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.