| Now Find a show to go to! Oct 30 (Sat) - Scaphism, Despoilment, Wreckoning, Sarcomancy, Deconformity - London Billiards / Club Oasis (Worcester, MA) OCT 30th @ Worcester’s Club Oasis: THE FLAWLESS VICTORY HALLOWEEN FRIGHT-FEST feat. SCAPHISM, DESPOILMENT, WRECKONING, SARCOMANCY, and DECONFORMITY[views:26256][posts:156][show listing] ___________________________________________ [Aug 10,2010 8:05pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] [img] HALLOW’S EVE – WORCESTER DOES A FUCKIN' RITUAL ABOUT IT. IPSISSIMUS (Scares the shit out of you…) SCAPHISM (Fucks you with a chainsaw…) DESPOILMENT (Steals all the organs from your corpse…) WRECKONING (Beats your skull in…) SARCOMANCY (Casts wizard-type rituals…at you.) Wear costumes or you’re all pussies- unless of course you dress up like an actual Vagina. Many surprises are planned and raging like a motherfucker is highly encouraged. +18 $TBA This show brought to you by: Zuul [img] and Lego Fatalities [img] Legit Flyer Coming soon. |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 10,2010 8:08pm - boblovesmusic ""] motherfucker! |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 10,2010 9:21pm - DestroyYouAlot ""] Well, just looking at the lineup, you guys clearly won't be smoking any pot this night. |
| ____________________________________________ [Aug 10,2010 10:58pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] my costume will be an upstanding citizen |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:32am - goatcatabisk ""] I got a custom sigil that allows my peepee to be in two (or more) places at once. |
| ___________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 8:35am - arktouros ""] FuckIsMySignature said:my costume will be an upstanding citizen i LOLD coffee all over my person. |
| _____________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:19am - ouchdrummer ""] Being brought to you by "ZUUL" made me ROFL. This show looks Insane. |
| _________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:26am - haupty ""] Awesome show |
| ___________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:40am - DreadKill ""] ouchdrummer said:Being brought to you by "ZUUL" made me ROFL. This show looks Insane. seeing the name Zuul made me think the band Zuul was coming here and playing this. realizing they're not makes me a sad face :( |
| ___________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:41am - FuckIsMySignature ""] i had no idea there was a band named Zuul...thats awesome. |
| _________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 12:22pm - josh_hates_you ""] RITUALS!!! |
| __________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 12:27pm - SacInDartmouth ""] Wreckoning + costumes is either going to be disastrous or hilarious. Or disgusting. |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 12:31pm - boblovesmusic ""] FuckIsMySignature said:i had no idea there was a band named Zuul...thats awesome. Zuul on MA Züül on MA |
| ____________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 12:34pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] SacInDartmouth said:Wreckoning + costumes is either going to be disastrous or hilarious. Or disgusting. D. All of the above |
| __________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 12:35pm - SacInDartmouth ""] The last time Wreckoning played a Halloween show it was before I was in the band and everyone was wearing children's superhero costumes. |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 12:36pm - boblovesmusic ""] dammit this day is going to be a tough show decision. Either this, Rich Horror's show or Rewind! |
| ____________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 12:52pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] ya its shame they fall on the same day. merely coincidence tho since i've been working on putting this together for awhile. luckily the two shows are so far apart distance-wise it shouldnt have too much affect on draw for either show. you however may need to fire up the cloning machine. |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:01pm - boblovesmusic ""] all the bands on all the shows are awesome, but individually it's Despoilment vs. Pantera Ipsissimus vs. Type O Negative haha |
| ___________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:03pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] we might also do a Type O cover since its the first Halloween without Peter. |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:14pm - josh_hates_you ""] FuckIsMySignature said:we might also do a Type O cover since its the first Halloween without Peter. speaking of covers songs i want to do an amon amarth song for this show but staples says no. sad face..... |
| ___________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:15pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] DO EEEEEEET :FLAMING: |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:35pm - Alexecutioner ""] boblovesmusic said:all the bands on all the shows are awesome, but individually it's Despoilment vs. Pantera Ipsissimus vs. Type O Negative haha Despoilment also might have a live drummer! |
| ______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:45pm - goatcatalyst ""] FuckIsMySignature said: you however may need to fire up the cloning machine. fortunately my subincision + the proper arrangement of sigils allows for me to be in two places at once. genital mutilation-facilitated time + space travel FTW |
| ___________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:47pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] i wish to subscribe to your newsletter |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:49pm - DestroyYouAlot ""] FuckIsMySignature said:we might also do a Type O cover since its the first Halloween without Peter. We're gonna cover you guys covering TON. IS THIS THE MOST META YOU'VE EVEN BEEN? |
| ___________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:51pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers of covers |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 1:51pm - DestroyYouAlot ""] goatcatalyst said: FuckIsMySignature said: you however may need to fire up the cloning machine. fortunately my subincision + the proper arrangement of sigils allows for me to be in two places at once. genital mutilation-facilitated time + space travel FTW SCIENCE!!! |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 3:34pm - MetalThursday ""] Droppin' science like Galileo dropped the Orange. |
| __________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 7:18pm - Galileo ""] Enthusiastic by Association Wednesday, May 12, 2010 Oh, where to begin. Well, first off, I should not begin with "where to be gin," as I originally wrote. Alcohol and I don't mix. Besides, gin and tonic rolls off the tongue much better than gin and Jordan. Then again, I said be gin, not be mixed with gin. Now I can't even keep my own story straight. Good luck deciphering the rest of this post. I suppose I ought to start out with the most exciting news in my life. That's right, I finished reading Eldest for the fourth time, and have since traversed 232 pages into rereading Brisingr. The Bumblebee of Life once again inspired me as no other writing has. I'm pretty sure on one of the pages I most recently read, Paolini got switched up on which entity, Eragon or Saphira, was talking (thinking to each other in italics). It was like six paragraphs back and forth with no ", Eragon said," and suddenly Saphira was asking questions of Eragon, and Eragon was answering with what only Saphira should have known. PS, I didn't notice that Eragon was just Dragon with an E until halfway through my fourth read of the first book. Also, I once thought that "I am" was the shortest complete sentence. It's actually "Be." I started seeing a counselor, mostly because after the E/Dragon thing, I realized my brain wasn't functioning as well as it once was. Maybe I'd always been mistaken, but aren't most counseling sessions an hour long? The ones with this guy are 45 minutes, which usually run a little late. So far, and yesterday was my fourth session with him, he's really only been getting to know me rather than talking me through things or giving advice or whatever, not that I'm an expert on counseling. Yesterday I ended up saying something I didn't expect to. That's happened a few times before when I talked with Solomon or other counseloresque people, but this was slightly different, as in hindsight, I'm not sure what I said was true. I ended up saying that the nondescript sickness that I always feel, as described in the second paragraph of Restless, might as well be synonymous with shame. It seems like it would be true in the abstract, but not when I think about it concretely. This brings me to another important if not mind-numbing point. It's the idea of absolute value verses relative value. I bought A Few Good Men on BluRay the other day, because it was on sale for $10 at Fred Meyer. Seemed like a good deal to me, and I love that movie and don't currently own it, so I bought it. After I bought it, I looked it up on Amazon, who was selling it for $11, but it occurred to me that if it had been on there for $7 or something, would I have still thought it a good deal? Clearly, at some point, I thought the movie was worth $10. Would the value of owning the movie be less if I found a better deal? This is obviously a simple case, but I think it can easily be applied to our lives in bigger ways. It also reminds me of the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Do cats have adam's apples? Kotenok, get over here. I was thinking about it a couple Sundays ago, and I think my goal for counseling, though I've not mentioned this to him yet, is to be able to say that my relationship with God is amazing, to really think that. I know that it is, for why should the creator of heaven and earth die that I might have such a relationship? But I think I take that for granted. If God is good, the ultimate good, he loves us as much as he says he does, and has the chance to save us, I don't want to be so arrogant to argue that it would be required of him to do so at the cost of his own, or own son's, life, but it seems to me to be the logical choice. I think for that reason, I take it for granted. I would never argue that I was worth that sacrifice, but that too is folly, for God said I was, and I shan't argue with him. I guess if I really beheld the gravity, the enormity of the relationship I have, I would repeatedly fall on my knees and cry out in thanks and ... disbelief? There's some irony. And if it were truly as intimate a relationship as it ought, I would feel more stable in it, and more thankful and awed. I would say it's amazing. As it stands, it simply is. On the other hand, a couple times I've tried to live without it, and I couldn't do it. I feel like I'm stuck in limbo, "wrestling" with an impassive god. And I know that is not his nature, so why do I feel that it is? Why does the evidence in my life point that direction? Well, that took a depressing turn. While I'm at it, I might as well write the rest out of my system. My counselor said something at the end of our session yesterday. It didn't immediately throw me off, in fact, it elicited an odd sense of pride. Today, I felt jumbled though, badly enough that I felt physically sick and stayed home from work. I watched Minority Report for the first time in a few years. The scene where Agatha, John, and his wife are all at his wife's house, they're up in Shawn's old room, and Agatha is talking about the life Shawn could have had actually brought a couple tears to my eye. I rarely get choked up over movies, especially action movies. I'm not sure why it happened, but it was just immensely sad to me. Also, the scene where the murder was supposed to take place and Agatha is reliving the present was done incredibly well. I really felt for Agatha, and it was hard to watch. I've probably seen the movie a good six to eight times. I'm not sure why this was the first time I had such emotions about it. Or, I'm not sure why I had emotions about it this time. I haven't decided which. So, I maybe exaggerated a slight amount, the teensiest amount conceivable, in fact, if exaggeration were tangible, I'm pretty sure I would have split the atom, when I said that the most exciting thing in my life was finishing Eldest. Maybe. God save us all if Stephen Colbert ever happens upon tangible exaggeration. The earth might just gain enough mass that the sun would start orbiting it. Anyway, if there is something more exciting than reading a book for the fourth time, it's this. A few weeks ago I went to the eleven o'clock church service because the Costa Rica team was having a post trip thank you party for our supporters up in Bellingham. At this particular morning service, it was rather full, and I ended up sitting next to a girl named Kaylee. The lead singer in the worship band said something about playing an old song, and then started the chords for Shout to the North. I commented, "Old? This was written like eight years ago." Kaylee laughed at that. After the service, I asked her and her cousin if they wanted to go out to lunch. I've been out to lunch with several people after church services both at Harper and LatR so this was no big deal to me. They checked the time and her cousin's schedule, and then we went to Chipotle in Northgate. Kaylee's got to be one of the most interesting people I've met. If she had more character, she'd have to appear on the USA channel. She's super bright, laughs at corny jokes, and can hold her own in a banter. You can't ask for much more than that. But wait, there's more. Call in the next thirty minutes and she'll own Firefly and Serenity on DVD. That's nerdier than I am! Her one flaw is that she's not seen Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Of course, having no room for improvement, for growth, would also be a flaw so, damned if you do, damned if you don't, and damn the torpedoes! So, I may have laid it on a little thick there (really got into the groove, which I guess means I've found my muse for writing hyperbolically), but really, based on first impressions, she's a great person. A week later, I asked her out to coffee, and she suggested the following Friday. The next day, coffee changed into dinner, and the day after, dinner into dinner plus Iron Man 2 with friends. You've got to admire someone who was looking forward to Iron Man's sequel more than I was, especially someone of the female persuasion. I don't think I'll say much more than that tonight, lest I too stumble upon tangible exaggeration. It's now getting late, and I have three unequally viable choices. In order of descending meritoriousness they are go to sleep, read more Brisingr, and watch A Few Good Men again. I did get five hours of extra sleep earlier today, so I'm not too tired, but tomorrow might be painful if I'm not awake. We're having a morale event (I almost forgot about it) at 10:00 in Seattle. I hate driving in Seattle. I hate parking in Seattle. top | 1 Comments Anonymous said... At June 17, 2010 9:58 AM Wow, that is one impressive wall of text. Stranger than Fiction Saturday, April 17, 2010 Bah, I can't write fiction. I try from time to time, and it's always boring. Part of the issue is that I really only want to write something if it's not been written before. And part of the reason is I have no talent there. I'll stick to what I'm good at: writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of unread text so it looks like I have a life, at least one interesting enough to write about, so long as the readers don't actually get past the first paragraph. This time I thought I had it. The last few attempts have been attempting fantasy, but I don't have any good ideas of magic systems (which are my favorite part). I'd rather learn than teach, read than write. I also tend to get hung up on the plot, which was the case this time as well. This time I thought I'd write the story of boy meets girl (because that's never been done before), but only write during the moments they're actually interacting. The first "chapter" was five lines long, from the moment a mutual friend was introducing them until the moment after they shook hands and got distracted by other friends at the party. The second chapter was just the friend confirmation email from Facebook. For the third, I was attempting to write an instant message chat log. I actually wrote a program to generate the HTML for me. It turns out talking to myself on paper isn't as fun as talking to myself aloud. Five minutes into the "conversation" I alt+F4'd without saving. On a side note, I couldn't figure out how to get a WebBrowser Winforms object to autosize, nor make it scroll to a certain point on the page (i.e. the bottom). Using LINQ's XDocument and XElement objects, though, made the page generation itself a breeze. Even ctrl+z was simple. I just kept a stack of each of the XElements I'd added, and then to undo, popped the stack and called .Remove() on the object, which removed itself from the XDocument. Magic! I think maybe the hardest part for me, writing fiction, is creating a character other than myself. I just can't leave my own head. I think most authors, at least in their early works, write with the main character being the author. Alexander, for instance, gets woozy from the height of a chair unless he's over water, much like his character Longshark (whom, in my head, I pronounced Lawnshark) in his latest story. I would guess that Paolini acts quite a bit like Eragon, at least in his inquisitiveness. But then both them have supporting characters that are quite different from than the authors. I just end up writing copies of myself, or possibly my friends, though it turns out the way I perceive my friends is a lot more like how I perceive me, than it is how they actually are. They wouldn't say this. I would. Bah. I do wonder what happens if you add an element to multiple XDocument objects, because .Remove()'s documentation says it removes the element from its parent, and in this case, there are multiple parents. I could try it, and report back, but I'd rather wonder than know in this case. All my friends would too. So yes, I keep attempting and failing fiction. Mostly this happens when I reread Eragon. Two thoughts always come to mind while reading that book. One, this was make a great MMO. It really would, but the whole magic system would be incredibly complex. You'd have to write a run-time compiler for it, and then you'd have to convince people the game is fun enough to play to learn a completely made up language, and then you'd have to figure out the whole "an expert might say water and conjure something completely unrelated, like a gemstone, because he can see the link between the two" thing. After all that triviality comes the part where you have to enforce no deceit when someone speaks the ancient language. The other thought is always, "I can do this." And time and time again it proves untrue. The last few weeks I've been thinking about something that the pastor said, that when we want to feel good about ourselves we revert to doing what we do best, specifically mentioning writing, among other things. I think that's true of me, not that I'm saying I'm necessarily a good writer, only that I take pride in it. The sermon he said this in was on Easter, and about "giving God the pen" of our lives, letting him dictate what will happen in our lives. I think God gives us certain aptitudes, and it would be foolish not to use what God has given us, so I'm wondering what God wants me to write. There is this blog, but I'd like to write a book someday too. I guess if I want God to answer a question, like what does he want me to write about, I should ask him--I should pray. I certainly don't pray religiously. It's a habit I should get into. Hime and I call each other best friends, but we haven't seen each other since her birthday in January. I'm in bed now, or rather, on Bill's couch in Bellingham the day after I started writing this post. Before I let it slip another day, I think I'll just post it now, short and sweet. top | 1 Comments Alexander said... At April 17, 2010 12:18 PM Now it shall be terribly hard for me not to think of him as the Lawnshark! Four Words Sunday, April 4, 2010 He is risen. He is risen indeed. It's Easter right now, so happy Easter if you happen to be reading this post today, or if you happen to read it some Sunday between March 23 and April 27 in the future, and that day also happens to be the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring of your current year. Yeah. Easter is the most important day of the year, with Christmas a close second. I don't think that's a very popular opinion, but it's mine. It is the day Jesus Christ conquered death. It is the reason we have The Good News. If I have my metaphysics right, Good Friday was the day our sins could be forgiven, but no one would believe it had Easter not happened. Or maybe I have them wrong, and it is in the act of rising again, conquering death, that we may have victory in Christ as well. I don't think Easter is celebrated correctly. I don't really know how to explain it, but the fact that Easter is so diminished in the minds of modern society, on par with Groundhog's day or Valentine's day, speaks to the fact that it's important, and that someone or something wants it suppressed. Because it's fun to blame the greeting card industry, I'm going to do just that. No one buys Easter greeting cards, probably because so few really appreciate the resurrection of Christ. Without cards, there are few ad buys, and without the media, there's little hype. Any church that tried to make an Easter awareness commercial would probably be pegged (by me) as a little silly. But no, I can't legitimately blame the card industry. While I've never been one to find the devil under every rock (or really almost any rock), leaving no stone unturned leads me to find Satan at work here. I find myself frustrated this morning. I go to the evening service at church for two reasons today -- one, I normally go to the evening service because I like to stay up late on Saturday evenings, which I did last night; and two, because we were asked, if we weren't bringing friends that would not normally go to church, to go to either the early morning service (not happening) or the evening service, so that there was space and parking at the nine through eleven o'clock ones. I'm frustrated because this is the first Easter that I didn't go to a morning service followed by brunch or family time of some sort, except for the Easter I was in Jamaica. This morning I got out of bed at 12:30 (having been awake for two hours before that), tagged some photos posted by Courtney from Costa Rica, and then got Arby's. It was not exactly my traditional Easter morning. Somehow I associate tradition with observance, and so I don't feel like I've really observed Easter, the most important day of the year. Even the fact that you go to Easter service in the morning is observing that Christ rose in the morning, that the stone was found rolled away in the morning, and that the rest of the day people could marvel at it. I actually feel guilty, like the traditions were something I was supposed to do, or else I'm in sin or something. I know that's absurd but that's still how I'd describe it. Anyway, there's no good reason to feel bad on Easter unless you mock its meaning, and I don't believe I've done that. This week went pretty well. Last summer, after Fir Creek, I was pretty burnt out at work for another week and a half. Somehow after the trip, I was actually doing better than I had been before the trip. I'm not sure if I was burnt out from working harder than I'm used to (three big features, basically on my own), or because it was the last few days before vacation, or because I had a feature dropped on me and it was still in black box, mountain mode because I hadn't really had time to evaluate each part to realize it was only a medium sized hill. Anyway, when I got back Sydney was my acting manager because my actual manager is on vacation (for his kids' spring break). Sydney split my feature into three parts, and I ended up with about a third the work I was expecting to do, and of that work, I'd already done about a quarter, whereas I hadn't touched the other two parts. That made it much easier for me to get back into the groove of the faster life, and on Friday I made a ton of progress. I still have to write tests (which undoubtedly will uncover another thirty necessary changes [anecdotal edit: I did indeed introduce a bug where renaming a databases shrunk it to the minimum size]), but I made it to the jiggle phase. That's where you put all the pieces loosely together and then jiggle it until it all fits. This is not an official software development term. Yet. We had a preview feature in our last release that I wrote. Now that it's no longer a preview feature, I had to tear all the code out. It felt weird deleting a bunch of code I wrote, when I had a meeting scheduled to discuss how that code would work after they deployed it (they haven't yet released the last release with the preview feature). I'm looking forward to work tomorrow. Friday night, I went to Swood's for our weekly hangout time. I've never been to a Good Friday service before, and because I was at Swood's, I didn't go to one this year either. Next year I think I'll try to make it. I had a good time at Swood's, though. It might even have been better that I went there than church. Hanging out with him is therapeutic for me, restful. We ended up watching The Men Who Stare at Goats. It wasn't what I was expecting, but still pretty good. It got me thinking about a couple things. I think everyone (or at least, of the one person for whom I can speak from experience, it's true for this one person) likes to pretend at some level that they can do things they can't. I pretend to use the Force to change traffic lights, which may or may not coincide with me watching the other lights of the intersection. I wish I were telekinetic. When I go by street lights, they turn off a lot more frequently than they do for other people I've talked to. That's either because I'm more observant to it than other people, or I really am special -- and what an amazing super power that is, especially as it's involun post was too long read more at your own risk |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 7:35pm - DestroyYouAlot ""] [QUOTE="Galileo:1114740"]Enthusiastic by Association Wednesday, May 12, 2010 Oh, where to begin. Well, first off, I should not begin with "where to be gin," as I originally wrote. Alcohol and I don't mix. Besides, gin and tonic rolls off the tongue much better than gin and Jordan. Then again, I said be gin, not be mixed with gin. Now I can't even keep my own story straight. Good luck deciphering the rest of this post. I suppose I ought to start out with the most exciting news in my life. That's right, I finished reading Eldest for the fourth time, and have since traversed 232 pages into rereading Brisingr. The Bumblebee of Life once again inspired me as no other writing has. I'm pretty sure on one of the pages I most recently read, Paolini got switched up on which entity, Eragon or Saphira, was talking (thinking to each other in italics). It was like six paragraphs back and forth with no ", Eragon said," and suddenly Saphira was asking questions of Eragon, and Eragon was answering with what only Saphira should have known. PS, I didn't notice that Eragon was just Dragon with an E until halfway through my fourth read of the first book. Also, I once thought that "I am" was the shortest complete sentence. It's actually "Be." I started seeing a counselor, mostly because after the E/Dragon thing, I realized my brain wasn't functioning as well as it once was. Maybe I'd always been mistaken, but aren't most counseling sessions an hour long? The ones with this guy are 45 minutes, which usually run a little late. So far, and yesterday was my fourth session with him, he's really only been getting to know me rather than talking me through things or giving advice or whatever, not that I'm an expert on counseling. Yesterday I ended up saying something I didn't expect to. That's happened a few times before when I talked with Solomon or other counseloresque people, but this was slightly different, as in hindsight, I'm not sure what I said was true. I ended up saying that the nondescript sickness that I always feel, as described in the second paragraph of Restless, might as well be synonymous with shame. It seems like it would be true in the abstract, but not when I think about it concretely. This brings me to another important if not mind-numbing point. It's the idea of absolute value verses relative value. I bought A Few Good Men on BluRay the other day, because it was on sale for $10 at Fred Meyer. Seemed like a good deal to me, and I love that movie and don't currently own it, so I bought it. After I bought it, I looked it up on Amazon, who was selling it for $11, but it occurred to me that if it had been on there for $7 or something, would I have still thought it a good deal? Clearly, at some point, I thought the movie was worth $10. Would the value of owning the movie be less if I found a better deal? This is obviously a simple case, but I think it can easily be applied to our lives in bigger ways. It also reminds me of the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Do cats have adam's apples? Kotenok, get over here. I was thinking about it a couple Sundays ago, and I think my goal for counseling, though I've not mentioned this to him yet, is to be able to say that my relationship with God is amazing, to really think that. I know that it is, for why should the creator of heaven and earth die that I might have such a relationship? But I think I take that for granted. If God is good, the ultimate good, he loves us as much as he says he does, and has the chance to save us, I don't want to be so arrogant to argue that it would be required of him to do so at the cost of his own, or own son's, life, but it seems to me to be the logical choice. I think for that reason, I take it for granted. I would never argue that I was worth that sacrifice, but that too is folly, for God said I was, and I shan't argue with him. I guess if I really beheld the gravity, the enormity of the relationship I have, I would repeatedly fall on my knees and cry out in thanks and ... disbelief? There's some irony. And if it were truly as intimate a relationship as it ought, I would feel more stable in it, and more thankful and awed. I would say it's amazing. As it stands, it simply is. On the other hand, a couple times I've tried to live without it, and I couldn't do it. I feel like I'm stuck in limbo, "wrestling" with an impassive god. And I know that is not his nature, so why do I feel that it is? Why does the evidence in my life point that direction? Well, that took a depressing turn. While I'm at it, I might as well write the rest out of my system. My counselor said something at the end of our session yesterday. It didn't immediately throw me off, in fact, it elicited an odd sense of pride. Today, I felt jumbled though, badly enough that I felt physically sick and stayed home from work. I watched Minority Report for the first time in a few years. The scene where Agatha, John, and his wife are all at his wife's house, they're up in Shawn's old room, and Agatha is talking about the life Shawn could have had actually brought a couple tears to my eye. I rarely get choked up over movies, especially action movies. I'm not sure why it happened, but it was just immensely sad to me. Also, the scene where the murder was supposed to take place and Agatha is reliving the present was done incredibly well. I really felt for Agatha, and it was hard to watch. I've probably seen the movie a good six to eight times. I'm not sure why this was the first time I had such emotions about it. Or, I'm not sure why I had emotions about it this time. I haven't decided which. So, I maybe exaggerated a slight amount, the teensiest amount conceivable, in fact, if exaggeration were tangible, I'm pretty sure I would have split the atom, when I said that the most exciting thing in my life was finishing Eldest. Maybe. God save us all if Stephen Colbert ever happens upon tangible exaggeration. The earth might just gain enough mass that the sun would start orbiting it. Anyway, if there is something more exciting than reading a book for the fourth time, it's this. A few weeks ago I went to the eleven o'clock church service because the Costa Rica team was having a post trip thank you party for our supporters up in Bellingham. At this particular morning service, it was rather full, and I ended up sitting next to a girl named Kaylee. The lead singer in the worship band said something about playing an old song, and then started the chords for Shout to the North. I commented, "Old? This was written like eight years ago." Kaylee laughed at that. After the service, I asked her and her cousin if they wanted to go out to lunch. I've been out to lunch with several people after church services both at Harper and LatR so this was no big deal to me. They checked the time and her cousin's schedule, and then we went to Chipotle in Northgate. Kaylee's got to be one of the most interesting people I've met. If she had more character, she'd have to appear on the USA channel. She's super bright, laughs at corny jokes, and can hold her own in a banter. You can't ask for much more than that. But wait, there's more. Call in the next thirty minutes and she'll own Firefly and Serenity on DVD. That's nerdier than I am! Her one flaw is that she's not seen Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Of course, having no room for improvement, for growth, would also be a flaw so, damned if you do, damned if you don't, and damn the torpedoes! So, I may have laid it on a little thick there (really got into the groove, which I guess means I've found my muse for writing hyperbolically), but really, based on first impressions, she's a great person. A week later, I asked her out to coffee, and she suggested the following Friday. The next day, coffee changed into dinner, and the day after, dinner into dinner plus Iron Man 2 with friends. You've got to admire someone who was looking forward to Iron Man's sequel more than I was, especially someone of the female persuasion. I don't think I'll say much more than that tonight, lest I too stumble upon tangible exaggeration. It's now getting late, and I have three unequally viable choices. In order of descending meritoriousness they are go to sleep, read more Brisingr, and watch A Few Good Men again. I did get five hours of extra sleep earlier today, so I'm not too tired, but tomorrow might be painful if I'm not awake. We're having a morale event (I almost forgot about it) at 10:00 in Seattle. I hate driving in Seattle. I hate parking in Seattle. top | 1 Comments Anonymous said... At June 17, 2010 9:58 AM Wow, that is one impressive wall of text. Stranger than Fiction Saturday, April 17, 2010 Bah, I can't write fiction. I try from time to time, and it's always boring. Part of the issue is that I really only want to write something if it's not been written before. And part of the reason is I have no talent there. I'll stick to what I'm good at: writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of unread text so it looks like I have a life, at least one interesting enough to write about, so long as the readers don't actually get past the first paragraph. This time I thought I had it. The last few attempts have been attempting fantasy, but I don't have any good ideas of magic systems (which are my favorite part). I'd rather learn than teach, read than write. I also tend to get hung up on the plot, which was the case this time as well. This time I thought I'd write the story of boy meets girl (because that's never been done before), but only write during the moments they're actually interacting. The first "chapter" was five lines long, from the moment a mutual friend was introducing them until the moment after they shook hands and got distracted by other friends at the party. The second chapter was just the friend confirmation email from Facebook. For the third, I was attempting to write an instant message chat log. I actually wrote a program to generate the HTML for me. It turns out talking to myself on paper isn't as fun as talking to myself aloud. Five minutes into the "conversation" I alt+F4'd without saving. On a side note, I couldn't figure out how to get a WebBrowser Winforms object to autosize, nor make it scroll to a certain point on the page (i.e. the bottom). Using LINQ's XDocument and XElement objects, though, made the page generation itself a breeze. Even ctrl+z was simple. I just kept a stack of each of the XElements I'd added, and then to undo, popped the stack and called .Remove() on the object, which removed itself from the XDocument. Magic! I think maybe the hardest part for me, writing fiction, is creating a character other than myself. I just can't leave my own head. I think most authors, at least in their early works, write with the main character being the author. Alexander, for instance, gets woozy from the height of a chair unless he's over water, much like his character Longshark (whom, in my head, I pronounced Lawnshark) in his latest story. I would guess that Paolini acts quite a bit like Eragon, at least in his inquisitiveness. But then both them have supporting characters that are quite different from than the authors. I just end up writing copies of myself, or possibly my friends, though it turns out the way I perceive my friends is a lot more like how I perceive me, than it is how they actually are. They wouldn't say this. I would. Bah. I do wonder what happens if you add an element to multiple XDocument objects, because .Remove()'s documentation says it removes the element from its parent, and in this case, there are multiple parents. I could try it, and report back, but I'd rather wonder than know in this case. All my friends would too. So yes, I keep attempting and failing fiction. Mostly this happens when I reread Eragon. Two thoughts always come to mind while reading that book. One, this was make a great MMO. It really would, but the whole magic system would be incredibly complex. You'd have to write a run-time compiler for it, and then you'd have to convince people the game is fun enough to play to learn a completely made up language, and then you'd have to figure out the whole "an expert might say water and conjure something completely unrelated, like a gemstone, because he can see the link between the two" thing. After all that triviality comes the part where you have to enforce no deceit when someone speaks the ancient language. The other thought is always, "I can do this." And time and time again it proves untrue. The last few weeks I've been thinking about something that the pastor said, that when we want to feel good about ourselves we revert to doing what we do best, specifically mentioning writing, among other things. I think that's true of me, not that I'm saying I'm necessarily a good writer, only that I take pride in it. The sermon he said this in was on Easter, and about "giving God the pen" of our lives, letting him dictate what will happen in our lives. I think God gives us certain aptitudes, and it would be foolish not to use what God has given us, so I'm wondering what God wants me to write. There is this blog, but I'd like to write a book someday too. I guess if I want God to answer a question, like what does he want me to write about, I should ask him--I should pray. I certainly don't pray religiously. It's a habit I should get into. Hime and I call each other best friends, but we haven't seen each other since her birthday in January. I'm in bed now, or rather, on Bill's couch in Bellingham the day after I started writing this post. Before I let it slip another day, I think I'll just post it now, short and sweet. top | 1 Comments Alexander said... At April 17, 2010 12:18 PM Now it shall be terribly hard for me not to think of him as the Lawnshark! Four Words Sunday, April 4, 2010 He is risen. He is risen indeed. It's Easter right now, so happy Easter if you happen to be reading this post today, or if you happen to read it some Sunday between March 23 and April 27 in the future, and that day also happens to be the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring of your current year. Yeah. Easter is the most important day of the year, with Christmas a close second. I don't think that's a very popular opinion, but it's mine. It is the day Jesus Christ conquered death. It is the reason we have The Good News. If I have my metaphysics right, Good Friday was the day our sins could be forgiven, but no one would believe it had Easter not happened. Or maybe I have them wrong, and it is in the act of rising again, conquering death, that we may have victory in Christ as well. I don't think Easter is celebrated correctly. I don't really know how to explain it, but the fact that Easter is so diminished in the minds of modern society, on par with Groundhog's day or Valentine's day, speaks to the fact that it's important, and that someone or something wants it suppressed. Because it's fun to blame the greeting card industry, I'm going to do just that. No one buys Easter greeting cards, probably because so few really appreciate the resurrection of Christ. Without cards, there are few ad buys, and without the media, there's little hype. Any church that tried to make an Easter awareness commercial would probably be pegged (by me) as a little silly. But no, I can't legitimately blame the card industry. While I've never been one to find the devil under every rock (or really almost any rock), leaving no stone unturned leads me to find Satan at work here. I find myself frustrated this morning. I go to the evening service at church for two reasons today -- one, I normally go to the evening service because I like to stay up late on Saturday evenings, which I did last night; and two, because we were asked, if we weren't bringing friends that would not normally go to church, to go to either the early morning service (not happening) or the evening service, so that there was space and parking at the nine through eleven o'clock ones. I'm frustrated because this is the first Easter that I didn't go to a morning service followed by brunch or family time of some sort, except for the Easter I was in Jamaica. This morning I got out of bed at 12:30 (having been awake for two hours before that), tagged some photos posted by Courtney from Costa Rica, and then got Arby's. It was not exactly my traditional Easter morning. Somehow I associate tradition with observance, and so I don't feel like I've really observed Easter, the most important day of the year. Even the fact that you go to Easter service in the morning is observing that Christ rose in the morning, that the stone was found rolled away in the morning, and that the rest of the day people could marvel at it. I actually feel guilty, like the traditions were something I was supposed to do, or else I'm in sin or something. I know that's absurd but that's still how I'd describe it. Anyway, there's no good reason to feel bad on Easter unless you mock its meaning, and I don't believe I've done that. This week went pretty well. Last summer, after Fir Creek, I was pretty burnt out at work for another week and a half. Somehow after the trip, I was actually doing better than I had been before the trip. I'm not sure if I was burnt out from working harder than I'm used to (three big features, basically on my own), or because it was the last few days before vacation, or because I had a feature dropped on me and it was still in black box, mountain mode because I hadn't really had time to evaluate each part to realize it was only a medium sized hill. Anyway, when I got back Sydney was my acting manager because my actual manager is on vacation (for his kids' spring break). Sydney split my feature into three parts, and I ended up with about a third the work I was expecting to do, and of that work, I'd already done about a quarter, whereas I hadn't touched the other two parts. That made it much easier for me to get back into the groove of the faster life, and on Friday I made a ton of progress. I still have to write tests (which undoubtedly will uncover another thirty necessary changes [anecdotal edit: I did indeed introduce a bug where renaming a databases shrunk it to the minimum size]), but I made it to the jiggle phase. That's where you put all the pieces loosely together and then jiggle it until it all fits. This is not an official software development term. Yet. We had a preview feature in our last release that I wrote. Now that it's no longer a preview feature, I had to tear all the code out. It felt weird deleting a bunch of code I wrote, when I had a meeting scheduled to discuss how that code would work after they deployed it (they haven't yet released the last release with the preview feature). I'm looking forward to work tomorrow. Friday night, I went to Swood's for our weekly hangout time. I've never been to a Good Friday service before, and because I was at Swood's, I didn't go to one this year either. Next year I think I'll try to make it. I had a good time at Swood's, though. It might even have been better that I went there than church. Hanging out with him is therapeutic for me, restful. We ended up watching The Men Who Stare at Goats. It wasn't what I was expecting, but still pretty good. It got me thinking about a couple things. I think everyone (or at least, of the one person for whom I can speak from experience, it's true for this one person) likes to pretend at some level that they can do things they can't. I pretend to use the Force to change traffic lights, which may or may not coincide with me watching the other lights of the intersection. I wish I were telekinetic. When I go by street lights, they turn off a lot more frequently than they do for other people I've talked to. That's either because I'm more observant to it than other people, or I really am special -- and what an amazing super power that is, e post was too long read more at your own risk |
| _________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 8:11pm - bloblovesmusic ""] lol what? |
| ___________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:04pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] COPYPASTA BOMB |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:22pm - Alexecutioner ""] i read the first few lines, not worth it |
| ___________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:23pm - nekronaut ""] Alexecutioner said:i raped the first few lines, not worth it fix'd |
| ___________________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:24pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] hahahaha |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:30pm - Alexecutioner ""] nekronaut said: Alexecutioner said:i raped the first few lines, not worth it fix'd hahahaha |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:34pm - Alexecutioner ""] ok, so costume roll call? whos coming as what? i need to steal your ideas |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 11,2010 9:34pm - Alexecutioner ""] i wanted to do goro but i dont think i can play drums with the extra arms |
| ____________________________________________ [Aug 12,2010 12:29am - FuckIsMySignature ""] you damn well better learn |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 12,2010 1:56am - goatcatabisk ""] I may or may not be a glory hole. |
| ______________________________ [Aug 12,2010 7:21am - Yeti ""] everyone should come as a Mortal Kombat character. i'm going as Shao Kahn. |
| __________________________________________ [Aug 12,2010 11:04am - SacInDartmouth ""] As brilliant as the MK idea is, we have something special in store that cannot be changed. |
| ______________________________ [Aug 12,2010 1:11pm - Yeti ""] ah damnit, i was hoping you would go as Baraka. but fair enough. |
| ______________________________ [Aug 12,2010 1:12pm - Yeti ""] Crazy Dan would be a good Baraka. |
| _____________________________________ [Aug 13,2010 9:10am - Sacreligion ""] His Baraka would probably be more convincing but I know how to go back, back, back, back, high punch. |
| ____________________________________________ [Aug 26,2010 10:22pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] SURPRISE! Deconformity has just been added to complete this devastating line up. ohhhhh shit. |
| ________________________________________ [Aug 26,2010 11:00pm - boblovesmusic ""] Woah they're still around? |
| ____________________________________________ [Aug 26,2010 11:04pm - FuckIsMySignature ""] dragged them out of hibernation |
| ______________________________ [Aug 27,2010 7:21am - Yeti ""] woo! |
| _______________________________________ [Aug 27,2010 7:30am - Alexecutioner ""] i think they've spent the past year working on a new full length |