“Courtesy” torgo_x and the Revealer

Hey vegemitelover and brianenigma! Here’s a must attend conference for you.

“Third, pray for God to bless this industry.”

Codependent No More, Motherfucker!

“Only those who die very young learn all they need to know in kindergarten.” — Wendy Kaminer

I am indeed a sheep.

Like others, I am doing that thing in which anonymous posting is allowed and IPs are not logged, so that you can shout into the well whatever you wish, about me or anything else.

Double meat? Hmm… let’s see about that

http://www.aclu.org/pizza

Today, our hosting provider at work decided to give the IP address of our great big fileserver machine to another machine, too. For those of you who don’t do this kind of work, that’s like assigning the same phone number to two people. Chaos followed, with earsplitting clown music playing.

Speaking of earsplitting, Tile Guy is currently doing the moldings which involves short loud episodes of sawing at irregular intervals and occasional surprisingly loud bangs. I think I am going insane. There, good, I am insane now.

I’m reading Wendy Kaminer’s Sleeping With Extraterrestrials which is another pretty good but disappointing attack on the New Irrationalism. She has a finer hand and a more sympathetic eye, but it still ends up being 250 pages of Stuff Wendy Can’t Stand, rather than a nice tight organized argument for or against a particular view of the world. I wish she had concentrated more on official insanity like police use of psychics or the acceptance of various mad beliefs in the medical and mental health fields.

And now, I quote the immortal Schwern, who wrote in a haiku about summer years ago:

It’s too fucking hot
Living in a hot, wet sponge
It’s too fucking hot

A distinctive metallic taste in my mouth.

I don’t know whether to be enraged or defeated. Twenty-five years of rejection, another thirty, and then death? A variety of shitty consolation prizes? For every it wouldn’t work, for every I’m not ready, for every you’re a friend, for every sorry I just don’t think so, for every embarrassed shrug I want to throw a punch. Any 17 year old kid in town is ahead of me. I watch generations of friends age past me into stable happy lives and I burn. I’ve always been ugly and gawky and weird and now I’m old on top of it. Go ahead and twist that sneer of distaste into a concerned and friendly supportive smile. I am not fooled, even if you are. Go stick some pretty, well-adjusted boy between your legs if you want but don’t ask me for an avuncular smile; they’re all gone.

I always knew I was Nick Carraway, but I never expected to be Caliban.

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

–Wilfred Owen