Son of Laziness

The original plan I had for this rant was to list off some pop cultural observations in an organized database sort of way, but after a few random things that came out of my mouth recently, I realized I was long overdue for a new Laziness. So long in fact that you probably don't even know what I'm talking about. So, to recap, we had this, and this, and this. So now we have this.

Really Stupid Sci-Fi Conventions

• If you're in America and you go back in time to the year 1200, you invariably end up in England.
• Every planet has a single climate, one government, one city, and no animal life save the dominant species, which is named after the planet.
• Also there are no significant variations in the individual members of that race that can't be found in humans.
• Any race that has a hive mind has a Queen. Killing that queen kills the whole lot.
• All sentient life in the universe has the exact same optimal living conditions and dietary requirements.
• In the future, bullets have become outdated, as lasers are clearly far cheaper, more practical, and efficient. Plus they fire wonderful meter long solid beams of light.

A Similar Conversation

Hey, did the Federation model their AI after Zork or what?
"Computer, full power to the engines!"
"WHICH ENGINES? THE IMPULSE ENGINES, THE WARP ENGINES, OR THE MOTORBOAT ENGINES?"
"Computer! Deactivate the holodeck!"
"YOU HAVE BEEN EATEN BY A GRUE."
Seriously, every TNG episode where the day wasn't saved by Wesley or Data, it was by phrasing questions to the computer properly.
In a scene that lasted like half an hour.
"Computer, are there any foreign particles here?" "YOU HAVE USED THE WORD PARTICLES IN A WAY I DO NOT UNDERSTAND."
"*sigh* OK... Computer, are there any BARYON particles here?"

I find most of my conversations tend to look like monologues. The other end of that was just the occasional laugh.

Tales From #CENSORED

I have a little IRC channel which by design has a crypt-like atmosphere. Only around 20 people know it exists, myself included, and out of that 20, 16 don't give a flying smurf, 2 don't tend to use the internet, 1 just sorta lurks about all the time and looks if I said anything on rare occasions, and the last is me. If I ever get bored enough or change my monitor resolution so I can actually keep an eye on more than four channels at once, I might set up a channel for you folks to come stalk me in, but I'm protecting the identity of #CENSORED because I love having a place where you can have a conversation in which there are 24 hour gaps between replies.

For example, Monday: <MysteriousLurkerX> Hmm, that's amusing. Tuesday: <Googleshng> What? Wednesday: <MysteriousLurkerX> Oh, just a random Onion article. Thursday: <Googleshng> Ah. Link? Friday: <MysteriousLurkerX> www.theonion.com/somethingorother

I'm probably exaggerating that a big, but MysteriousLurkerX did once leave town for two weeks, come back, and reply to all the various things I said in the interim not realizing this, so it's close enough to reality says I. In any case, here's a couple logs for you:

This would probably have a better impact with timestamps. Assume half an hour elapses between each line.

*** MysteriousLurkerX (lurky@some.college.host) has joined channel #CENSORED
*** Mode change "+o MysteriousLurkerX" on #CENSORED by ChanServ
<Googleshng> hmm
<Googleshng> you know
<Googleshng> I need to find some people who loathe web comics
<Googleshng> because I mean, if right now I just started screaming about what a hideous affront to my existence they pose, you'd probably say "Hey! I like some web comics!"
<Googleshng> except that you're probably asleep.
<Googleshng> Actually, I suppose I'd be just as well off if I could get someone to enter this channel, never leave, but then never actually look in here, because then I could scream at a wall with the delusion someone was paying attention, but without the nasty catch of ACTUALLY talking to myself, because let's face it. The fact that I don't talk to myself is all there is between me and the loony bin.
<Googleshng> I agree.
<Googleshng> ... DOH!

Here's another of these...

<Googleshng> hey, that's pretty cool
<Googleshng> the newest Weird Al CD has a song whose lyrics are entirely palindromes.
<Googleshng> Which is really a pretty impressive feat.
<Googleshng> I mean, the only way to top that would be if it was all ONE palindrome, but I don't think you can do that and still have such song like elements and rhyming and having a beat.
*** MysteriousLurkerX' is now known as MysteriousLurkerX'
*** MysteriousLurkerX (lurky@some.college.host) has joined channel #CENSORED
*** Mode change "+o MysteriousLurkerX" on #CENSORED by ChanServ
<Googleshng> 607 w33j 7h8j043ww3e [Translation for those not fluent in typo: you seem unimpressed]
<Googleshng> uh
<Googleshng> shift that down one key.
*** Signoff: MysteriousLurkerX' (Ping timeout)
<MysteriousLurkerX> heheh nah it's pretty cool
<MysteriousLurkerX> but i had heard it before, and more importantly wasn't here to respond
<Googleshng> pfft, like THAT'S an excuse
<Googleshng> oh wait, it is
<Googleshng> a good one at that
<Googleshng> YOU WIN THIS ROUND!
<MysteriousLurkerX> haha

A few hours and a netsplit later...

*** Mode change "+nstr" on #CENSORED by ChanServ
*** ChanServ has set the topic on channel #CENSORED to http://www.kekkai.org/google/politics/ || If bored: www.kekkai.org/google/rants/donate.shtml - $970 sans the trips&comp, $3860 with. DANG travel is expensive... computers too. || Excel: Need 20
<Googleshng> ...
<Googleshng> ...
<Googleshng> THIS ISN'T PEPSI!
<MysteriousLurkerX> ?
<Googleshng> THIS IS R.C. COLA!
<MysteriousLurkerX> :o
<Googleshng> I mean, I like both just fine, I just thought it was pepsi. Didn't really look at the bottle when I poured it.
<MysteriousLurkerX> heheh
<Googleshng> I suppose it'd be more dramatic if R.C. Cola was my one weakness or something, but what are you going to do?

Incidently, the whole MysteriousLurkerX is less an exercise in anonymity than a way of clearing up that said person has like 50 interchangeable nicks.

Dreams

Here's a weird little fun fact about me. I dream backwards. Everyone has a conscious mind and then a subconscious. Your subconscious can arguably be described as an insane demon that lives inside your head and tries to piece together things you see in ways no sane being would. Every so often, your subconscious will share it's results with you, usually while you're asleep. When I was something like five years old, I had a dream so absolutely disturbing that I struck some kind of weird deal with my subconscious to keep such things to itself. (Technically this dream was just that a bunch of anthropomorphic cookies gearing up to exact bloody vengeance on Cookie Monster or something like that, but nightmares have never actually been required to have disturbing imagery. My cousin once woke up in a cold sweat after a dream in which a perfectly ordinary haystack was just sitting there being a haystack.)

Ahem. As I was saying, I made a weird sort of deal with my subconscious. It doesn't give me dreams that I'm aware of more than like twice a year tops, but in exchange, I have to give IT dreams. Every night (or more accurately morning) as I'm falling asleep, I have to string together some bizarre story or group of random images to keep my subconscious entertained for the night. Failure to do so generally results in one of the aforementioned rare actual dreams. I don't have any point in bringing this up honestly I'm just low on random imagery tonight and thought you might find my unique little insanity interesting.

Future Stuff

My muse is pretty annoying. First, it has me working on this comic here. Now once I finish that, it's pretty insistent that I redo the bulk of it, removing all blackspace by filling margins in with weird little doodlings. Then it wants me to try and get all this published, not in the form of books mind you, but scrolls. THEN after all that, it has ANOTHER comic it wants me to make. I don't have to be as eccentric with the formatting of that one though, the only restrictions are that I have to draw it in a sloppy style, using those old fashioned ink-well pens, and only two colors of ink, which must be randomly splattered and splotched about each image. That and it has to be dark and disturbing and full of death, but really upbeat. Finally, my muse insists that if I ever finish this second comic, and get it published, I must periodically hold autograph sessions where I sign covers in my own blood. I figure I'll get my publisher to work out deals with blood banks where I donate some, but get to fill an ink well from the bag, sign autographs until it runs out, making sure there's a nearby laminator because the stuff doesn't keep well. Eccentric sure, but hey, it'd be more of a collectable seeing how I could only sign a few autographs a year.

One Final Thing

This coming Monday is my birthday. 99% of the people reading this shouldn't give a smurf about that fact, but the other 1% know those family members of mine who never know what to get me, despite my obvious hinting here. So consider yourselves bludgeoned over the head, oh, and come on over for cake and such on Sunday. As for the other 99% of you, well, if you really wanna give me something for my birthday, more power to you. Heck, if you wanna come over and have cake and stuff, you can do that too. I mean, anyone who has enough time to track down my address and crash my birthday celebration deserves at least a piece of cake for their efforts.