Catastrophic Dreams Appear To Be Back

If you remember (you don't have to remember), I have strings of terrible terrible dreams where either I die or everyone in the world dies. I hadn't had one in a while. I just had one, and I will share it. The central event in this dream is a Wu-Tang Clan concert in Ocean City, New Jersey that has yet to happen (this coincides with tonight's Wu concert in Philadephia). Everyone in the dream is just hanging out on the beach, having a great time. A few of my close friends are there, and aside from that I still know tons of people there. It's nice. Sunshine, pretty girls, beach smells, et cetera. I get in the water, and a wave hits us. Then another one. They keep coming. They happen in fast succession and get progressively stronger; it gets to the point where one cannot even get up after the wave because another one is coming in. I manage to get up after one of them (they're still relatively small at this point, nothing to worry about), and ride the crest of the one coming in. This one is pretty huge, and it keeps getting bigger. In a split second it's taller than the hotel that's right on the shore, and I'm still on top of it. As soon as it begins to crash, I wake up. I heard their screams.

Newsflash:

The Chuck Norris shit is OLD. END IT.

Haley Joel Osment: Apparently not the Next Culkin.

If you're like me, you spend a significant amount of time in conversation about the trainwreck that usually is the private lives of child stars. Recently I was talking about Haley Joel Osment, and how we haven't really seen him since, well, since his balls dropped. Kid was born in April of 1988. That makes him less than three years younger than me. That makes him...two months away from being recognized as an adult in this fair country. Yeah. Wow. They grow up so fast, huh? Unlike some of his compatriots (Corey Haim, Gary Coleman, Danny Bonaduce, and the indelible Corey Feldman), he hasn't fallen into a spiral of drug abuse and morbid public fascination. Osment isn't exactly on the fast track to the Academy Awards, but he's doing things. There's a game coming out for the Playstation 2 console in March called Kingdom Hearts 2. I'm a fan of the first game. Many people are. It was quite a fine game. Read up on it. It's an action RPG, and Osment does the voice-acting for the game's main character. If you look up Osment on the IMDB(link), it becomes apparent that he's been doing other cool voicework too.

So, next time a child-star drops off the face of the earth, do not automatically assume that they spent their fortune up their noses, in their arms, or otherwise just fucking wasted their futures. No, only do that if you can't find any recent IMDB entries for them.

Crotchrot is a fungal infection of the groin region. Sadly there are no first hand accounts on Wikipedia.

"Playing To Win" - Highly Interesting Article On Videogame Theory

Link. The author is a game designer named David Sirlin. I found this interesting to be highly interesting because Sirlin breaks down the differences between gaming abnormalities that make the game unfun, and ones that the player just needs to work around in order to become better and develop new strategies. I can think of plenty of times when certain things in games have become "off limits" simply because the players were not willing to use or work around them. Anyhow, just read this article if you're even remotely interested in playing videogames competitively at any level.

The Blockbuster Film is DYING.

I originally saw this (link) at BoingBoing (link). Compelling study. Honestly I cannot say this surprises me. Remember what I wrote about Big Momma's House 2? (Forgetful) Well, I think the days of that kind of stuff are numbered. The question I have is, what will they be replacing this stuff with? Will it be...worse? I feel that there's a true dearth of originality in the movie industry at large, which does not mean that interesting and original movies are not born out of it. The majority are awful though. Soon enough we'll see change. Change will probably be the cloning of whatever has been a recent success. Get ready to see Brokeback To The Future...for real.

Google Update For Google Whores Like Me!

Gmail now has the capability to catalogue all of your conversations that take place through the gtalk (jabber) service. You just have to change a setting in your gmail options. You don't even have to use the gtalk program; I use gaim and it works just fine. The information is sent almost instantaneously to gmail. This is cool. Info. This actually makes Gtalk a lot more useful. It's less of a gimmick now. Remote viewing of your conversation logs is something that no other instant messaging service can claim right "out of the box."

There's a Cold Week Up Ahead.

Well, today's high here in sunny exotic Delaware is 43 degrees Fahrenheit. The rest of the week is going to be in the thirties and shit. That's chilly. That's uncomfortable. That's no way for the city of Newark to welcome me to its heart. I've been here for a few days now and it's been very nice. I enjoy walking everywhere. I enjoy seeing familiar faces around town. I enjoy feeling like I'm a part of this place instead of being some anonymous person who waves to their neighbors from the car but never actually speaks to them.

The news has been interesting this week, hasn't it? That ship that sunk in Egypt. Wow. The first thing I thought of when I read that story was, "Is this going to knock the titanic out of the top spot for Most-Horrific-Maritime-Disaster?" It appears that a thousand souls perished at sea, but it wasn't until after the disaster that things really got heated up. There's rioting in Egypt now. People are unsurprisingly...pissed. Relatives are screaming left and right that someone fucked up big time on this trip. The ship did have lifeboats, afterall.

Ugh, I need to move around. Having this mirror right next to my desk is turning me into some kind of fucking narcissist. I can't stop looking in the goddamn thing. The lookin' ain't even that great, but it's there, you know?

Time to move around.

Brokeback To The Future. I'm moving.

This is a trailer for a fictional film called Brokeback To The Future (link). It's scenes from the Back To The Future films spliced into a trailer to make it vaguely homosexual.


Light update. I'm in the process of a move.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta is out. I got a new monitor

IE7 Beta here. This new monitor is huge; 20.1 inches. The native resolution is 1680x1050. Here's a screen capture of my desktop:

I just culled my music folder

I culled the shit out of it. Too much stuff was going unlistened to. I got rid of everything that I listened to once and didn't like, or even twice, or three times. I got rid of the stuff I didn't like. I was highly impartial. I have freed up gigabytes of space. I recommend that anyone do this because it will make you feel less overwhelmed when you want to listen to some music on your computer.

"Big Momma's House 2" Sells 28 Million; Or, Why My Faith In American Moviegoers Is Rapidly Declining

"Big Momma's House 2" sold 28 million dollars worth of tickets at the box offices this weekend, making it the second-highest grossing January film opener ever. This surprises me. It makes me wary of the future of Hollywood, and I question whether or not I as a consumer will have a place in the current / future film industry. I feel that there are way too many sequels in production in Hollywood and very few original ideas make it to production. It seems like most movies, even movies that were not so good, are getting sequels in the last few years. Also, classic and not-so-classic movies are being remade at a dizzying pace. Sequels and remakes do not equal innovation, and often lack depth. Why does this keep happening? Because the American public spent 28 million on "Big Momma's House 2" in a single fucking weekend, that's why. Some movie theaters here charge more than 10 dollars per ticket to see the film, and I'm sure that's relatively cheap compared to other places in the country. I'm not the kind of person who wants to spend that kind of money so that I may gain the priviledge of watching roughly two hours of some characters I've seen a few years ago doing the same kind of shit, but without the pep of the original. They wouldn't make these shitty movies if people didn't go to see them. These major film production companies are in it for the money, the business end of your entertainment experience. They could care less about the quality, it's just what sells. So if we communicate that we want to see something different on the silver screen by not spending our money on stuff we saw a few years ago, they'll listen. Big Momma's House 2 didn't come out because the people demanded a sequel and Martin Lawrence was only too happy to hop back into an uncomfortable body suit; it came out because the first one did well, and they wanted to see if they could sell it back to us again, with a few new sight gags and not much else.

Oh My God, This Is A Hilarious Video

This video (link) has to be one of the funniest most immature things I've seen on the internet in a long time. I laughed out loud at this, and there isn't a lot on the internet that can make me do that. If nothing else, watch it just for the shock value. Author's home page. I did not get around to watching the A.F.I. video linked below that one.

I found some old gum in the pocket of a vest

I went to put on a vest I purchased about a month ago and I wanted to put a CD I just burned in one of the front pockets. In one of those pockets I found this gum you see here. I have no idea how old it is, but there are a few hairs protruding from the side of the packaging. Fucking ill.

Here's the vest:

Last.fm - I love you. But why are you so wildly inaccurate?

If you scroll down the right side of this blog you'll see that I added my Last.fm weekly artists chart. Last.fm (link) is a website / program that watches your favorite music player in Windows, Linux, or OSX and sends the tracks you play to a website. On this website all of the information is compiled and you get a nice chart that shows you your listening trends and it will even recommend you other stuff to listen to based on what your tastes seem to be. There are other features too...but to me this is the most important. I only wish that it was more accurate. As it stands, it makes no fucking sense most of the time and it tells me all this wrong information. Apparently from Dec. 25 to Jan 1 I only listened to 89 different tracks. I find that hard to believe. It could be possible that I'm not listening to as much music as I think I am. In any case, I recommend this free service highly. Maybe you'll get better results than I have. I've been using this for quite a while. It's been a year and a few months. I had it back when it was called audioscrobbler. Have fun.

Quick Question For Those Bashing Google About google.cn

Do you guys think that somehow Google will be able to have a localized server for China without complying to the country's regulations and laws? Google is not above the law. This doesn't make them criminals, they are not "red on the inside" (lol at that comment), they're just trying to provide a more stable service to the vast potential Chinese userbase. Most of the results that Google has filtered out of its Chinese domain would have been blocked by the powers that be over there, anyway. So why all the fuss?

Excerpt From A Novel.

I'm reading Stephen King's The Stand (1978) right now and it's pretty good. It's been a relatively long time since I've read a King novel (about 10 months I think). Here is a part that I just read that I found interesting. A character is explaining the possible re-emergence of society in the aftermath of a "superflu" which has, apparently, wiped out most of the human race.

Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Show me a man or woman alove and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent that charming thing we call "society." Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll re-invent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll re-invent warface. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

Wow, This is like the morlocks or something. Kind of.

Story taken from Boing Boing.

"According to Standart daily newspaper under the Bulgarian capital Sofia there's a thousands of kilometres of tunnels built between Roman times and Communist regime. They shelter about 20,000 people - most of them are criminals and bums."

Link

I need to read more work by Burroughs...

Copied and pasted this from a forum post I was reading. Opiates are interesting and scary at the same time. Imagine not caring about life; being a wraith. Wraiths exist in this world, and they are junkies.

I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... Most survivors do not remember the deiirium in detail. I apparently took detailed notes on sickness and delirium...

The Sickness is drug addiction and I was an addict for fifteen years. When I say addict I mean addict to junk (generic term for opium and/or derivatives including all synthetics from demerol to palfium). I have used junk in many forms: morphine, heroin, dilaudid, eukodal, pantopon, diocodid, diosane, opium, demerol, dolophine, palfium. I have smoked junk, eaten it, sniffed it, injected it in vein-skin-muscle, inserted it in rectal suppositories. The needle is not important. Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction. When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Bannistria caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drug of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other narcotic departments.

I have seen the exact manner in which the junk virus operates through fifteen years of addiction. The pyramid of junk, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the street is always thin) right up to the top or tops since there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world and all built on basic principles of monopoly:

* 1--Never give anything away for nothing.
* 2--Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait.
* 3--Always take everything back if you possibly can.

The Pusher always gets it all back. The addict needs more and more junk to maintain a human form...buy off the Monkey.

Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse. Junk is quantitative and accurately measurable. The more junk you use the less you have and more you have the more you use. All the hallucingen drugs are considered sacred by those who use them--there are Peyote Cults and Bannisteria Cults, Hashish Cults and Mushroom Cults--"the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico enable a man to see God"--but no one ever suggested that junk is sacred. There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative like money. I have heard that there was once a beneficent non-habit-forming junk in India. It was called soma and is pictured as a beautiful blue tide. If soma ever existed the Pusher was there to bottle it and monopolize it and sell it and it turned into plain old time JUNK.

Junk is the ideal product...the ultimate merchandize. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy... The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. He pays his staff in junk.

Junk yields a basic formula of "evil" virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite. Assuming a self-righteous position is nothing to the the purpose unless your purpose be to keep the junk virus in operation. And junk is a big industry. I recall talking to an American who worked for the Aftosa Commission in Mexico. Six hundred a month plus expense account:

"How long will the epidemic last?" I enquired.

"As long as we can keep it going... And yes...maybe the aftosa will break out in South America," he said dreamily.

If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street. And stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups," so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no more junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.

Addicts can be cured or quarantined--that is, allowed a morphine ration under minimal supervision like typhoid carriers. When this is done, junk pyramids of the world will collapse. So far as I know, England is the only country to apply this method to the junk problem. They have about five hundred quarantined addicts in the U.K. In another generation when the quaratined addicts often die off and pain killers operating on a non-junk principle are discovered, the junk virus will be like smallpox, a closed chapter--a medical curiosity.

The vaccine that can regelate the junk virus to a land-locked past is in existrence. This vaccine is the Apomorphine Treatment discovered by an English doctor whose name I must withhold pending his permission to use it and to quote from his book covering thirty years of apomorphine treatment of addicts and alcoholics. The compound apomorphine is is formed by boiling morphine with hydrochloric aicd. It was discovered years before it was used to treat addicts. For many years the only use for apomorphine which has no narcotic or pain-killing properties was as an emetic to induce vomiting center in the back brain.

I found this vaccine at the end of the junk line. I lived in One room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removedthem except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of terminalk addiction . I never cleaned or dusted my room. Empty ampule boxes and garbage piled to the ceiling. Light and water long since turned off for non-payment. I did absolutely nothing. I could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out. If a friend came to visit--and rarely did since who or what was left to visit--I sat there not caring that he hads entered my field of vision-- a grey screen always blanker and fainter--and not caring when he walked out of it. If he died on the spot I would have sat there looking at my shoe waiting to go through his pockets. Wouldn't you? Because I never had enough junk--no one ever does. Thirty grains of morphine a day it still was not enough. And long waits in front of the drugstore.Delay is a rule in the junk business. The Man is never on time. This is no accident. There are no accidents in the junk world. The addictis taught again and again exactly what will happen if he does not score for his junk ration. Get up that money or else. And suddenly my habit began to jump and jump. Forty, sixty grains a day. And it still was not enough. And I could not pay.

I stood there with my last check in my hand and realiuzed that it was my last check. I took the next plane for London.

The doctor explained to me that apomorphine acts on the back brain to regulate the metabolism and normalize the blood stream in such a way that the enzyme system of addiction is destroyed over a period of four to five days. Once in the back brain is regulated apomorhine can be discontinued and only used in case of relapse. (No one would take apomorphine for kicks. Not one case of addiction to apomorphine has ever been recorded.) I agreed to unergoe treatment and entered a nursing home. For the first twenty-four hours I was literally insane and paranoid as many addicts are in severe withdrawal. This delirium was dispersed by twenty four hours of intensive apomorphine treatment. The doctor showed me the chart. I had received minute amounts of morphine that could not possibly account for my lack of the more severe withdrawal symptoms such as leg and stomach cramps, fever and my own special symptom, The Cold Burn, like a vast hives covering the body and rubbed with menthol. Every addict has his own special symptom that cracks all control. There was a missing factor in the withdrawal equation--that factor could only be apomorphine.

I saw the apomorphine treatment really work. Eight days later I left the nursing home eating and sleeping normally. I remained completety off junk for two full years--a twelve year record. I did relapse for some months as a result of pain and illness. Another apomorphine cure has kept me off junk through this writing.

The apomorphine cure is qualitatively different from other methods of cure. I have tried them all. Short reduction, slow reduction, cortisone, antihistamines, tanquilizers sleeping cures, tolserol, reserpine. None of these cures lasted beyond the first opportunity to relapse. I can say definitely that I was never metabolically cured until I took the apomorphine cure. The overwhelming relapse statistics from the Lexington Narcotic Hospital have led many doctors to say that addiction is not curable. They used a dolophine reduction cure at Lexington and have never tried apomorphine so far as I know. In fact, this method of treatment has been largerly neglected. No research has been done with variations of the apomorphine formula or with synthetics. No doubt substances fifty times stronger than apomorphine *could be developed and the side effect of vomiting eliminated.

--William S. Burroughs 1955

RIP - The Black Table

I just learned that The Black Table (link), one of my favorite online publications, will cease updating on January 27th, which is just a few days from today. I'm really sorry to see it go. Some of the articles were awesome. Actually most of them were awesome. Everything I read there was awesome.

Gaim 2.0.0 Beta 2 is out!

Tell your AOL Instant Messenger client to go fuck itself!

Gaim website: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

Link to download Gaim 2.0.0 beta 2 program (Windows): http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gaim/gaim-2.0.0beta2.exe?download