeping on the floor of a pre-med honors student who's one of three white folks in mixed race building. You've only just started coming to this area, and just because yer crashing on a counch in Oakland does not mean that yer little white-bread Orinda ass is now ghetto and reputable. Give it a rest, and stop playing that damn "my neighborhood" song over and fucking over agin. I'm working on a book here, ass hat. Some people actually have paying jobs, instead of volunteer positions where we can work on our street cred fulltime.

As Bill Cosby said, pull yer pants up and speak English.

Mon, 21 Mar 2005

Legendary

I am certainly subject to hyperbole. But still feel I can rant about the use of innappropriate words in TV commercials. These things should be word restricted. Legendary is not a word that should ever be used in TV commercial, because it'll never be used in a proper manner. The glaze of your Honey Baked Ham is not legendary. Perhaps it's delicious, or dare I venture there, even famous. But the latter is stretching it.

It has been suggested that I write a book on ilovebees.

I think I shall.

Sat, 19 Mar 2005

Yes, but is it art?

That may not be, but this certainly is.

Ultima VII

When I was in high school videogames were the most popular way to pass the boring downtime between weekdays. It was either that, or run off to the Christiana Mall to watch the highly flamable mall chicks burst into flames. Or to watch a herd of black kids throw chairs at each other in the food court.

I always had a Macintosh, which I still use as my primary computer type to this day. Of course, Mac's are somewhat lacking in the game department. I spent a great deael of my time at SAS staring over the shoulders of my classmates as they played the wonderful PC games of the day: Civilization, X-Wing, and a host of others.

One of those games I never got a chance to play was Ultima VII: the Black Gate, and its sequel, Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle. As you can see, the convention of naming computer related software with ridiculous numerics is nothing new. This game, was particularly beloved by Dave Meyers, a fellow in my class at school. Dave was one of the few guys who actually allowed me to sit in and watch him play: most everyone else had long ago banished me from their domains. Dave worked his way through these two and the eventual eighth Ultima game, and the whole time I drooled over the freedom of movement and action within this amazing world. Entire towns were populated with minute items, and all of them were obtainable. If you wanted, you could go around stealing every pair of boots in the city, or collecting horse shoes. It waas a phenominally open environment.

Well, as I have recently lost my Windows box to hardware failure, (Thanks nVidia for the crappy heat management of your GeForce 2) I've been forced to bootstrap my semi-functional Debian box into a viable desktop PC. I say semi-functional because when Leif finished setting it up, it was in a state of perfect server functionality, but completely unusable for mundane tasks. Leif did a terrific job of turning it into a server, and he's always been kind enough to walk my lame ass through fixes and troubles, particularly the recent rectification of Shorerwall's constant blathering to console. But Leif never offered to configure X Windows, and I never asked him to.

So this week has been XFree86config-4 week for me. I've been adding mouse support, changing screen resolutions, attempting (and failing) to install Gnome 2.x. I've finally arrived at a point where the Debian box is just about completely functional. So what better way to celebrate than by installing a whole fuck-load of useless programs?

While browsing through the stable packages listed on the Debian site, I discovered Exult, an open source engine for Ultima VII and Ultima VII 2. Of course, you need the art and resource files from the original game to use Exult, but I'm sure some of you clever folks out there will see that I've included some very helpful links for this endeavour.

Of course, I ended up playing on my Mac instead of the Linux box. C'est la vie.

Sun, 13 Mar 2005

Good Bad and Ugly

well, it was a great week, it was an awful week. it was definitely an ugly week. The ugliness came from the game developers conference. This event is run by CMP, my former employer. Fortunately, there is no bad blood there, and all my former coworkers were quite happy to see me. As I was to see them. But, still, it was ugly. the world pf game development is not pretty. These people are not attractive. When I ran into Dave Arneson, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, I was both overwhelmed with awe, and old man smell. /Gamers do not age well.

I made many new friends and had a good week, though i am tired fromall the walking and lugging of the laptop around the Moscone West.

As i write this , ms. kim is drunkenly giving us food and drinks.

Continuing the next day....

Ms. Kim really did take care of us. So much so thta I was unable to finish this entry.

Now, the reason this past week was awful is that Langston died.

He was a great rat, and lived a happy and fat life. He never bit anyone (unless he mistook their fingernails for food and gently tugged at them). He did steal, quite a bit: sandwiches, tomatoes, anything he could get ahold of and drag under the couch or into his cage. He was a sweet and intelligent rat, and We'll miss him very much.