For reasons wich are not entirely clear to me, I recently created a last.fm account. You will now be able to not only see what music I'm listening to, but also to witness my irregular hours, in real time. Such fun!
From now on, I will of course feel obliged to only listen to songs you don't like by bands you've never heard about.
If you belong to the subset of people who still consider SMB3 one of the finest pieces of video game ever made, you might want to check out Mario Adventure. This "hack" is in reality a complete game unto itself, with new worlds, new levels, new monsters, but based on the SMB3 engine. It's fun, insanely difficult, and 100% Mario. You can download the rom here. All you need is a NES emulator and you're set.
A Homage To Calvino, Or Somesuch
So, a man enters a bar. (No, it's not that kind of — no, let me finish — it's not a joke story.) He's quite tall, wears a black leather jacket, looks agitated, and the first thing he does is turn to another patron (a stout man in a teal top hat and matching suit, God knows who came up with that one) and say: »I met the Reader today. An hour or so ago. Out on the street. We have a serious problem.« The reason he speaks in these short puffs of sentence is that he is winded from running.
»Serious how?« rejoins Teal Hat (?!? Jeez! You ought to take a tire iron to the Writer). »Uh, I mean, how serious?«
»Our entire universe may cave in, serious.«
»Oh. That is problematic. Specify!« Teal hat? TEAL?
»He's thinking of writing on his own.«
»Oh dear. That—«
»And he's sitting over there now.« They evince no real astonishment. »He's thinking about how ridiculous your suit is, see?«
»Hey! What's wrong with my attire?«
»It makes him want to change stuff, to go editorial, and what's worse, to leave and write his own, better stuff. It makes him think he can easily be a Writer himself.«
You sigh, you crumple the paper into a small ball, you knead it into a kind of little rocket with your fingertips, and into the trashcan it goes with fifty-eight others. This is why proofreading is necessary, you reflect as you pull the next piece of halfway scribble-covered paper from off the pile.
Teal? What can you have been thinking?
An Excerpt
I traversed the seas in a balloon. (I was trailing the airship home of the Secret People. They were from the future.) The water surface was full of building façades, turned outward. After a while of flying, they became real buildings. Many were Eiffel Towers in various scales - from the height of my balloon to many times the real tower. I realized the Secret People had erected these façades and buildings to hide the hidden country in the center of that sea, the country over which their home carried them on its huge rotors. After all, if there were buildings covering the horizon, who would ever think to go see what was there?
It was the perfect concealment.
It just occurred to me that I have not yet mentioned The Ditty Bops to you, Dear Readers. So now I do.
Listen to the songs, especially all of them.
The writings of Scott Aaronsson are interesting and frequently humoristic. Take special note of the essay on large numbers, which equips you with new ways of telling your friends just how much better than them you are.
I'm currently in the process of picking out a hat. It's harder than it may sound; I haven't really a hat head, and there are some demands to be considered; the hat cannot be to expensive (I'm a student, after all), it must be broad-brimmed and preferably something that can take a little wear and tear.
So why a hat, the reader may ask, and why these strict specifications? Well, I need something to go with my long coat, hunting-rifle (or shotgun - I'm not picky) and big sonuvabitch knife that will most likely be my outfit of choice in a few years, after global warming has destroyed all of civilization and the remaining scraps of humanity has been forced to battle for survival in a harsh, unforgiving postapocalyptic landscape.
As far as fashion is concerned, the greenhouse effect is a vastly preferable apocalyptogenic agent (neologism of the day. Feel free to use it) to nukes. Dramatic and romantic as the latter may be; being forced to drag around a hazmat suit - or even just a gas mask - isn't really that sexy. Furthermore, cancer can to nasty stuff to your skin. In that light, we should be happy that global warming is the impending doom of our generation.
I implore you all to immediately go out and buy your own hats, before the floods and the hurricanes collapses the international hat distribution network. Oh, and while you're at it, you'd better buy a rifle and a big sunovabitch knife too, because if you haven't and we meet after the shit has hit the fan, I won't really be able to afford not to kill you and take your hat. And, y'know, sell it to someone who remembered to buy the rifle but forgot to buy the hat.
Yes, that's all.
