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The Golden Boy with the Teflon Suit
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| Sister Thing gig |
[26 Dec 2009|04:53pm] |
I'm playing live on New Years Eve at Splatterball vs Fightclub
9pm at Vedette Nightclub
238 Nicholson Street
Footscray VIC OZ
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| Something something something pounding sodomy. |
[23 Dec 2009|09:46pm] |
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That's it for work until Tuesday. Now to survive Christmas.
NewsTechnica is going from strength to strength, which is to say it looks pretty and might hit three figures of visitors a day. Do please tell your friends.
(I share a host with lemonparty.org and k-k-k.com, and there's a reason I didn't link either of those. As neither of the actual owners of the server in question have touched it in ages — which is why the logs were broken until I fixed them — it appears I am in fact the sysadmin for these venerable Internet landmarks. Oh dear. I thought the box was running CentOS, but it's increasingly apparent it's running this.)
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| La Muse, or left puritanism |
[23 Dec 2009|12:46am] |
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Left and Right isn't just the arbitrary polarization
of a particular country's politics.
It runs deeper, and there are such a things as "left" and "right" mindsets.
The comic book La Muse
offers us a very nice illustration of the rapture of the left.
The heroin has god-like powers, and the whims she realized
are extraordinarily revealing of what "liberals" fantasize:
from annihilating right-wing baddies
(who seem to be orchestrating all violence throughout the planet)
to curing people's body and mind through casual sex,
from solving war and feeding the hungry
to saving the planet's environment and making everyone go green.
The books' fantasies culminate with the implicit promise
of eventually making every human a god,
with the twist that godly powers on a cosmic scale
are mixed with militant atheism
(as well as pro-homosexual propaganda and multiculturalism).
Of course, if there are no constraints of nature,
if scarcity doesn't exist anymore,
if danger and death can be averted at whim,
then why in heaven should we eat organic,
cultivate healthy habits,
refrain from polluting,
think in the way the lefties cherish,
drive electric, etc.?
When all wishes are fulfilled for free,
why sacrifice to an old painful way of achieving goals?
Or why bother about old goals at all?
The real reason for those perverse wishes is
that sacrifice itself,
disconnected from any structure of causes and consequences,
is what is desired by the leftist.
Indeed, whereas La Muse can make smoking safe for herself,
it wouldn't occur to her to make it and other behaviors safe
for everyone else, too;
no she has to make everyone forfeit the upsides
of behavior she perceives as vicious, in favor of austerity;
all the while violently promoting behavior the perceives as virtuous
in blissful ignorance of any downsides others may identify about them
(such as casual sex, cultural relativism, etc.).
The left want to control your behavior just as much as the right does;
and just as with the right, your behavior is controlled
here in the name of your own personal salute using selfishness as a bait,
there in the name of some greater good that is far beyond you,
ultimately vowing you to be sacrificed to the cause of the controller.
The left will differ from the right only in that it wants to replace
old gods and old hierarchies with new gods and new hierarchies,
attracting a new generation of power hungry bastards
who want to become the prophets and priests of the new order.
The old idol may have been dethroned, its name, "god", trampled upon,
and its worshippers ridiculed;
the "black magic" superstition is still there
hiding in plain sight under new names.
And so far, the left has been successful.
Think of it: about each and every successive change of power
is the then right getting taken over by the then left.
So would I do if granted unlimited
magic powers?
You already know
my answer
to this challenge.
It isn't replacing one puritanism with another.
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| Hanukkah notes 2009 |
[22 Dec 2009|01:18am] |
In 2007, Wifey and I tried making a Star of David decoration, but
it didn’t come out
well. For 2008, I let my house be the undecorated one on our
street. For 2009, Wifey decided to invite over our
little homeschoolers’ group for a party, so SOMETHING had to be done.
So this is what I did (click images to embiggen): I pretended
that the ropelight was a neon sign tube, which I wrestled into a star-shape
and then covered the non-star parts with black electrical tape.
The ropelight has a fairly large minimum curvature, so I curled it into loops
at each corner (covered with tape) to create the appearance of a sharper
change of direction than a ropelight can actually manage. This is pretty
much exactly what ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) xolo suggested in a comment on my 2007 post.
This wooden star-of-David form is the same one that we’ve been using for many
years. Previously it was covered in many strands of Christmas lights,
with the controls set to “random chasing patterns”. But those lights
stopped working during the move to Canada. The yellow blob in the
window is a hanukkiah;
see the daytime photo below.
Blah blah blah. Need more text because the pictures are too
big. Yadda yadda.
At the Hanukkah party, we cobbled together some electronic gizmos to make
a Skype videophone for our livingroom; we used it to call a former member
of our group who has moved back to the States. They were familiar with
Skype but we had not previously used it. The setup for our livingroom was
quite easy!
After the typical conference-call greetings, they panned their camera
around so we could see how much snow they got; then we pointed our camera
out the window to show how little we got (because the jet stream is quite
far South right now).
We had a Secret SantaHanukkah Harry gift exchange. It was notable
how many people got fellow family members when they pulled a name randomly
out of a hat, but perhaps this is related to the birthday paradox.
Maybe I should make the pictures smaller.
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| Places I stayed in 2009 |
[21 Dec 2009|07:49pm] |
Because all the cool kids are doing it.
Toronto, ON
Amsterdam, NL
Bury St Edmunds, UK
Cheltenham, UK
Brighton, UK
London, UK
Stratford, ON
Long Beach, CA
Albany, NY
Boston, MA
There may have been a trip to Detroit in there somewhere too, but I rather suspect that was last year.
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| A New Home, Social Events, Unitarian End-of-Year Concert |
[22 Dec 2009|09:40am] |
Last night caseopaya and I visited an estate agent and made an offer on a three-story townhouse in Willsmere, the former Kew Asylum. A few hours later we received a message from said agent that our offer had been accepted. So over the next few months we'll be making the move to our new abode, which is still being advertised on realestate.com.au.
Last week was txxxpxx's biennial Christmas party. As with previous affairs this was a huge night; about ninety people in attendence of the usual suspects. Spent most of the night chatting to our recently published fashion historian, frou_frou, and local council environmental manager recumbenteer and our favourite artist severina_242. Last Saturday had horngirl and alchemon over for dinner; afterwards we made it down to "The King of Tonga", a delightful bar on Tennyson St.
On Sunday attended the end of year concert at the local Unitarian Church. As is often the case at such events Therese Virtue's world music choir provided an exceptional contribution. Close to $1000 was raised for the Humane Society of International. As usual, I was given the task of doing a brief speech describing the organisation and the work, along with a few motivational lines; I compared mechanist approaches that considered animals as automata (Descartes, Malebranche) to utilitarian approaches (Bentham, Singer) which emphasis capacity to suffer.
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| flying tomorrow. |
[22 Dec 2009|12:37am] |
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as usual, if plane explodes, all my money goes to my brother, and my fiction may be redistributed by anyone who dem hell wants to.
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| And an addendum: Good things lifewise about this year. |
[21 Dec 2009|03:24pm] |
1. I'm become much more strong when it comes to fixing my fucking mental wank. I don't immediately yell SHUT THE FUCK UP at people who want to mention their medical problems. Okay, I do think I've got a brain tumor right now and keep trying to see if I can smell burning feathers, but I'm in a way different headspace than I usually am when I gets the hypo. I haven't had to run back to support groups like a sad little bitch. 2004 the hypo fucking took over my life. In 2006 it came back but I killed it off. This year it's back but it's so low grade I'm like LOL at it.
2. Andy's headcancer hasn't come back. Because his headcancer was so fucking massive by the time they removed it, it seemed likely that it would recur quite often. However it hasn't yet. Also, despite that he's missing a fair bit of his skull and head-bones right now, his hearing seems to be returning (amazingly) on the side he had the operation on. His doctors were surprised that he could hear given there's fuck all left in there, but he can. It's going to be another year before he's able to get hearing aids, but his life is almost 'normal' right now so I'm wondering if it's even worth it. I think that's one huge worry in our lives that seems to have taken a back burner, although obviously he will be in and out of hospital FOREVER with this goddam thing.
3. I'm way more open/and comfortable with my sexuality. In the past I've been generally, "well bi. ISH? but only wif a penis on it, uhhh... and cute guys... and yeah, um... SHUT UP AND GO AWAY don't ask me". (Although apparently, according to at least two anonymous readers, I'M PRETTY OBVIOUS WITH MY INTERESTS.)
But I've been gradually more open since last year, mainly with close friends, and now that I have a good friend I can wailywail at over ADORABLE boys I'm just so much more yay. I feel like I completely missed out on the fun dating teenage years because my friends just didn't... I mean we weren't even on the same page when it came to who we found attractive. I've been totally fucked by my parents and friends who are like "WHAT YOU WANT TO DATE HIM WHY DO YOU FIND HIM ATTRACTIVE EW". And now I'm like, fuck damn, FUCK IT ALL. So. I'ma gonna be honest and up front and I think in that case people will generally give me a helluvalot less SHIT.
4. I've got more into HELPING THE WORLD. I've been more involved in charities I was interested in. I plan to do more in the future. And I'm going to start following my interest - my main interest - which has always been fish. I fucken love 'em. I love fish so much. My holidays are basically a tour of fucking aquariums. And I'm going to get more into it. I AM SO EXCITED.
5. I've realised that the distances around the world are fucking hilariously small. Travelling for a day is no fucking big deal to see someone you like or you want to hang out. It's WORTH IT. The world is a small place. So. I'ma gonna come see people I dig.
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| Apache on cPanel weirdness: "combined combined combined." |
[21 Dec 2009|12:50am] |
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If you have this problem, where you can't get anything out of awstats and it turns out to be because your Apache logs contain nothing but the word "combined", once per line, over and over — this is because cPanel b0rked your httpd.conf and left out the LogFormat lines. Apache then presumes the word "combined" at the end of the CustomLog line is not a direction on how to log, but the actual log format. Cut'n'paste them from httpd.conf.orig and somehow beat cPanel into putting them into its RCS.
(cPanel is source-available proprietary software to make LAMP stupid. Our host is at the stage where I'm very glad I have years of expertise beating Apache around, and sudo.)
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| 2009 |
[21 Dec 2009|01:47pm] |
I'm leaving the country tomorrow and may not have decent internet access. So here's my 2009 meme.
1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
I went to the US!
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Amazingly, I did manage to sell 20 stories by the end of the year. HA HA HA. I just got in there, too... I had a magazine contact me wanting to reprint two of my stories YESTERDAY.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My oldest best friend has a new baby. :D
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Um. My great aunt, Mother Theresa. I hadn't seen her since I was about 5 though. Some of Andy's relatives died as well.
5. What countries did you visit?
Australia, US, New Zealand. It's been a pretty shit year for holidays.
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A husband with a real job. God. I really really wish for this. He's trying now, but there's nothing. I can't do anything. I feel really helpless. My entire life and ability to do what I want is based on him getting a job that pays above minimum wage. For the past four years I've been stuck supporting him in any way I can and feeding off the money I've saved up. I just don't know how long anything is going to last if he can't find something.
7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don't know. There's nothing much in particular.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
20 sales, I guess.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I've got no friends, and I haven't been able to help Andy get a job. It's sort of the first time that I've really been pretty helpless like that.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
My allergies rule my life as usual, and I did catch flu for the first time. FUCK THAT SHIT IS HORRIBLE. I also got a skin fungus. That was pretty sick shit.
( Blargh )
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| It's the climb. |
[20 Dec 2009|09:19pm] |
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So, Friday night I was drunk down the pub with nyecamden, ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) genetikayos, a laptop and wifi, and I slipped on a credit card and bought NewsTechnica.com. (I was actually quite surprised this was available — pretty much everything has been squatted.) I spent yesterday setting up the latest WordPress, importing the text from the previous site and tweaking the theme within an inch of its life. (It's a freebie they give away to entice you to buy the commercial version. Spelling errors in the configuration dialogues, cut'n'paste coding and localisation is something that happens to other people. I'll be uploading my version when I've finished.) Along the way, I wrote my first MySQL updating program in PHP. Today I had to leave behind the technical wizardry and do the hard bit: write something. A decent start, I hope.
(today.com has cut pay in half and doubled the advertising in its obnoxiousness. I went to NotN yesterday and got a floating ad in the middle of the page. FUCK OFF, DIE. They're clearly running out of money and getting desperate. FLOATING ADS EQUALS FAIL. I might bother with ads on the new site, or I might not — NotN was netting me about £30/month; I make approximately 120 times that working a proper job.)
So. Update your bookmarks and links!
I'll be needing a new set of business cards then.
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| Via Luna |
[20 Dec 2009|11:04pm] |
1. Elaborate on your default icon: A picture of me that Andy did for me for bugjar's birthday. Then um I appear to have reappropriated it for myself. My god, I totally took back a birthday present. I am a cock. :/
2. What's your current relationship status?: Married.
3. Ever have a near-death experience?: No.
4. Name an obvious quality you have: I have fairly large breasts.
5. What's the name of the song that's stuck in your head right now? Crazy, Gnarls Barkley. Isn't that song just the greatest?
6. Name a celebrity you would marry: Kirsten Vangsness.
7. Who will cut and paste this first?: I don't know.
8. Has anyone ever said you look like a celebrity?: Yes. A fair bit. Because I do.
9. Do you wear a watch? What kind?: I don't. I use my mobile phone. This is basically the only thing I use my mobile phone to. I fucken hate technology.
10. Do you have anything pierced?: My ears.
11. Do you have any tattoos?: No.
12. Do you like pain?: Yes, but not my own.
13. Do you like to shop?: I like buying books! And sometimes I like food shopping. I don't like, buy clothes or things like that though.
14. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?: I can't remember. Probably a coffee.
15. What was the last thing you paid for with your credit card?: I paid for my MSF support shit with my credit card most recently, as Andy just said he'd paid that off when it came in today. Woo. Charity. I wish though I didn't have to be charitible at fucking Christmas! I don't have any bloody money!
16. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?: Mummy. I can't remember why she called. I think just to check we were ready to fly to Australia.
17. What is on your desktop background?: I used to have this absolutely scrummy one of this guy from Tekken:
Now it is some crazy random girly as shit one that came with Windows 7. I also coloured in everything purple so that all my file banners and my tool desktop are purple. SO GIRLY.
18. What is the background on your cell phone?: My cell phone is a black and white one that calls people and has a phone. That's all I want, that's all I need. It has no background.
19. Do you like redheads?: Um, I have friends who are red-haired, so yes? Andy is a wee bit ginger but I dye his hair black because I don't find red hair attractive, but I feel like this is because I have fairly awful red-brown hair when it's not dyed, and thus it is an issue of self hatred and no reflection on the attractiveness of red haired people in general.
20. Do you know any twins?: No.
21. Do you have any weird relatives?: Er. I don't know how you define weird. Most of the weird ones and the religious ones have died out.
22. What was the last movie you watched?: DOA - Dead or Alive. FUCK that movie rocks!
23. What's your favourite gemstone? I like Topaz. But it's my birth stone, so I suspect that's why.
24. Add your own question here for the person copying this meme to answer: What animal would you be if you were an animal?
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| I still won't wear green no matter what you say |
[19 Dec 2009|10:44am] |
I went to two different Irish pubs last weekend.
Toronto is lousy with pubs that claim to be Irish and English. Apparently the key to selling a lot of beer in this town is to hang a Guinness sign in front of your door and adopt a name like "The Pride of Cork" or the "The Ass and Sparrow". I have no idea why but places that market themselves as being fresh from the mothership see a lot of the pieces of coloured paper with pictures of the Queen on it. Maybe it's the connotation that they hail from places that know how to make decent beer, but I don't see a lot of pubs that claim to be German or Belgium in the city. So I dunno.
Anyway, the first one was one of the typical modern half-bar-half-restaurants that slaps an Irish name on themselves, makes the waitresses wear a green scarf, puts Guinness on the draught list and figure they're done. Here's a hint for you, if you think that Irish "poutine" is a dish made with potatoes, cheese and gravy you have no frickin' idea what you are talking about.
The second place was a completely different story. An actual Irish pub. As in a place full of Irish people, where Irish people go to hang out with other Irish people and listen to an Irish man singing Irish music written by other Irish people about stuff in Ireland. And where conversations take place about what part of a little tiny island they all come from.
And from the moment I walked in that door I was six years old.
See like a lot of newcomers my parents' first friends were people they met through the local immigrant community - pubs mostly. My dad's family lived in an area when he was young that was given the nickname Cabbagetown because of the Irish and Scottish immigrants, so most of his friends going to school were from the same background. When my family first arrived it's was those old buddies along with his family members that formed the initial ready-made social circle. Everybody in my little world had an accent. At parties they played music by bands that sang about the rebellion against British rule or made rude jokes in Gaelic. My mother would listen to the Irish programs on the multicultural radio station to get news and music from home.
After a few years of living here of course, they picked up new friends among neighbours and co-workers and their social circles became more mixed. Once I started school and making my own friends I started spending time around adults who came from different backgrounds. Because the change was so gradual and I was so young it never really occurred to me that a change had happened at all.
And then one day, 40-odd years later I walked into an Irish pub. And instantly I was six.
(Fortunately beer can cure that.)
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| Clean Feed, part 9 |
[19 Dec 2009|03:56pm] |
| [ |
music |
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Rakkit [Two Lone Swordsmen Remix Effective Machine]-Death In Vegas-Milk It [Disc 2] |
] |
Before the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) released their report earlier this week, Watchdog International released their own report. Watchdog International is the company which maintains the New Zealand filtering system and, though not named in the Enex report, would have been involved in the work Enex, DBCDE and the New Zealand Ministry of Internal Affairs performed together as part of their live pilot this year.
Watchdog International's report was available briefly on their website, but has since been removed. Presumably because it explains which kind of URLs were removed from the ACMA blacklist to guarantee the 100% effectiveness of the blocking trial.
Fortunately WikiLeaks has come to the rescue and made the report available here.
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| free account users |
[18 Dec 2009|09:33pm] |
Apparently I can send a coupon to 10 of my friends who have free accounts to upgrade to a paid account for half price.
Anybody who wants one, say the word.
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