marathon hour twenty-three: callin it quizits
I just realized that if I stay up any longer, I'm gonna be all tired come Friday, which would make it difficult for me to get horrible trashed on cheap liquor and other less licit intoxicants. Well, actually it would be even easier for me to get blasted out of my mind, but I'd probably pass out right away. So, the marathon is over. Not like anybody gave me any moral support anyway. *sniffle* None of my celebrity guests showed, either. I think it has something to do with me entitling the email invitations "GREAT HOT STOCKS 100% GUARANTEED INVESSST NOW!". I thought the invessst part would have a nice sinister ring to it, like that snake guy on Thunder-Thunder-THUNDERCATS! Apparently not. Taking into account the hours I didn't bother to log, because it wasn't really a marathon for the first twelve hours or so, I've done 36 hours of straight gaming - weak, weak. That's WAY below my average. Must be something in the water.

  posted by james @ 6.12.01

 
sha-ZAM!
Using the actual DNS of my ftp server instead of its literal name, I've finally been able to get through. W00t and such.
If anyone out there has a REAL server for me, lemme know, lemme know!

  posted by james @ 6.12.01

 
marathon hour nineteen: geo-mc-goddamnit
Geocities' ftp server has been hiding from me since hour 16. It's now hour 19. Juffo-Wup grows my fibres and I grow turgid! Well, I can still update it on my side, you guys will just get a major flood of updates when I can finally post them. I've hit my 'third wind'... for a time there, I was almost passing out, but I moved my computer back onto my desk... using it while lying down was just too risky. The odds of my falling asleep while sitting up are a bit lower, I think.
Anyway, I'm going to start dicking around with Photoshop for a while during the next week... maybe right now. Need to get back up to skill. Do what I have to do, and all that. I have no idea when my finals are, I hope they're not tomorrow. Or today. That'd be pretty rough.
Tonight's episode of the Tick was pretty weak; I'm getting sick of it. The old animated Tick was so good! The witty banter was so... animated. Putty just doesn't fit the role in my mind. Anyway, time to go do something other than type... I don't remember what I had in mind, as I currently seem to have the attention span of a marble, but I'm sure I'll find some way to entertain myself.

  posted by james @ 6.12.01

 
corollary
For those of you wondering what kind of things I'm into, I think I'll drop a few crumbs. An html output straight from Winamp of my mp3 playlist can be found here (when I get my new computer, I may use my old on as a dedicated shoutcast server! Wheeee!). Of course, this is supplemented by my not-very-extensive at all cd collection, which contains such tidbits as some semi-old Portishead and MGB's (not to be confused with MBV's) Loser Anthems.

I also am a mad fan of online humour sites, ranging from SA to PA. One of my favorites is the strip Bobbins. It is critical that anyone visiting here give the link some clickage... I wanna win the christmas card! Anyway, feels like videogame time. Buh-bye.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour sixteen: six hours of tv
Powerpuff Girls were on at four, Buffy at five, and the Tick at nine... had to watch all that, of course. Still awake!

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour ten: hour nine is two hours long
More Elysium.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour nine: ...
No news. Playing Elysium.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour eight: things are becoming a blur
The last couple hours went by SO quickly... I can't seem to come up with anything interesting to post... so tired... must sleep...

...in 64 hours.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour seven: worst episode ever!
My roomates are officially up, but seem relatively unconcerned with my goal of 72 hours of logged non-sleeping. Fuzz got back to me, says he actually has played Star Control 2, on my computer and against me no less, but says it sucked because I cheated. Yeah, whatever. Like there are any cheats for multiplayer Star Control 2. Anyway, I'm starting to get kinda tired, so something interesting better happen to keep me awake. Fuzz says I'll pass out soon. Fuzz lies.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour six: uneventful
I'm eating some pie... that's about it for interesting events. I spent the last half hour fixing up the code for the archives section so it'd actually work, albeit poorly. Like I said... I'm kinda tired. For now I'll leave it at that. Coming later: things more interesting than this delicious strawberry-rhubard pie!

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour five: cynicism, cruelty, Krispy Kreme
My roomates seem reluctant to give me moral support. So also do the 'celebrity guests' I invited. I've yet to hear back from Steve Buscemi, Natalie Portman or Chris Farley. Roomate Rob tells me that at least 1/3 of that is because Chris Farley is dead, but I don't believe him! True artists never die, they just go mainstream. I also haven't heard back from Gabe from PA or John from Bobbins yet. *sniffle* At first I thought ok, I'll find some other interesting guests to give me moral support, content, and vital, vital audience. Perhaps Nicole deBoer, I thought, or maybe that guy that played the d00d in Dune. You know, the d00d. With the super-powers and shit. Yeah, you know what I'm talkin about.
But no. In the words of sweet, sweet Portishead, nobody loves me. That's ok, video games will never betray me!

Well, anyway, Fuzz showed up, keeping me awake for another twenty minutes or so before wandering off to play GTA3. I tried to convince him that he should play Star Control 2 instead, but he listened not. Never has Fuzz felt the pure thrill of piloting a VUX Intruder or Androsynth Guardian. Never the raw power of the Ur-Quan Dreadnought or Chmmr Avatar.
Heh, Chmmr. That's a funny name.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour four: inspiration, tragedy
While in the shower, I started humming a little ditty about Al Qaeda, which I fleshed out a bit in the kitchen. Allow me to serenade you:

My name is Osama
I'm a terrorist
I like to blow up buildings
And get Dubya really pissed

I have no respect for human life
But really that's ok
'Cuz neither do the the infidels
Who bomb me every day

I believe my women
Should be neither seen nor heard
They should just follow me around
Like my faithful goat herd

It was shortly after I rhymed 'heard' with 'herd' that I realized my muse had left me, probably somewhere during the first line of the first verse. Alas, I shall not rock out this hour. No, I shall just eat.

At the moment I consume a Pasta Gardens vegetables and pasta thingy. It has all the flavour of KD with broccoli and carrots mixed in, and surprisingly, it's really good. Except for how it's burning my the leg that I'm resting my plate on.

The shower was definitely a good idea. Not only did I get in valuable cleaning time, but it forced me to change my shirt, and lo and behold, my Got Wang? shirt was in the closet. My estimates are that the magical power of the shirt will keep me awake for at least another four hours. And just for those of you at home, I was awake for twelve hours before I started logging, so there. That'll explain why I start going nuts when I'm only on hour 20 or so. Anyway, I await the return of my muse. I asked as it was leaving; on the way out the door, it said sometime along the lines of 'real soon'.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour three: fearful imagery
I'm going to take a shower. However, to wipe that image out of your head, let me point you towards Penny Arcade, whose strip of the day is both funny and funny. Fuck! I need a thesaurus. And a shower.

If you hurry, you might catch them before today's news is up, thus giving you a new strip with old news... this was an eye-opener for me. It's like when that kid in Who Has Seen The Wind sees the dead two-headed horse, and contemplates God making mistakes and evil existing and shit. It's deep. Go get enlightened, and I'll see about getting some liquor to increase the merriment with.

I'm on aim and icq at the moment, and will be for about another... 69 hours. 'sup3rj4y' and 92554341, respectively. Feel free to pester me and send me free pr0n.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
propagander stirfry
Another stylish propaganda image now up in the gallery, and this one inspired by if not related much to my current plight. Enjoy, this makes three!

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
update
Nor do any nuclear hand grenades exist. You didn't think...? That'd be mean, you know.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour two: decisions, decisions
Before me sit two socks. Not matching in colour, nor in texture, but in one quality they are equal: they're both clean. Do I don the socks now, knowing full well that in a few hours I'll take a shower, and then the socks will be dirty, and I won't want to put them on? Do I save them for later, when I have gone mad from having freezing toes? I am reminded of Wile E. Coyote. He too had decisions to make, but the end result was always the same: he got annihilated in some entertaining way. Life is like a coyote-roadrunner cartoon... you can pick your trap, but you'll never catch that fucking bird, and in the end you've only picked the method of your demise. Or something. Personally, I'm going to fill my blood with tiny robots that keep me working at all times, and I'll ride on a motorcycle and fight people with a big pole, and develop indomitable psychic powers, until I finally grow into a gigantic blob and have to be weakened by an orbital ion cannon and finally defeated by my best friend with a nuclear hand grenade. Odds on that aren't high in the near future, since none of my friends have nuclear hand grenades, nor do any exist. As you can see, however, by selecting the path of near-immortality and godlike power, I have condemned myself to death by nuclear hand grenade.

I'm gonna put on those fucking socks.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour one: this fucking sucks
I'm stuck now for 72 hours, as I've declared it a marathon. Now I have to update every hour, which means that with two hours the content of my weblog will like, double. The problem is that Sunday was a laundry day. Monday was my backup laundry day. Tuesday was my backup-backup laundry day. Today... today is Wednesday, and I still haven't done laundry. While this isn't a huge problem at first, as I have lots of most clothing types, I've been out of clean socks since Monday. To illustrate this problem, I've illustrated the problem with Paintbrush. Check it out:

[edit: lost the picture when I changed from geocities to angelfire. sorry.]

  posted by james @ 5.12.01

 
marathon hour zero: rants, flame and pop
Tomorrow (or rather today, as it's now 6am) is the last day of classes before finals for this semester, which is both good and bad. My calculus mark isn't amazing and I really haven't done that great in Linguistics 100A, to tell the truth. Still, in ComSci115 I seem to be at the head of the pack, which is good, because most of the pack are poor programmers. Maybe being at the head of the pack is bad, then. Well, regardless, I decided to celebrate a day early by going and getting not-really-drunk-at-all at Felicita's. The security guys, bless their lazy hearts, didn't card me so Andy and I got in. British Columbia's drinking age of 19 sickens me almost as much as the drinking I do regardless. Unfortunately, my escapades ended with me having not nearly enough beer in me to have fun, but enough to do stupid things, and I ended up buying $80 of groceries, of which $20 worth were Oreos. Maybe that's actually good. I really can't be sure at this point; I've decided to go marathon-styles and not sleep tonight, which is more of the sheer genius you're used to.

I would have been asleep if not for two events, both good. The first was minor, but I had to log in to Elysium to buy my new ship. Goddamned sea monsters ate the last one. Well, that and the game is horribly addictive. So far, marijuana has not been able to replace the addiction; perhaps I'll see if I can get a prescription for methadone.

The second event was much more entertaining. As I do most days, I checked SA for my dose of humour, and found to my delight another 'Awful Link of the Day'. Despite the misleading title, the ALoD is actually NOT updated every day, and so on the days that it is I rejoice and celebrate with Jones and My Bloody Valentine. After grabbing some cream soda from the fridge and turning on the stereo, I followed the link, ostensibly to TheWorldAccordingToMe.com. Yeah. More like TheWorldAccordingToAnIdioticNazi.com. Reading through the pages gave me a good laugh, a headache and a sick feeling in my tummy. After posting a rather polite 'You are an idiot' style paragraph in his forum, which was quickly topped by hundreds and hundreds of goatses (that will NEVER exist in link form upon this page) I noticed a section of his website entitled 'Hate Mail', and entered with glee.

The section itself held a half dozen flame messages he'd received and his responses (rebuttals, if you will; re-ass-als, if that tickles your fancy). Intrigued, I read on. The flame he'd gotten did seem pretty low-brow; however, his rebuttals were even worse. Deciding to eschew sleep in favor of putting people down to make myself feel better (something I learned in kindergarten) I promptly fired off a more intelligent hate message - a rebuttal of his rebuttals, even! Oh, the irony. It reminds me of this one time I was watching Friends, and some of the guys didn't want to go to this concert because it was too expensive, and the other guys didn't want the first guys to come because they hate poor people, or something. That's the hegemonic capitalist ogligarchy for you... those Friends also hit socio-political theory right on the nail. That's why I watch them all of whenever I can't avoid it. Quickly downing a few shots of egg nog to harden my nerves, I spellchecked the email and sent it off - through Hotmail, even, as @home seems to now be defunct and my @shaw.ca address isn't ready yet.

Feeling all puffed up with my self-superiority, I entered again the guestbook to laugh at the tens of SA-goon entries that had been posted while I was flaming. Moving further back in time, I finally reached the first dozen posts, the ones from before SA had found the site! I was shocked to find out that not only did he have a fan (possibly an imaginary friend, I can't be sure) named Brian who helped him with the site, but a human being had actually given his site props! Expecting a laugh, I followed the link to her homepage...

...and was humbled. The web design of pop-sanity was exquisite. Wondering why an intelligent being would offer props to the raving lunatic that is the self-titled 'GreatOneKingStormtrooper2K' of theworldaccordingtome.com, I delved deeper, only to find that the site's title of pop-sanity was not a witty play on words, but a literal description of the contents! While I have nothing against fans of pop music (except, of course, for their horrible taste in music) the combination of coding excellence and pop-music struck a shattering blow to my already fragile psyche. Quickly I loaded up some of The Juliana Theory, cranked the speakers, and blasted the evil thoughts out of my mind.

  posted by james @ 5.12.01