Played a really good game of go tonight. I lost, but I played better than average so I'm happy about it. This might be the first game I can feel good about submitting to the go teaching ladder.

Always wanted to learn aikido, now more than ever. I think I see a lot of its precepts in go.

Holy crahp. I just got an email that begins with:

Has your cum ever dribbled and you wish it had shot out?
Have you ever wanted to impress your girl with a huge cumshot?

Actually, no. I can't say I've ever thought to myself "man, I bet she'd REALLY impressed if my load hit the headboard like a ball peen hammer!"

WHO COMES UP WITH THIS SHIT?

So ...apparently AIM wasn't down, something was up with my connection. Couldn't figure it out so I just got on the phone with tech support. Reset all the hardware, boom, works. Sure, it's fixed. But I still don't know what the root of the problem was and that bugs me a little.

Long day tomorrow. I'd better not !@#$ing oversleep.

(Finally) installed a computer for a client so her workers could check email from the front desk instead of the info requests being printed out by the owner and sneaker'd over. I only charged her (roughly) half of my old rate but (a) I knew this was a budget job going into it and (b) she's been sending me referrals. And (c) work is work.

Picked up a pay-as-you-go cellphone with the full intention of only using it as an answering service with the nice side bene of having a cellphone if really needed. Tomorrow I can design business cards and boom, I'm semi-legit.

A lot of things are beginning to gel.

I'd like to live someplace where there is a good go community, a solid aikido school and a community college wouldn't suck now that I consider it.

Been thinking about the futility of planning anything overseas until my daughter turns eighteen. The current plan is to lay low for the next 7 years, save up a decent bankroll, get a degree and teach English overseas when 2012 rolls around. What?? I'll be 40. ... Holy shit I'll be 40...

Whatever. =)

Oh yeah -- I lost about 10lbs. Been sticking to my diet like gangbusters. Every try to stick to a diet when you're stoned? If I can do this, I can probably achieve world peace.

Most of you probably know that Grand Theft Auto San Andreas has a sex scene embedded in it. You have to download a modification from a third party to actually see it, but the moralists are at it again, regardless.

Earlier this week, the House voted 355-21 for a resolution asking the FTC to investigate the company. Last week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, asked the FTC to investigate Rockstar, saying the company had "gamed the ratings system" by concealing sex scenes in the game that can be unlocked by computer programs available on the Internet.

This is a little like blaming the cable box manufacturer when your kid downloads a hacking tool to bypass the password feature and watches pr0n all night.

You can't access the scene unless you modify the program in a way that the developers never intended. It simply wan't published that way, so how are you going to blame them for content that can't be seen without hacking?

Oh, if only we had as much energy for tackling, say, hunger.

AIM seems to be down. For the last day, too. Grr.

Went to Soulstice just to get out of the house for a bit. Just as I'm about to walk out the door, crack bang boom, tons o rain. Gr. Fuckit, it's just rain.

Get there, yap with the local denziens, smoke a bowl, finish by watching the storm blow out to sea at dusk. Good timing.

So I know I'm a bit behind the curve on this one but Revenge of the Sith. Holy crahp. It all just fits right into place, doesn't it? Kind of strange for the most recently-released movie chapter to be ending where my childhood began.

Computer prepped for client. Check.
Go games played. Check.
Chiropractor. Check.
Cleaned room. ... Working on it.

So ...this is weird. My varicose veins have all but disappeared. Well, to anyone else my leg would look a bit blue but really, either my diet or the chiropracter visits have done a great deal of good. I'm leaning toward the chiropracter because their job is to get the spine to not pinch things, which can't help but assist in a bloodflow sense. After all, my first incidence of DVT occurred just below my pelvis. This is precisely the area the chiropractors worked on.

Whatever. It's the first time in about a dozen years I haven't had a swolen leg, often painful, occasionally necessitating a hospital visit.

I've discovered a VERY powerful concept in the game of go. It's somewhat based upon the aikido idea of 'ma ai.' Long story short, ma ai is the concept of keeping a distance from the enemy such that if they're going to attack, they must commit to that attack fully.

In go, I've been learning to "throw away" stones, force a manditory reaction by my opponent. Then I build up the decoy, incursioning stones just enough to continue the ruse. While they're working to kill the stones I have no intention of saving, I build a larger, more stable area.

It's a hell of a technique. It works because people have this natural inability to not write off anything. If stones invade, those stones must be quashed, period. It's like playing with your cat with a laser pointer. They're so fixated upon the dot, they lose all peripheral vision.

Tomorrow I install a system for a client, get paid, pick up my paycheck, pick up a prepaid cellphone, a domain name and have some business cards made. Then I'm actually running my own business.

Christ, I hope I don't screw this up. Know my weak spot? Crappy financial common sense. Hm...

I'm taking a cue from a friend and going on an "herbal hiatus," and for similar reasons.

Having said that, I just beat a 14k player in go (I'm 21k) while severely, severely plastered. I'm amused. And, I might add, a bit smug. =D

I just started a new business. An on-location, cycle-only technical support/hookup thing. Long story short, I installed a NIC card for a customer where I work, she happens to run an inn, she told all the local inns about me, they started calling me, they started telling all their friends and now I'm getting 1-3 calls per week on a regular basis.

People in this town will hire you for $25/hr to hook up their DVD player. I'm not trying to be derisive so much as point out that when you've got as much money as some of these people do, it eventually reaches a point where spending $30 and 30 seconds on the phone with me is preferable to spending five minutes behind a television trying to figure the shit out.

Me, I can't even fathom paying someone to hook up my computer. But then again I do eat at Dunkin Donuts occasionally and there are problably people who are so poor that the idea of paying someone to make a sandwich seems pretty outlandish.

To each their economic caste. *shrug

You remember the guy who chewed me out for charging too little, about 1/5th of what he charges? Well, I took his advice, raised my rates to a flat $30/hr ($25 for AV hookup, less chance for disaster) and I'm having business cards made. I bet you a wooden nickel his head explodes when he finds out. Not my goal, but certainly funny to think about.

Oh, so the name of the business: Two Wheels Good. Orwell + Bikes. Let's see who notices.

Rick James has been running on the wheel for the last 60 minutes. He is the Jim Fixx of the mouse world.

You know, if I didn't quit learning the guitar, I bet I would know Santeria by now. That makes me sad. Maybe I should stop quitting shit...

"The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit."

     - Banksy (a graffiti artist)

Ever have something happen in your life that just comes out of left field, a "wtf just happened?!" moment? This is even past the "my god it's been a bad day, I just want to go to bed so I can wake up to a fresh page" type of event. I don't even know what the fuck to do with myself right now.

I'm quitting Go. I have zero talent for that game. Playing is an exercise in masochism.

In fact I'm really not good at anything, now that I think about it. Can't learn to play the guitar. Can't hold down a job worth a damn. Hell, I can't even find a halfway decent job. I can't muster enough concentration to finish a fucking book, this is my fifth try. And I'm too broke to afford the drugs that will help me concentrate but I'll hate because it turns me into a zombie.

I'm a cash cow for the mother of my daughter.

Seriously. I think it's time to find a room to rent somewhere for the next seven years, plug away at a bachelors and pretty much speak or interact with nobody.

First, everyone, run -- don't walk, run -- to the nearest p2p client and download something by The Stone Roses. Fools Gold and Getting High are excellent but almost everything is.

This brings me to the too-lazy-to-write-this-stuff-myself portion of our blogging.
____

"Hello, this is the President of the United States. Yeah, I find it hard to believe too, but go ahead and leave a message and either Dick or Karl or my Dad or Laura will get back to you. BEEEEEEP!"

"Yeah, boss? This is me, Scott. McClellan. You know, your press secretary? You remember. Kind of balding? The one who always falls for your finger on my chest, then I look down and you hit me on the nose trick? Listen, I got a problem here. Um, this thing is getting weird. I mean, the reporters won't get off the Karl Rove-Valerie Plame story. They're like rabid wolverines and I'm the wounded bunny.

"I did the whole ‘can't comment on an ongoing criminal investigation’ deal like we agreed. And kept doing it. Christ, I must have said it maybe 80 times and they wouldn't stop. The hell is that? I thought we had a deal with these guys. Even Carl Cameron from Fox News! You should have seen him: ‘Does the President still have confidence in Rove?’ I wanted to slap that weasel smile right off his smug mug.

"Some dame even asked ‘who is Karl Rove’ and I totally blanked and launched back into "ongoing criminal investigation" looking like a complete idiot, which I know is what you pay me to do, but holy crap, they just wouldn't lay off. Where's Jeff Gannon when we need him?

“Anyhow, boss, please please please tell me we're not going to run that stupid ‘he never mentioned her name’ defense. I mean, c'mon. He did say Joe Wilson's WIFE worked for the CIA. Which unless the guy is the King of Bahrain or an Elder in the Mormon Church or an Eskimo or something sounds pretty definitive even to me.

"And unh, if you do talk to Mr. Rove about this could you leave my name out of it? To be honest, the guy kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. Remember that time I spilled coffee on his lap, and everyone laughed? Later on he pushed me into my office and started screaming and all the doors and windows shut on their own and the air got dense and I swear his eyes turned all red and stuff and a bunch of papers on a chair burst into flames. They were just a pile of old Posts so it was no big deal, but still ...

"And I've been asking around and I'm not the only one he creeps out. Cheney's chief of staff's head intern told my intern that she walked in on the Vice President and Mr Rove in that big marble bathroom upstairs dancing around waving dead chicken carcasses and using the decapitated heads as finger puppets. And now she's got warts on her eyes, and I know you don't want to know anything unless you need to know, but this is stuff I think you need to know.

“If you ask me, I think we ought to go right back to good old Plan A where we criticize the criticizers. Get McConnell or one of the boys to express their patriotic outrage and say how picking on Karl Rove is endangering our troops and well, you know the routine. That's it, I guess. You know me, I'll do whatever's good for the team. Except for that hot tub thing with Robert Novack. But you were just kidding around, right? Ulp, here comes Matt Cooper. Got to run."

     - Scottie McClellan, Whitehouse press secretary, leaving a message on George W. Bush's answering machine. Stolen wholesale from Alternet.org.

Took a 'ride with a friend who owns a shop nearby. We're turning a corner when a rabbit runs in front of the car, makes it to the other side safe, apparently freaks out and runs back from whence it came. He was driving slow, so there was no danger of hitting it, the experience was just very surreal. Especially given my state of mind.

Got hired to do a simple computer hookup this week. Turned into a DSL right-down-to-the-wiring-in-the-house problem spanning four hours. $160 after tip.

I'm in the wrong !@#$ing business.

Rick James has finally given the wheel a rest.

You can smell it... You can smell it...

Holy shit. I must have missed the part of the press conference where Scotty got bitchslapped:

MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation --

Q Why are you choosing when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MR. McCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish --

Q: No, you're not finishing -- you're not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American people, he did, indeed, talk about his wife, didn't he?

"When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

     - Senator Rick Santorum on the Roman Catholic Church's sex scandals

The liberals are out of touch with America? Rick, you just inferred that some MIT physics professor is somehow culpable when a priest rapes a child. What the holy shit is wrong with you?

In more amusing news, Scott McClellan, the Whitehouse press secretary was hammered like a rented mule yesterday.

Q Does the White House have a credibility problem?

MR. McCLELLAN: Ed, these are all questions that you're bringing up in the context of an investigation that is ongoing --

Q I'm not asking about that.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, it's clear that this is coming up in the context of news --

Q We could talk about WMDs, a whole range of issues.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- in the context of news reports. And I appreciate those questions. And I think you're trying to get at the specific news reports and wanting me to comment on those specific news reports and --

Q But they're news reports that have been confirmed by Karl Rove's attorney, Scott.

MR. McCLELLAN: John, you can keep jumping in, but I'm going to try to keep going to other people in this room, as well. And we can have constructive dialogue here, I think, but that's not the way to do it.

Q It's not my job to have a constructive dialogue, Scott. Sorry.

It's sure nice to see that our 4th branch has finally found its nutsack. Apparently Barney, the Whitehouse dog, was chewing on them.

We now have two mice. Not nearly as cool as Tricia's sugarglider brood (I'M STEALING TWO FROM YOU WHEN I VISIT, WOMAN, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!!), but they're still hilarious. Ella gave them a treadwheel and Rick James runs on it all day long. He'll run for a bit, lose his footing, flatten himself against the side and do a few rotations. I've seen him hit nine loops over the top.

zing zing zing zing zing zing zing
run run run run
zing zing zing zing zing zing zing zing

I'm beginning to think he likes being spun upside down. Either that or he's a complete idiot.

Yesterday Mr. Rick James lost his footing and the wheel flung him into the ceiling. Thud. Got right back on, kept running. Last night I actually had to disable the wheel because all I heard all night was bonk bonk bonk bonk. Rick James being thrown from the wheel repeatedly.

Today I found both of them on the wheel. Mayhem. Sometimes they'd both run simultaneously, each overtaking the other over and over again. Then -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- Rick would run, spinning Peaches over the top. Peaches doesn't miss a beat, runs when she gets to the bottom, flipping Rick over the top. They did this about four times, pausing only to watch me nearly pass out laughing.

Cleaned my room. You know it's gotten bad when it takes three hours, four trips to the sink and more than a few "holy shit, I've been wondering where this went" moments.

For all of you not in my immediate loop, I lasted 2.2 days on the new job. In a nutshell, it involved fundraising for third-world children. Sponsorship, basically, the same as on TV. My job is/was to convince people to give me their credit card information and cough up $24/mo to give a child in some starving country food and water.

After three days of standing in the pouring rain (not under some awning, in the fucking rain) I had only one child sponsored (Maria from Columbia).

Now ...I can take being ignored but I don't much care for being chewed out. One woman got upset when I suggested that we as Americans could not wait for our leaders to solve issues like hunger, debt relief and AIDS and even when they say they'll do something, they eventually reneg⁺. She stormed off, returned to give me a second piece of her mind. I told her to "kiss my ass," walked over to my boss and quit on the spot.

I learned something interesting though. The people you think would stop due to guilt, a conscience, whatever ...don't. And the people you don't expect to stop, do. They may not sign up, but they'll at least hear you out. I'm not sure I even managed a second sentence to anyone wearing a tie.

But ...yeah. Good cause, good concept. Just not something I can do and not kill someone in the process. The only reason I didn't tell her to "fuck off" is because I respect the people I was working with. My anger doesn't need to make their life harder.

Anyway, sleep for me. Tomorrow I launch a new full frontal assault on the IT job market. An acquantance has already tipped me off to a potential opening...
____

⁺ If I remember correctly, Bush promised 6 billion for AIDS years ago. No money was actually given, of course, just promises. Now it's the whole G8 and debt relief and here we are, falling for it again.

[01:19] bodhiFive: http://www.fortune.com/
fortune/fastforward/
0,15704,1081105,00.html?promoid=cnn
[01:19] bodhiFive: Whoa.
[01:21] chip: time to invest in some new stocks
[01:21] chip: hah
[01:22] bodhiFive: Seriously. But it's funny to think that there are people who (likely) sit around and just dream up where the technology could go, whether something else might "collide" with it (political moods, wars, etc) and then declare how feesible an idea it is for the investors.
[01:22] bodhiFive: What a job.
[01:24] chip: there was someone from my school who made a job for himself at motorolla as a professional story teller that painted pictures of what life would be like if things could do x, y or Z
[01:24] chip: he seemed to be doing pretty well
[01:24] bodhiFive: Whoa.
[01:24] bodhiFive: That's fucking AWESOME.
[01:24] chip: yeah
[01:24] bodhiFive: I want that job.

Ella played this song for me, Fall Out Boys' Sugar We're Going Down. I'm not sure how much airplay they're getting but their official website (falloutboys.com) looks like crap, so I'm guessing not too much.

If you haven't heard it, grab it. This song is destined to be one of those that I can't tolerate listening to one more time in a year because I played it into the ground.

I wonder if it would work as a movie trailer song...

A couple of women ordained themselves priests because they believe the whole "men only" rule is bullshit. The Roman Catholic church views the ordination as having no standing at all, saying that Jesus didn't have any female followers, therefore God means the priesthood for men only.

He didn't hire any blacks, Asians or midgets, either. Are they excluded too?

What's funny is how long they have managed to successfully maintain what amounts to nothing short of full-on sexism.

For everyone dying to hear my latest stance on Martha Stewart, I'll just quote her directly.

Asked about the electronic monitoring device she must wear on her ankle -- she has complained repeatedly that it irritates her skin -- Stewart says she knows how to remove it. "I watched them put it on. You can figure out how to get it off," she is quoted as saying. "It's on the Internet. I looked it up." Her publicist's eyes "widened with alarm" when Stewart made the remark.

What a strange profession, PR agents. They're like bullshit shepherds, guiding all the ticking time bombs through the court of public opinion minefield. Oh, fuck. You can't say that. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it matters whether you'll make less money if you say it.

It's hard to reconcile our self-image as moral and god-fearing nation with an unabashed cult of meritocracy -- the more you make, the more you're worth as a human. The part about not having other idols before him comes to mind.

I even get depressed about it from time to time, but you know what pulls me out? Some act of serendipity, something out of the blue that suggests we're not completely fucked yet.

This week it was seeing the cover of GQ. Apparently Jessica Simpson represents everything great about this country.

It's funny because it's true.

As strange as it may sound, welcome to my childhood.

Bush, as most of you probably know, sucks.

Wait, that's not what I meant to say. I meant to point out that Bush is going nowhere on anything. The war in Iraq. The war on so-called "terror." The economy. Social security. Hell, he can't even ram his favorite burn-the-village-to-save-it nominee for the United Nations post through. And, as I've noted, there is precisely zero good news for this president on the horizon.

Which makes me giddy in a way that only Hello Kitty flatware can.

So it is extreme happiness that I announce Dubya is fuxx0red (NYT, registration required) on the O'Connor replacement issue.

Conservatives believe they purchased the presidency fair and square and therefore believe they're owed someone solidly anti-abortion. This is no secret, which is why when the Republicans talk about liberal "judicial activists" I damned near piss myself.

Which brings us to Alberto Gonzales, presumably on the short short list for O'Connor's vacated Supreme Court seat. Gonzales is a sort of wildcard in that his position on many things is in a kind of question mark to everyone but Gonzales. Maybe he gets elected to the lifetime post and then comes out of the closet. Who the hell knows.

The religious right -- again, receipt-holders of the Commander in Thief -- Do Not Like Gonzales. But he's about as conservative as Bush could pick and actually get through Congress.

Let me put it another way; Bush can nominate Gonzales and get him through Congress but it will piss off his backers something amazing. Alternately, Bush could pick someone ultra-conservative, never get them through Congress and actually accellerate his popularity free-fall.

Unless Bush pulls a golden horseshoe out of his ass, I think he may enter historically unheard-of disapproval numbers well before his term ends.

He's fucked. F to the U to the C-K-E-D. I'm loving it. Every bloody second of it.

As a side note, keep in mind that Gonzales penned a legal justification for torture at Bush's behest.

Every day I wake up and marvel to myself that this is my country. It takes a lot of effort to not see what we're doing around the world. Shitloads of effort.