The live version found on all the best-of albums is far superior to the original studio version.

I know there are people who cannot wrap their heads around allegories, apologues, and abstractions. For them I will just relate an incident I may or may not have just witnessed.

A crowd of people files into an elevator. As the doors are closing, an elderly woman dashes in, and stands in the line of the door sensor, thus holding the elevator hostage. She yells to an elderly man, at this point out of sight, and continues to stand firm. Behind her, the rest of the passengers fume silently and exchange dirty looks. When the man finally arrives, the pair steps inside, allowing the doors to close.

The End

I was going to write an allegory here in the form of five cinquains, but rumor has it that I have been a bit too subtle. Consequently, this is not an allegory at all.

There is a request for audioscrobbler support in vux, and what with audioscrobbler suddenly becoming trendy, I decided to write some preliminary support in Z-Shell, which I have sent to the bug report.

Audioscrobbler 1.1 uses timestamps in the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (which then must be url-encoded). Audioscrobbler 1.2 uses seconds since epoch, so I will refrain from ranting about that further. However, because of the silly timestamp format, I discovered a problem with the strftime built-in.

I am lying; the problem is with the handling of the TZ variable. Luckily, I can mention it here so I can avoid bringing it up in an appropriate forum.

Once upon a time, crystalscomfyland.com provided numerous eCards for impertinent individuals to send, free of charge, across the great and vast Internet.

From time to time I mourn for www.crystalscomfyland.com and the delightful eCards hosted therein. Were it still around, I would not hesitate to send an eCard with the picture containing the phrase « Uncle Larry touched me in the no-no place! » to someone who needs cheering up.

I would send one to Crystal too.

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 gives movie theater employees the power to detain people. Title II protects families by keeping illegal the deletion of commercial advertisements.

It has been suggested that the parable-to-allegory ratio is a bit extreme. Thus, what follows is an apologue of very poor quality.

A shark, a Pomeranian, a squirrel, and a kernel hacker walk into a bar. The shark, who was wearing a fascinating breathing apparatus, exclaimed that the chocolate cake was better than the panacotta. « Yeah, I'd hit that » agreed the kernel hacker. They were not very surprised when the Pomeranian and the squirrel ripped out their throats.

The moral of the story is that chocolate cake is a potentially-dangerous substance.

I first had kiwi in 1983, give or take a year.

A giantess said to a man, « Son of Earth, regard my Blog, and fear it, for it is the Wave of the Future. »

The man replied, « You are indeed enormous. What is a Blog? »

The giantess scoffed. « Puny one, » she said, « how can you live in this land and be so ignorant? Blogs are the New Media. I shall furnish you with the URL. »

The man typed the URL into his Web Browser, and absorbed the information displayed upon his Screen. « This is mildly interesting, but I would much rather read about Ali Davis working as a porn clerk. »

« FOOL! » she fumed with disgust. « My Blog entries are so magnificent that all creatures big and small will Link to them. Then my Blog will be read aloud on cable news, and soon I will be invited to share my Opinions on talk shows. » she proclaimed, and like the ebb of the tide, she returned to her Day Job.

Time passed, and a dwarf approached the man. « Did you see what the Grumpy Old Djinn wrote in his Blog today? » she inquired.

« No, » the man replied nonchalantly. « I don't read Blogs. »

Looking at him levelly, the dwarf said, « You should. Get an RSS Reader. » Then she continued on her way.

« Hey, you're kinda short, » he called after her.

She looked back to yell, « You're fat! » and vanished behind a tree.

The man, weary from all this socializing, decided it was time to go to a party. At this party he ran into his friend the Monkey. « Yo, dude, » said the Monkey, « did you check out my sister's Blog? »

« Uh.. your sister has a Blog? » grunted the man, for he was as uninterested as he was irritated by the neighboring conversation about the critical importance of having an advanced degree in oncology from a reputable university.

« Yeah, dude, » said the Monkey, somewhat incredulous that anyone could have missed his Blog entry Linking to the Blog of his sister. « It is really interesting. Just follow the Link from my Blog. »

On his way home, the man thought carefully. If he openly refused to read the Blogs of the Monkeys, they would hurl feces at him. That is why, when he reached his abode, he procured for himself an RSS Reader. He subscribed to a variety of Blogs and proceeded to wade through them. There were fascinating observations about how people had put on their shoes in the morning, and recommendations about what blogs to read, and speculation about which soap opera characters would marry one another this week, and very personal thoughts about which the writers sincerely hoped that their close friends would never read. So the man sent the RSS Reader to the Bitbucket In The Sky.

The giantess stopped by the next day, and when the man inquired as to whether or not she had gotten invited to any talk shows, she shouted in anguish, « Worm, you really don't read my Blog, do you? »

« No, I do not, » he admitted as she flayed him with a cat o' nine tails.

When she had gone away, the man procured another RSS Reader and subscribed to the Blog of the giantess, which happened to use Movable Type. « What the hell is this shit? » he mused poetically, for only a very small portion of each entry was readable. So he subscribed to another Blog using Movable Type, and found the same problem. He subscribed to another, and yet another. Finally he discovered one that included the entire entry and did not force him to follow a Link to get to the real content. It was a good Blog, and it gave him Hope, but every MT Blog he found after that had the same problem as that of the Blog of the giantess.

They found him six days later. He had clawed his eyes out before realizing he could have unsubscribed from the problem Blogs.

Recently I had the pleasure of sitting next to a conversation entitled “Foucault vs. Sartre”, and despite my efforts, I was not able to block out the discussion entirely.

A few days later, I was tricked into talking about Philosophy. While I was stunned and stewing about this, I was tricked into talking about philosophy, which is not as reprehensible, but can still be irritating.

Every now and again someone explains to me that a failure to believe in a supreme being results in a meaningless void in one's life, or a dearth of moral fortitude, or a funny accent.

I wonder if they'll stop.

Ian Murdock: Wil Wheaton: "Why do you think so many Americans are turning to the BBC or Guardian UK for news about our country? It's not because we hope to catch the latest cricket scores between stories; it's because the Mainstream Corporate Media in America is a miserable failure."

Complaints that http://example.com/ goes somewhere different than http://www.example.com/ (for domains which are not literally example.com) annoy the hell out of me.

If you want to improve this situation, implement SRV record support in web browsers.

[09:05:23]       Welcome to WeeChat, the geekest IRC client!

Minnesota is..

I think I need a better picture of this.

I am half-tempted to buy this book for some reason.

Occasionally I have recommended Ubuntu to people because I had been under the mistaken impression that great strides had been made in terms of usability for the Windows crowd. I am probably responsible for much of this misunderstanding because I still cannot fathom that anyone with half a clue would use GNOME, even though there is evidence to the contrary.

Whatever the reason, I have lost some credibility, because neither Ubuntu 4.10 (warty) nor 5.04 (hoary) are as usable for some people as Windows XP.

In one case, a poor computer was unable to get onto the network (its only NIC is an Atheros 802.11g card). On the plus side, the non-free madwifi driver was installed without issue. However, this did little good because of Ubuntu bug #6882 which causes the WEP key entered in the happy little GUI to be written to /etc/network/interfaces in the wrong format. Consequently, the computer is unable to associate with the access point unless the admin happens to prepend « s: » in the WEP field in the GUI, edit /etc/network/interfaces directly, or set the key with iwconfig.

When the admin has no idea what « s: » means; or that /etc/network/interfaces exists, or what it does; or what iwconfig does; then this problem is impossible to diagnose, much less to work around.

While I was able to point out that this was a known issue, and to provide a workaround, I was unable to explain why this was not treated as release-critical, why it had not been fixed, or why the file browser was unable to mount a vfat-formatted floppy.

So now I have nothing to recommend to those for whom Debian is too difficult.

I wonder how many people will be able to spot the amusing things about this link.

Erinn Clark implies that a cell phone habit is more expensive than a cigarette habit. The numbers are a bit different here:

New cell phone: free with annual contract
Nationwide coverage (600 minutes/month): $40/mo - $480/yr
Total: $480/yr - $40/mo

Pack of cigarettes: $7.50
3 packs/week: $22.50
Total: $1170/yr - $97.50/mo

They say that drawing a disco-dancing robot on a polystyrene cup by means of an X-ACTO® knife is the mark of brilliance. I have never attempted this myself.

I share John Goerzen's distaste for incorrect use of the term « newsreader », and I am intrigued by the idea of using NNTP for such things.

Mark Liberman, who ignores my plea to fix the RSS feed on Language Log, calls « SarbOx » a « constraining structure ». Really, he should have identified it as the instrument for a bad pun.

Kenshi Muto discusses potential costs for having a DebConf in Japan, as do other people on a mailing list where it isn't on-topic. I am under the impression that I can get a plane ticket to NRT more cheaply by an order of magnitude than a flight to Helsinki. This is probably because I know tons of people who want to go to Japan and none who want to go to Finland.

sixdegrees had a better name and a better service than either Friendster or orkut. I suppose it's a good thing that things like Frumster and Shagster seem to be paying tribute to something lesser instead.

I have discovered that there are zsh users who torture themselves with unnecessary commands like find and xargs. While I do not think this is something of which to be ashamed, other solutions exist.

zsh has powerful globbing, which makes find irrelevant. For example, if one wanted to get a list of all files under /home that start with the character « q », one could do

find /home -name "q\*" -print

With zsh, one could type

print -l /home/\*\*/q\*

Another trivial example is that

find /home -name "q\*" -exec rm {} \\;

could become

for i (/home/\*\*/q\*) rm $i

I imagine that there are a number of cynics out there saying, « Oh, no, asterisks confuse me, and so it is not worth it for me to change my silly ways, and furthermore, find can do lots of things. » Yes, find can do many things beyond filename comparisons, but zsh is actually more powerful. Want to glob based on file ownership? This find command

find /home -name "q\*" \\! -user clint -print

is so much more pleasant as

print -l /home/\*\*/q\*(\^u:clint:)

The reader is invited to figure out how to accomplish the task of identifying all files owned by the process's effective user ID with zsh, and compare it to the same task with an inferior shell.

Now, to introduce zargs, try a silly xargs example

echo this is a test of the emergency broadcast system | xargs -n2

The Z-Shell version is not much of an improvement

zargs -n2 this is a test of the emergency broadcast system

One may run into length issues when not using shell builtins. For example, this command would work regardless of how many files the glob matches, and regardless of what characters those filenames contain (whitespace will be handled fine, and the command will print one file per line, unless there are newlines within the filenames):

print -l /\*\*/j\*

This command will not work with a very long list of files, unless one is explicitly using zsh's builtin rm command, which is not loaded by default.

rm /\*\*/j\*

To successfully delete all those files beginning with « j » and owned by “mrwiggles”, one can do

for i in /\*\*/j\*(u:mrwiggles:); do rm $i ; done

which will handle any number of arguments, but will fork rm for each file, or one can use

find / -name j\* -user mrwiggles -print0 | xargs -0 rm

(where it is necessary to delimit with NULs to avoid word-splitting problems introduced by whitespace) or, better yet,

zargs -- /\*\*/j\*(u:mrwiggles:) -- rm

Note that for each shell instance, you need to either load the zargs function explicitly, or autoload the zargs function explicitly, as in autoload -U zargs

These examples are fairly simplistic, but with more complex tasks, doing things the zsh way can pay off considerably.

I know some people who love Williamsburg, and some people who despise it. Some people are intimately acquainted with its characteristics (despite never having been there), and others think that it is a theme park in Virginia. I am referring to the home of Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, Peter Luger Steakhouse, and a variety of peoples highly suited for mockery.

It seems like it was only just this Saturday that I was discussing with Mako the Dogfish Head on tap at Barcade. Just today, someone referred me to an article about a video game tournament. This article should lay to rest any misconceptions that Williamsburg is populated only by Hasidic Jews.

Jacobo Tarrío Barreiro appears to be under the mistaken impression that “Could not grok results of statting file %s” is a useful and appropriate employment of the word « grok ». In fact, it is neither.

Some people think that having multi-committer Arch repositories is evil. Others attempt to deal with the failings of SFTP by installing a wrapper to set the umask. This is would be an insane workaround for arch.debian.org, so what I and others like to do is make use of ACLs to avoid the headaches which one might otherwise face.

For example, if one had a repository in /arch/dbnpolicy/hamm , one could run

setfacl -R -m 'g:dbnpolicy:rwX' /arch/dbnpolicy/hamm

setfacl -R -d -m 'g:dbnpolicy:rwX' /arch/dbnpolicy/hamm

The -d is the magic here; it ensures that all new patches will be writable by the dbnpolicy group. This is important because each member of that group needs to be able to manipulate Arch lockfiles.

Have fun.

UPDATE: Daniel Stone correctly points out that the « rwX »'s above, which were « rwx »'s, should be « rwX », as they are now.

This is a game. The objective is to guess which authors of fantasy literature are being lampooned in the following passages. Do not make the mistake of assuming that I am interested in your guesses.

Number one

Brando al'Piprin sat quietly in the tower, communing psychically with wolves, while Matth Broondybook stood in the courtyard, quizzically eying the Mountains of Dhestiny. Elminaynendha burst in on Brando, exclaimed, “I love you,” kissed him, screamed, “I hate you,” slapped him, and ran out.

Brando sighed. “Women are so confusing!” he muttered loudly. “Maybe Matth can give me some pointers on how to deal with them. Matth really understands women.”

Elminaynendha bumped into Matth in the courtyard, and gave him a brazen glare. “Women are so strange”, Matth thought to himself. “How does Brando juggle eight of them? He really understands women.”

Number two

Brando al'Piprin sat quietly in the tower, communing psychically with wolves, while Matth Broondybook stood in the courtyard, quizzically eying the Mountains of Dhestiny. Laestaer al'Piprin burst in on Brando, exclaimed, “I am King this week, brother,” and raped him.

Meanwhile, Arwyn al'Piprin dressed as a boy and went to the stables with her father's sword. Some guards apprehended and raped her. “Did you hear,” one gossiped, “that the Cannister boy is the product of incestuous union?” The other guards responded by raping him.

Number three

Raaiserfore awoke, rubbed some pine-scented oil on his torso, donned a red tunic, rusty hauberk, and a blood-stained chapeau bras. From the innkeeper he ordered a breakfast of lentils, local ferns, lentils, squab pigeon, lentils, lentils, and lentils.

“Would anyone care for a game of dice?” he inquired.

“Sure,” replied a man with one eye, no teeth, and an enormous dagger, “but let's use my dice. Yours look a bit strange.”

Raiiserfore eyed the man's dice briefly, and exclaimed, “I have just now remembered a previous engagement!” He quickly made his exit, stabbed three bandits to death, hijacked a boat, and sailed it 1200 miles to the city of Maandaak.

He checked into an inn, and ordered a meal of lentils, lentils, turnips, lentils, bread, and lentils. Looking around, he asked, “Would anyone care for a game of dice?”

Bennjamen Marko Hell has neglected to mention that he is giving haven to one of my very valuable AC cords.

It figures that the Boston sarge release party would be on the same day as the Mermaid Parade. Fuckers.

I am rarely blown away by bands of which I have never heard, but a Canadian band has joined the ranks.

Lars Wirzenius wrote a mini-fortune in Python.

Here is a Z-Shell version.

#!/bin/zsh
zmodload zsh/mapfile
y=(${(ps:%%\n:)"${mapfile[$1]}"})
integer z=$#y
print -n $y[RANDOM%z+1]

Obviously you could make it shorter with a bit of effort.

This is like some mutated morir soñando.

These people appear to be eating watermelon.

I wonder if anyone else had the same initial reaction to this advice from Alfie.

Over a decade ago, I heard a busker with a pompadour sing a song in the Paris Métro. All I remember is that the chorus started with something like « mes cigarettes » and ending with « quatorze juillet ».

If anyone knows which song I am describing, please let me know.

Foreigners occasionally experience confusion when attempting to dine at American restaurants. Here are some terms and their meanings.

• entree: the main course

• a la mode: with ice cream

• half-and-half: a mixture, equal parts milk and cream

• Philly cheesesteak: a sandwich which is far inferior to and barely resembles a genuine cheesesteak from Philadelphia.

It is rumored that this is Jeroen van Wolffelaar.

Suddenly I feel tempted to shop at AF Supply.

Chicken Run, Lola, Run

The first time I visited Queens, I vomited, but not until I had been there for several hours.

To every horse
There is a stumble
And a date palm
For every rock thrown
Under heaven

I was educated recently about the irony mark (؟), and while trying to explain this to someone else, I came across this gem.

Three weevils lived in a jar of flour: Jasper, the father; Marcy, the mother; and Darya, their devoted daughter.

Whenever the weevils needed anything from outside the jar, Darya would risk her life to procure it for them. On one occasion, Marcy, who had a penchant for the sap of a plant that grew at the far end of the humans' farm, was sobbing maniacally about her lack of sap, and generally behaving in a very passive-aggressive manner. Consequently, Darya found herself making the long journey to the plant.

On past procurement excursions, Darya had sometimes encountered boy weevils. Most of these were mentally ill, and had myriad other faults, but Darya had very low self-esteem, and agreed to all manner of trysts with remarkable facility.

On this day, she found herself being followed by two weevils, and she cherished the attention which they lavished upon her. They accompanied her all the way to the edge of the farm, where she tore a chunk of leaf to take back for her mother.

The return was slow, for now there was a physical burden, but Darya did not complain; she was happy to be able to serve her mother. She was also flattered that the two boy weevils appeared to be fighting over her, in a very passive-aggressive manner.

Then she saw him: a boy weevil, breathtaking in his magnificence. He was looking at her. He was walking toward her! She nearly swooned, and not in a very passive-aggressive manner.

« Do you need help with that? » he asked, eyeing the leaf chunk.

“Uh-huh,” she nodded vigorously. The other two weevils glanced at each other.

« Where are we going? » he inquired as he lifted part of the chunk.

“To the farmhouse there,” she replied, grinning like an idiot.

So they went on. Darya paid attention only to the new weevil, whose name was Guillermo, and ignored the other two, who fidgeted in a very passive-aggressive manner.

By the time they arrived at the farmhouse, one of the grumbling weevils had stalked off in disgust. The remaining three climbed into the flour jar, and Darya presented her mother with the leaf chunk.

Marcy proceeded to consume the entire chunk, all by herself, in a most nauseating fashion. Guillermo grimaced, and suddenly Marcy noticed him.

“Who is this?” she gasped?

« I'm Guillermo, » the poor boy responded, not able to predict the coming onslaught.

Marcy lumbered toward Guillermo and began to kiss and slobber all over him, in a most nauseating fashion.

« Uh, yes, nice to meet you too, » he whimpered, all the while dying inside.

“That's my dad,” Darya informed Guillermo. Jasper stood motionless to the side.

“Dad!” she yelled. Jasper started, and looked around as if he had just woken up. The other boy weevil skulked in the corner.

Marcy began to cry. Darya rushed to her side, shrieking, “Mom, what's wrong? What's wrong?” in a very sincere manner.

“Oh, nothing,” Marcy wailed. “I just wish I had some more sap.”

“I'll get you some more sap, mom,” Darya exclaimed earnestly.

“No, no,” Marcy sniffed. “You're tired and you should spend time with your new friend. I would go myself, if only I could. I don't need to be happy all the time.” She gazed into nothingness, vorlornly.

“Will you help me get another chunk?” Darya asked Guillermo.

« Um, okay, » he said slowly, and followed her out.

Marcy abruptly stopped crying. “Who are you?” she inquired of the remaining boy weevil.

When they were a safe distance from the flour jar, Guillermo said, « So why can't your mother go herself? »

“Oh,” replied Darya, “my parents have CFS.”

« What? »

“You know. CFS. CFIDS? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?”

« Oh. That's a real disease? » he asked, incredulously.

“Oh, definitely. We get fen-phen from the human's medicine cabinet.”

« What? »

“You don't know fen-phen? Have you been living in a cave? It's fenfluramine and phentermine, and you take them for CFS. Everybody knows that.”

« Oh. »

“I hope I don't get CFS,” she announced.

« Uh, yeah, me too. »

So they trekked to the plant, and they trekked back. Marcy shoved the leaf into her gaping maw, and subjected Guillermo to more slobbering.

Darya took Guillermo to a slightly private place, and showed him some much more pleasant kissing than her mother was offering.

Time passed, and in between bouts of taggin' dat ass, Guillermo attempted to repair Darya's dysfunctional family. When that seemed fruitless, he tried to save her by taking her far away from them. That failed as well, for her sense of filial duty was insurmountable, and she did not believe that they should be forced to behave like real people or take responsibility for their lots in life.

One day, a frustrated Guillermo said, « I have an idea. I'll be right back. » He raced down to the floor of the kitchen, and was crushed by the farmer's boot. Soon everything was back to normal.

Every so often, I describe spätzle using the word « dumpling ». There is no obvious reason why I would have picked this idea up. The thing about spätzle is that they involve boiling dough, whereas a dumpling can be made without dough, and does not need to be boiled.

At least twice now, I have been corrected by German-speakers, such as ½€, who explain that spätzle are not dumplings.

The moral of the next allegory will be, „Do not mention dumplings around Germanic people”. It will be published across several spätzle, boiled, eaten, and lost to the mists of time.

Who wants some 點心?

One frequently asked question is « omlgol y iz utf-8 b0rken in zsh lol ».

Thanks to the efforts of Clint Adams, Andrey Borzenkov, Erinn Clark, Wayne Davison, Oliver Kiddle, Bart Schaefer, and, most of all, Peter Stephenson, zsh-beta 4.3.0-dev-1+20050815-1, due to hit mirrors in the next few hours, is compiled with multi-byte character support enabled.

So, if you want to stem the tide of whining about this issue, rush out to sid and beat on the zsh-beta package until the bugs are found and obliterated.

Make sure you

setopt printeightbit

For people like Pierre Habouzit, who dislike the NO_PROMPT_CR option of zsh, but also dislike having incomplete lines eaten by their prompts, a new option, NO_PROMPT_SP, is on by default in the zsh-beta package in sid. It may be more or less pleasing than the solution that Pierre has adopted.

Martin Krafft wants to know how to avoid completing LaTeX-generated files after vi or vim.

zstyle ':completion:*:*:vim#:*:*files' ignored-patterns '*?.(aux|dvi|log|ps|pdf|bbl|toc|lot|lof)'

or zstyle ':completion:::vi(m|)::files' ignored-patterns '*?.(aux|dvi|log|ps|pdf|bbl|toc|lot|lof)'

In the days before intellectual property, when musicians were rendered penniless by the common folk sharing songs without paying for them (this completely killed off music by the Middle Ages, by the way, and it was not until the Berne convention that anyone started writing songs again), it was not uncommon to take someone's song, play, or rain dance, and perform it, modified or unmodified.

Because this was before proper revision control systems existed, it is impossible to determine the history of a traditional folk song. For example, Paper and Pins can express cynical views about love and commerce (thanks, Jordi) such as in this version or in this version, or something more sentimental, such as in this version or this version.

So, was the original author happy or bitter?

Sitting on a rooftop
Waiting for the sun to go down on me
The sky is beautiful tonight
And there's no place I'd rather be

Long ago, I had a dream
Of a moonlight lagoon
There I stood at the water's edge
Reading the waves as runes
There's a girl with dark brown hair
Standing right in back of me
And I can feel her presence there
Though I still can't see

The sun sets behind the mountain
And finds its inner peace
We watch the silver stars
A purple haze surrounds the moon
And we sit and talk for hours

Long ago, I had a dream
Of a moonlight lagoon
There I stood at the water's edge
Reading the waves as runes
There's a girl with dark brown hair
Standing right in back of me
And I can feel her presence there
Though I still can't see

I wonder where you are
It's been so many years
Since we dreamed so many dreams
And cried so many tears
Now it seems so far away
And it'll never be the same

But long ago, I had a dream
Of a moonlight lagoon
There I stood at the water's edge
Reading the waves as runes
There's a girl with dark brown hair
Standing right in back of me
And I can feel her presence there
Though I still can't see

♥

It's like broccoli.

命 短シ
恋セヨ 少女
赤 唇
褪セヌ間ニ
熱キ 血潮ノ
冷エヌ間ニ
明日ノ月日ハ
無イ者ハ

It appears that some people fail to realize that they are not obligated to eat the entire cheese content of the hotel room in one sitting. One needs to break these things up into manageable chunks.

æc♥ describes how one can use Google Alerts to stalk people. This should be of particular interest to people in Sweden.

Some people have strange ideas about non-free software.

Of course non-free software is evil.

I love Dana.

Many years ago, Nattie asked me, “Why are you traipsing around Baden-Württemberg with a large metal bowl full of Maultaschen?”

« I'm not traipsing », I replied.

I was lying.

We couldn't get on the midnight train going an-y-where, so the seven of us made our way to Paris. Jeremy managed to get us thrown out of the FNAC in Montparnasse, but we bought tickets to a Henry Rollins concert over at Châtelet-Les Halles. That's where we bought the tickets—not where the concert was. I don't even know why we rode the RER that day.

Ed (the store, not the guy) provided us with some food. We bought some reasonably good coulommier and wine, and a ton of bottled water. Some of the others bought sweets, and I bought some syrup and limonade for mixing diabolos. We snagged some fresh baguettes from a nearby bakery, and carried our comestibles to the Parc de Saint Cloud and commenced our repast.

When we were good and full, Ed (the guy, not the store) suggested that we go to a choral concert at the Cathédrale-Basilique de St. Denis. Nila wanted to go to some museum instead. We fought about it for quite some time.

I wanted to go eat at Le chat grippé, but we ended up at a restaurant in the 5ème where they shunted us to the basement with the Germans. Can you believe it? I was mortified. The meal was passable, but the conversation kept turning to boring stuff like art. I watched the Germans try to order dinner without using any French words. You'd think someone would have helped them. No one did. It took about 15 minutes of gesturing between the waiter and patrons before the concept of „chicken” was agreed upon. Fascinating stuff.

Dessert was pretty good, actually. I might go back just for that, if I were in the neighborhood.

“What now?” Nattie inquired.

« I dunno », I replied.

I was lying.

I disagree utterly with the opinion of Philipp Kern.

If you can figure out what this list is, maybe you will figure out why it is amusing.

1. A Life Apart: Hasidism in America
2. New York
3. Downtown 81
4. Strapped
5. Ghostbusters 2
6. Contempt
7. Grey Gardens
8. Wild Style
9. The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
10. L'Avventura
11. Gerry
12. Good Times: Season 5
13. T-Rex: Born to Boogie: Special Edition
14. Michael Moore's The Awful Truth: Season 2
15. Hiroshima Mon Amour
16. Night Porter
17. Hell House
18. Blow Up
19. Cleo from 5 to 7
20. Jay-Z: Fade to Black
21. Alphaville
22. Breathless
23. Underground
24. Dancer in the Dark
25. Band of Outsiders

"I say, Lu! I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I see now you were right all along. Do come out. Make it Pax."

As much as I'd like to comment on Andres's description of Rob Levin's douchebaggery, I am much too busy admiring the GNU paxutils roadmap.

They say that teamwork is about sacrificing one's individuality. What team is responsible for the verbatim republishing of this poem?

THESE LACUSTRINE CITIES

These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing
Into something forgetful, although angry with history.
They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance,
Though this is only one example.

They emerged until a tower
Controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back
Into the past for swans and tapering branches,
Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless love.

Then you are left with an idea of yourself
And the feeling of ascending emptiness of the afternoon
Which must be charged to the embarrassment of others
Who fly by you like beacons.

The night is a sentinel.
Much of your time has been occupied by creative game
Until now, but we have all-inclusive plans for you.
We had thought, for instance, of sending you to the middle of the desert,

To a violent sea, or of having the closeness of the others be air
To you, pressing you back into a startled dream
As sea-breezes greet a child's face.
But the past is already here, and you are nursing some private project.

The worst is not over, yet I know
You will be happy here. Because of the logic
Of your situation, which is something no climate can outsmart.
Tender and insouciant by turns, you see

You have built a mountain of something,
Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument,
Whose wind is desire starching a petal,
Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears.

… imitating languagehat imitating wood s lot, which possibly copied from the New York Times.

Blog this poem yourself today. It won't be annoying at all.

Philipp Kern asks if POSIX says anything about rm(1) and symlinks.

The answer is here. Note that the blog comments are incorrect.

Adam, why would a slash mean “dereference a symlink”?

From ifcwtc.org:

Visitors from every nation on earth will come to the Center to understand and appreciate the story of freedom as an ongoing world movement, and to learn how the lives of the victims of September 11th were deeply connected to freedom's evolution. In this way, the heroes of September 11 will be seen alongside the freedom heroes of history, and the poignant tragedy of the day will be portrayed in the light of other great sacrifices that have been made on behalf of free and open societies.

Can I be a freedom hero when I grow up?

Stalking used to be a respectable occupation. As with Tor, selfish and abusive people have to mess the whole thing up for everyone.

don't know what to say... i called 11 times... you never picked up.

This stalker neglects to mention that these 11 calls took place in the span of 9pm to 2:23am, and that 6 calls were within 12 minutes of each other.

A stalker with good manners would remember that it is impolite to make normal phone calls after 10pm, and stalker phone calls after midnight.

This erosion of stalker values is just another indication of the impending collapse of society.

Someone should name a band “Infringing README”.

www.dccalliance.org goes here, www.dccalliance.com and www.dccalliance.net go to linspire.com, and www.dccalliance.biz goes to a third location.

Craziness.

To the New-Hampshire-bound girl who first read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in the third grade: what is your name?

To the guy who had not “tooken the train” since he was a kid: you look slightly like Alan Alda.

To the woman who speaks eerily like Julia Child: get a new fashion consultant, or at least some inoffensive shorts. Or stop wearing shorts.

To the gaggle of fuckchimps wearing BLUE MAN GROUP stickers on their all-black clothing from the GAP: NO.

To the people exhaling marijuana smoke: get better weed.

To Citizens Bank: I hate you.

To Ari: I do not look less creepy.

She furrowed her brow as she tightened the noose
and cleverness flowed from her fingers like juice
Said she as a scowl her anger did induce,
« The minstrel boy must die »

Paco and Regis had just been forced to leave the courthouse steps by some uninformed individuals bent on protecting Freedom in the most delightful way.

« How do you think the Joe Kay case will turn out? » asked Paco, when they had found a new place to loiter.

« Napoleon says it will turn out well, » Regis replied.

« He's been saying that for sixteen years, ever since Snowball accidentally slipped on that banana peel and died, » Paco observed. « What if Joe Kay is dead? »

« Dead‽ Why would the courts proceed if he were dead? » Regis shrieked incredulously.

« I dunno. I just heard a rumor, » mumbled Paco.

Regis sputtered, « Look, it's simple. The proceedings are closed to the public. Therefore we have to trust the court system. You do trust the courts, don't you? I mean, it would be tantamount to treason if you didn't. »

« Uhh.. »

« And if Napoleon tells us that things will turn out well soon, then he must know something, mustn't he? »

« But he's been saying “soon” for sixteen years! »

« Maybe things got complicated. You don't know what's going on in there. »

« Yeah, why don't we know what's going on in there? »

« Because if the public knew anything and decided to act, it could jeopardize the case. »

« What if not acting could jeopardize the case? »

« Just be patient, all right? »

« Hey! I can't believe you guys listen to a talking pig! » shouted an obnoxious little girl.

Three days later they heard that she had tragically died from a bizarre banana peel accident. All preened their moustaches in silence.

I find it curious the way people keep going on about how Ubuntu's focus is the users, given the way I've seen several bugs handled in Ubuntu's bugzilla.

You want it all
But you can't have it

There once was a boring old bore
Whose writings induced us to snore
« Killfile 'im? » we mused
But our clients refused
For the boredom caused them to dump core

You want it all
But you can't have it

Andrew said to Alice, « They've put me on Ritalin now. Everything seems so clear. »

Alice said, « Good for you, » and went to tell Barry, for it seemed like the type of news that should be shared. Barry didn't care about that.

Alice told Barry about her problems with Christopher. Barry didn't care much about that, but he knew that Darlene would, so he pretended to be interested and sympathetic, and then rushed off to tell Darlene.

Darlene was happy to hear the gossip, but since Barry wasn't very good at being catty, she tracked down Evan so that they could make fun of Alice and Christopher.

Evan was good at being catty, and after he and Darlene finished their artful derision, Evan went to find Felix in order to make fun of Darlene.

Felix did better than that, and they mocked the pathetic lives of Andrew, Alice, Barry, Christopher, and Darlene for awhile. Then Felix went to tell Andrew all the awful things that Evan said about him.

Andrew was horribly offended that Alice had betrayed him. He raged for two minutes, then turned his anger inward, got terribly depressed for eight minutes, and then killed himself.

Felix was disturbed, and went to tell Evan. Evan found this to be greatly entertaining, and proceeded to spread the gossip.

Nevertheless, the miasma was displaced.

Oliver wrote an article about file metadata, including some tips about zsh glob qualifiers. Registration required.

This tirade against French is amusing.

« Get off the MUSH! » Tom pleaded.

« Just a minute! » Corinne replied. « I'm marrying the Bajoran ambassador. »

« We're going to be late! » he whimpered.

« Yes, dear, » she murmured, not looking away from the monitor.

Tom sat down, logged into the MUSH, and typed p Tara=heyas

Seconds later, a line appeared on his screen.

Tara pages: LOL

He logged out of the MUSH and tapped his forehead against the desk.

A minute later, Corinne said, « Okay, let's go. » They donned their cloaks and stepped outside. Tom commented that it was getting dark, and they hurried along the path all the way to the forest primeval.

« You guys are just in time! » shouted Amber-Lynn, beckoning for them to join the circle.

« Hey, Amber-Lynn! » Corinne squealed.

« Hey, Greta!  Hey, Andy! » she added, and continued greeting everyone in the circle.

« Hey! »

« Hey! »

« Hey! »

« Hey! »

« Hiya! »

« Hey! »

« Hey! »

Tom smiled and waved at everybody. « What's up with him? » he asked, gesturing to the boy who was pretending very intently to tend a herd of goats.

Greta snorted. « She broke him, that's what. »

« That bitch! » Corinne muttered. « All she cares about is getting her cunt filled. »

« Language! » Tom exclaimed. « Don't be so crude! »

« Well, it's true! » she grumped.

« Okay, people! The Equinox is approaching! » Amber-Lynn announced. She withdrew from her cloak a ceremonial dagger, and held it up for all to see.

One by one, they cut their palms and bled into a chalice. When the knife had returned to Amber-Lynn, she cleaned it off and sheathed it. Then she held the chalice up to the sky and intoned, « We offer this, our life's blood, to the Sacred Mother. » They completed the ceremony without error, and proceeded to snuggle in small groups.

Some time later, Tom's bladder hinted that it had an urgent matter for his attention. He extricated himself from a pile of humans, and wandered off to relieve himself. On the way back, he veered to confront the boy sitting sadly on a rock next to the goats.

« Why so glum, Geoff? » Tom inquired.

« I hate her! » Geoff shrieked, his voice cracking. « She said that she cared about me, but she didn't! She doesn't care about anybody but herself! »

Tom feared that he was in over his head, yet said, « Maybe she does care about you. »

« What? Did she say something to you? »

« Er, no. » Tom began to feel pangs of regret as Geoff appeared more and more crestfallen. « I've never spoken to her. »

Geoff buried his head between his knees and rocked back and forth, and Tom walked sheepishly back to where Corinne was dozing.

« Follow me, » he said, after he gently shook her awake. He led her by the hand to a grassy, open spot. She stood, teetering groggily, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

« Dance with me, » he said.

She smiled sleepily. They swayed together, with their eyes closed, not watching the moonlight glisten on their skin, not paying attention to the noises of the nocturnal creatures. They both swayed to music playing only in their heads. For some, it's hard to dance that way. For Corinne and Tom on this night, it seemed to come naturally: their two souls acting in concert, exchanging feelings, not words. They breathed in the scents of each other's hair, and basked in the warmth of their terpsichorean embrace.

When the sun rose, they walked, hand in hand, back toward the place where they had left the others.

« I love you, » Tom said.

« Promise you'll never leave me, » Corinne demanded.

« I promise, » he replied.

« I'll love you forever, » she said, almost as if in exchange.

They woke the others, said their farewells, and trudged home.

[...]

People around here do not consider things like this or this to be animal cruelty.

And what the hell is this?

When I linked to an amusing rant about expression in French, I was contradicted by the peanut gallery. Unfortunately, no one was considerate enough to blog an explanation of why the piece was not, in fact, amusing; therefore, I cannot link to such.

However, Jean-Michel Kelbert was kind enough to blog in French about a completely unrelated topic. He does not use the words garçon, fille; tiède; chaud; any forms of the words aimer, baiser, embrasser; or even le weekend. He does use the word digital-shopping, but since it's the name of the website, there's nothing funny about that.

Now, for those playing at home, here is the challenge. Write a paragraph or two (in French), using all the French words above, and make sure it is not amusing in any way. You may use baiser as a noun if you wish to avoid vulgarity.

Do not, under any circumstances, email me your answers.

Char, you neglected to mention just how campy your favorite movie is.

At least they don't make the dolphins wear Halloween costumes.

[...]

Four or five days later, Tom and Corinne lay in bed, quietly seeking Morpheus, but they did not find him. Instead, an unfamiliar figure appeared to them from the world of dreams. She was wearing a white satin dress, and her raven hair was pulled back a bit too tightly. From above her prominent nose, blazing eyes looked downward, staring intently at the candle she held at waist-height. As its flame cast light which danced across her face, she beckoned. A haunting melody began to play from somewhere far behind her. She looked up. Everything faded to white.

Tom and Corinne sat up in bed, both sweating profusely. Their hearts were palpitating like crazy, and they twitched a bit before looking at one another.

« Bad dream? »

« Bad dream. »

They calmed down, fixed the twisted bed covers, snuggled together, and went back to sleep.

They did not reach down to get their laptops. They did not record their dreams in their dream journals. They did not present their dreams to one another. Corinne did not get to point out that Tom had misspelled “astronaut”. By dawn, all was forgotten.

[...]

AutoSIG, TapCIS, ejryam
Pro-YAM? ZCOMM?
Pro-YAM? ZCOMM?
Recognizing Tom Neff's PPN on sight

CB Simulator, where you might have seen something like

<astronut> Clint: both astronauts look correct?

But you didn't.

[...]

Three or four weeks later, Jared hosted a party. Jared was known for his parties, for being able to play the zither (though he had never played publicly), and for taking a great many photographs of naked people.

Geoff sat alone by himself, looking dejected. A few people were foolish enough to try to talk to him, and they were summarily snapped at.

« Why did he come to a party to be antisocial? » Tom wondered aloud.

« Because that bitch has got him under her spell, » Corinne seethed in reply.

Tom glanced over to where Geoff was pretending not to look. A circle of boys were puffing out their chests. In the middle of the circle sat a girl, garbed in a lacy white gown. She was an elfin creature, and her name was Leigh.

« Some guy from the MUSH is gonna be here tonight, » Corinne mumbled.

« Which one? »

« Victor. He plays a science officer on the Intrepid. »

« What's the science officer's name? »

« Victor. »

« What's his real name? »

« Victor. Pay attention! »

« Oh. »

Greta walked over. « Do you see that? » she asked, tilting her head toward Leigh.

« Yeah, » Corinne sighed.

A tall, thin boy with green eyes approached. « Are you Corinne? » he asked Greta.

« No, I am, » Corinne declared, waving abortively.

« Oh, sorry, » the boy squeaked. « I'm Victor. »

The conversation turned to a particular MUSH subplot in which Tom had little interest. « Excuse me, » he murmured, and wandered over to Geoff.

Geoff was curled up in the fetal position, and was unresponsive to conversation. Tom gave up, and made a beeline for Leigh.

« Angelo, you're so muscular, » Leigh giggled, feeling Angelo's chest.

« Leigh, what did you do to Geoff? » Tom interrupted.

Leigh slipped her hands out from under Angelo's shirt. « It's Tom, right? » she asked, eying him quizzically.

« Yeah. »

« Tom, I didn't do anything to Geoff. »

« Then why is Geoff over there in a coma? »

« Geoff did that to himself. »

« Oh, my mistake. » Tom rolled his eyes and plodded back toward Corinne and Victor. Greta had apparently tired of the MUSH talk as well.

Before he reached his destination, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He whirled around abruptly to find Leigh standing there.

« Wait, » she said. « Why does everyone think I did something to Geoff? »

« Do you really have no idea? »

« Let's go somewhere so you can explain it to me. » She beckoned for him to follow, and moved lithely toward somewhere he presumed must be more private.

He looked to the circle of boys, now falling apart. They craned their heads around, looking for some other group upon which to latch upon.

He looked to Corinne and Victor, still chatting intently.

He looked to himself, and thought that he was about to make a terrible decision.

Then he followed Leigh.

[...]

I saw the phrase “phylum bitches” here, and am disappointed to discover her blog is the first hit on a Google search for those two words.

He was trying to to get into her pants while her boyfriend was away. She was enjoying it.

He was over being inappropriately honest with someone else. She said to me, « I can't believe he's being so honest. I would totally be lying about it. » She was telling the truth.

I asked her if that was generally true about her. « In situations like this, » she said.

He finished his honesty and came over. She shared a theory about another liar. « I have Ethics, » he said, deceptively trying to seduce her.

Later she claimed that subjugating another human being is only unethical if it is done without transparency. I recall that her boyfriend is required to agree with her when she is present. When she is not present, he is free to share his true opinions.

I left the two of them alone to continue their barnyard dance.

She said, « English people don't really pay attention to themselves. »

« Huh? » he said.

« Like, if you ask them how they feel about something, they won't know. »

« All the women in her family are like that, » she said. « They're all attracted to abusive people. They think that if they love someone enough that they'll stop being abusive. »

« Hmm, » he said.

« Yeah, luckily she's starting to get over that. »

This is dedicated to Bruce. No, not that Bruce. I've changed some of the details, not to protect anyone from embarrassment, but to enhance humor value.

I started dating this guy from the Taco Bell. He said he was independently wealthy but he liked to work at Taco Bell for fun.

Six months later, I asked him why he kept borrowing money from me if he was so rich. He explained that all his money was tied up in an investment with his friend.

A year later I found out that he was married and had kids. I asked him why he lied to me, and he said that it was because he didn't want me to get the wrong idea. I said that that was unacceptable. So we transitioned our relationship into a friendship, and I kept having sex with him.

He said that he was thinking about trying to be a good husband and father, but I told him that that wasn't fair to his wife and kids. He called me his sexy girl.

He introduced me to his friend's wife. She said that she wasn't his friend's wife; she was his wife. He denied it. I asked him why he'd lie about his wife. He got mad and stormed off.

I wonder if he still loves me.

« I'm not smart enough for that, » she protested.

« Yes, you are, » he insisted. « You're really, really smart. » He wouldn't have said that to a man of comparable intelligence, but she had a cute little ass.

„Sagt mal, was ist eigentlich der Sinn hinter Clint Adams' blog?!” fragte sie.

„da gibt es keinen sinn”, meinte er.

„das scheint mir auch so”, antwortete sie.

I am impressed by the ability of someone to distinguish on sight a Missouri resident from an Iowan.

Phil,

You've left the apostrophe in; some people say that this is incorrect.

I'd like to thank Phil and everyone else who has contributed relevant information regarding German grammar, to those who have sent fanmail, and to those who have used the word Müll or otherwise indicated their displeasure.

Not too long ago, a strangely amazing person showed me a unique facet of the power of simple expressions of gratitude. Or perhaps I hallucinated that.

Thanks to Christian Perrier, add-shell and remove-shell have moved from passwd to debianutils.

I agree that the Seuss glyphs are awesome, but where can I get a nice free font that contains them?

The person who wrote this has a Master's degree and earns more than US$200,000/year:

This effort will likely be a phased solutions with progressive step wise sophistication.

« My girlfriend is so annoying, » he said. « She keeps asking me if she's a bad person for thinking this or that. » He whined mockingly, « “Does it make me a bad person if I don't care about hurricane victims?” So I just shrug and say I don't know. »

« What you should do, » I said, « is, no matter what she says, to tell her that she is, in fact, a horrible person for thinking whatever it is that she is thinking. »

« No, » she barked, shooting me a disapproving look. « You should always tell her that she's not a bad person. »

I was disappointed. I wonder if she and her husband lie to each other regularly.

[...]

Greta wandered over to where Amber-Lynn was sitting, looking bored. She was amidst a group of girls dressed mostly in black, sporting nose rings, and chain-smoking light cigarettes.

« So I was walking by, and I saw him fondling his girlfriend's best friend! I can't believe he would do that. It was disgusting, » one was saying.

« So was this a long time before he started going out with you? » another asked.

« Hmm, maybe a month? »

« Is he still fooling around with her or his ex-girlfriend? »

« He'd better not be. »

Greta waved to Amber-Lynn and moved on.

A young girl was surrounded by a group of boys. When one would impugn her character, she would giggle and hit him playfully. Greta heard one mumble to another, « So, I finally broke down and bought the new album. »

The other laughed, and the girl whirled around angrily. « What did you say? » she demanded. « What did you say about me? »

« I didn't say anything about you, » he replied. The other snickered.

« Yes, you did, » she insisted. « Tell me what it was! »

« Relax, you crazy whore. »

She hit him playfully. Greta moved on.

Meanwhile, Leigh was explaining to Tom that she never meant to hurt anybody. « I never mean to hurt anybody, » she said. « It just happens. »

Meanwhile, Victor was explaining his theory of why MUSH girls were better in bed. Corinne was giggling.

Meanwhile, Jared was lighting his pants on fire.

« … so I says to him, “Don't be fucking with the Aes Sedai!” And he ignored me! » someone was whining.

Greta quickly moved on.

Geoff was looking around anxiously.

« Looking for someone? » she asked.

« No, » he lied.

« She is so not worth your time. »

« I don't know what you're talking about. »

« Realistically, you can either pull yourself together and ignore her, or you can dedicate your every waking moment to making her life miserable. Much as I'd like to see you do the latter, you should be forewarned that she will manipulate a group of men as stupid and delusional as you into fighting her battles for her. »

« Shut up. What do you know? Fuck you! You're just jealous. » Geoff curled into a ball.

Greta rolled her eyes at him. « You're not going to win her back. She's done toying with you. Later, Eeyore. »

Greta moved on.

[...]

I wonder if demi-racoons use cycle.

We forced them to ally
Then we mocked them for clinging together
Then we mocked them for falling apart
They never had a chance

All the keyboards I use these days suck. Thinking back, I can only recall two keyboards that I actually enjoyed.

The first was the Northgate OmniKey/ULTRA.

I don't remember what the second one was, but it was a “natural” ergonomic shape and had a built-in trackpad.

« I'm gonna be brave, » said the man in the striped Ralph Lauren shirt, as he cut into the bland and non-threatening grana padano.

« Every time you say “Anita”, I'm gonna say “hummer”. » the yuppie hipster chortled. « Anita Hummer! »

His aging female companion shoved him playfully.

« No musical chairs! » shouted the man in the striped Ralph Lauren shirt.

« Howdy, I'm Spike MacLure, » said the man claiming to be Spike MacLure.

« Yes, that's my real name, » said the man claiming to be Spike MacLure.

« It really is, » said the man claiming to be Spike MacLure.

« Let there be blue! » cackled the man in the striped Ralph Lauren shirt.

« I've got a backyard, » said the man claiming to be Spike MacLure.

« This is my house! » lied the man in the striped Ralph Lauren shirt.

If I'm in Times Square, why is there a sign that says „Sex Kino — Ganz in Farbe?” And if I'm wearing a tuxedo, why am I holding a paper Air France bag? And if my hair is curly, why is it red?

And if the Horned King is watching the Telmarines amass an army, why am I going to Belgrade? And if I'm in Belgrade, why am I entertaining 12 people for $170? No, why am I entertaining 17 people for $40? Why am I entertaining anyone if I have the Horned King to worry about?

If that was Bob Arctor, why wasn't he wearing his scramble suit? If I'm flying above the city, carried on the wings of angels, why is some little boy telling me that I'm distasteful?

If I'm in a heated argument about Tim Burton movies, why in the hell is someone claiming that Magnolia is worth watching?

And if I'm blogging, why in God's name am I not talking about keyboards?

I want to see a 5€ cactus.

She was raped a few months before I met her. Her brother noted that she liked to surround herself with puny guys, but the boyfriend she snagged a few months after I met her was a bit older, strong, and violent. Their affair was short-lived. When it ended, she shaved her head and started wearing long underwear and sweatpants and workboots. She made oh-so-clever puns involving variations of my name in the context of rubbing. I couldn't deal.

We talked briefly a few times, years later.

Scat
Ululation
Cavorting with no respect for brevity
Plight of the Native Americans
Plight of the Congolese
The relevance
Jazz spam
Spam jazz
Su-San
Slightly gothy
pseudo-French
cabaret
parody
oom-pah-pah
carnival
revue
Where's the calliope?
Tiny violin with a big sound
Teeth aglow
A tiny boy who had just learned to kiss without affection
To kiss as a form of payment
Magically pissed at loss
Ephemera or pretentious hot air?

A woman thought it would be a good idea to get her four-year-old daughter's ears pierced. Her four-year-old daughter indicated that she did not want her ears to be pierced.

I wondered how Child Protective Services would react if I called them up and told them that some woman was trying to mutilate her daughter against her will.

« The 80's are alive and well over there, » he observed.

« You're not picking up chicks, » I asserted.

« Yeah, » she replied, « They're too old for me. »

And a Game Boy symphony crashes into space
The hipsters hanging upside down
That guy's German accent is utterly base
He's a bit of a clown
Still you refuse to be traced
To me it seems such a waste
And that Halo dance troupe's got a feel that's bittersweet
And it's your face that I'm looking for on every street

Defanged arugula, and a mushroom in 酢
Entertainment with zeal
Motown singing
And a dance retinue
It was pretty surreal
Then it's time for a chug
In an Irish-style snug
And the rain clouds over Williamsburg
Explode without heat
And it's your face that I'm looking for on every street

We didn't expect to be forcibly subjected to Britney Spears. We didn't expect that guy to start stripping. We didn't expect him to create a large, modular, plastic mock phallus. We didn't expect him to employ the mock phallus in such a manner that would lead to what followed, and we didn't expect that products of his mock climax would shoot through the air at us.

Then again, I didn't expect everyone to start dancing to “Hey Ya”.

Joey, in a hilarious exposition about thread patterns, mentions k00ks, which reminds me of movie adaptations.

Every time “good” books get turned into movies or things one seems to call “miniseries” even when they aren't, deep, thoughtful critical analysis sparks discussions that I am somehow forced to endure.

« Oh my god, that was so wrong. The book was very specific about how many steps there were, and Peter Jackson just went and changed it for no reason. »

« There was a book? »

« That was good. It was exactly like the movie. »

« No, it wasn't. The book didn't have Dumbledore crossdressing, Hermione being a dirty little slut, and Harry sodomizing Hagrid and all the animals. »

« Well, it had the same feel. »

« What you have to do is not think of it as having anything to do with the book. Then you might enjoy it. »

« It's a movie. Enjoy the movie. It's a movie. »

« I can't believe they didn't do anything about Sunny's teeth. It's like Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, only botched in the opposite way. »

Then there's the fun game of sitting around and arguing about which adaptation of Dune is the worst: some version of the movie, or the SCI Fi Channel miniseries. Who ever thought that hats would enter into a discussion like that? Not I. I still have some hope for the 18-hour Italian version featuring Salvador Dali, assuming they can resurrect Dali and start making the movie again.

Speaking of the SCI Fi Channel and their high-quality programming, I made the mistake of watching Legend of Earthsea, a “miniseries” with two whole parts.

Don't worry about this movie wrecking the books for you; it bears little resemblance to the Earthsea books by Ursula K. LeGuin. Apparently Ursula noticed this too, because she complained about the adaptation. It looks to me that she's being far too kind. My guess is that they took a a few of the books, ripped out some random pages, shuffled them, and gave them to the people who made the “BeastMaster” TV show, with instructions that didn't make sense in any language.

The best part of this “miniseries” for me was the point at which I was screaming at the guy on the screen (who was obviously a Hampshire student at some point) to go back and get his hackeysack.

Now I read that they're going to take religion out of the His Dark Materials adaptation. As Kaki would say histrionically, « Kill me now. »

1. Whose grave have you always wanted to visit?
2. Why are there so many fat chicks at ren faires?
3. Is it more ethical to shop at WalMart or steal from WalMart?
4. Is there a book you have been trying to finish for years? If so, what is it, why can't you get through it, and why can't you give up on this book?
5. A ten-year-old child reading a comic book should be ________
6. What is your 怪癖?
7. Do you have a favorite country? Why?
8. Typical desert island stranding: what is your ideal rescue scenario?
9. Without googling, do you know for what Rhysling Awards are given?
10. How would you react to the following situation: You are walking down a quiet country road. Up ahead, lying in the dirt, is a little baby bird. Both its wings are broken. You have a hammer.

I'm told that the last question was plagiarized from The Doug Anthony All Stars.

Andres: That is a bad track record. You should move to a safer neighborhood, like Bushwick or Bed-Stuy.

Joey: I don't know what they've done to the Narnia script. My expectations were so low that I was thrilled to find out that they were doing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first instead of following the “new and improved” book ordering.

Last I heard, they were doing terrible, terrible things to Ender's Game.

Steve: I seem to remember that one can write a more functional HTTP server in fewer lines of Z-Shell code.

Benjamin: As I understand it, Orson Scott Card is the problem. I'm sure other people can point to examples in his writing which illustrate poor judgment; I will stick to the topic at hand. Orson Scott Card has reportedly expressed his belief that Jake Lloyd is a fine actor. Orscon Scott Card has expressed his wish that Jake Lloyd play Ender in the movie. In case you are reading this with some program that strips hyperlinks (be sure not to miss the changelog for version 1.5.7), I'll remind you that Jake Lloyd is the kid who played Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

If I recall correctly, Mr. Card was relieved to discover the high quality of child acting, because it meant that he wouldn't have to dumb down the story quite so much. I'm almost certain I heard that Peter and Valentine would be dropped entirely.

I cannot bear to go on.

Finally, the unifying theme between “HTTP Server” and Orson Scott Card is that, some time ago, Mr. Card attempted to co-author a novel with… the Internet.

Does anyone have a link for that?

Nearly a decade ago, ESR subscribed me to the fetchmail-friends mailing list without my permission.

I'm still on the damn list. Can you imagine what unsubscribing from a list that I've never subscribed to would say about me?

толстый кит in Middlesex: you got played. Also, do this.

Today's puzzle: See if you can find the zombie in this picture.

I was cruelly manipulated into reading “Three Ethical Moments in Debian” by Dr. B. I laughed. I cried. I was shocked.

I now regret not having read it while listening to Bit Shifter.

Og Maciel: When your children decide that they don't want to “eat their fibers”, you should beat them with a morningstar. If that doesn't head off the problem right there, you could try subjecting them to Bergen County's blue laws.

If you really want to be cruel, tell them that the word “snowclone” from this article is translated to French ici.

I've heard it said that listening to Leonard Cohen can turn one suicidal. I wouldn't know about that. What I do know is that I once listened to Benjy Eisen tell a story about encountering Cohen before a concert. The story ended with the words “all the time in the world”.

I note now that some people are comforted by having all the time in the world, and some people are burdened by the same. For someone who seeks out pain and suffering to distract one's self from one's deeper problems, eternity can be a curse. Luckily, I don't know anyone like that.

So I'm walking along, singing “He Wants You” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and some crackho drives by shrieking “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers and some schmuck in an ape mask grunts at me fiercely and I pass at least six unhappy little girls in similar little princess costumes and I see this girl sporting what I can only describe as, and this isn't entirely precise or accurate, a mohawk-mullet and I think to myself, « What would Romain Françoise say to that mohawk-mullet? »

Ahmet's “Caucasian Walnut Chicken”

• 1 pound chicken breast
• 10 oz. walnuts
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 2 tbsp. olive oil

Boil 1 pound of chicken breast. Save broth. Put a 10 oz. package of walnuts in food processor, grind. Add 1 cup bread crumbs, 2 cloves garlic, and 1 teaspoon salt plus one cup or more of reserved chicken broth to the walnuts in the food processor to make a paste. Shred the cooked chicken into fine pieces. Place chicken in a serving bowl and spread the walnut paste on top.

Mix 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper with 2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle mixture on top of walnut chicken mixture. Serve with pita bread. May be served warm or chilled.

What kind of crazy RHPS fiasco has a narrator?

Selling fresh mozzarella is illegal here. This means that I have to either make it myself, which would involve plunging my hands into scalding hot water, or procure it from someone flouting The Law.

So, instead of being able to go to the local supermarket, one may experience conversations like this.

« How fresh are they? »

« All fresh, mang. All fresh. »

« Which are the freshest? »

« All fresh. You want this one? »

« Is that the freshest? »

« They're all fresh. »

« Fine. »

Then maybe he'll give you a discount on some smack. If it turns out that he's given you some bad cheese, there's no legitimate entity to complain to; you either suck it up and deal, or you oil up your sawed-off and go hunting.

This reminds me of something.

Go watch the video here.

Yo te hablo de poesía
y vos me preguntás
a qué hora comemos.
Lo peor es que
yo también tengo hambre.

The following is dedicated to Og Maciel, whose life apparently would be empty and meaningless without it.

There was a couple
Not an underwater couple that controlled the sea
But a couple of people on land
Who courted one another with the magic of haiku

They sent haiku across the country
Every day
Until the philotes
Brought them together physically

Then the Great State of California
Pronounced them legally wed
Because it either didn't know
Or didn't care
That poetry is supposed to rhyme.

« They seem to have installed an ice rink in Bryant Park, » he said.

« Are they lolling? » I asked.

« They don't seem to be, » he said. « Not yet. »

Once there was a little androgyne named Brendan. He was knee-high to a hamster, long-haired, and full of zest for life. Sometimes he rhymed slow, sometimes he rhymed quick, and sometimes, at least in his opinion, he resembled in some ways a Chick-O-Stick, and did not resemble DeLorean, Gambino, or Gotti.

A waitress concurred to some degree. « Here is your vermouth on the rocks, ma'am, » she said. When Brendan insisted that he was not a “ma'am”, she was terribly apologetic, but her pleas could not quell the tumult of his bruised and beaten ego.

« I am virile! » he declared, and through will alone he set his mind in motion. He furrowed his brow and concentrated deeply, and, ever so slowly, his facial hair grew. After many breaks for food and sleep, he decided that his masterpiece was complete. He beat his chest and left his home to show everyone his pride and joy, his Mustache.

« You've got something on your lip, mister, » said a young boy.

« Great success! » exclaimed Brendan, for he had been identified as a “mister”. He was on top of the world, basking in his newfound masculinity.

« Stay away from my children! » screamed a woman who had instantly deduced that he was a member of NAMBLA.

Realizing that many people believed him to be a pederast, he decided to make an adjustment. Soon, he had cultivated a Van Dyke, and showed his face in public again.

« Nice goatee, ma'am! » a teenager shouted.

« It's not a goatee! » he replied, and walked on. Reflecting that he had been called “ma'am” again, he undid his pigtails.

What came next was a series of men hitting on him. « This will not do, » he thought, and converted his Van Dyke to a goatee.

When this caused an entirely different set of men to hit on him instead, he swallowed his pride and went to the supermarket to ask for some advice.

« I am not a homosexual, » he explained to Miss Midwest Midnight Checkout Queen. « I am manly, and I like the poontang and the boobies. What can I do to stop this unwanted attention? »

« Shave, » she said, and refused to acknowledge his protests.

So he shaved and went to the bakery. « I've got a sweet tooth, » he explained, « for licorice drops and jelly roll. »

« I'm sorry, ma'am, » the baker informed him, « but we only sell lard bread and bran muffins here. »

Brendan let out a high-pitched scream and stormed out to play in traffic. His eye was caught by a sign advertising fortune telling services, and desperation drove him to go ask for a consultation.

« You will die unhappy, » said the Gypsy Queen.

Brendan recounted his trials and tribulations and asked her for advice. The Gypsy Queen informed him that he would be subject to additional charges for such, and he assented.

« Very well, » she sighed. « People will never respect you if you care what they think. Just be yourself, and if anyone complains about the way you are, or demands that you change to suit them, tell them to fuck off. »

« That's wonderful advice! » Brendan gushed. He gave her an enormous tip, and hurried out into the world to try out his new lifestyle.

« That guy sucks, » people said. « She doesn't care about anybody but herself. » So they shunned him.

He died an unhappy little androgyne.

I accidentally read one of Adam Kessel's blog posts, and I paused to be annoyed.

Neither vux nor randomplay have Audioscrobbler support.

Ted Leung wrote a positive review about Peter's and Oliver's book.

Then came the entertaining comments. Here are two bits which made me giggle the most.

In no case should you be doing complex programming in a shell script!

Learning the POSIX standard shell is time well spent, IMO. Most shells implement it pretty well (e.g. bash, zsh, sh on most machines) and it's pretty powerful.

This is slightly obscene.

Stolen from Bart Schaefer. Isn't it so pretty?

urlencode() {
  setopt localoptions extendedglob
  input=( ${(s::)1} )
  print ${(j::)input/(#b)([^A-Za-z0-9_.!~*\'\(\)-])/%$(([##16]#match))}
}

The file extension for OpenMG appears to be .omg.

Four people will find this amusing.

flurble, would you rather have a pet badger or a pet koala?

Update: Matt gave this an index of “2”.

Update: She picked koala. Reasoning is implied here.

I only have two things to say to this.

This and this.

Some of the greatest Flash cartoons ever made have been unearthed again.

• Miss Muffy episode 1
• Miss Muffy episode 2
• Miss Muffy episode 3
• Miss Muffy episode 4
• Miss Muffy episode 5
• Porkchops episode 1
• Porkchops episode 2
• Porkchops episode 3
• Porkchops episode 4

Alas! Plenty of them are still lost.

Also, a frightening Journey thing.

Say, for example, that you were a rabid Miami Sound Machine fan, but you were subjected to grave trauma, and now you are so emotionally handicapped that a mere reminder will send you into hysterics.

Perhaps you keep your diary in multiple files in a directory somewhere, and you decide that you want to revise history and wipe out any files that mention Gloria Estefan.

rm $(grep -l "Gloria Estefan" diary/*)

That's pretty easy, but, maybe you want to preserve as much as you can stomach, and you've learned that you can handle seeing “Gloria Estefan” every once in a while. So you only want to delete files that have “Gloria Estefan” more than once.

rhythmisgonnagetyou() {
 $(grep -c "Gloria Estefan" $REPLY) -gt 1  
}

rm *(+rhythmisgonnagetyou)

Of course, you can make it much more complex.

Josh, is the Thinkpad still running Fedora? If so, what's the hold-up?

« I don't understand avoidant people, » I said.

« They're usually scared. I don't know why she would be, but in my line of work, that's been my experience. Sometimes they're scared of themselves. » she said.

Apparently rabid dogs run to merchants.

æc, check out /etc/security/limits.conf in libpam-modules.

Andres, some snakes are more well-behaved than others. Can you tell just by looking?

Jordi, are you blind? We've all known that Mika is hot for a long time.

I've read eleven of these. Is that too many or too few?

Only five off Jaldhar's list.

I wonder about the quality of the serving spoon mentioned here.

Let's say you have a bunch of Ogg Vorbis files that you've tagged with tp_tagger, and you want to extract the relevant information so you can somehow submit it to last.fm via Audioscrobbler 1.1. ogginfo has lousy output for machine parsing, but that's okay.

#!/bin/zsh

setopt extendedglob
zmodload -i zsh/datetime || exit 1

parse_ogginfo() {
local output album artist mbid title len tstamp

output=(${(f)"$(ogginfo $1)"})

album=${${(M)output:#*ALBUM=*}#*ALBUM=}
artist=${${(M)output:#*ARTIST=*}#*ARTIST=}
mbid=${${(M)output:#*MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID=*}#*MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID=}
title=${${(M)output:#*TITLE=*}#*TITLE=}
len=${${(M)output:#*Playback length:*}#*Playback length: }

if [[ "$len" == (#b)([0-9]##)m:([0-9.]##)s ]]
then
  (( len = $match[1] * 60 + $match[2] + 1 ))
else
  (( len = 0 ))
fi

typeset -i len
tstamp=$(export TZ=UTC; strftime "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" ${EPOCHSECONDS})
print "${(qqq)artist} ${(qqq)title} ${(qqq)album} ${(qqq)mbid} ${(qqq)len} ${(qqq)tstamp}"
}

for i in "$@"
do
parse_ogginfo $i
done

There's an off-by-one error if you should happen to have a track whose length is an exact number of seconds, and obviously the timestamps are useless if you don't run it on exactly one file at the correct time.

Sample output:

"Too Much Joy" "Making Fun of Bums" "Son of Sam I Am" "0077f5e2-ffe8-4f5c-83c5-d2a7bdc79776" "172" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Song for a Girl Who Has One" "Son of Sam I Am" "af48111b-27e3-4c2b-8c42-927864b0e1f4" "209" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Clowns" "Son of Sam I Am" "5cc2cf9c-2c68-48d4-be2c-ff0cbbae17e6" "219" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "My Past Lives" "Son of Sam I Am" "abd67bc7-1813-421b-9145-d072e58e62e5" "241" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "That's a Lie (remix)" "Son of Sam I Am" "dc22b8b2-7965-4c27-9cbc-9e529b2b1c87" "143" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Hugo!" "Son of Sam I Am" "e0bba321-f654-4512-b052-66d605f96194" "144" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Kicking (That Gone Fishing Song)" "Son of Sam I Am" "f9a3deb2-1b99-4fab-a32f-d594606bc1df" "244" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Life is Flowers" "Son of Sam I Am" "053c11b7-577d-48d0-94cd-182af0b0cc84" "218" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Connecticut" "Son of Sam I Am" "ad34c9c0-08bb-482b-aa75-41f7422e8fc7" "196" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Bad Dog" "Son of Sam I Am" "c0641c0f-6357-47ae-a967-f39c57546236" "196" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "1964" "Son of Sam I Am" "0e56e785-75ec-4fa6-adb6-5fc2e58ffb7f" "223" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Worse" "Son of Sam I Am" "2e4ccf4c-ba42-4206-8e38-758105475f06" "147" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Seasons in the Sun" "Son of Sam I Am" "61d7f977-ef05-4648-b913-c4826c12e425" "212" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "If I Was a Mekon" "Son of Sam I Am" "7ca27d50-bc12-43c8-83b7-e28cd3a3be1d" "172" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"
"Too Much Joy" "Train in Vain" "Son of Sam I Am" "14b48a3e-e448-47e5-850c-b9e3e01a1d10" "108" "2005-11-18 17:00:10"

First, I should point out that I hate GUIs. Then I should point out that I don't want to play music with a GUI music player. I'm including ncurses-type things like cplay in the GUI category. They've always made my skin crawl. So, why am I testing out GUI music players? It's because I didn't didn't realize that I misread the Audioscrobbler spec. Now that we've established that I don't know what I'm talking about, let's move on.

Yesterday, I followed the suggestion of some KDE people and tried amaroK. I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty, it was functional, the UI didn't piss me off, and it kept showing me a picture of Mako for some reason I still can't figure out. Here's where it fell down: it wanted me to select tracks based on album/artist info in the file tags; the musicbrainz lookup function is not as useful as tp_tagger; when I tried to play tracks off of a slow networked filesystem, it skipped a bit, then it shoved its head up its ass and ate itself. It managed to finish the track before it disabled its frontal lobe, but it didn't send the data to last.fm. So, amaroK was a lot better than I expected, but unacceptable.

People seem to like Quod Libet. Joey and Erinn. So when I tried it today, I didn't expect it to be awful. Here's what it has over amaroK: it doesn't fall over and die when trying to deal with files on a slow networked filesystem. It just skips. You may be thinking that this could be easily solved with proper buffering. I'd think that too, if it didn't skip when playing files on the local hard drive. You may be wondering why I'm trying to play music on an old 486. I'm not. This is a Pentium 4 2.8GHz under almost no load. This is ridiculous. Compared to amaroK, this thing is ugly as sin, and incredibly awkward. That includes the metadata editor that people keep raving about for some reason. Furthermore, when I rearrange songs in the Play Queue, it occasionally ignores me and plays the track that used to be at the top of the list.

Rhythmbox also has problems with skipping, so I guess that gstreamer is the devil.

I'm not filing bugs because I don't intend to ever use these programs again.

Decklin, MPD looks pretty interesting. I have filed a wishlist bug on vux on the presumption that integrating it with mpd would be peachy keen.

Still, mpdscribble is conspiring against me. That it can't get MusicBrainz IDs is a minor irritation. The more significant problem is that it doesn't work at all. For every song, it whines about skipping, like this:

new song detected (Leonard Cohen - Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye)
skipping detected, not submitting.

I'm not doing any skipping, and crossfade is set to '0'.

I continue to use my happy NIH pseudosolution.

« He'll get a one way ticket to Hell and back, » he said.

« A one way ticket to Hell and back? » she asked incredulously. « Why would anyone want to go to Hell? »

Nobody ever sings about Leslie Nielsen starring in Forbidden Planet.

I disagree that the best thing Kylie Minogue has ever done is “the video for her cover of The Locomotion, obviously”. I think it's something more like singing with Nick Cave or showing up on “The Vicar of Dibley”.

Every so often I need to convert an entire system of some kind to another kind. For example, Debian to Ubuntu, or Ubuntu to Debian, or i386 to amd64. Prior to the existence of either Ubuntu or amd64, this type of thing was much, much easier. The main problems are that apt and dpkg trust the contents of /var/lib/dpkg/available, and so do the postinst scripts and whatnot.

So as we get more and more sources of .deb files and as postinst files make more and more assumptions based on the version passed as previously installed, opportunities for error increase, whether or not you're editing the available file to facilitate some sort of conversion.

I've been complaining about this sort of thing since the dawn of time, but everyone always says, « That's not supported, so fuck off. » This is it will be difficult if not impossible to install simultaneously multiple MTA packages for the foreseeable future.

So if the udev package preinst checks the previous version to determine whether or not to perform certain actions, and you happen to have a udev package created by someone other than the Debian maintainer, you may find yourself facing completely unexpected behavior because this other package did not meet the expectations of the Debian package.

Of course, the udev package can't possibly attempt to know about all the other potential udev packages that anyone might build.

There's no telling whom the angry owl will attack.

<jwzfan> Dear jwz, I hate you for inventing the term "Lazyweb."
plzdiekthx

Remember, jwzfan, if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.

<jwzfan> Clint: someone seems to have missed the sarcasm in my internet expression.
Perhaps I should have suffixed it with LOL

This is not a googlewhack. This is not a googlewhack. Did you get that thing I sent you? Did you get that thing I sent you? Did you get that THING I sent you?

NaNoWriMo is over.

I've always looked at Radiohead fans with the same sort of non-understanding that comes when Rush fans try to explain to Rush haters that what makes Rush really, really awesome is the deep insight and cleverness in the lyrics. Some small advice: never let a PhD in philosophy do any songwriting. I don't hate Radiohead. I just don't understand why anyone would like them. It was my understanding that there were about as many Radiohead fans as, say, fans of Mudhoney.

Imagine my shock and confusion when I discovered that there seem to be quite a few more people on Last.fm listening to Radiohead. « Fine, » I thought. « Everybody's got a copy of Creep sitting around that they listen to every once in awhile for reasons of nostalgia. That does not appear to be the case.

There is a group called “Extensive Musical Taste”. Note that their top artist is Radiohead. There is a group called “People with inconsistent musical taste - who yet prove a certain indy-attitude”. I don't know what that means, but their top artist is Radiohead. There is a group called “Die Hipster Die”. Radiohead is tied for number one. Someone else has noticed this particular trend, and has created a group called “Radioheads_Not_Our_Top_Artist”. Bless these people for not having Radiohead as their top artist. Radiohead is their #2 artist. Whee!

Last week the DD group had Radiohead at the top. I have no idea why it fell so far after that. Maybe it's a scrobbler fuckup.

I could stop singling out Radiohead, and broaden this to the other bands hovering at the top of nearly every group chart: The Beatles, Death Cab for Cutie, Pink Floyd, and so on. Oddly, this thing isn't very popular.

« Sure, » you may be thinking. « Radiohead sucks, but what's the problem? ». The problem has to do with the effects of globalization on world cultures. In Jihad vs. McWorld it says that… okay, well, I don't know what it says because I've never read it. Nevertheless, Benjamin Barber claims that Democracy is the solution to the evils of both globalism and tribalism. This is a fantastic idea if you happen to be in denial that “Democracy” is just a perverse form of tribalism.

So guzzle down your McDonald's, listen to your Radiohead, wash it all down with some Coca-Cola that you bought at Wal-Mart, put on your Old Navy sweatshirt and head over to Starbucks to drink a frapmooccino while you obsess about American politics even though you live in an obviously-superior country, then go home and watch “Friends”.

That's easier than being someone with musical taste.

P.S., Radiohead being on South Park is no excuse.

P.P.S., Buttercup is not a Radiohead fan.

I don't know which is scarier, strfry() or memfrob().

In some cultures, pizza is a dessert served after cake and raspberries.

She is composed of sharp angles. Her limbs are thin and long, and her elbows curve into rose thorn-like points. Her face is a smooth void of black, but you can make out the prominent cheekbones and sharp chin. Her hair is shiny and silver like spiderweb. Slim braids run from the crown of her head and wind up around her horns resulting in two horn-shaped mounds of braids on the top of her head. The rest of her hair is braided and looped in the back. Her fingers are long and thin with four joints.

She wears a midnight black velvet gown with a high silk fin-like collar rising out from behind the neck. The bodice is fitted tightly and has an angular U-neckline that dips down into a V. The sleeves are long and tight, and form a V to reach the middle finger and cover the knuckles. The skirt clings to the hips and fans out at the bottom with a shredded hem, revealing red satin underneath; the effect appears remniscent of flames. It has a long train that trails in the back. Silver spiderweb lace hangs from the sleeves like fins and from the collar like a cloak. It is for you.

The Internet is full of comedians.

This is not the ugliest code I have ever written.

The handling of HTTP/1.1 chunked transfer-encoding is a horrible hack. The indentation isn't quite as random as I would like. I have other complaints, but I've forgotten them, as zomg does mostly what I want, which is to play music and report it to Last.fm. Unfortunately, it lacks the power of vux, but that's another story.

zomghelper is a C program that extracts the relevant data from an Ogg Vorbis file. It written because vorbiscomment doesn't report the track length, and ogginfo is much too slow for my needs. I don't expect most people to share my needs, so the five of you that are actually going to use zomg probably won't need it.

I don't think this guy has seen Love Serenade.

<vance> An Australian Senator wants Australians' internet connections
      to be automatically filtered by ISPs.
<vance> buncha wankers
<vance> when you think aussie you think big blokes capable of taking
      care of themselves
<vance> and yet
<vance> they always have the dumbest laws

Once upon a time, there were people that would operate buildds, look at failed buildd logs, diagnose build failures, file FTBFS bugs, and quite often would send patches to fix bugs.

Were they called “porters” or “buildd admins”? I can't remember.

zomg now does last.fm radio stations. It requires wget, for reasons I do not entirely understand, and either mplayer or mpg321. I suggest using mplayer, since mpg321 lacks minor features like buffering.

Use the -r option, like

zomg -r lastfm://user/neuro42/personal

Hit 'h' at the prompt for some ugly instructions. Type 'tu isbilia' to listen to isbilia's Personal Radio, or 'tl spanginator' to listen to spanginator's Loved Tracks.

This part of the program is flaky and messy.

Phil, it is rumored that all the people in the NM bureaucracy are volunteers, and therefore should not be thought of to have any sort of responsibility as part of their positions of authority, and should not be held accountable for anything.

Jacobo, “realise” is not a word in en_US.

I've “released” a new ZOMG with a couple of requested last.fm features incorporated. I can't remember them all, but they include the ability to mark a track as loved, to ban a track, to turn discovery mode (subscriber-only) on and off, and some Tab-completion fun (probably only vaguely useful if you have long radio station URLs in your history).

I saw Joey Ramone shortly before he died. I saw Wesley Willis shortly before he died. I passed up a chance to see Joe Strummer right before he died. What was I thinking?

These two have something in common.

« If you ever had sex with a prostitute, I would lose all respect for you, » she said.

« There are lots of things you could do to make me lose all respect for you, » he replied.

« Like what? » she asked.

« If I told you, it would be like threatening you, » he answered.

« Oh, so I'm threatening you? Are you saying that sharing an innocuous observation like that is a threat? » she demanded.

« You, » I declared, « are a pair of manipulative cunts. »

« We weren't talking to you, » she countered.

You are The Superjesus

The Superjesus 110% Powderfinger 95% The Whitlams 95% Regurgitator 95% Grinspoon 20% Eskimo Joe 20% Machine Gun Fellatio 20% Kylie Minogue 5% Killing Heidi 5% AC/DC 5% Midnight Oil 5%

You are Australian, you use the word “prawn”, and you know what vegemite tastes like.

Kai, put

set envelope_from=yes

in your muttrc in order to cope with annoying lists like that.