Ray Bradbury said, ""

Hell

No, not Squirrel Nut Zippers.

In the parking lot near my house, an independent living center has been holding a combination Event of Cultural Significance/garage sale. Replete with an acoustic guitarist belting out cleverly modified songs such as "Blowing in the [name of nearby restaurant]," "The Wind Cries Buffalo," "Eye of the Buffalo," and "Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Hotdogs."

This has been going on for the past three hours. I have repented my sins but he still has not shut up.

For the love of G-d. they have started singing "Old McDonald Had a Farm," in which they recite an inventory of the merchandise for sale. What did I do to deserve this?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 28, 2007 10:23 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
hateblogging

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Zoological Madhouse

I finally made it to the zoo. I have decided that there a few things more depressing than visiting a zoo alone on a hot July day. You get the feeling you would be equally served by visiting an asylum or a seedy waterfront opium den.

A male gorilla lay on the ground, curled into a fetal position like Ted Kennedy fighting off the D.T.'s. His mate hid behind a wall, covering her face like a geisha while rocking back and forth.

A bold mandrill baboon paced back and forth with a long stick, practicing 'bo kata in the hopes that one day it will take out a zookeeper or at least a small child. His companions made an opium den look lively and friendly.

A giraffe walked in a tight clockwise circle, dipping its head at regular intervals, in an OCD display that would put Monk to shame.

The polar bear paced back and forth a mere inch from the rounded edge of the cliff, occasionally placing a paw mid-air as if to say, "one of these days, humans. One of these days I'll just jump."

A turtle and a rattlesnake, sharing an enclosure, glared at each other from opposite corners.

A lone zebra clung to the edge of his enclosure, measuring the perimeter with the exactitude of Edmond Dantes. Perhaps his comatose maned wolf neighbor will play Abbe Feriá when it awakens.

Only the vultures seemed genuinely pleasant as they consumed rotten mice. The stoic pygmy goats, with their perpetual sardonic grins, only seemed to be having as much fun.

Thanks to Shrek, the lone donkey garnered more attention than all the lions, rhinos, and sea lions combined. His days are full of groping by small children begging him to let loose an Eddie Murphy bellow. His zebu neighbor, by contrast, shrank from the palpable revulsion of those who unconsciously shun his kosher pigginess.

Last but not least in this parade of depression and lethargy, was the mighty buffalo, who betrayed life by a feeble swish of his tail to ward off the clouds of flies attracted to his nearby mound of excrement.

Curiously, babies outnumbered animals by at least five to one. Every woman pushed a septuplet stroller and was festooned with more baby-laden papooses than Rambo had grenades.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 26, 2007 13:02 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
life

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Geekery Repository

Unix has seduced me. My journey into the land of the neckbeard will be documented at my new blog, Pookekufr Unix. I'll meet you on the other side unshaven, unkempt, coffee and nicotine stained, and sleep-deprived.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 26, 2007 00:40 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging, geekery

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That's hackers for you...

Heh.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 25, 2007 21:38 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery

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Men and Women, 2

Women do not understand that every man, if somehow he were to wake up in a woman's body, would be evil. Mindboggingly evil.

For a man to court a woman, he must expend an enormous amount of thought and energy. He must take into account whether his cologne will remind her of an ex, and guess whether that would be a good or a bad thing. He must figure out whether his remarks will be interpreted as pretentious ploys or double-entendres, and gauge his flirtations with the accuracy of a Columbian coke-dealer measuring out kilos.

He must intuit whether his choice of restaurant will be interpreted as a bald display of wealth or an indication of a charmingly quirky personality (which in turn depends on how he thinks she thinks she sees herself). He must figure out whether to open doors for her (and risk being perceived as sexist) or not (and risk being perceived as unchivalrous).

He must decipher her every word for every possible subtext it might contain and some it might not contain, and select the correct meaning in a heuristic process that would crash Deep Blue. He must gauge how funny he must be to seem attractive while at the same time not too funny to preclude a long-term relationship.

In short, he needs the single-mindedly determined strategical prowess of Henry Kissinger and the telepathic ability of Giscard, with some teraflop computing capacity thrown in.

For a woman to court a man, she needs only a pulse.

Women, you won't believe me until you ask your husbands how much effort they put into your first dates together. Your shock should alert you to why I am right.

Now, imagine what would happen if a man were to wake in a woman's body. Vast sectors of his brain, once dedicated to the modal logic of courtship, now are available for other functions. He could, in theory, win the Fields Medal and write the Great American Novel. Before lunch. But more likely he will find that with an insignificant fraction of his former labor he can attract far more sex and gifts. He will find that with a literal blink of an eye he can acquire luxuries that he would otherwise have had to spend years working toward.

He would become a gold-digger such as the world has never seen, and would likely marry the world's most powerful man by evening.

What next? He would set men against each other and watch as they duke it out, laughing all the while. Trust me, if a man were transmuted into a woman, he would immediately set out to start a barfight over himself. Helen of Troy would have nothing on him.

All this is in addition to the fact that every man knows that were he to wake as a woman, he would likely die of thirst after three non-stop days of masturbation.

When you stop to think of how quickly such a man would become a sex-hungry manipulative and capricious succubis, you cannot but marvel at the self-control women possess. Remember, guys: no matter how cruel or manipulative you think a woman is, you would beat her in spades given the chance.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 25, 2007 07:01 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor

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Coincidence?

I think not.

My 2005 "Defend Your Nuts" post.

(Hat tip: Travis Benning)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 23, 2007 21:09 EST | Permalink | comments |
discoveries

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More Ubuntu Geekery

Tell me that doesn't arouse you.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 23, 2007 20:28 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
geekery

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Vacation!

My first vacation in a year and a half.

Blogging will be light again this week, as I spend time delving into Unix, watching movies, and visiting monkeys at the zoo.

A Unix textbook, massive amounts of coffee, Blockbuster and Netflix accounts, and a ticket to the zoo. What more does a man need on a vacation?

Movies on my queue so far:

Gattacca
Dark City
12 Monkeys
True Romance
Metropolis (1927)
Rashomon
Eraserhead
A Scanner Darkly
The Thing
Night of the Living Dead
The Crazies
Videodrome
A History of Violence
North by Northwest
Dead Like Me season 1
Road to Singapore
Road to Bali
The Thin Man
Murder by Death
Dead Alive
Memento
12 Angry Men (original)

Update: I am not going to Candy Mountain.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 22, 2007 18:28 EST | Permalink | comments |
life

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Sorry, but

My family is coming up before my vacation begins, so blogging will be light this week as I divide my time between work and trying not to sell the kitten-stealing brats to Canadian organmongers.

This is about what I expect the week to be like:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 15, 2007 21:31 EST | Permalink | comments |
life

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Your Sunday Beauty

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 14, 2007 21:40 EST | Permalink | comments |
music, beauty

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More Ubuntu Geekery: KDE

I wrote a long post describing in loving, erotic detail, how it feels to configure the KDE desktop into whatever I want. Open source is a digital grease-monkey's dream, and the KDE Ubuntu Linux desktop has got to be the hands-down champion at letting one peek under the hood short of hotwiring the batmobile that is BeOS.

But then I realized that no matter what I wrote, it could not approach the satori that is actually using it. No other way can dispel one's preconceptions about it: "Linux has graphics worse than an Atari system as seen by Mr. Magoo... if you use Linux you cut yourself out of the world's most popular file formats and become a digital hermit... Linux involves complete mastery of the command-line interface... Bill Gates will kill me for using it." All false. Except the last, of course.

So I will stick to listing the three things about it that still are annoying me:

1. I don't like the letter K when used as a substitute for the letter C. Every time I see a word like klass or kut, I wish to strangle someone. So I am understandably driven to a near homicidal pitch of rage when I see that almost every single application in KDE has this bastard letter. Seriously, there are more K's in KDE than in Sen. Robert Byrd's full title. Kaffeine media player?!

2. The desktop clock is stuck in 24 hour mode and I haven't figured out how to switch it over. I am not smart enough to subtract 12.

3. There is no third thing.

If you are using Ubuntu Linux with KDE, feel free to leave a comment on whatever your gripes are with it, if you have any. If you decide to try it out on the basis of this blog post by a complete stranger with no credibility, you are obligated to tell me how it rubs you.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 13, 2007 20:41 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
geekery

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In Which I Steal Jeff Goldstein's Thunder In a Mock Conversation With My Goldfish Houseguest

Me: Your turn. Go!

Goldfish:

Me: C'mon, try harder. Go!

Goldfish:

Me: Damn. It's harder than ever to come up with satire that has not actually happened.

Goldfish:

Me: I tell you this, my piscine friend. On the day when reality is utterly indistinguishable from satire, I will make you into a delicious California roll topped with plenty of fresh wasabi and ginger. You can count on it.

Goldfish: Gulp

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 13, 2007 18:41 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, conversations

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Ubuntu KDE Desktop

Suck that, Bill Gates.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 12, 2007 21:46 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
geekery

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Ron Paul Exclusive

"You think Fred Thompson has had a colorful and far ranging sex life? Try waking up on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, next to a sea lion wearing a party hat and a thong. Try  O.D'ing on viagra and rampaging through a Buddhist monastery brandishing a bo in one hand and a tub of vaseline in the other. Try getting caught digging up the grave of Don Knotts with a group of Rocky Horror Picture Show fans dressed in full tranny mode. Colorful and far-ranging? I think not, Fred. I think not."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 12, 2007 20:03 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, insults

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A Singular Mugging

I got mugged inconvenienced at gunpoint squirtgunpoint today while on my way to work at 4:00 in the morning. By a polite yet mentally retarded criminal.

He came up on my right, deaf, side, and pressed the gun into my back. He started riffling through my pockets (during which time I noticed the gun was cammo-colored plastic), peered into my wallet (which I displayed for him after he couldn't find it) and saw only a bunch of receipts and old library cards.  The entire time he mumbled in increasingly more confused tones, ¨where´s the money?"

He handed my wallet back, unharmed, and apologized.

The entire time, I had to fight rage and an overwhelming urge to grind his face off on the concrete or slice open his femoral artery and watch him bleed out. Had I been anything but overly polite and cooperative I would have killed him. And I don't like to kill before noon.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 11, 2007 15:39 EST | Permalink | comments |
life, beggars

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Ubuntu

Ubuntu Linux has some quirks, good and bad, I wouldn´t have expected.

One of them is a dummy root superuser. There is no root: everything godlike one does, one does through sudo. This happens to be an excellent safety feature- you are by definition never logged in as root and therefore your computer is always a bit suspicious of you.

To be continued...

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 11, 2007 01:52 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery

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Ubuntu At Long Last!

I finally installed Ubuntu.

One catch: I can't figure out how to partition more than 4.2 gigs for it; it has barely enough memory allocated to it to run. Meanwhile, I've got 28 gigs free space post-partitioning into Windows, Ubuntu, and Ubuntu command-line system. What gives?

Anyone out there know how to manually partition a hard-drive?

Update: I've got a monster headache. A pounding, storming, gallomphing headache. I think most of it is simply sheer frustration.

Update x2: Ok. I deleted the previous partition and reinstalled Ubuntu onto a 20 gig allocation. Not much, but it´ll do.

So far?

Interface: 10/10 (Perfect)
Control: 7.5/10 (Mouse is a little grabby right now)
Speed: 6/10 (Might have to hack some prefetch)
Graphics: 8/10 (Nothing overt)
Power: 16/10 (I am a god)

Update x3: That headache? Still there.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 09, 2007 21:09 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery

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Your Sunday Jazz

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 08, 2007 10:16 EST | Permalink | comments |
music

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Woo Hoo! Books!

I got:

Jon Winokur's "The Big Curmudgeon: 2,500 Irreverantly Outrageous Quotations from World Class Grumps and Cantankerous Commentators"

Salman Rushdie's "Fury"

Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 07, 2007 12:01 EST | Permalink | comments |
books

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Things to Remember

If, while leaving your house to work a few hours of weekend overtime, you see a bloody mess of broken glass on the sidewalk a few feet from your door, it might be a good idea to crawl back into bed.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 07, 2007 09:04 EST | Permalink | comments |
life

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Saturday Wee-Morning Wikigroaning

This is bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Boop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toot_Braunstein

Beware, this one might convince you that there is no God.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 07, 2007 01:37 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, discoveries, boredomblogging, wikigroaning

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Another Would-be Darwin Award Winner

As I've said before, I have an interesting job. One of its perks is being around people who, being impervious to sarcasm, are at any moment capable of gross violations of the law of self-preservation.

Coworker: [pulls out bundle of firecrackers] Check these out, holmes! What should I blow up?

Me: Hey, why don't you stick one in a cigarillo, shake the pack around, and then we could play Russian Roulette with them?

Coworker: [enthusiastically sets to work hollowing out a cigarillo] Sweet, holmes!

Later on...

Coworker: I'm bored.

Me: Hey, look. A test-tube with some undoubtedly virile gunk in it. Why don't you blow it up?

Coworker: Woo hoo!

Forty minutes later...

Me: Hey, look. An insulin pen. Do you know what an insulin coma is?

Coworker: No.

Me: It was used before electroshock therapies. In madhouses.

Coworker: [Gleefully jabs pen with a nail and sprays a mist of insulin solution all over the place]

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 05, 2007 16:17 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, life, scruffy work, best posts

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Yeah, but the test was biased

You Are 76% Cynical

You're a full blown cynic... and probably even skeptical of these results. You have your optimistic moments, but most likely you keep them to yourself.

For a second opinion:

Your Score: Snake

You are 69% Cynical.

Watch out, don't test your patience . . . you're a snake! You make people earn your trust and they work to keep it. You make a fairly good balance of trusting people and being cautious at the same time. Don't get paranoid, though. Try concentrating on what makes you happy more than what doesn't and you'll avoid being mistrusted. Your outlook is not as cheerful as some; but that's okay. The world needs your ability to say what's on your mind and let others think what's on theirs. You're about as neutral as Switzerland, anyway. That's a good thing. You'll make more friends that way. Luckily, you will fit nicely with most any category. Ideally, you would want to look for friends/lovers who are kittens or bats. You're personality is pretty neutral in the area of cynicism. It all depends on personal preference, really. More cynical or less, bat or kitten?

You scored higher than 99% of the other people your age and gender for skepticism and sarcasm.

Beat that, Isiah. So what if the first test is biased toward people who believe Tinkerbell can come back if they only clap hard enough, and the second is nonsensical?

Those in the know, know that she only comes back when Disney decides to re-release its movie archives in order to attract a new generation of rodent-worshippers. And that no online test would be complete without "quirky" questions proving the eccentric superiority of the test-maker.

Update: Every word of this post is a lie. You figure it out.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 04, 2007 21:14 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
boredomblogging

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Independence Day

Stop reading this. Log off, eat large quantities of bbq'd meat, and blow shit up.

Still here? Maybe this will get you in the right mood.



My way of celebrating the Fourth? Constructing a life-sized Ted Kennedy effigy out of M-80's and selling it to a 10 year old.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 04, 2007 03:48 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
life

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Cynicism You Too Can Use In Conversation

Mix and match these snippets to impress naive college students. You'll be worshipped by the men and stained in inappropriate places by the lipstick of the women.

I'm not a communist. But I'm not stupid either.

The universe is a stochastic, temporal-independent Markov chain. Am I going to leap up and do the Tango? Are you going to kiss me? Each moment is isolated, the possibilities are born anew with each tick of the eternal clock, yet we see causality in all this. Infinite possibilities, we are not bound by the past. We are not able to predict the future. All we have is the present. So, my dear, please excuse my hand. It is conditionally independent of its prior position within my pocket. Let me show you my collection of Hume.

You are young. The world stretches before you like a field of peaches ready to be picked by illegal immigrants, who came to this country for its unprecedented opportunity and freedom. And foodstamps. Let us, like those struggling in the shadows of America, expose our hopes to the light of inquiry. Would I be lying if I said I like peaches? Would you be lying if you said I really liked the thought of Mexicans laboring in the sun for dirt wages just so I could rub your body with the juicy fruits of their back-breaking labor? I think not, my dear. I think not.

If I vote for Republicans, I will only be helping the military-industrial complex. If I vote for Democrats, I will only be helping the welfare-bureaucrat complex. If I vote for a third party, I will only be helping the tinfoil-hat complex. If I vote not at all, I will be complicit in whatever lunacy prevails. So I make sure to vote as is my civil duty.

I may be a calloused cynic, but I have a soft spot for Sailor Moon. You can do it, Sailor Moon!

If I'm such a cynic, why do I believe there is a deep order within the universe? If I'm such a cynic, why do I cry at every glurge meme I see in which a cute little girl saves a fluffy kitten? If I'm such a cynic, why do I donate my spare time to charities? Cannot a cynic believe Man is capable of astonishing acts of kindness, mercy, and altruism? Would a cynic have Tivo'd every episode of Touched by an Angel? Would a cynic admit he had a lifelong crush on Cosette?

Everything I've said was a lie.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 03, 2007 07:12 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, philosophy, satire, best posts

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Pseudo-Random Observations on a Warm July Day

My coworker required almost a minute of contemplation to understand the phrase, "heads I win, tails you lose." And he has procreated.

In my commentspam bucket: "mr. chews Asian beaverfree car pornhorse nudepokemon." I. Want. Whatever it is.

Never, ever warn someone about another person's biting wit. He will forever test the waters to see for himself, and that path inevitably leads to bukkake references.

Where I grew up, Independence Day was always celebrated in the middle of July, for some reason. You wouldn't see any firework shows til at least the 10th. In Buffalo, those fireworks start exploding in May. I still don't understand why.

We are soon to celebrate the birth of a nation and the shrugging off of tyrants. That in itself is a feat worthy of continual admiration (and occasional depression because such bravery will not likely be repeated). But who celebrates September 17th, the day our Constitution was ratified? Many countries have declared independence and undergone revolutions in the name of "liberty, equality, and fraternity"; only ours has invented a Constitution which makes that independence worth dying for.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 02, 2007 16:29 EST | Permalink | comments |
life, constitutionalism, boredomblogging

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All I Can Say...

No comment necessary. Unless you're an imam, in which case you might feel compelled to issue a fatwa against such sluttish dress.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at July 02, 2007 03:35 EST | Permalink | comments |
music, morning

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