Today I've upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibis (a brave goat apparently; I'm eager for Sleepy Sheep myself, but then I'm pretty boring). Of primary note so far: the irritating issues surrounding PulseAudio have buggered off, and I'm now listening to Pink Floyd on Amarok (Sheep of course), watching some compiled NFL violence on YouTube, and previewing a Rifftones audio file with Nautilus -- all at the same time. (Schweet.) Furthermore the new tabs in Nautilus are a much welcome addition, and somehow everything feels a bit snappier, as if the screws have been tightened. The only issue was that the filesystem mimetype association got screwed up somehow but that was easily repaired. So blippity flippity flop.

It's an interesting interview about Anathem with several revelations for Stephenson fans (among them the confession that he's never read Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun -- huh!? -- now everybody calm down!). No word on whether he still uses (eegh) Emacs.

Now it can be revealed: Important Work (this doodad here) has endorsed None of the Above for President of the United States! Now don't get all excited; this does not make the editors anarchists or any such similar silly thing. Well, not entirely. But we agree with the loonies over at nota.org that "all legitimate consent requires the ability to withhold consent". In previous years we have chosen to demonstrate our withholding of consent in less direct but no less direct ways: one election we endorsed Lex Luthor for President (and we still do on general principles). Four years ago we endorsed Cthulhu (why vote for a lesser evil?). But this year we felt that of the several known and unknown candidates -- Barry Obama, Johnny McCain, Bobby Barr, Übermensch Jones, Ralphie Nader, Chuckie Baldwin, Cyndie McKinney -- one candidate really stood out from the rest, and that was none of them. What a dreadful lot for a dreadful future. What a sad time to be alive. The use of NOTA rather than an obviously ridiculous "Mickey Mouse" kind of name ensures that we send the correct message to our rulers: we aren't joking around here; we don't like any of you. Seriously. You guys all suck. So please join us by writing NOTA on your election ballot today. You'll be surprised at how good it will make you feel about life, liberty, and the future of these United States.

Ah the aftermath, behold it! The naive gloating by the lefties, the bitter grumbling by the righties, the patronizing congratulations by the Euros (good little Americans, you made the right choice, blah flah flippidy.). It's enough to make one stay upon the couch all day watching Star Trek with naught but a bag of Cheesy Poofs for company. And I was expecting to feel relieved that it was all finally over. Could it be... that it's all just beginning...? Eeeeghow!

I'm a sucker for Stupid Here's-Mine Memes, and this here's the latest one:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

After fumbling about with a tape measure for a few minutes I decided mine was Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (fourth printing, 1950), but that was a dictionary and didn't really have sentences. So I got out the tape measure again and located number two: Niven and Pournelle's Inferno (first Pocket Books printing, 1976) which I'd had on top of a reading stack in preparation for the imminent release of its sequel:

"Oh no!"

That left me a little disappointed, and I started wondering if maybe a closer book could be found (I can get carried away by a good Stupid Here's-Mine Meme). Then it occurred to me that the rules didn't specify whether a wall was an impediment to "CLOSEST", so I ran down to my bedroom and started rooting through the big pile of cardboard-box storage that exists on the opposite side of the wall from my desk. I was sure I had a few books in there somewhere! I finally came up with a rumpled old copy of Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood (Berkley edition, 1986) which really deserves better treatment than I was giving it. This time the quote was more satisfying:

I had thought him unaware of me; I had imagined myself a mere irritation in his life, a nagging insect that he waved aside brusquely, hardly noticing.

Ah, Mythago Wood! How long ago did I last look inside you? Thanks, Stupid Here's-Mine Meme!

It's been a typical month in Coventry: beer, mistakes, hurt feelings, etc. Beefy Lou was stuck with some large gambling debts after betting an Election Day swing-state parley that hit on Pennsylvania and Ohio but lost on Indiana. (You should hear him bad-mouthing Tippecanoe County.) His main trouble was he didn't have the money to pay the bookie, which is trouble enough, but then he started to feel his desperation, got all nervous and sweaty and wild-eyed, so went to Dr. Jones for it. One thing well known about Dr. Jones is that he will pay handsomely for the rendering of certain... unusual services. These services are so famously unusual around Coventry that only the most desperate will risk them by taking Jones' money. Ah well for Beefy Lou.

Dr. Jones has been living in a giant yurt since Election Day (like this one only many times larger). On that day seven distinct tornadoes touched down directly atop his Superfortress (something to do with a mass mind-control experiment gone horribly wrong, the details of which are scarce), and the Superfortress was destroyed (much to the great relief of local law enforcement who could never quite figure out how to raid the place). Numerous smaller structures have since sprouted up around the yurt, much like the environs of a medieval castle, only more yurtish, sort of like mushrooms around the base of a tree. These are filled with artisans, craftsmen, and so forth who have been fabricating materials for the reconstruction of the Superfortress. It's become quite loud over there lately, lots of clanging and chugging and hissing. I've gotten a part-time job with them supervising a team of mining-dwarves.

So anyway, Beefy Lou goes into Dr. Jones' giant yurt. His eyes are already bleary from the coal smoke and grit flying about outside, and he finds it's all flickery and hot inside as well: there are torches mounted in sconces along the walls and ruby embers smoldering in braziers by the entrance flap (there's no door, just a flap of greasy fabric). The whole interior is thick with smoke and he can't see much the entire time he's there. What he does make out is an imposing dais rising atop dozens of stairs like some Aztec pyramid in the center of the yurt, and at the top a large couch, Dr. Jones reclining upon it surrounded by dancing shadows. Jones already knows why Beefy Lou is there somehow, and as if by some unspoken contract made between them tosses down a large soft pouch. It's full of the exact amount Lou owes the bookie as well as a note: "Soon I will call upon you to perform certain... unusual services." That's it, simple as that.

Beefy Lou leaves the yurt, goes over to the bookie and gets square. Now he has to wait, wondering, worrying... He's got friends coming over to give their condolences, looking at him funny like he's sold his soul or something, like in another week or so, when all this is over, he won't be the same person anymore, he'll be another poor dumb bastard who took Jones' money and did something unusual for it. It's gotten to the point where whatever the service turns out to be he doesn't want to do it. Jones could tell Lou to fetch him a pizza or clean the yurt's bathroom and he still wouldn't feel right about it; not because of the task itself but because everybody else in Coventry would assume it was something else, something terrible and weird and un-freaking-usual. If only Lou could buy his way out of it somehow.... But should he bet for or against that Stuart Smalley...?

When I was a human child I feared monsters: under the bed, in the closet, hanging upside down outside my bedroom window, marching up the road wrecking houses along the way. Then something switched, probably due to movies and books and tv; I realized how fantastically cool it would be to actually see the kind of monster a child fears, how completely that would change my understanding of the universe, how totally it would alter everything. After that I began actively searching for monsters -- under the bed, in the closet, etc -- but I never found any, and I sometimes miss being afraid of them. Now I have to fear mundane things: unemployment, health problems, gangs of youths, hillbillies, terrorism, clowns, nuclear war; none of it cool at all. It was much better when I was afraid of monsters! But when I explained that to my five-year-old nephew he wasn't buying it; he's still too scared of monsters. And then he kicked me, the rotten little monster.

If you travel over to Amsterdam where they've got those whores, and also canals, it's still cool if you smoke a little weed in one of their coffee shops. But if you dare to smoke any tobacco the police will flip out on you and drag your ass off to jail where they'll beat you and make you cry. Actually they'll just fine you, but still. This one crazy dude had the audacity to mix a little tobacco in with his weed. What was he thinking? Somebody might have slipstreamed some of that evil tobacco smoke! Wh-what would they have done then, huh?

It's Thanksgiving, which bulges with traditions: turkey, parades, football, and the Genesis masterpiece Supper's Ready. Somehow it started with a local DJ decades ago who claimed to have gotten it from some other DJ even longer ago (or something like that, a song meme passed down via radio from the seventies), but here it is now, and some of us are still listening to Supper's Ready on Thanksgiving (although it really seems like more of an Easter kind of song...). And it still sounds pretty good for having heard it once a year after all these many years.

I realize, btw, that many people listen to Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving in addition to or instead of Supper's Ready. I hate those people. I mock them, I sniff derisively in their direction, I hold my nose in their vicinity.