Take the Norman Mineta test.

The Commander-in-Chief read his buzzword-sprinkled State of the Union speech somewhat adequately last night, as you may remember.
I eased the pain by chatting on The Independent Media Center IRC, making MST3K-like comments throughout. It was nicely cathartic.

Hope this one makes it into some history books, or at least a few amusing protest signs:

Your enemy is not surrounding your country. Your enemy is ruling your country.

Anyhoo, here is my rather daunting collection of peacenik links. Please take one and pass to the left.

Anti-War PSAs Rejected @ Last Minute By Comcast
This one is interesting to me since Comcast is about to officially become my new ISP. A peace group spent $5000 in vain, trying to show that many (if I dare not say MOST) Americans are at the very least uneasy about the prospect of a renewed war with Iraq.

If you can slog through this, you're a better human than I
United Nations Resolution 1441, Finalized back in November 2002. Tony "Prime Minister of the Brits" Blair was the one who sent me this link-- actually, I was listening to NPR and they mentioned the 1441 magic. Obfuscation aside, this is the official unofficial declaration of the war which will begin Real Soon Now. Speaking of war...

How would you like Some Pictures From the First Gulf Oil War?
Click and ye shall receive. Not much to say about these, except that photographs always make me think twice about callously looking the other way while my government murders my fellow poor people. C'mon, let's have some more delicious links!

Brian Eno is Still A Genius
Read Eno's Time Magazine Article to find out why I'm being so gooey. Also, buy or download a Brian Eno album at your next available convenience.

Another Link I've Ganked From Tom Tomorrow :
Enthused about our Next Iraq War yet? Still reading? What would you say if I told you that we're hitting those non-American so & so's with 800 Cruise Missiles in the first 48 hours of this still-pending WAR? You wouldn't say anything, since I'm just a computer screen? Ok. Fair enough. One more makes it magic:

Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!
The popcorn you're eating has been pissed in, film at 11.

If you don't understand my choice of logo, ask your local library to explain "the 1980s" to you, or just keep chanting "USA! USA!" and feel soothed by the prospect of a Missile Defense Shield. Either way, champion.

Dave & Goliath (http://brodeco.net for deduced details) cat's game thus far, Champ.

In bed, awake too early. Nervous about my little job interview with PCC today. Life is rather silly at times. Fell asleep last night after we got home, and we didn't even get the chance to watch pirated Twin Peaks episodes which were mysteriously downloaded by the gnomes of zurich last night, as they utilized Kazaa. I was so excited to watch the stuff all last night, but sleepy feelings get the best of us all.

Ready for some cumbersome links?
These are videos I shot with Brandon Faloona on a recent Monday (Martin Luther King's Birthday, Observed, Chief)
Raising an Activist
MLK March Observers 2003
Yuppies in Cars at the MLK March, Downtown Seattle
Marching With Candor

Yeah, that's my current time-vacuum, the Seattle Independent Media Center. Work off them community service hours, boy!

One ponders the complexities of Theft and Criminal Tresspass on one's non-record. While I have no intention of stealing or criminally tresspassing on the IMC space, it must enter the minds of the Indymedia old-timer volunteers, That Brodie Guy is Trouble. I hope to prove myself again and again, because why not?

That's some terriffic writing, there, Chief. I'm reading Fight Club, about 60% finished with the book-- damn, it's a cliche fulfiller (in the sense that I'm enjoying it more than the film). Book only costs $10, people. The DVD is way more expensive and your friend already has it anyhow.

Sitting in this position for too long has sucked the inspiration out of my spine. I'll get back to you after the job interview, assuming there's a "you" to get back to.

Some wars.

I'm sitting in a vat of self-drugged Rhesus monkeys. Each more alike than the last. We are all covered with fleas, scratching and pawing at one another, and tribes begin to form. Over the years, our tribes spread further and further out-- we get better and better at killing one another, and slowly stand upright. My friends' heads seem to be bulging with the passing centuries.

We think that someone built this vat for us, but that could easily be a cultural (and/or genetic) myth. Maybe we're just in this monkey vat. Water spawns life, and we live on the wettest planet in our star system. Why can't anybody here relax for more than a few hours at a time (without expensive and damaging drugs, that is?) I believe that the major source of stress in this life of ours is leftover survival & reproduction instincts which we have concatenated into something called "Civilization", which I believe is a myth on the level of the homo sapien (sapien) "Subconscious Mind" fairy tale.

Walk with me down the beach. Observe the alpha males and other desirable (for various social and physical reasons, hence "semi-evolved" [and who would have their species any other way?]) mates.

Grr. Here goes my huge Human Brain again, destroying my ability to relax. These lumps of nerve clusters between your ears are usually friendly invaders, but from time to time even the most sane among us wishes for a bit of ignorance. Alcohol and other dangerous drugs are a short term fix, but what about 10 years from now, when Terra's population is at 12 Billion? What next, fellow fools? Let's all look the other way as the train steams rapidly toward us. Each of us standing on the track for a unique and childhood-related reason.

More to follow... or skate on past Indymedia IRC, which is where you can stalk me in #seattle or #tech. Thanks for being the Chief, you putz.

It's just barely hacking, but there's a great free program I blindly downloaded and installed after a particularily productive Google search (Sparky at my side, I felt like a true Ubergeek for one brief, shining moment [we use Kazaa to get old episodes of Twin Peaks])

Here's the URL, Chief:
http://kazaahack.250x.com/

There are just 4 simple buttons/options:

Skyrocket (the reason our participation level is at 1000 now) * Makes your level # "rise rapidly" after your current downloads are finished.

Freeze * Guess what this one does to your Participation Level. No, guess again. Give up? It freezes it in one place.

Reverse * I'm in crazy backwards land! My uploads are decreasing my P.L., and vice versa for my downloads and with the LADY! GLAVEN!

Act Normal * Oh shit! The Kazaa Homeland Security Troops have detected your pseudo-leet skillz, and they are coming to your IP address! ACT NORMAL!

Random thoughts from meatspace, the real world, where I have my laptop
handy, but no wired vibes from cyberspace.

Is that Mondo 2000 enough for you?

So, I'm at or around http://faloona.net... or else I'm drifting toward,
away from, http://seattle.indymedia.org .

Thoughts of deep importance:

"http://copyleft.indymedia.org/"
"http://indymedia.copyleft.us/"

Whether you know it or not, we all work for BrodeCo.
http://brodeco.net/

(you're probably living the brodeco.org dream right now, my yawning friends)

So, now I'm doing volunteer hours for a non-profit organization. (The
Independent Media Center, or Indymedia Center-- depending on who you're
trying to communicate with.

When brainstorms engender rainstorms.

I had the urge to remove "engeneder" from its "Today's Secret Word is ____"
(whenever anyone says ENGENDER, Scream Real Loud!) status.

What? You're still reading this? OK, er... http://brodie23.com is still static,
and it's just because I'm rather fucking impatient with upload.attbi.com
--

PS, uh... life is really fucking good. I love life. Life loves me. Life is for the living.

Etc.

Well, how about hacking KaZaA?

On an amusing note: last night after we saw Die Another Day (don't bother, it will be on cable eventually), I got off on some damn fool rant about the Transmetropolitan movie which me & Radagast might eventually write... anyhow, I said something about Slashdot... then I had a culture shock for about 30 minutes. Sylvia has never visited /. and she had no idea what I was blathering on about. Same planet, different worlds.

Don't worry-- she will be assimilated.

Sparky is headed home soon, to help me run errands before she goes to work.

I have to find an organization in Seattle which needs community service volunteers... phrased that awkwardly because I'm embarassed about having court-ordered community service. Ach. Booze + Brodie = Bad Boy Brodie. Damn it. Well, the Boys & Girl's Club doesn't want me, and neither does the West Seattle Food Bank-- although the Food Bank lady did tell me to come in on Monday. I'll probably head in there and get an application, then start feeding some hungry people in Seattle. I feel good about making a contribution, but I think that I'm also spending a lot of "money" on my credit card which I don't have this X-mas, mostly because I feel like I've pissed away quite a few years of my life.

So I'll go to the hardware store and buy some coax, and get wifi shtuff at Radio Shack or on pricescan.com. Then I'll feel better about Brodie, right? Naah, then I'll just be busy, and I can impress my housemate Lance with computers... I guess in the long run, a wireless network in the house actually WILL make me happier, I just feel shitty because the Boys & Girl's club rejected me based on my criminal tendencies. Fug. Why can't I just be mindful, all of the time? Had I been looking out for my best interests on October 21, I wouldn't have gone to QFC with Drunk & Drunker. It's all cheese, anyway. This isn't really slashdot-appropriate, but I feel sluggish and cabin-fevered... so who cares.

I just wish I could feel happy and complete for a few minutes. I have everything a young man could ask for, and a lot more, and still I yearn for that little extra bit. No matter what. I always want more. Happiness by consumption and acquisition of material goods it ain't... I just like to feel smart, and a functional wireless network at home will probably assuage my self-loathing for another month or two.

We keep ourselves so BUSY in this culture, and it's to distract us from the everyday horrors we witness and inflict on others. I subscribed to Slashdot today as an X-Mas gift to CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal. And whoever else gets a cut. If I'm blowing dough left and right, I might as well support people like Rob-- if only because Geeks in Space used to "crack [me] so consistently up."

I also registered about 100 domains yesterday with gandi.net-- only 12 euro / year. Some of them, like http://daringheart.com (not up until after X-mas) -- which is for my mother -- were X-mas gifts. I got Lore Sjoeberg of Brunching.com the domain name http://chimpanzeesversusfreemasons-whowouldwin.biz

And that should be enough to warn you against ever shopping with a credit card online while under the harmful effects of the Reefer. Heh. Oh well. At least my Vaio is sexy, right? This little laptop is my dream come true... and a new hard drive is on the way for Sparky's computer. I have to remember to buy her some more RAM for X-Mas as well. Then I have to remember to calm the fuck down and stop turning every challenge in my life into a panic.

Brode
http://brodeco.com/activitylog.php for more of the same.

Acquired:
Sony Vaio NVR23

You have permission to envy me.

http://brodeco.com/ and http://brodeco.com/activitylog.php for less info.

PS, http://chimpanzeesversusfreemasons-whowouldwin.biz/

Here I sit in the BrodeCo office again, chewing thoughtfully on a pizza crust... taking the occasional bong hit, and munching chips while surfing around on slashdot. Waiting for slackware to download (still). Basically, WinXP crashes or otherwise fucks up the download each time...
My girlfriend is allegedly going to buy 4 new sticks of RAM for our computer-- probably by tomorrow. Huzzah for the shopkeep.
Uh... yeah. I decided to start posting on Slashdot, too. I mean, more than once every few years.
Well, I'm going to log onto FIX now. Ah, FIX. Eases the pain. (I've got a fucking impossible migraine headache.... grrr.
Kelly out.
Oh yeah... I'm reading "Programming Perl" (aka the Camel).... Perl is really cool. I can't wait to grok it.

Gah. Well, I still haven't installed Slackware 8.1 ... here is a list of reasons why:

1) I have a life. Computer problems take a backseat when I have a girlfriend. Always. It's not very geek of me, but it's true. I get most of my geek work done when Sparky is at work.
2) Windows XP is poorly designed.
It's a pain in the ass to make an ISO image with XP. It just is. I tried downloading something called "ISO Recorder" but it crashed. Then I got "Power Toys", which was supposed to add ISO burning functionality to this piece of shit OS. No luck.
Actually, on a side note, I'm really impressed with both XP and the XBOX. I finally love Big Brother. (That doesn't mean I'm going to leave this blasted Win2k partition on here. No, this mothafuckin' partition is going BYE BYE as soon as Sylvia leaves for work tomorrow and I can sit down and geek out for a good 8 hours.
3) I'm stupid.
I don't remember half of the crap I've learned about Linux... most of my tech knowledge is stored safely in an overhead compartment, somewhere in the nether regeions of my brain. Damn it. Stuff like fdisk, etc. comes back to me once I read some HOWTOs, but this really gets to me-- that I've been using computers for 20 years and I still really don't know shit when it comes right down to it.

I ran Cat5 from the XBox to our NIC card, but nothing magical happened. I would have been really impressed with Microsoft had XP at least shown some glimmer of detection. Oh well.

Note to self: remember to fix Sparky's Nokia.

I wired up a nice sound system here at the house, but I'll have to wait until Lance wakes up to use it. I can't wait to see the look on his face when I teach him about KaZaA. In fact, when Lance finds out he can watch The Simpsons and Futurama, I'll probably have to clean up the office-- my guess is that the office will get really crowded, and I'll have to buy that new video card [once my replacement VISA arrives] with Fire Wire... blah blah blah... yeah, Lancey will be excited to puff the magic dragon with me here in the Brode Cave.

But, yeah. I'm really fucking frustrated with the current OS project. Grr.

Monitor: AST Vision 5L
Printer: HP psc 2110 all-in-one (very tempermental)
OS: Windows XP, sadly (am downloading slackware-8.1-install-iso right now, but XP crashes mysteriously whenever Slack is about to arrive on my Desktop. http://subgenius.com for less info)
There's a Sony monitor sitting next to the AST (which I'm looking at)... but I'd need to be in a better mood to install it or even think about it before tomorrow (we're giving our friend Luke the monitor back ASAP)
Oh, and there's another piece of shit monitor in the closet to my left, but I don't even want to dignify it with more than a passing mention.
This is all being done with the help of an Athalon 1800 Processor, and there's Ween playing on an Acer 56x max crap-factory standard CD-Rom drive.
Our Sony CD-RW is just kind of sitting there on the Acer's left (my right) and there's a Creative 8x (antique) screwed in just above it [when the tower sits at a vertical angle)...
There's an X-Box in the living room, but it's just barely compatible with the television.
I'm smoking "Tobacco"(tm & copyright 2002 the Microsoft Corporation), but later tonight I will be inhaling the fumes of burning "Cannabis Sativa" ("Cannabis Sativa" and all associated memes are copyleft & copyright 2002 by Brodie Michael Wesley Kelly, http://brodeco.com/, all rights reserved by your dead rotting corpse of a grandmother, may she be raped by Conquistadores every weeknight at 9/8 Central on your local NBC affiliate.)

Oh, and there's some beer. Beer is good.

Beer helps me enjoy installing Slackware.

More details as they are imagined.

Sincerely,

Jehovah
One True God