Hey liveblog. I turned 21! That is pretty impressive I guess.

Is it a little worrying that when someone asked me the other day what I was doing with myself (apart from class and working), I couldn't think of anything?

I think maybe it is worrying.

PS: THOUGHTCRIME EXPERIMENTS came out, and you should read it.

On a tape I found when looking for something to record onto with the 4-track I picked up:

UNIDENTIFIED POP SONG IN BACKGROUND
CHILD'S VOICE: Mum! ... Mum!... Mum!... It's not working!
WOMAN'S VOICE (my mother): What?
CHILD'S VOICE: I can't hear anything!
MY MOTHER: You have to rewind it first.

---

CHILD'S VOICE: ...and one for the little boy who lives down the laaane!
MY MOTHER: Will, you want to say anything?
ME, VERY YOUNG: Yes. A B C D E F G, H I J K el-em-en-o-pee. Q R S, T U V, W, X, Y and Z. Now I know my A B Cs, next time won't you sing with meeee!


In other news, my internet wasn't connecting when I got home tonight, and I felt like half a person.

Also:

What is it with everyone totally stealing my ideas? Sort of?

There are just a lot of clockwork monestary stories going around at the moment (NEAL STEPHENSON, I AM LOOKING AT YOU).

Aww, Neal Stephenson, you know I don't mean it.


I guess mainly I am just sad that now if I write a novel that's horoligious people will call me derivative.

HACK THE PLANET AUGHGHGH

Would anyone be up for a rousing game of play-by-email Diplomacy?

The Archimandrite sighs, and shuts the empty cabinet with a click. It echoes around the Winding Hall as a worried murmur erupts from the small congregation of engineers.

"Brothers," says the Archimandrite, solemnly, "The Machine God is winding down."

Paler than the others, Midian is staring at his feet – at the intricate spiral floor mosaic reminiscent of the great mainspring housed deep below them.

Around him, everyone is babbling predictions, calculations: how long they'll have, without the keys to maintain their systems, before the torque runs out.

And how long will I have, wonders Midian, without the key to my heart?

---

I grew a beard for a play! Then I shaved it.
ALSO: my team came 8th out of 89 teams at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, South Pacific Region, 2008!

So I found this through Fleen.com - it is called Hero and it is like, whoa.


Anyway, my exams are over now so instead of school I work all day. Or I sleep until the afternoon and then work for two hours and pretend I worked all day if anybody asks me. And I want my GRADES back already, goddamn it.

In other news, my electric razor broke, so for a week I grew some sweet stubble. Like, half the hair that comes out of my chin is ginger! This was news to me. Exciting news. But if I want to keep living rent-free at home, says my mother, I'm not allowed to grow a beard.


Aside to kisuchi: Transcription is, as always, ongoing. Two years, indeed!

I just realised that I Will Possess Your Heart (apart from meandering) is a song about stalking.

Seriously, Ben Gibbard, what were you thinking?

"How I wish you could see the potential of you and me"?
"Outside your window, I see my reflection as I slowly pass"?
"You reject my advances and desperate pleas/
I won't let you let me down so easily"?


The video doesn't do a very good job of rebutting this, either.


EDIT: Brendan points out that it's on purpose. Well, good job on getting the message across, anyway, Ben Gibbard. I totally caught on eventually. High fives all round.

PEE ESS EVERYONE: I have a pdf of Nobilis (to tide me over until the Eos Press re-release - why didn't I think to do this earlier?). When I finish reading it I will be foisting it upon you all. That is all.

This shouldn't surprise me, but contrast and compare ECTOMOPLASMOSIS and Scary-Go-Round. Come on, internet, indulge me, I listen to your crackpot theories all the bloody time.

Yes! They both use the free lovecraft society fonts. High five, you are just as nerdy as me.

The only thing lamer than having your younger brother accidentally install a host of trojans on your computer and spending the next 18 hours straight at the monitor trying to fix it all is realising, once that is done, that your computer will not recover and pretty much needs a new OS install anyway.

When you have a huge programming assignment due in two days.


I will show you what I have been tabletting when I have a computer capable of running photoshop without groaning like an octogenarian on a treadmill! And is recognising the internet connection.

The only thing more exciting than getting the call telling you if you got called back to a second audition is getting the call telling you if you were cast.

Even when it turns out you haven't been cast.

This actually makes me feel really inferior to all my high school theatre contemporaries, since it seems like all the ones who've auditioned for Young and Hungry ever have gotten in. And I thought I did a pretty good job of my audition, so, whatever.

Back to writing my Javadoc for the assignment I have due tomorrow, I guess.


In other news, I saw Iron & Wine live last night and it blew my goddamn mind.

Not sure what's going on here. Potentially leading towards a hard-boiled steampunk epic set in SPACE PARIS.

Also I've been playing a lot of Professor Layton lately, which hasn't been helping my productivity.

Guys listen to this cover of sexyback! It is amazing!

Do not listen if you can't help but like songs with chimes.

Did you hear about the baker who spent six months working at a jam factory?

He was on sconedment.

I've been playing with my tablet some more.

( Does this still count as Fanacrusis? )

(Second in a series)

Q. How do you know whether the light in the refridgerator really turns off?

A. The short answer here is "you can't", but that's the answer people give when they think you're not ready for the possible consequences of finding out.

Consider two rooms connected by a hallway. In one room is the switch to the light in the other. If you flip the switch, how are you to know if the light is on, or not? Answer: You need an accomplice - and an empty refridgerator.

If you care for your younger brother, don't use him. Instead, find his scrawniest friend. Promise the friend a reward (beer is fine), but remember that you'll have to give it to him in advance: you can't risk your results being skewed by greed. So nothing too strong, ok?

Give the kid a pen and paper and tell him to climb into the refridgerator. Close the door and wait thirty seconds. The door will stick a little, but when you finally get it open the child will have disappeared. On the back wall of the refridgerator, gouged painstakingly into the moulded plastic, will be your answer.

But are you going to be satisfied by the word of some punk kid? Jam yourself in there and pull the door closed and find out for yourself!

EDIT THE NEXT DAY-ISH: Lee courteously reminded me of disney's How Things Werk (with your pal, Mr Werks). On top of the fact that it's already been done (better, with a '50s theme) my last one read like pseudo-hitherby and this one reads like an entry of that blog whose name I forget where all the entries ended with something akin to "happy your brother's friend's mother holds you responsible for her child's disappearance day!"

EDIT EDIT: The blog was called Girls are Pretty.

Science time, I think, returns to the void - until I find my own voice for it, at least. I need to concentrate on my tablet anyway, right?

You're right.

You son of a bitch

Do you know how much my parents paid for my orthodontic treatment? Getting infecty now and again is one thing, but shifting my teeth around and fucking up my perfect bite is quite another thing entirely.

You may have no shame, sir, but I want you to know that I will have no mercy.


Yours etc.

Excuse me while I get all whiny and arrogant for a second.

The problem with wanting to be a creative person on the internet is that my name is already taken. And not just taken, gentle reader - taken by someone who is ludicrously famous. Son of a bitch even has the same middle initial. There is no justice.

So nobody will ever be able to google for me. Possibly ever. And I can't change my name to Bill, either, because there's a pop culture expressionist with - Bill, I hate to knock a name-buddy but it has to be said - atrocious facial hair.

Of course, being unable to have www.firstnamelastname.com (though I could still use .co.nz or .net if I was desperate - ".net! It's the indie .com!") solves the real problem here - having an apostrophe in my name. What is the deal, internet. What do you have against apostrophes.

Seriously.

Not having to deal with that means I just have to come up with a suitably humourous pun on 'will' (or, god forbid, find a screen name).

Curse you, William the Conqueror and Niall Noigiallach, for being such popular kings!


Though, on the other hand, something could be said for internet anonymity - Gibson's later books have characters googling each other willy-nilly; in twenty years time all our dirty laundry will be airing on the internet and I'll be able to giggle in internet obscurity.

EDIT: thank you, wikipedia - "history records an event in Normandy in 1171 where Henry the Young King held court for Christmas which included 110 knights named "William"-- the Williams had gathered in a room and refused to allow any one to eat with them, unless they were named William."

As the shorts were running, Rosanna, sitting behind me, kicks my chair and says "Dude! What are you doing at a chick flick?"

Juno was not a chick flick. It was a delightful coming-of-age comedy. So, if Rosanna had instead asked, "Dude, what are you doing at this delightful coming-of-age comedy" I could have replied "mentally high-fiving myself for seeing a totally awesome movie." Of course, that would have had to have happened after the movie, so maybe not.


And since I know you guys don't trust me anyway, Rotten Tomatoes says 93!