The Unavoidable.

I am forced to admit that, if given the opportunity and a reasonable chance of eluding police detection, I would with a wide maniacal Joker's grin, strangle to his death the freecreditreport dot com guy. But first -- first! -- I would make him apologize. Also that insurance lizard, I'll strangle him too.

Oh happy happy joy!

I've seen most Seinfeld episodes dozens of times, maybe more; I'm retarded like that. But the other day -- imagine it! -- I saw a Seinfeld episode I had never seen before! My mind was practically crippled by the unexpectedness of it. This was an episode from the generally weak first season in 1990, before the characters were fully fleshed out, when the sets were slightly different, and everything feels a little cheap in comparison with later seasons. This episode -- the second one they made, the fourth to air -- was called "Male Unbonding", and was about Jerry trying to break up with an annoying (male) friend. The best part was the origin of Kramerica Industries and Kramer's "Make Your Own Pizza" idea. Did I really need to just write all that? Can't I have a life too?

It is June 6 and Google is commemorating the anniversary of Tetris in their logo. Tetris. Is this the result of extraordinary bad taste, common ignorance, or some kind of deeper political statement? In any case, Google: I direct my morning urine toward thee.

I've gotten to the point where I so loathe movie theaters I'd usually rather wait a few months for a DVD release rather than venture out to a multiplex. It's the other creatures in there that disturb me, all crowding together in communal consumption of entertainment, each full of their odors and noises, they repulse me. In order for me to remain calm I must have the three seats to either side and those immediately in front of and behind me empty of any sort of ape creature (and this applies even to anyone who came with me -- I'm a lousy date) or I get claustrophobic (anthropophobic actually: a fear of the company of other people, but in my case almost exclusively in movie theaters). So the point is, I don't go to theaters to see movies. I didn't go for the new Indiana Jones or the new James Bond. I even skipped Watchmen, a film I've been waiting to see for over a decade. It has to be a very special movie to lure me out to a theater, like a new Tarantino or a special screening of Blade Runner. Or a new Star Trek.

I'm too lazy to compose paragraphs now, so here are some bullets re: my ambivalence over the new ST:

<*>It's not that I dislike having a regurgitated Enterprise crew to knock around -- and this one is as good as any -- it's just that I'm not sure *why* we have it. Maybe I haven't been sold on the whole "series reboot" concept; when there are so many great options for new franchises lying around and so many great characters why resurrect this one and these? Marketability?

<*>The villain is yet another rehashed Khan with less charisma (cleverly named Nero of the Romulans). Thank the gods he didn't quote Shakespeare or Melville.

<*>I wasn't seriously annoyed by all the nonsensical science elements, even the black-hole time travel, the magical red matter, and the galaxy-threatening supernova. There's worse in many episodes of each of the TV series.

<*>I usually like Michael Giacchino's music but this new ST score is terrible. Why start over from scratch when you've got music by a great composer like Jerry Goldsmith at your disposal?

<*>The characters plot was much better than I expected; rather than chunking the familiar names together and immediately re-establishing the old Enterprise esprit de corps there were realistic character conflicts and unexpected interactions. I especially liked the way Spock and Kirk came to understand who should be captain; the universe has a way of ordering itself.

<*>Uhura is practically a brand new character in this movie. Her infatuation with Spock is a little odd; maybe it's a reference to this weird scene from the original series. (Incidentally, doesn't the blond beehived Yeoman Rand in that clip look like Chloe from 24?)

<*>The slapstick elements felt out of place (especially Kirk's allergic reaction and Scotty in the tubes)

<*>Once again we are proffered the concept that Kirk is a "genius". Why does Kirk have to be a genius? In fact, we have Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and now with the new movie also Uhura and Chekov -- all geniuses. Why can't normal people crew a starship?

<*>There was too much territory to explore with a mere movie. I would rather have this as a series. Now get busy.

7 out of 10

I see somebody is adapting this Robert J. Sawyer novel to a series. I happen to have read this book, along with one other Sawyer novel (Calculating God), and don't recall enjoying it as much as I do an average breakfast. Sawyer is a mediocre writer who doesn't seem to know much about the real world, writes prose doodles to fill out his manuscripts, but does come up with some interesting story ideas. Now he's sold one to TV, and if the adaptation takes some liberties with the original it might actually have promise as a series.

What is amusing about reading Sawyer, a Canadian, is that Canada has a much higher profile and importance in the world of his fiction: whenever a list of current events is required, the list inevitably includes a headline or two from Canada; characters have to travel to Canada, and when they're there they must remark on how clean and orderly everything this (unlike that foul smelling America down south of them); and Canadians contribute all kinds of wonderful things to the world. Which is funny because when I think of great things Canadian I struggle after naming Rush, Kids in the Hall, and... what? Trailer Park Boys? Ice Hockey? Oh Canada.

Jaunty Jackass! I had some sound problems with Flash applets (silent YouTube videos, etc) after upgrading but they were resolved by reinstalling Flash. I like the new notification system, except that Pigeon now adds a new, unnecessary icon to my first desktop panel. I assume the two are related.

The main thing that irritates me about Jaunty is the decision to include Amarok 2.x in the repos instead of Amarok 1.4. Amarok 2 sucks. It sucks exactly as hard as Fruity Pebbles in a bowl of grapefruit juice. Also -- also! -- the new Amarok version has been named "Amarok" instead of "Amarok2" or "AmarokSuck", so you can't just pick one or the other in the repos; you have to jump through flaming hoops of burning fire in order to get the good one installed and the bad one banned. Here's the bug ticket (Won't Fix). Bah! KDE 4 strikes again!

Holy Brunhilde! Valkyries with light sabers!?

This weekend I watched the pilot for Caprica, the prequel (or sorts) to Battlestar Galactica, and while my loathing for Ron Moore lingers on, and collects like bile in all the inner nooks of my crannies, I must admit to being very favorably impressed with it. Caprica strikes me as a much better platform for exploring the kind of issues Ron & Company attempted in BSG. Leaving the finale aside, my essential gripe with BSG was that the writers persistently attempted to tell stories that the fundamental plot situation -- the final desperate fragment of humanity fleeing from a vast, inhuman killing machine -- was unable to support. Every attempt by the writers to explore some current-event story idea (politics, religion, class struggle, terrorism) that did not directly address and derive from that basic desperate situation would inevitably be undermined by its inherent implausibility. No so for Caprica. Caprica has much more potential for mirroring our own civilization, and for reproducing our own sets of conflicts in its fictional world (which was, I suspect, the reason for its invention). And as an added special bonus: we get to find out how Ron will eventually screw it up.

Upon a late afternoon while lurking near or about the refuse dumpster at the foot of the upper parking lot, one will often chance upon a ghoul local to our community disposing of a small, tightly tied bag. On most days the ghoul, a scraggly-faced old woman who lives on the other side of the Complex, will drive her gold car to the foot of the upper parking lot and park next to the refuse dumpster, there to make her deposit. Day after day the minor spectacle is repeated, and day after day I grow ever more curious: what might the bag contain, and why should it be the same size every day disposed of in exactly the same way?

Yesterday, I could take no more; I must know her secret. So I lingered near or about the refuse dumpster at the foot of the upper parking lot, and feigned casual idleness as the scraggly-faced old woman arrived in her gold car, then produced the small, tightly tied bag and approached the dumpster. My pulse quickened, my anticipation soared. In just a few moments I would have the answer! But then the ghoul paused, and stood for a moment listening, glancing several times in my direction, as if aware that my idleness was feigned and some deeper motive compelled my lingering. Could she guess at my intentions? Would she dispose of today's bag in the usual manner or drive off to a different dumpster? Perhaps I had disrupted her routine forever, simply by observing her take part in it.

But no; she seemed to regain her composure and, per her usual routine, tossed the small, tightly tied bag into the refuse dumpster. She then returned to her gold car, and drove away from the foot of the parking lot, back to her own side of the Complex and whatever fetid hole she dwelled in by night. Now was my chance! Feigning casual idleness as fiercely as I was able, I leaned into the dumpster and rummaged about in there, searching through rancid food, soiled diapers, broken appliances, while beset upon by the foulest of odors. Finally I recognized my prize: the small, tightly tied bag of the old ghoul woman. With trembling hands I untied the knots, unwound the corners of the bag. Now the mystery would be revealed! When I opened the bag, nothing could contain my startlement. I stood gazing into it, shocked and appalled, filled with dread. The bag of the old ghoul woman contained human fingers! Nah, I'm kidding, it was catshit.

I recently had the brilliant idea of moving my Eclipse workspace to a shared FAT32 volume. Months later I tried to package a war archive using Maven and found odd results: the webapp was being assembled with lower-case directory names (meta-inf and web-inf) and therefore not deploying correctly. When I moved the project to an Ext3 volume it assembled correctly. The problem was related to how the FAT32 filesystem was being mounted, and can be resolved by adding shortname=mixed to the array of mount options in fstab. When this option is omitted, it defaults to shortname=lower, which forces filenames less than 8 characters into lowercase.

Ah the days of beer and sweatpants! I spent this week with NCAA basketball buzzing in my background, patiently waiting for that set of conditions that make a game worth watching: a close score with less than 5 minutes remaining. When the alarm for that sounds I set down my e-book, adjust my posture, and root for the team indicated by the result of a coin toss. Sometimes I watched hockey instead.

This weekend included "Earth Hour", which I love because it provides a chance for grumpy malcontents like me to demonstrate their contempt for environmentalism and environmentalists merely by leaving the lights on. Take that, freakos!

I've been reading through the online-available texts nominated for the hugo and nebula awards, and I'm mostly unimpressed. I'm presently about a third into Gaiman's Graveyard Book and I'm thinking about dumping out of it. The Doctorow book, Little Brother, is pretty entertaining, despite some annoying left-liberal biases. None of the shorter form texts have been worth the read. Oh the state of the things!

I'm sure I've mentioned that the Kindle is great for online texts; in past years I didn't bother reading most of the Hugo or Nebula noms because I couldn't stand the e-format. (I was probably better off actually, given the sad quality of most of that stuff.) This week I wrote a little program that cleans up common text issues for Kindle; it replaces non ASCII characters, removes unwanted line breaks, etc. Amazon has a service that does something like this but I'm temperamental enough to want my e-texts exactly the way I want them.

Despite having spent so many thirsty years waiting for it, I still haven't seen the Watchmen movie. It's not the mixed reviews either; I just loathe movie theaters that much, the greedy swine. Still, I would like to see it in IMAX before it expires.

Some fun, huh?

This is a stroke of brilliance. It's the classic Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice hacked into a zombie novel, such that:

Original: IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Hack: IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

And so on. I love this idea. I'm now contemplating The Vampire Madame Bovary....

The goons in my head are compelling me to mention that this week's "Heroes" is much better than in recent months (years actually) thanks to the return of the great Bryan Fuller ("Dead Like Me", "Wonderfalls", "Pushing Daisies", etc) to the head writer's chair. During the course of the episode Fuller gradually fixes numerous little problems that the show has been enduring; it's like watching a skilled mechanic repair a wrecked vehicle. It may not be enough to save the show but it's an impressive attempt. Now maybe I can stop pretending I've stopped watching it.