TAO OF DOWINGBA HAS MOVED!
For the last time ever, Tao of Dowingba has moved. It is now at www.dowingba.com. Since I have my own domain name now, even if I move it in the future, you won't even notice!

Update your bookmarks accordingly!

Gig
Gig. Tonight. Mozeba. Port Carling. Be there. Be square.

Cello
Mozeba is (probably) going to become a trio. Yes, that's right: we're going to totally screw up our tried-and-tested group chemistry by adding 33.3% more people. But we're not going into this lightly.

We are a very serious band and we write very serious music that we're err very serious about. We aren't about to dive into something rashly and risk screwing up the past 2.66 years of our lives. We're being careful about it.

Me and Jackson are going to Toronto on Tuesday to co-purchase a cello. We are going to lend the cello to someone for a month or so, and we'll see what he comes up with. If he sucks, or doesn't fit in well with our already very eccentric style, he's out. We take our cello and find a new test subject and repeat ad infinitum.

It'll be weird having a third member in Mozeba. Nobody has ever even been in the same room with us while we practice/write songs. We're a very secretive band. And over the past 2.66 years we've grown to be like each other. We've inherited (some of) each other's personality traits, it seems, as well as writing traits. Or something. Basically we've grown together as musicians over 2.66 years. Neither of us are a whole musician independently. We're each half a musician. This musician's name is Mozeba, and he is growing 33.3% more weighty.

Diagnosis
My Brainworks diagnosis:

Christian, you show a slight right-hemisphere dominance with a moderate preference for auditory processing, an unusual and somewhat paradoxical combination of characteristics.

You are drawn to a random and sometimes nonchalant synthesis of material. You learn as it seems important to a specific situation, and might even develop a resentment of others who attempt to direct your learning down a specific channel.

Your right-hemispheric dominance provides a structure that is only loosely organized and one which processes entire swatches of reality, overlooking details. You are emotional in your reactions and perceptual more than logical in your approach, although you can impose structure and a language base when necessary.

Your auditory preference, on the other hand, implies that you process information sequentially and unidimensionally. This combination of right-brain and auditory modes creates conflict, as you want to process data more rapidly than your natural processes allow.

Your tendency to be creative and free-flowing is accompanied by sufficient ability to organize and be logical, allowing you a reasonable degree of success in a number of different endeavors. You take in information methodically and systematically which can then be synthesized rapidly. In this manner, you manage to function consistently well, although certainly less efficiently than you desire.

You prefer the abstract and are a theoretician at heart while retaining the ability to be practical. You find the symbolism in a great deal of what you encounter and are something of a "mystic."

With regards to your lifestyle, you have the mentality which would be good as a philosopher, writer, journalist, or instructor, or possibly as a systems designer or social worker. Perhaps most important is your ability to "listen to your inner voice" as a mode of skipping over unnecessary steps to achieve your goals.

Not bad.

Plane lands on highway
Plagiarized from The Bracebridge Weekender (no website to link to):

A polit flying an advanced ultralight airplane was forced to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Muskoka Airport in Gravenhurst [this is bullshit: muskoka airport is closer to Bracebridge than Gravenhurst -dowingba] on Tuesday.

Bracebridge OPP said pilot John Morgan, of Toronto, took off for a flight to Haliburton late Tuesday afternoon. He was flying the plane at about 3,500 feet when it lost engine power and began to lose altitude, police said. Unable to regain power, Morgan made a safe emergency landing on Muskoka Road 118, east of Bracebridge near Vankoughnet.

Police said the plane sustained minor damage to its wing after hitting a mailbox during the landing. Morgan was uninjured.

Once in a while a truly bizarre news story shows up in the otherwise bland Bracebridge press.

Colour scheming
It has recently been the subject of a small debate. Grey on grey. The colour scheme from hell?

I absolutely love this colour scheme (the one you are looking at, on this page, right now). This colour of grey, to me, best contrasts the black text. Even better than white. Not only that, it seems to make the text look more "clean" and "professional". I really just love the colour. (It's "#CCCCCC" if you're an HTML geek.)

This colour scheme isn't as good though. But still, you can't beat grey.

Evolving poem
The Tao of Dowingba poem keeps evolving. Here's a good one:

Tao of hours put into your property
would perfer it
oh well. Yes, Jackson, I know
what? to live
my
life is not the
reason even though boring and are treated.
the dispute is obviously
very fact that my mind, off
the reason he is
ruined
because of
my usual picnic table But now seriously considering
the poem generated from the fading
remnants of course, led to them
that bad for the other towns and
we all around so of
humour. 23:54 | postCount ;
Thursday, August
22, 2003 The government,
is
obviously so being lonely because Big Brother is this site 3
times in Canada
nowadays.So that is, wrong.

The weird thing is, August 22, 2003 is a Friday.

The seven stages of Verve
I'm beginning to accept my Verve situation. I don't really care anymore. I'm going to leave it up to fate. If my money arrives, great. If it doesn't, oh well. I'll just happily sputter along on Blogspot for a while. Well, probably forever, I guess. Clearly it's impossible to leave Blogspot. I just want this little drama to end so I can get back to posting interesting entries. And my posting lax will finally end once I can get my mind off of this.

Advantages of staying on Blogger: I don't have to worry about diskspace and bandwidth usage. Only have to change one or two templates when I make changes. Free.

Advantages of moving to Movable Type: No Google ad. Reliable archiving. Individual entry archives. All around better speed. Better domain name.

Edit: Blogspot does have a bandwidth limit. It's 250mb a month. Which seems pretty crappy until you realise that, basically, I'd need to get about 27,000 visitors a month in order to go over that limit. (I've changed my archiving to "weekly" so that people don't have to suck up 50kb every time they want to see an archive, saving me a bit of bandwidth worrying.)

The perfect society
Here is my idea for the perfect society:

Everyone owns a piece or property and can do whatever the hell they want on that piece of property. They make their own laws as they wish, and are responsible for enforcing those laws as they see fit. If you are on someone else's property and you break their laws: good luck, buddy!

In turn, public places (like streets and such) are owned by the government and are governed accordingly. The government make the laws and are responsible for enforcing and such. In this example the government happens to be a Democracy (exactly like Canada's government nowadays). So being on the street would be no different than being on the street in Canada nowadays.

If, for instance, you are standing on your property and shoot someone who is standing on the street (or on another person's property), it would basically be treated the same way international politics are treated. If the government feels like it (and in this Democracy, they certainly would), they would see fit to prosecute you accordingly. That is, if they have the power to. (If your property is powerful enough to defend against the government, my God you should write a book!) If the dispute is against two property owners, then it's up to them to resolve the issue (most likely an all out war, in which case at least one piece of property would surely become available).

If, for instance, a property owner or the government dislikes something another property owner or the government is doing, they treat it exactly like international politics. It's a very simple idea, really. Basically each property is a country.

Is this not the perfect societal structure? Of course, life would be very savage and violent. But I know I would perfer it this way. (This coming from an average white suburbanite who has never tasted any real violence in his sheltered, pathetic life.)

Take it or leave it. You all know I'll go down in history as the next Karl Marx, though. Or at least Groucho.

Verve fiasco: day 14
My money order if floating in some mysterious void between here and Pontiac, Michigan. I mean, you'd think it'd either have arrived at Verve or been sent back here by now (like if I mispelled the address or something). But it's apparently done neither. It's like an 11 hour drive between the two locations. What, did it fall off the truck or something?

I am now seriously considering the fact that my money may never arrive. I may lose this account and all the hundreds of hours I've put into it. I was so eagerly awaiting the official launch of Tao of Dowingba v3.0, but now that seems nothing but the fading remnants of a dream long forgotten.

I guess fate has a sense of humour.

Story introduction
I just had the perfect idea for an introduction to a novel:

"I'm so lonely. There's no one on this green earth for me," I said into the telephone reciever.

"So move to mars," the distorted voice on the other end mused.

"Yeah right," I retorted. "Republic credits don't just grow on trees. And besides, there's no good work on mars; only crappy construction/oxygen pumping jobs. Only a fool would move there until Project Atmosphere is finished."

Lonely talk
All I want to talk about is being lonely and I don't want to talk about being lonely because being lonely sucks and talking about it is boring but I guess I should talk about it for lack of anything better to talk about even though it's boring and being lonely sucks as I stated before but I guess you probably remember that since it's in this very sentence but who knows these days with televisions and radios draining everyone's brain kind of like the "telescreen" or whatever it's called in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four where there's this screen that has propoganda on it and you can't turn it off but you can turn it down but not completely off and it makes everyone all stupid because Big Brother is watching and he don't want nobody to be smart and uppity for some reason even though it means there's no one exciting to talk to because everyone is stupid and Big Brother is obviously very smart but it's ironic because the very fact that he exists is the reason he is obviously very lonely.

12 days of Verve
It's been 12 days and my payment somehow hasn't reached Verve Hosting yet. Whatever.

Tao of Dowingba poem
Here is the poem generated from the text of my weblog:

Tao of my 25mb the
Internet connection. is not sure
why; I
get. read. stuff.
09:2003 Blog mathI
actually 300 entries ,
on for the agenda
for what did before.

Thank you, come again
I suddenly noticed that I am getting frequently repeating visitors who aren't me. I suddenly feel bad for my recent posting lax. Oh well.

(Yes, Jackson, I notice you've accessed this site 3 times in 2 days. You're becoming a regular...err...guy who likes to read stuff.)

So in light of these new circumstances, I will now begin lying like a politician so that people will think I'm cool. Oh wait, sorry, that position has already been taken. Sorry Keith.

Ignorant tourists
I went down to the river today. I've been going down there every day for the past few days. I'm not sure why; I don't swim or anything, I just get an urge so I go. I usually sit on a picnic table and look at the water for a while. Nothing wrong with that. Except the river unfortunately happens to be a hot-spot for tourists. And we all know how I feel about tourists.

So I light up a smoke and walk down to my usual picnic table. But sitting on the grass nearby is some tourists. "Smoking kills more than just you, you know!" yells an intelligence-impaired tourist.

You know what? Fuck you, you stupid, pompous, self-righteous, rich little ignorant bitch. Just because it's open-season on smokers lately doesn't make you a better person than me. You don't think smoking is a disease? You don't think I try to quit every fucking two days. You don't think my life is ruined because of fucking cigarettes and I'm doomed to spend my life desperately trying to cypher money out of the gutters and trashbins of society just to feed your ignorant tourist lifestyle? Do you walk up to people with lukemia and notify them that it's bad for them? Who are you to tell me how to live my life? What did you see when I walked by? Did you see a human-being? No. You saw a fucking cigarette. What do you want me to do? Do you think it's my fucking fault cigarettes kill people? I try to quit every fucking day and all I get in return is a bunch of subhuman tourist bastards yelling at me. Don't whine to me about it. Go to the fucking du Maurier headquarters and burn the fucking place down. What the fuck do you want me to do? Pull a gun out of my pocket and shoot myself right then and there? Do you want me to fucking kill myself on command, master? Tell me what to fucking do, since you're obviously so much smarter than me and on such a higher, next-to-fucking-God plateau that you think you can waltz into other people's towns and notify them that they are wrong. You are right and everyone else is wrong. It's your way or the fucking highway. Other people only exist to please you.

Sorry, bitch. Just pump some more terrorist-funding gasoline into your missile funding SUV and get the fuck out of my town.

The evolution of the Blogosphere
When boredom meets geekiness.

Rocking and rolling
My Internet connection is down, so of course I'm led to assume the rolling blackouts have hit Gravenhurst (where my ISP is located) or wherever they connect to. They said on the radio today that Muskoka/Parry Sound are next on the agenda for the blackouts, as they periodically move them around so as to distribute our meager energy supply fairly. They said "it will come without warning", which I found rather funny, in an ironic sort of way.

Edit: The Internet came back on at 9:13, mere minutes after writing this.

Posting lax
I haven't been posting nearly as much as usual. This is due solely to the fact that I've been spending most of my free time setting up my MT blog. Last night I had alot of entry ideas in my head but the power was out and I was too lazy to get out a pen and paper. Anyway, I guess I'll tell you how my blog has been set up. (The link will be broken probably until Monday. Until then you can use this temporary link to see all the action.)

-The main page should look pretty much exactly the same as it did before.

-Each entry has an individual archive page all to itself, including a section for comments (like most other MT blogs).

-The main archive is a list of months, each linking to a page with an entire month's worth of entries on it (each entry having a PermaLink to the individual archive page).

-I have not yet added a trackback feature and I'm not sure if I ever will. I do like the concept of trackback, and plan to utilize this concept (by automatically trackbacking others' blogs), but I'm not sure if I want to see what others are saying about me.

-I plan to add an "about" page but have been too lazy to do so yet.

-I am leaning towards not adding a hit tracking program to the site. I think that I don't want to be influenced by the amount of readers I get. My ego can't stand such fattening punishment. Also, I'd like my site to be completely self-contained; I don't want any third party servers bogging down my load-time.

-I plan to add a "links" page, finally.

Wow, that certainly doesn't seem like alot of changes, but I assure you I've put in well over 100 hours of work.

Darkness in Bracebridge
In case you were wondering, I was indeed included in "Blackout 2003", the biggest blackout in North American history. For 20 hours or so I had no power. Now we are in a state of emergency, being urged not to go to work and to conserve energy and water. And of course, every business will be like "oh, we're important", and will open up for business as usual, and hence, we will go through another happy 20 hour blackout. Yay!

Inn at the Falls, being the idiots they are, opened up for breakfast this morning. I went in around noon to find out what was going on for dinner tonight...dishes everywhere, it was mayhem. Idiots. And yes, they are serving dinner tonight. Idiots. I'm gonna get fucked up the ass on dishes when the power goes back out.

I have alot more to write on this subject, but I don't want my entries to get too long, because the power could go out at any second. I'll organize my thoughts while I hand-wash all the fucking dishes tonight and you'll get some great entries when the power comes back.

Yep.

Edit: I don't know what's gonna happen with Verve Hosting. I sent my money-order last Friday and it apparently hasn't arrived. This blackout has hit Canada post severely. I hope to God it got on the plane before the chaos. I hope Verve understands that almost all of Ontario lost its power and is in a state of emergency. I don't want to lose my account because of this. I'd send them an email if I had any hope it'd get read.

Messenger spam
I recently started receiving a new kind of spam, called "messenger spam". Worthless animals (advertisers) utilize a disgusting Windows glitch to send spam messages through the Windows network messenger service. It is a growing phenomenon (disease):

"This is just going to be a whole other delivery vehicle for spam," Baldwin said, adding that the fact the service is turned on by default is another indication that Windows security has a way to go. "But welcome to Microsoft," he said.

If you get one of these messages telling you that the security flaw can only be fixed by buying their program, don't be fucking fooled by these lying bastards. There are two easy ways to fix this problem (on Windows XP):

If you still want messenger service to run, go to control panel, go to network connections, and right click on your Internet connection. Click on the "advanced tab", and turn on the firewall (if you have service pack 1 or above). The firewall will make some other Internet things not work, probably, but some sacrifices have to be made in the fight against horrible capitalism-killing scum like spammers.

If you don't care about having messenger service run, go to control panel, go to administrative tools, find "messenger service" in the list and right-click on it. Click the big button that says "stop" and change the "start-up status" to "disabled". Click OK.

Note that "messenger service" is not the same thing as "Windows Messenger" or "MSN Messenger"; it's just a service that allows network administrators to communicate and stuff.

Bloodshed begat bloodshed
What is the difference between an army and a group of terrorists? I was watching a TV program today about the "Red Brigade", where they were interviewing a member of said group. They were at the site of some particular mass-murdering and the guy was saying how he regrets so much what he did. "In fact, I don't even want to be here, can we leave?" he said, at which my dad said "Ohh, too bad. He should be fucking shot."

So someone who fights in an "army" is revered and basically given immunity from any dissenting opinions for the rest of his life. Someone who fights in a "terrorist organization" should be shot, immediately, on location.

I asked my dad why he thought this man ought to be shot. He went into his whole spiel about how "armies" only fight military targets while "terrorists" go for "normal people". What?! Come on.

This opinion makes the assumption that "military targets" are people who are more deserving to die than "normal people", and that it's alright to kill a "military target". Why are they more deserving to die? Because they chose to join the army and therefore forfeit their life for the cause? Do you think Iraqis chose to join the army? Do you think Vietnamese chose to join the army? Did Afghanis? Did Koreans? Did Nazis? No. None of them did. So someone who is oppressed and forced to join an army is more deserving of death than someone who got assigned an odd number and missed the draft.

Someone should shoot the guy because he fought for what he believed in, in a way he thought right? Therefore should his executioner be shot because he fought for what he believed in, in a way he thought right? And his executioner? And his? Jesus, the whole human race would be gone in a week!

Long story short: no one has the right to kill anyone else, and killing more people is not the answer, surprisingly enough. It's like pouring water on your wet floor; it ain't gonna make it dry.

Blog math
I actually posted this to my new Movable Type blog first. I'm going to post there regularly and just copy and paste the entries into this blog until the other site actually launches.

It's weird actually having my own webspace on the web. Suddenly I'm quite concerned about diskspace and bandwidth usage. I was considering not transferring my Blogger entries on the basis that they'd (149 entries) would take up too much space. But after doing the math, I found that I'd have to post around 3500 entries for my 25mb to run out. That'll give me a good couple years before I have to upgrade, methinks.

As for the bandwidth usage: I'd have to go through more than 100mb a day in order to surpass my 3gb/month limit. I don't think that'll happen any time soon. And even if it does, it's just a couple bucks more per extra gb.

In a couple years, when my site reaches 25mb, the bandwidth could become a real issue, but I'll be upgrading by then anyway. Right now, before my site is even launched, I've gone through about 40mb of bandwidth (that is from over 13 straight hours of trial-and-error-editing). My disk-usage is at about 6mb; that includes the 4mb Movable Type installation about 150 entries, two forms of archive (so it's actually 300 entries), and all my indexes.

For some reason I thought that when I use MySQL, the actual posts wouldn't count toward disk space, because databases usually aren't considered. I thought all the posts were kept exclusively in the database. For some reason I never considered that each post would have 1 or 2 HTML files also associated with it. That being said, my SQL disk usage is at about half a mb, but it doesn't count toward anything anyway.

So I have about 18mb left on this site. I don't think I'll be storing any photos or anything like that. I need every last byte for entries!

Countdown to the end
I have completed my own personal Blogspot Exodus! And I did it all on my own! The site is generally up now and useable. And it only took me 13 hours! Yes, for 13 straight hours I sat here and typed, cursed, spat, pounded, screamed. I beat Movable Type!

My domain (dowingba.com) will be registered when Verve Hosting receives my money-order. I estimate it will take about a week before it's fully registered. So alas, this is the last week of Blogspot. It's kind of sad, really. I've already made a couple posts on Movable Type and my God, it's so fucking awesome I can barely bring myself to use this crappy thing we call Blogger anymore. But I'll try; I'll try to keep up my regular posting routine for this final week. I do owe Blogger gratitude. It was with this service that I really learned what it is to be a blogger. And that's what I am, and will always be: a blogger.

Note: An advantage of this week-long wait for a domain name is that I have time to transfer all my posts from the Blogspot blog and my old Blurty blog to my new Movable Type blog (whew, say that 10 times fast). I also need some time to get my "individual post" pages looking up to par.

For what it's worth, here is a link to the temporary IP address I was given. I have no idea if it'll even work for anyone but me, but I'd say there's a good chance it will. Enjoy. I know I am.

MT
I am in the process of installing MT. After 4 hours, I actually had it working, but then it stopped working. Now I'm trying to get it working again. This blog will be moved, eventually, to dowingba.com (that link will be broken until the DNS updates).

Whoops
I "fell off the wagon" today. I was ready to sign up for TypePad. I was going to sign up for the "plus" service, which, with my "lifetime discount" would come to $71.60 a year. Great. But then I realised they only accept credit cards. And I don't own a credit card. So I offered my dad the deal of me paying him the money so I could use his credit card. But alas, he only has a $100 credit limit. And $71.60 American is over $100 Canadian. Sigh. Why can't TypePad accept money orders? Come on!

So then, still on my "get the fuck out of Blogspot" bender, I signed up for Verve Hosting. I set it up to get dowingba.com for 1 year and the "starter plan" hosting for 6 months for a total of $45.00. But then I realised I don't know the first thing about setting up Movable Type. If they don't recieve my money order in 10 days they'll just cancel my request, no big deal. But should I send them the money? I can't afford to pay Movable Type $40 to set it up for me. I don't think Dean is offering his Blogspot Jihad anymore, either.

Is this feasible? Can I possibly have a full-featured Movable Type powered weblog at dowingba.com? The only way is if someone sets it up for me, because I guarantee I can't do it. (I tried before; setting up a free account on Netfirms for the sole purpose of seeing if I could install it. I couldn't.)

Follow the white rabbit
On this computer, if you forget to log out and let the computer go idle, sometimes instead of going to the screensaver, it goes to a blank DOS screen with a blinking cursor (the "underscore" style of cursor). I always expect the words "wake up neo" to appear on the screen.

Breaking the cycle
Every night at 11:30pm I sit on my front step and have a cigarette. Two beautiful women walk by, every time. Every time, they don't notice me, as I sit in the shadows. Every night I wish our paths would just intersect instead of just run parallel.

Last night, at 11:30pm I sat on my front step and lit up a cigarette. Right on cue, the two ladies appeared on the road in front of me. But just as they were almost past, gasp, I was startled from my fantasizing stupor back into reality when I heard "excuse me." What the? Can they see me? Are we actually in the same world? It was like two universes colliding. "Do you have an extra cigarette?" This was my chance. All I have to do is be friendly, talkative, witty, clever, and I might actually find myself in a relationship. "Sure," I muttered, way too quietly, as if I was some retard trying to sound normal. "I'll pay you 25 cents for it," she explained as I stood up and reached into my cargo pocket for the pack. "No, don't worry about it," I said, again too quietly, as I walked toward her with the cigarette in hand. I handed her the cigarette, and when she motioned to give me the money, I shook my head and waved my hand and backed off. "Thanks," she said and they continued on their way. I re-entered the shadows.

"What is such a nice young lady doing out at this time of night?" "My name's Chris, how are you this fine, rainy evening?" "I like cats, they smell like cat food." Any of these lines would have been better than shaking my head and slinking off into the shadows. Dammit, you idiot. I've scolded myself for the last 23 hours about this. In an hour from now I'll sit on the step and hope to redeem myself. In an hour and five minutes from now I'll scold myself again for being such an idiot.

Blogger Typepad Blogger Typepad Blogger Typepad Blogger...
It really pisses me off that Blogger has decided to stop archiving my posts all of a sudden. Typepad is looking better and better all the time. But the fact is, it costs money. Yes, yes, it's a very small amount of money, but it's money nonetheless. I'm trying to live with the fewest possible societal ties, or chains. I can't have a Typepad bill (however small) looming over my head for as long as I keep a weblog (which will certainly be forever). I have faith that Blogger will smarten up and start archiving my posts again. The posts are in the database, they just aren't being published to the archive page. Oh well, it's not like anyone is gonna be using the "PermaLink" to reference any of my posts anyway.

And yes, I've already abandoned the idea of "one super duper big post". It's just not my style. I write short and sweet entries. That's just how I do it.

Dying a thousand deaths and Vanilla Sky
Lately I've been finding it hard to organize my thoughts well enough for my usual "lots of short random posts" weblog format. You see, for this format, each post has to be interesting in itself. I started thinking, while reading this "online serial" site (to which I forget the link); why don't I just basically compile everything that happens in my day into one super duper big post! It would be more like a real "journal", and much easier to come up with subjects for. My own life can be my inspiration! And of course, it would be more like a real life "serial", as you can follow along each day as my life takes over-dramaticized twists and turns. Of course, this is not a unique format idea. I was thinking of changing my Blogger settings so that only 1 day worth of posts (yes, I'll likely still post multiple entries on some days) appear on the main page, but I will postpone that (if I decide to even do that) until Blogger decides to start publishing my archives again. Oh yeah, just so you know: Blogger hasn't archived any of my posts since August 4th. So anyway, what happened today? (Lines get all wavy as flashback sequence begins.)

When I arrived at work at 8:30am, the day seemed full of promise. The dishpit was semi-clean, and yes, it was overcast! Oh glorious overcast! By all means it should have been a nice, relaxing day in the good ol' dishpit. But alas! The nitwit who wrote the schedule forgot to schedule a salad worker for lunch today! Suddenly I had to do dishes and salads. Oh yes, and the sun came out after over a week of hiding behind the happy grey clouds. Lunch would be in full throttle today. Oh, and how delighted I was to find that all the lettuce in the kitchen was all fucking brown and rancid, promising a fun day of picking through lettuce to find the "good" pieces while servers wait impatiently for their orders and customers put their change purses away.

After about three hours of a total "white out" (if you've worked in a kitchen you know what this term means), with the servers waiting impatiently for rancid salad while their customers huffed and put their change purses away, I finally ripped the last chit and breathed for the first time in ages. The other salad people punched in at 2:00 and my day got back to normal.

Later, I watched Vanilla Sky. Fuck, that movie was good. But I think the idea of a "Life Extention" corporation is pretty unfeasible and silly. What company could stay in business if the benefits of their services couldn't even be reaped in a definitive amount of time? "Oh we might be able to provide our service, but even if we can, we don't know when." Wow, sign me up.

The style that defines me
I do notice when I get linked to by other weblogs, and I sometimes feel bad that I don't have a links section of my own. But the fact is, a link section just doesn't fit in with the style of this page, in any way I can think of. "Well, just change the damn style, you selfish bastard," you must be saying under your breath as you methodically stroke the barrel of your sawed-off-shotgun. Well, like any form of art (and this is a form of art), I do not define the style, the style defines me. This is the style that became, and I'm merely the unfortunate clout who happened into its clutches. It's what I always say: I don't create art; art creates me.

If you have any ideas of how I can fit a links section into this site design, I'm all ears. I've toyed with the idea of just making an entry of links, and then linking to that in the main menu. Perhaps, perhaps.

The bomb
From Antipixel:

He'd been taken prisoner somewhere in the Pacific (can't recall where) and was being held with other POWs in the hold of a old freighter moored in Nagasaki harbour.

They were kept in the bottom of the ship, below the waterline, and he said that when the bomb went off they heard it and then the sides of the hold became too hot to touch.

Jesus. That might be the best weblog entry I've ever read.

Tao of Dowingba commenting standards
Here are the standards I will adhere to in reference to the comments on this site:

-I will never delete a comment.

-If someone "vandalizes" my site (like filling my comments with the word "you suck" thousands of times, for instance), I will ban their IP address from the commenting system (they will still be able to view my site though), until I recieve a written apology (to my email address). If, after recieving the apology, they do it again, they will be banned forever. Note that the "vandalizing" comments will still not be deleted in this scenerio.

-If you submit a comment with spelling mistakes or what have you, and, like me, it drives you completely mad, you can email me, and I will gladly edit it for you. The edited comment will display "edited by request" at the bottom in italics.

-There are no rules (except that "vandalism" thing stated above). Feel free to curse, disagree with me, or be as much of a flaming idiot as you like.

-And just so you know, all fields (name, email address, homepage) in the comment box are completely optional. If you don't put a name, your comment will show up as "anonymous". Also note that your email address will be linked to in the comment for all the world to see. I cannot change this fact. If you don't want the public to see your address, don't type it into the field, it's completely optional. If you do enter it, and it gets displayed, and you suddenly decide you don't want it public, email me and I'll get rid of it.

Basically, I'm a human, I can be reasoned with.

(Thanks to Calblog for inspiring this.)

Which is more destructive, gain or loss?
My favourite verse so far from Tao Te Ching:

Heaven is eternal, earth is everlasting.
The reason they can be eternal and everlasting
is that they do not foster themselves;
that is why they can live forever.
For this reason sages put themselves last,
and they were first;
they excluded themselves,
and they survived.
Was it not by their very selflessness
that they managed to fulfill themselves?

I am really enjoying this book so far. It seems to speak to me like no other book I've read. It seems to me I already have a general, deep understanding of Taoism, even though I've never actually researched it or anything. It's an understanding that I can't begin to express in words, however, which makes it suck as a topic for a weblog entry. But suffice it to say, I think Taoism has influenced my life in many ways before I ever picked up a book on the subject.

Edit: Another favourite verse:

Which is closer, your name or your body?
Which is more, your body or your possessions?
Which is more destructive, gain or loss?
Extreme fondness means great expense,
and abundant possessions mean much loss.
If you know when you have enough,
you will not be disgraced.
If you know when to stop,
you will not be endangered.
It is possibe thereby to live long.

Great stuff.

Unmovable type
It's nice to know that even Movable Type has its flaws. I don't know why I'm so addicted to change. It seems I'm obsessed with it. I can't stay in one place for long. Blogger is fine! I can't move around. I do like Blogger. Who cares if there are better things out there, like Movable Type or Typepad. Who cares? I hereby make a solemn promise to myself and any readers I might have that I will never move my blog unless Blogger or Blogspot go out of business, or some other unforeseen circumstance keeps me from using this system. Never, goddammit!

More Google/Yahoo fun
I am the #4 result for sars stock concert videos on Google, and the #5 result for muchmoremusic sucks on Yahoo.

Edit: Also, the #1 result for "Tao" blogspot, and the #1 for Petition MuchMoreMusic on Google.

Google (and any other spider-based search engine) is busted, and that's why I like it.

New format!!
Seven days' worth of posts will be found on the main page. If you want more, go to the god damn archives.

Note: Seven days' worth means: if I post something on Monday, post nothing on Tuesday, and then post something on Wednesday, that counts as two days' worth. Only days with stuff posted count. Got that?

More weblog thoughts
Looking at the Typepad features list, I get very excited, and I drool, and then I have to change my pants. But I'm not going to move my blog yet again. I just don't care anymore. Blogspot works fine. And I'm sure Typepad will take off with flying colours so it'll be around for a while, in which case there's no rush to move. But I'll probably never move. I'll just spend the $4.95 a month on new pants.

Webbacklog
I love going into the archives of my favourite blogs, starting at the beginning, scrolling to the bottom of the pages and reading up through the posts. Yes, I even do this with my own blog. The freaky part is, it took me only a week or two to read Kottke.org in its entirety, while it took a good 5 years for him to write. This is why I prefer "date" archives as opposed to "category" archives. I don't care what the posts are about, I just want to read from beginning to end (or end to beginning).

Another strange phenomenon is that I do this over and over with the same weblogs. No matter how often I read the posts, they always seem fresh. I guess you could say, we're fresh obsessed. But then again, you couldn't.

Glance at a glance at a glance at a glance at a glance...
Here is what happens when you view your own Glance server page. Yep, nothing to write home about...

Mac of the beast
In Ontario, a Big Xtra meal with cheese at McDonald's comes to $6.66 (CDN).

If a tree falls...
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Now, the answer I hear all too often is "Yes, it still causes vibrations whether or not someone is around to hear it."

First of all, that is a belief. It's blind faith. You believe it still causes vibrations, yadda yadda yadda. If no one's around to hear it, did it fall? If you walk into the woods and see a tree laying on the ground, you jump to the conclusion that it fell; but really all you know is that it's laying on the ground. It is a question of perception. Does something exist if nothing perceives it?

Second of all, the question isn't "does it vibrate?" The question is "does it make a sound?" If no one is around to hear it, how can you say it makes a sound? If there were no such thing as ears, nothing would make a sound, but things would still vibrate.

Anyway, there's no answer to the question. That is the point.

Curb your criticism
Curb Your Enthusiasm is an absolutely brilliant show. Here is a general synopsis of the episode I watched today:

Larry's wife tells him to get rid of a certain old jacket of his. Larry's friend claims Larry stole his outgoing answering service message from him. After a long argument, Larry changes the message from his office phone. Larry and his wife get invited to a baptism somewhere err far away. Larry reveals he doesn't really know what goes on at a baptism. Larry gives his jacket to a homeless person on the street. They get to the airport to find that their tickets have gotten stolen. After arguing with someone at the front desk for a while, they get on a different flight, which means they have to rent a car and drive to the baptism. While in the car, Larry checks his messages only to find that his service isn't working. Apparently changing the message from his office phone doesn't work. "Oh well, so we'll miss a couple calls." In the car, Larry comments on how it makes him mad that Christians are always trying to convert people. Larry and his wife get lost, and arrive late to the baptism. As Larry gets out of his car, he sees what he thinks is someone trying to drown someone else. He creates a commotion and the guy being baptized ends up floating uncontrollably downriver. After he is rescued they are all back at someone's house. The guy being baptized refuses to try again, and his fiance refuses to marry him if he doesn't. The woman yells at larry "see what you've done?" One of the Jews in the crowd says something like "yeah, well we resent the conversion anyway". A "war" breaks out. Later, when Larry and his wife are driving home, they see the homeless guy he gave his jacket to again. "Oh, I found these airline tickets in the pockets," he says. "I tried to call, your number is on the tickets, but..."

Absolutely brilliant.

Trying to force blogger to make a new archive page
Blogger sucks on the first of every month.