Erinn writes of her trip to San Francisco, which gave me flashbacks of something that happened to me in San Francisco.

I was in a car, allegedly on my way to dinner. The driver abruptly put the car into park, leaped out of the vehicle, shouted that we should park the car, and sprinted into Herbivore. One of the passengers calmly got out, got into the driver's seat, drove car around the corner, and parked it. We all reconvened inside Herbivore, then left to go get dinner somewhere else.

I have left a few important details out of this story in order to foil poetry attempts.

!

From the streets of old Oz comes the keeper of britney
With demands for retraction and rhythm like Whitney

Perceiving a challenge he rose to the bait
And this brief but strange tale which I did recite
With interspersed rhymes did he variegate
Bypassing the foils of which I did write

The end of the poem is triumphant and haughty
The lyrical prince has been just a smidge naughty
To call me a name is the act of a churl
Amphibian? No.  Bitch, this frog is a squirrel

I was disappointed when I met Rick Cruz.

Epochs should be a mark of shame, like participating in planet memes or continuing to “maintain” a package after it has been NMU'd several times in a row.

« How goes the vampire hunting? » she asked.

« Exhausting, » he replied. « It's like I've been sent to the land of bitterness... from the bitterest city in America, to the bitterest country in the world, where no one seems to develop emotionally over the age of 13. They all think I'm chinese. »

Twice upon a time, there was a corporation called Company B. Ironically, their bugle player quit two days before the beginning of this story.

Two days after the bugle player quit, something sinister was happening at Company B. To better understand it, we need to go back in time a bit. So this next part happens well before the beginning of the story.

Once upon a time, Company B was run by a middle-management team known as Team Alfalfa. These guys were young and naïve and inexperienced, but idealistic and somewhat morally pure. They certainly didn't expect the bugle player to quit. They were surprised by almost every one of the things to come. When they hired a Belarussian, they were surprised when he quit shortly thereafter and moved to Hampshire County in Massachusetts. They were surprised when the owners of Company B hired Team Buckwheat.

Team Buckwheat was a group of power-hungry jerks, who were hired because they had Experience and Vision. Company B needed to grow, because Progress is important, and anyway, how else would the owners be able to bilk the company of millions of dollars through fraud and mismanagement if the company didn't grow big enough to amass millions of dollars in the first place?

The thirst for power was great within each member of Team Buckwheat, and they collectively vowed to take over the company. Through trickery and deceit, they sabotaged Team Alfalfa. Team Alfalfa mistakenly believed that its power hold was strong and that it could threaten to hold the company's business hostage, but it was very much mistaken. Slowly but surely, Team Buckwheat started to drive Team Alfalfa out of the company until only two members remained.

In fact, their lust was so great that they began vying for power amongst themselves before they had succeeded completely in their purge of the ranks of Team Alfalfa. They employed evil and complicated manipulations and machinations, until only two of them remained as well. As only two, they were much less powerful, and as they saw the danger and became afraid, they clung to one another and allied.

Losing faith in Team Buckwheat, the owners of Company B hired the Grey Knight to continue the work of rapidly growing the company in order to make enormous profits. The Grey Knight came in and exuded Calmness and Rationalness, and provided a stark contrast to the meanness and cruelty that Team Buckwheat inflicted upon its subordinates.

So some unlikely bedfellows among the grunts and peons formed an alliance, and with the reluctant aid of the Grey Knight, they had the remnants of Team Buckwheat fired based on flimsy pretexts, while the remnants of Team Alfalfa watched from the sidelines.

The peons and grunts were naïve and overly hopeful in the Grey Knight, who was not as noble as he seemed. After a few months of everything functioning better than it had ever done before, he brought in his friends, Team Corn. Team Corn was power-hungry as well, but more patient. Unlike Team Buckwheat, which had been cobbled together from strangers, Team Corn stuck together and moved from company to company, leaving waves of disgust and resentment in its wake.

These people immediately took steps to secure their power base. Where things had been transparent and group-oriented before, they were made obscure and individualized. Each project was assigned to a single person. All communication regarding each project was required to go directly and privately to the responsible person. Discussing a project with anyone else was a breach of protocol. If the responsible person fell sick or left the country for mysterious reasons, all activity on that project would cease. Accomplishments were discouraged, and simulating the appearance of much effort and progress was encouraged.

The members of Team Corn were stunted in their moral development. They believed that one was either with them or against them. Those who chose to be sycophants were given rewards and promotions, no matter how incompetent and unqualified they were. Those who did not were oppressed and punished. Objections and questions to ill-advised policies were met with hostility, and if anyone ever took a principled stand, Team Corn became fraught with confusion; they could not conceive of a reason one might act for the greater good or based on conscience rather than to do what would advance one's own interests.

After a very long time, this fundamental lack of comprehension of their own evil led to their downfall, but that small bit of justice was tempered when Team Durum came in to replace them. Team Durum wasn't as bad as Team Corn, but boy did it suck.

Andres, Ari really likes ping-pong balls.

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Order by February 10 and get
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We accept all credit cards

« Wow, » I said. « Do they really do that? »

« I don't know, » she replied, « but I really want to go to Hooters and tell them it's my birthday now. »

In the sack: Spruce. Some kind of conifer. No; sandalwood. Is it sandalwood?

Wet: Sandalwood. Some kind of wood, anyway. Probably wood.

Dry down: Sandalwood with an undertone of wet dog. How disturbing.

The touch: Okay.

The feel: Okay.

The magic of our lives: I don't know.

Final verdict: This is more difficult than being a pretentious wine taster.

In the sack: Talcum powder. No. Yes. No.

Wet: Cocoa butter and wet dog.

Dry down: Cocoa butter and vanilla.

The touch: Oily. Really oily.

The feel: A third of the way to channeling Tom Waits.

The magic of our lives: Moreso.

Final verdict: Maybe too oily. Not sure. Good thing this isn't final.

Peter: Sabena rocked. I'm bitter about that too.

Martin: Do I have a better chance of getting into Club Swiss Gold if I blog about how much Swissôtel sucks?

In the sack: A hippie store and sporadic clove.

Wet: The outside of the hippie store.

Dry down: Weak.

The touch: Oily and chunky.

The feel: Halfway to an outdated travel brochure.

The magic of our lives: Not there.

Final verdict: Too oily. Too inferior.

CAPPESANTE DEL NANTUCKET A ‘LIDO VENEZIANO
Marinated Nantucket bay scallops with Osetra caviar, lemon, chives and extra virgin olive oil
2003 Soave Classico, Leonildo Peropan, Veneto, Italia

PROSCIUTTO ‘LA QUERCIA’ CON BURRATA E PUREA DI DATTERI
Cured Berkshire pork with burrata cheese, date puree and wild arugula
2003 Chardonnay, Viberti, Piemonte, Italia

ARAGOSTA E PAGLIOLAIA CON PUREA DI FAGIOLI
Braised lobster and crisp dewlap with Umbrian white bean puree and spiced vinegar syrup
2004 Saint George-Moschofilero Rose, "Zoë!," Domaine Skouras, Argos, Greece

CANNELONI DI FAGIANO CON CASTAGNE
Handcrafted pasta filled with braised pheasant with Parmigiano Reggiano and toasted chestnuts.
2004 Charbono “Villa Andrianan-Napa Valley,” Summers Winery, Calistoga, California

TAGLIATA DI MANZO CON FEGATO ALLA GRIGLIA E BALSAMICO INVECCHIATO
Wood grilled prime strip steak with grilled calves liver, slow cooked cippolini onions, trumpet royale mushrooms and 50 year old balsamic vinegar
1999 Barolo, Vietti, Castiglione Falletto, Piemonte, Italia

SELEZIONE DI FORMAGGI
A selection of fine cheeses
10 Year Verdelho Madeira, Henriques & Henriques, Portugal

CREMA TIEPIDA DI CIOCCOLATO E CAFFE
Warm chocolate espresso cup with whipped cream and raisin pasticcini
2004 Dolce Stilnovo Rosso, Cantina Aurora, Piemonte, Italia

In the sack: Fruit roll-up hand cream.

Wet: Sweet strawberry candy. Not strawberry or sweet or candy though. But.. informer? boom boom? down? what?

Dry down: I couldn't care less.

The touch: On the cusp of being too oily.

The feel: Two-thirds of the way to Bill Withers on morphine.

The magic of our lives: In the same dimension.

Final verdict: This one's the best.

But today there is no day or night
Today there is no dark or light.
Today there is no black or white,
Only shades of græy.

Dear Geoff,

Hi there, thanks for the email...and although this seems ridiculous, I have a rule against dating Aquarians.

Nothing personal (I know, right, HOW can it not be personal?)

It's just that every Aquarian I've ever known cannot seem to handle deep emotional intimacy.

More thinkers, more logical than I tend to be.

I wish you well.

Zen rocks.

~Charlie.

When you are alleging that something has a citrus flavor, you should consider that peach, apple, guava, and pineapple may undermine your position.

Christine, reading only the first three Wheel of Time books seems like a pointless exercise in suffering.

It was wintertime somewhere in the Ozarks, in the days before the Soft Scape. A young boy named Timmy was born unto a poor family that already had one son. When that brother was killed in an accident, the parents boxed up all his possessions and hid them deep within the attic, not wishing to be reminded of his former existence. Some said that it was the only healthy option open to them, and some said that it was an ill-fitting tribute. In any case, Timmy barely even found out that he had had a brother, and any memories he developed of him were false.

As Timmy grew, he sprouted hair, and learned to speak, and learned to pray. Every night, before going to sleep, he petitioned God, « Please keep mommy and daddy safe. » If he had had a brother still, he would have prayed for him too.

The years went by, and Timmy went to school, and someone surprised him with the claim that he had once had a brother. He asked his parents about this when he got home, and they rather loudly instructed him not to discuss such things. He dropped the matter, but remained perplexed and afraid to ask any more questions.

It was a long time before his explorations of the attic yielded the discovery that precipitated a great big scene. When his father saw that he had retrieved some of his brother's possessions, he beat him, and his mother screamed that if he ever went up to the attic again, she would cut off his “pee-pee”, and everyone was upset for quite some time.

Mistaking this parental love for abuse, he drew away from them, and began to wander and drift. In the summer of his fifteenth year, he learned that love was a hobo's hand. Then, that winter, he left his parents' house for the last time.

Finding himself overwhelmed by the eternal struggle for food and shelter, he started turning tricks for small change. This proved to be a dangerous occupation, and Timmy's life was rife with anxiety for quite some time.

Presently, Timmy came to a little town, and in that little town lived a fireman and his wife. The fireman felt that it was time to experiment, and and inquired if Timmy would accomodate him. Timmy was more than happy to oblige for a reasonable fee, and the fireman was more than happy to continue to pay it. His wife was less than happy about the whole affair, for she felt that it reflected poorly on her as a woman, and she feared that if word got out, she would be the laughingstock of the town.

Timmy was unconcerned with such issues. Some said that he was morally bankrupt, and some said that he was a practical businessman. In truth, though, the money became utterly unimportant to him, as he spiraled toward a psychotic breakdown. He had developed a fantasy wherein the fireman would leave his wife and take Timmy away, maybe to somewhere like Alabama, where no one would oppress them. As he obsessed and clung to this dream, he pulled farther away from reality and other human beings. The fireman was relatively unconcerned, but the fireman's wife grew more worried by subtle nuances that she noticed over time.

« You must stop this! » she insisted.

« Give me my space! » he insisted.

The ongoing argument devolved into citations of marriage vows and Biblical passages, which were conveniently inconclusive. The fireman's wife was a God-fearing woman, and she knew that she could not violate “'til death do us part” without being struck down, and that she could not invoke the old “'til death do us part” loophole without violating “thou shalt not kill” and being likewise smitten. Thus she was at an impasse. Some said that she was a victim of a bad situation, and some said that it was her own fault for letting it happen.

Timmy's relationship with God was much more complex, though now almost completely forgotten. He had also almost completely forgotten the existence of the fireman's wife, else he might have thought to plot against her.

This memory lapse was abruptly corrected when the fireman's wife threatened Timmy. Timmy was upset and distraught and threatened her back. The fireman announced that he was tired of them both, and moved to Alabama on his own. Some said that it was irony, and some said that it was an owmen of things to come.

I had to release zomg 0.1.3 because last.fm started sending

HTTP/1.0 200 OK

where it had been previously sending

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

She called him because she had had a big fight with her boyfriend and asked if she could stay with him if she needed to. He told her that she could. He cleaned his place like a man possessed. No one had ever seen him that driven before and no one would see it ever again. When she made up with her boyfriend and decided to stay at home, the embers of hope within him died.

Normally he dated women who were contrary. They liked to fight with him and he liked to whimper and whine. There was a great deal of manipulative behavior on both sides, and a lot of emotion and intensity. He did not fight or squabble with her, but he loved her deeply.

She got married shortly before he did. He married a girl with whom there was almost no passion at all. Some people cried at that wedding.

KILL ELMO

« This isn't the hotel lobby! » she exclaimed.

« Up! » I retorted, though I was not Sunny Baudelaire.

They giggled.

« What's with all these internet suicides in the news? » she asked.

« It's like Heathers 2000! » he answered.

In the sack: Cocoa butter and sandalwood

Wet: Sandalwood and eucalyptol

Dry down: Sandalwood

The touch: A solitary bud

The feel: Staring into the mortality divide

The magic of our lives: Fleeting.

Final verdict: Robbed of a fair shake by environmental crisis.

In the sack: Talcum powder and jasmine In the sack: Eberhard Faber eraser and some flowers. Wet: Jasmine and talcum powder Wet: Eberhard Faber eraser and some flowers. Then the Großwörterbuch.

Dry down: Eberhard Faber eraser and jasmine

The touch: Greasy goodness

The feel: That guy needs to get off Elphaba's dick while I sing “Edelweiss”.

The magic of our lives: Probably half the reagents.

Final verdict: I do not have a cultivar.

In the sack: Lestoil and citrus.

Wet: Citrus and Lestoil.

Dry down: Opted-out and slammed.

The touch: Oilily fine.

The feel:

Vous comprendrez
Qu'j'préfère rester
Au fond d'mon lit
A méditer
Avec ma mie
Qu'est bonn' comm' du
Pain pas béni
Du pain perdu
A la myrtille
Qu'j'préfère visiter quêques endroits
De paradis
Du bout des doigts
Dans des pays
Tout en dentelles
Et qui tout droit
Vous mènent au ciel.

The magic of our lives: The transcendence is not of itself.

Final verdict: Too many variables spoil the objective.

'Twas the end of times
And he did wonder:
Doth she strum those amber chords for me?

The waves rose up, all filled with bream
The gulls circled, looking for the skirt of Olympus
Their cries echoing along the length of that sunlit sea.

Pandemonium erupted, and the shepherds tending their flocks
Saw through the dreary haze
A butcher, a baker, a mover, a shaker
Investigative reports

Spectral nightingales performed a mating dance
While far below, a foolish mendicant
Did sup on what seemed to him as the food of gods
Then queried an odoriferous prevaricator as to
The nature of one substance:
This milk is salty and so very sweet
Whence doth it come?

The other smirked and spun forth a mendacious tale
The likes of which no one had heard in many minutes
And though it never reached completion, a stray gull
Flew by and interjected:
You don't know the half of it.

The young in the dale longed for
The young in the dell
Who, in turn, longed for
Some old guy in the mountains
With poor hygiene and a
Goat that wouldn't quit
Said he: O, bitches!
Verily, thou art not shit.

Though no one could understand him
For he had no teeth.

• Brokeback Mountain

• Munich

• Capote

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

• Da Vinci Code

• To Kill A Mockingbird

• Microsoft

• Beep

Sometimes, when there are what one might term “charged discussions”, I like to play a little game. I sample a few of the people who are shooting their mouths off and check to see how they're contributing to a certain project about which I might have some opinions. In some cases, I find that they are not worthless blowhards as one might conclude from the inanity of their speech and actions, but actual contributors who just happen to be terribly, terribly incorrect. In other cases, I discover that they have shown a grave lack of judgment in prioritization. Let's stereotype some of the charming winners.

The worthless blowhard: This person has a contribution-to-noise ratio that is infinitesimal small. Perhaps he believes that by expressing himself, he is making the world a better place. Perhaps he thinks that his opinions matter. He is mistaken.

The arrogant egoist: This person also does very little. She believes herself to be supremely qualified to dictate the way in which others make their contributions, or at least moreso than the people who are actually doing the work. She is quite often mistaken, and should be ashamed of being such a control freak.

The catamite trainer: This is a version of the arrogant egoist who betters the world by taking on an apprentice. The Master supervises the Apprentice's contributions, and continues to dictate how things should be done despite being unwilling to actually contribute himself. One notable difference between this and a respectable mentorship relationship is that the Apprentice is aware that he is more qualified to make these decisions than the Master, but feels that it would be socially inappropriate to shake off the yoke of oppression. He is mistaken.

The possessive stoner: This is someone who is lax in her responsibilities but means to correct these deficiencies as soon as humanly possible. If anyone offers to help her, she says, “No! I'll do it myself this weekend.” Then she does something else. The offer is repeated a month later, and she replies, “No! This weekend for sure, Rocky!” Two years later, people are still fuming that the work hasn't been done. She is a flake.

On a completely different subject, let's talk about Debian. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who posts more than 5 mailing-list emails or newsgroup articles in a 24-hour period. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who finds out about Debian votes by reading Slashdot. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who reads Slashdot. I recommend the expulsion of anyone with subpar personal hygiene. I recommend the expulsion of anyone in Project Scud. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who employs statistics in a dishonest manner. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who tries to impose the values of a particular subculture that is not Debian on an international project. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who uses cdbs. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who likes tarball-in-tarball. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who makes lists. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who contributes more to Gentoo, Mandriva, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, or Xandros than to Debian. I recommend the expulsion of anyone who ever wrote an autobiography. I recommend the expulsion of Mos Def and Talib Kweli: best expulsion in hip-hop. Y-O.

zomg 0.1.4, featuring a Random fix.

In the sack: Tang

Wet: Lemon-lime soda with a splash of Tang vomit

Dry down: OOS with eXtreme Ray of Prejudice

The touch: Sharp and pointy. Slightly oily. Perhaps not enough.

The feel: Oh my god, it's full of stars.

The magic of our lives: Ow, ow, ow.

Final verdict: What a lousy party.

In the sack: eraser, but not Eberhard-Faber.

Wet: eraser with a slight touch of paint thinner

Dry down: OOS3

The touch: Oily, but not enough

The feel: Eh.

The magic of our lives: Fuck Glinda.

Final verdict: What's the point?

« Bubba Yaga, » he evoked.

« Bubba cuts your hair in the holler, » I observed.

« Do you know what a holler is? » he asked.

« I think so, » I replied.

« I asked once, » he continued. « Answer: a holler place between two hills. »

« You asked Bubba? » I inquired, wild-eyed with wonder.

« I have family in Kentucky, » he explained. « One uncle lives in a holler. I think I'll make soup this weekend. »

« I am totally quoting you in my blog, » I warned him.

« Cool, » he grunted, expanding to fill the room.

He said, « People are so, so stupid! If you let the government tell you what you can do in regards to abortion, how long until they tell you how much sleep you have to get or who you can marry? »

I quipped, « I hear that slippery slope arguments are invalid these days. »

She noted, « Ever since Vatican II. »

Disney is releasing the 50th Anniversary Edition DVD of Lady and the Tramp on Feb. 28.

Anthony, you and Ryan behaving like snarky assholes looks to me to be in direct conflict with the #debian-tech charter.

The fact that at least one of the channel ops considers this to be acceptable behavior is a perfectly valid reason for people to refuse to participate.

In the sack: rose

Wet: rose and citrus

Dry down: OOS4

The touch: Oily, almost enough.

The feel: She's a rambunctious little switch.

The magic of our lives: Piece without an overview.

Final verdict: May excel with accompaniment.

In the sack: Lemon

Wet: Citrus overload. The Colon Blow of Citrusland. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Dry down: Nothing? Could it be nothing? It's nothing.

The touch: Very slightly and pleasantly oily.

The feel: The false Capped are doing the Tripod Timewarp again and there is some clutching at Toys ’R Us.

The magic of our lives: A good start.

Final verdict: Repeatable.

It has come to my attention that AJ has made some updates. He says,

Of course, the two responses above are fundamentally contradictory: if Clint's right a ban (or similar) would've been appropriate, in spite of Joerg's claim. On the other hand, Google's sole definition of "snarky" seems to be "A colloquialism meaning short-tempered or snappish." which doesn't seem terribly applicable here -- however short tempered anyone was, anon left before anyone had a chance to lose theirs. Sadly, the rest of Clint's epithet assumes you've got some idea what the problem is in the first place.

Apparently I've been too cryptic, so I will attempt to rectify that slightly.

The episode begins, I believe, with Anthony invoking a reference to “secret changes”. Ryan perpetuates the joking. Matt acknowledges the Sneakers reference, though it could have been interpreted as approval of the discourteous and disrespectful banter. “anon” expresses his confusion about this apparent disparity between the charter of the channel and what is occurring in practice. Ryan implies by inquiry that no such discrepancy exists. “anon”, clearly frustrated, storms off in a huff. Anthony cites this occurrence in his blog. As far as I am aware, none of the channel moderators listed on the Charter have made their opinions known publicly.

In other examples, we see Anthony wielding the Charter as a threatening weapon. In this case, we see a failure to self-censor. It does not surprise me at all that someone would not want to put up with this.

So I am not saying that either AJ or Ryan or Matt should have been banned for this; that would seem rather extreme and unproductive. I am saying that I have little faith in the #debian-tech team to enforce things fairly.

Alexis writes that we should just ignore trolls.

Some people use the word “troll” to refer to someone who makes provocative utterances in a dishonest manner in order to elicit excited responses, usually of a particular sort. Some people use the word less specifically, and view the motives and execution of the “troll” to be largely irrelevant. Others use the word to denote anyone who disagrees with them.

I think that such labelling of anyone who is not being malicious is generally counterproductive, as it leads to division, conflict, dehumanization, and high blood pressure.

Is it really that much easier to write someone off as hopeless than to attempt to understand foreign viewpoints?

Incidentally, this whole Teletubbies metaphor doesn't wash. Teletubbies don't preach harmony while trying to control or expel people overtly. They say « Big hug! » and « Aww! » while psychically nullifying your mind.

Tinky-winky for DPL.

In the free space, between the notility and the wire
Did a spot cam be apple day
Yet urging on, like wind and fire
Reigned spotted chains of stained McCrae

In the sack: Mango vomit

Wet: That's right. Mango vomit

Dry down: Yes, yes, mango vomit

The touch: Slight greasiness

The feel: Little eddies. Dragons and a cloaked Death. The kissing of lips, the kissing of toes, the smelling of armpits, the coming to blows. The kissing of toes, the kissing of lips, the smelling of armpits, the coming to grips.

The magic of our lives: Must be a coincidence, but I don't see a gollywog on a pin.

Final verdict: Nah.

In the sack: Sweet strawberry ammonia candy

Wet: Bread-in-a-can. You remember bread-in-a-can, don't you?

Dry down: OOS with reluctance

The touch: Crazy oil goodness

The feel: Orange groves, lemon groves, lime groves, but no citrus to be found. Tonsils, sweet tonsils. A frozen banana.

The magic of our lives: Homegirl done grunted at the maksha router.

Final verdict: To be stapled in.

Steve, I think this is a crock. We have enough uninformed voters as it is; encouraging more people to vote without caring does not seem like it would have positive effects. At the very least, I would expect it to elicit more “protest votes” than we've had in the past.

Joey Schulze conspiciously omits the reason that James Troup gave him in response to his recent request to become an ftpmaster.

I'm betting that it has to do with separation of duties. Joey is already a member of the Debian System Administration team. Having a member of DSA also be in ftpmaster would be very dangerous and is not a risk that Debian should ever take. Who knows what could happen?

Jörg, your use of ASCII confuses me. Do you mean ⅔, 2 ÷ 3, 2 ∕ 3, or a relative pathname called 2/3 ?

Unicode solves all communication problems.

I think one of the devotee hobbyists should set up a survey to help debunk the myth of monoculture and illuminate some potentially-depressing patterns that may live in the cracks between tribalist boundaries.

I suggest something like this list of hostile acts.

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
deadbeef-1550-53xy-114d-490b20ec1fe3
[   ] 1: Alice makes fun of Wally for writing terribly broken patches (to his face)
[   ] 2: Wally makes fun of Alice for writing useless bug reports (behind her back)
[   ] 3: Alice sucker-punches Wally in the gut.
[   ] 4: Wally calls Alice a useless, scabies-infested neo-conservative
[   ] 5: Alice calls Wally a retarded troll version of Michael Milken
[   ] 6: Wally tells lies about Alice to everyone, pitting them against her
[   ] 7: Alice emails Wally some questions, with M-F-T and Reply-To set to Wally
[   ] 8: Wally willfully ignores all communication from Alice
[   ] 9: Further disthrustion
- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

One could do all kinds of fun stuff with this, adding and removing context for actions, since that type of thing matters to some people, even some of those fine people in the audience with some sort of borderline personality disorder.

I might rank number 8 as “most epicly-proportioned hostility” and number 3 as “least epicly-proportioned hostility”, whereas my friend Alpesh, who claims to be a pacifist, but refuses to acknowledge that verbal abuse is violence, might do the exact opposite.

Somewhere in the vast and unspoiled natural beauty that is New Jersey, right around the corner from K-Mart, lived a man named Stellan Andrews. He lived with his wife, his enormous children, and a host of psychotic delusions.

Stellan had always known that he was special. From a very early age, it was clear to him that he was superior to the other children, and as he aged, he discovered that he could employ his above-average intellect and cunning to manipulate social systems to his advantage. By the time he was 18, he thought himself invincible.

His ambitious and power-hungry nature was tempered by a fair amount of social ineptitude and an utter lack of empathy for anyone who was not similarly power-hungry and evil as he. This led to a perception of him as bright and eccentric at best, or more frequently as one of them there smartypants weirdos who thought that he was too good for his neighbors in the mobile home park. His friends were few and tended to be outcasts with sociopathic tendencies. These friendships were intense and codependent until abrupt ends; one person would demand too much, the other would demur, the first would stand firm and uncompromising as this would now become a significant issue about loyalty and value and importance, and after a short-lived blowup, they would never speak again. Throughout, extreme amounts of jealousy would rage in both directions, and so Stellan never had more than one friend at a time.

In between friendships, though also during them, Stellan spent much of his time tinkering with technology. He dissected and rebuilt radios, televisions, computers, and anything else he could get his hands on. He played with model rockets and explosives of many types, though without fail it was his friends who were more interested in these types of activities. With them, he also played with guns, but he never had any interest in doing so on his own.

After high school, Stellan enlisted in the Army, despite a fundamental distrust of government and a lack of passion for most of the various relevant interests of his now-forgotten friends: guns, history, tanks, U.S. Cavalry catalogs, and dolls that were called “action figures”. However, he did enjoy strategy- and war-games, which never had any relevance to his military career. The only aspect which appealed to him was the power hierarchy, and this seemed more natural to him than any other social structure he had experienced.

He was stationed in Laos for a time, and that is where he met his wife. She was a Chinese rabbi, and since she spoke no English, they hit it off smashingly. With not much to go on about her personality, he romanticized her into his perfect woman, and by the time his delusions were shattered, they were raising children in New Jersey. Neither was particularly happy. She sublimated nearly all of herself into her work at the local pan-Asian synagogue, and he, now more social than he had ever been in his life, entered into a sinister and twisted game.

It was called Perfidy, and there were a couple hundred participants across the entire country. These players had a few things in common: they were moderately sociopathic; they harbored great contempt and resentment for the average citizen, whom they characterized as a stupid sheep or cow; and they believed that they, as superior creatures, were entitled to control the proletariat for entertainment purposes.

The game, to boil it down to some sort of boiled-down nutshell, was the structured use of random and unwitting people as pawns in a giant and complex strategy game. The players who excelled were accomplished manipulators and liars, or, as they preferred to call themselves, social engineers. They were also cold and dispassionate.

Stellan lost his head. He had just been outmanœuvred by Jack Breig from Delaware, and he was livid. As the bile rushed into his mouth, he lost his firm grasp on strategery, and succumbed to vengeful instincts. Within days, he and Jack were getting far too personal. His rage abided when he succeeded in triggering Jack's divorce. In response, Jack proved once again that he was Stellan's better. The next day, Stellan was arrested for a crime that he did not commit. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. His family was not pleased.

He returned home a felon. No longer able to get credit or a job, he reacted in the most natural way possible: he joined the local Plan 9 Users' Group.

[To be continued...]

All this niggling about delegations disturbs me. You would have thought that Ian Jackson would have cleared this up but he seems to have confounded the issue by paragraphs of equivocation after a firm and sensible statement.

For someone used to nearly-nonexistent labor protections, the idea of not being able to fire someone without due process is one step away from a totalitarian dystopia.

Americans look at European employment laws with amazement and horror. The employees might see the added job security as comforting, but the knowledge that one can quit on 5 minutes' notice is comforting as well, and it is not a freedom that most would sacrifice. Employers see the added security as a potential nicety, but also as a terrible burden. « Not only do we have to keep paying them after we fire them, we have to give them places to sit! » It's tantamount to Evil Communism.

I'm sure you can guess what Europeans think of American labor laws.

Anyway, having anyone with augmented privileges not be fireable at the drop of a hat seems like madness to me. So I'll continue to believe that we can can anyone on the “org chart” any time we damn well please. Any other situation would mean that they have too much power.

Wouter, I don't know what's not ideal about this.

I was led to believe that one was required to give 2-3 months notice in either direction, regardless of cause. Here, actually serving one's two weeks is considered slightly beyond responsible and polite. What are the standards in Belgium?

ZOMG 0.1.6 will now prefer Mutagen to eyeD3 if it is installed.

In the sack: A cluster of conifers huddled together in the midst of a scary deciduous forest.

Wet: Rosemary with oil of baby.

Dry down: OOS6

The touch: Oleotastic

The feel: The push and pull. The tease and coax. The rapture. Russell. Chmmr. Shofixti. The shimmering of alibis.

The magic of our lives: Lumps from without

Final verdict: Deism is overrated.

There were cufflinks again, but the cycle is broken
It's been quite a few days since the last time we'd spoken
For if I must shoulder the onus inventive
To entice and allure and provide an incentive
Mayhaps I'd rather be writing in ballad meter

As EMF wavicles fly through the air
Bouncing off objects with nary a care
Getting fractured in the echo and sway
But it's so hard to dance that way
(when it's cold and there's no music)

Turn the midnight radio up for that sweet sound
For they might play Bowie, I to thee propound
It's not really work
It's just the power to charm
I'm still standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

And straight from the 80's rings out the refrain
With magic and sadness and heartbreak and pain

And we danced.

I used to be into quotations.

There was a guy. He was very Jewish. He had bad skin. He was morally bankrupt. He was ugly. He smelled bad. As you might imagine, there was an entire gaggle of girls trying to get into his pants.

They were a bunch of Christian fundamentalists, affectionately called the God Squad by some, malevolently called the God Squad by some. They wrote him the scariest love letters and poetry I have ever seen.

Finally, he had to choose one, and I was relieved that he did not choose the one who had adapted Culture Club lyrics to express whatever foul sentiment she was trying to express. Instead, he chose a sweet girl who lived with a crazy, flat-chested, exhibitionist midget hooker who claimed to be allergic to marijuana and aspired to be an architect.

Now the evil boy and the sweet girl with a tenuous grip on reality performed the proper rites of the barnyard dance and became officially socially-ensnared. She drafted a timetable by which they would traverse numerous stages of physical intimacy. She showed him this timetable. He deluded himself into thinking that this timetable was much more volatile than it was. Much later on, he dumped her for a girl that was much less Christian.

In the meantime, though, their dry-humping was interminable. He very quickly earned himself the nickname "Sticky Shorts", which, come to think of it, was far better than most of his other nicknames.

Then once, for a moment when her legs weren't spread, she mentioned to me that she had heard that I was into quotations. I acknowledged this and she became very excited. She was into quotations too. She felt the need to prove this to me. It was rather close to that time when I concluded that quoting was lame and that I would stop living vicariously through the words of others and idolizing ink and all that other stuff from that GNR song.

You should know this house by now
Broken-down and unkempt somehow
Tree sways like a dancer
God bless the cancer inside me
While I wait

And I remember the bakery
With the cinnamon buns
And I remember the apple tree
In the backyard
But now I feel I've lost myself
Things aren't how they seemed they'd be
Still I lie awake and alone
God bless the cancer inside me
While I wait

I miss the days when people would get fired for this level of incompetence.

On 2006-03-30 the developer CVS server had a substantial system failure. Due to the implementation of the CVS service, there is a single point of failure with multiple points of recovery (there is more than one data source we could potentially recover from if there is any data loss as a result of the failure). This outage currently affects developer CVS access directly, but we have disabled tarball updates and data syncs from the developer CVS server to the anonymous pserver/ViewCVS hosts as an additional level of precaution. Our main focus since the outage was detected has been to safegaurd all data on the developer CVS server as well as possible. We are currently attempting to backup the data on the host, which is taking longer than we initially anticipated it would, but is a necessary step to fully safegaurd the host's data. Next, we are going to perform some data validation to ensure the data set appears valid. Pending successful completion of those steps, we'll reenable developer CVS access. A few days after, we'll reenable CVS tarballs and syncs to anonymous CVS. In the mean time, we're currently advancing plans for a CVS architecture change based upon the knowledge we gained during Subversion deployment to eliminate the single point of failure that developer CVS currently has, add horizontal scalability and overall service resiliance. However, we still do not have an estimate on when developer CVS services will be restored, but we have been, and currently are actively working to restore access to CVS. We appreciate your patience with us while we work to properly resolve this major outage.

On 2006-03-30 the developer CVS server had a hardware issue that required us to take the service offline. We are actively working on this problem and hope to have it back up soon. There is not a current estimate for the duration of this outage, but when we get one, it will be posted on the site status page (this page). We currently expect this outage to last 48 hours, at minimum.

Matthew, you are violating my Grand Unified Code of Conduct.

I am reminded of a story from a long time ago. A fascist authority figure wanted to incite his wards to support a war that was somewhat controversial. He knew that if he insisted directly that all display support for the war, there would be some backlash. Therefore, he announced that whether or not someone supported the war (and that it was okay to have opinions either way), one thing that they could all be unanimous about was that they supported the brave and heroic members of the armed forces, and since this could not possibly be controversial in any way, arguing against it would be an indication of insanity. So the chorus mooed and baaed and appreciated the excellency of this logic, and by the next day most were parading about with signs and ribbons and shouting about how the troops were great and how they sure hoped that they'd win the war quickly. It did not end well for the small minority that did not support the armed forces.

So the political aim was achieved with just a little bit of trickery.

The one clear thing that we can draw from the thread on debian-private is that a bunch of hysterical people are perfectly willing to act without thinking. Maybe we're talking about different threads.

It is offensive to offer condolences on behalf of the entire project if said offer is controversial. It is offensive to pressure people to observe one, two, three, or fifty minutes of silence to make some political statement. It is offensive to derogate the objections of an individual in such matters. It matters not whether the objection is grounded in religion, spirituality, politics, culture, honor, integrity, or an unwillingness to be insincere. Don't fucking speak for me.

Matthew, you continue to be disingenuous. If you, in your official capacity as Debian representative, expressed condolences to the GNOME advisory board with regard to the death of GNOME's UI, I bet that some of the people not laughing might be angry with you.

Now how many of them need to speak up before you'd acknowledge them as people and not rabid stick figures?

Matthew,

1) I say "The Debian project believes that works under the GFDL, with invariant sections, are non-free". Someone is insulted, because they believe otherwise. Is my statement incorrect? Should that person feel insulted?

That statement would seem reasonable given the outcome of a project-wide General Resolution. If the individual believes that the process by which said outcome was reached was flawed beyond a reasonable point, that person might feel frustrated. If it is widely held that such was flawed beyond a reasonable degree, and the speaker advancing that position were widely regarded as being obviously deceptive, then that person should feel insulted.

2) I say "The Debian project believes that it is a shame that a member has died". Someone is insulted, because (for whatever reason) they disagree. Is my statement incorrect? Should that person feel insulted?

If you are basing your statement on a mailing list discussion in which no one was obliged to participate; which excluded anyone who didn't subscribe to that mailing list, anyone who refused to participate in said discussion for whatever reason, and anyone who quite correctly failed to recognize said discussion as a decision-making process; and which was generally shameful and embarrassing; then you are manufacturing consensus out of your ass. Yes, that statement is incorrect. Yes, we should all feel insulted.

Trying to argue that we should just spout meaningless platitudes (no matter how strongly a tiny minority might mean them) at a whim is insane. The Debian project condemns the U.S. head of state for being a retard; everyone with whom I discussed this today agrees. I know that Debian's about technical excellence, but what harm can a simple political statement do? Maybe we should darken our website to show our support for those who died at the Gulf of Tonkin.

If it's in poor taste to vote on whether or not the project believes something is a shame, then I think it's probably in poor taste to pretend that that was decided in some other manner.

Matthew, are you suggesting that all the heated discussions and flamewars about how to respond to the deaths of developers didn't happen, or that they were caused by three insane weirdos who are technically part of the community we love so much more than Ubuntu, yet not reeeeeally part of the community?

Do you recall discourse about certain actions potentially cheapening our honoring of the memory of Joel Klecker? Which position then fell in the realm of this common sense to which we should aspire?

Ride the apologue beam под скрантонем.

Up in the Catskills, the sun sometimes shines on a cairn. Sometimes it shines on people near that cairn. Sometimes people roll cigarettes while eying that cairn suspiciously, and sometimes one of those people has two eyes whose colors differ.

This person may like David Bowie, and he may be from eastern Massachusetts, and he may like to regale his ex-girlfriend with stories of the Japanese girls he conquers in Canada.

All that happens in the shadow plane, with the pale shapes, and time will not be what it seemed. Yet closer to the center of the Earth runs a stream, the centerpiece for a suffusion of lush, vegetative growth. That place in the forest, devoid of signs of vertebrate life, transcends time in a much different way.

There are other places like it, but they lack one important factor. For if I am to ask the question to bring it full-circle, who is left to answer me but the dead?

I was reading a Gregory Maguire book. I won't say which one; that would be telling. A man, perhaps 45 years old, with a shaved head and a bit of drunkenness, informed me that he had just been mugged. I did not care in the slightest. He then commented on the anthropomorphized animal depicted on the cover of my book, and went into some detail about the creature's inner thoughts. He was still boring the hell out of me.

Then he caught me off-guard. « You ever read the Foundation series? » he asked.

« Yeah, » I mumbled, wondering where this was going.

He proceeded to ramble on, inching closer and closer to me. Perhaps he thought that my name was Harry. It was not. The drunken spray of his saliva became more excited, and then he made his most impressive confession.

« I'm the Mule, » he announced confidently.

While I pondered this fact, he made sexual advances.

Luckily, Arkady Darrell and Bliss and that little hermaphrodite girl swung by and rescued me. Well, no; I only wish it had ended so well.

She bragged, « I speak French, so I could communicate with the Canadians. »

« Canadians don't speak French, » I corrected her.

« Ah, yes, that's true, » she conceded. « They don't speak English either. »

I lost my composure.

Do you remember the time that Kenneth Branagh was supposed to serve me tea and scones? No? Well, I do. What I remember most about that is that he never did. Seeing Roger Moore in a dress made up for having to pay $1 to see Roger Moore in a dress, but did it make up for the lack of scones? I don't know.

Jaldhar, I won't be able to go to Debconf 6 either, because your sombrero just gave me an aneurysm.

Have a nice day. May I please have the aneurysm?

This makes a great metaphor.

Dude, there are fawns.

« Call her an ignorant slut, » she suggested. « That's my new favorite thing to say. »

« Only if it has merit, » he replied.

« Especially if her name is Jane, » she countered.

« So, that was a productive walk, » he said. « I went to Isaac's at 9, bought pot from his mom, got high with them, discussed moving to foreign countries to avoid the draft, was given a cookbook, went grocery shopping, and bought turtle food. »

« Mmm... turtle food, » she said.

La lune,
sourde comme tes reins,
s'est enveloppée dans
son toile nuptial
de suages. 

Réfléchissant la
lumière empruntée de
ma soeur qui brûle,
ceux auquels elle
est l'abeille
t'attendent,
encore l'ouverts.

Récouvre-les,
Albern Ahn,
et par là
commence ta
retraite
de cette
verre tor-
due.

Joey, zsh does the subshell on the left side of the pipe. This is aggravating in far fewer cases than the right-hand way.

In times past, this would lead to confusion when one would try piping the output of the jobs builtin to, well, anything. That's why jobs is now special-cased to magically work in a subshell.

At the door are two pronouns. She runs, fleeing into the sentence. One pronoun kills the grammars who am helpless to prevent their deaths as the other chases her. Guillemets are heard, and he resents as the two resend.

I got my new 85lb. portable configured with a custom hybrid of Gentoo and Sourcerer GNU/Linux, cobbled together by Mark, the mentally-handicapped child who sells pickled vegetables at that stand on the road to the dairy. I can now blog at lightning speed, thanks to Mark's old-school compiler enhancements.

More updates when I learn how to reboot.

Then he turned into a hippo and ate clowns while basking in a jello mold.

If you install zsh-beta 4.3.2-dev-1+20060608-1 or later:

% zmodload -i zsh/system
% print $$/$sysparams[pid] && (print $$/$sysparams[pid])
13764/13764
13764/13765
% print $$/$sysparams[pid] && (print $$/$sysparams[pid])
13764/13764
13764/13766

If you're wondering what the hell Bernie and Vecchio were doing at Lincoln Center with a bunch of teenagers, then this has nothing to do with it.

Wouter, why haven't you ranted about deficiencies in denemo?

« Where's the nearest liquor store? » she asked.

« You're asking a homeless guy where the liquor store is? » he gasped incredulously. « Come on, I'll show you! »

« I think the Sherriff's Department is looking at my myspace page, » he said.

In the Year of the Mezcal, a prophecy was fulfilled. Don Gusano de Azúcar sired a critter the likes of which the world had never seen. This mahdi could not dispense honey, milk, orange juice, or ghee from his fingers. In point of fact, he had no fingers. What he had was the burning desire to liberate his brethren from the iron yoke of the She-Beast.

He set up a vast terrorist network, the likes of which the world had seen many times over, for it was basically just a phone tree, a couple of code phrases, and a bunch of dullards. Then, having forged his legacy, he perished, suffering a series of strokes brought on by being forced to watch an episode of “Full House”.

His minions bided their time until the coming of the Summer Solstice, and though they did not know how to say it in Portuguese, they eagerly sprang into action.

!dialing phone(http://ximg.scru.org/images/althea1.jpg)

With daring and finesse, they commandeered an IP phone.

!talking on phone(http://ximg.scru.org/images/althea2.jpg)

After 45 minutes of trying to add value, they failed to bring it to the table, since one major oversight was that they lacked any capacity to generate speech. « Hélas ! » cried the one that wasn't translucent at all, and he did so silently.

!typing on keyboard(http://ximg.scru.org/images/althea3.jpg)

Cleverly devising a backup strategem, they rushed to a computer to send some emails. Unfortunately, Outlook crashed on them six times, and then they were, like, totally diverted by a fascinating exchange between two guys named BJ and William. By the time they managed. To send their first email. Which they typed like this. Because the little guy on the period key. Had a tick. It was too late.

!STD transmission(http://ximg.scru.org/images/althea4.jpg)

Oh, you poor, foolish things! If only you had used free software, she wouldn't be giving you oral herpes right now.

If you've been experiencing any difficulties with zomg and beta.last.fm, you should upgrade to 0.1.9.

December came by, and the girl proceeded to remind everyone that her birthday was in a week. « My birthday is in a week! » she said. « I like flowers and candy. » « I just love roses and chocolate, » she said, « and my birthday is next Tuesday. »

After making the rounds, the girl went to visit the boy. « My birthday is in a week! » she declared.

« Yes. Next Tuesday, » he replied.

« I like flowers and candy. Do you like my shoes? » she said.

He looked down. « You know I hate high heels, » he sighed.

She pouted and stormed off. He threw away the birthday card he had been making.

« He's so mean to me, » she told everyone. « I hate him! » she announced. « I hate him because he's so mean to me! »

Everyone mumbled supportive nothings, and soon she was pacified by a couple of passing rhinestones and a length of ratty yarn. Before long it was her birthday.

The girl woke up to a plethora of Hallmark cards, flowers, and candies. She brushed her hair and went to see the boy.

« It is my birthday! » she announced.

« I know, » he said.

« I didn't see a present from you, » she stated, puzzled.

« That's because your present is here, » he retorted, grinning. She beamed while he went to fetch her gift.

« What the? » she squeaked, her brow furrowed.

« I got you a new coat, » he explained. « It has reinforced thumb holes so you won't have to cut your own and repair them, and it has extra pockets for your herb bags. »

« Do you like my shoes? »

He looked down. « You know I hate high heels, » he sighed.

« But they're shiny! »

« Well, I like you. »

« Then why didn't you get me flowers and candy‽‽‽ » she shrieked and stormed off.

December came 'round again, and the girl proceeded to remind everyone that her birthday was in a week. « My birthday is in a week! » she said. « I like flowers and candy. » « I just love roses and chocolate, » she said, « and my birthday is next Wednesday. »

After making the rounds, the girl went to visit the boy. « My birthday is in a week! » she declared.

« Is it? »

On Wednesday the boy bought her a box of chocolates and a dozen roses.

« Flowers and chocolate! » she exclaimed, delighted. « How thoughtful! »

False.

As human beings, we operate on stereotypes and snap judgments. Purse is getting kicked in the groin by a girl with pointy shoes. Pointy shoes went out of fashion 600 years ago. Tell her that, Purse.

In the twentieth century, I was at a wrap party for Kondom des Grauens, and I leaned over to my friend and pointed and said, « What do you think her ethnicity is? »

He looked at her, even though I hear that such behavior can get you locked up in this country, and he replied, « Well, I don't think this, but I think you think that she's half-Japanese, half-black. »

I said, « Uh, close, » because he was half-correct, and, though I was somewhat surprised by his response, I made my way across the private room at Life, which exists no longer, steering around the sphere of unpleasantness cast by Joe Fleisha