Come as you are, as you were,
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
The choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest as a friend as an old memoria

-- Come As You Are, Nirvana


The lights go down,
And the clouds are building outside.
You close the door and turn the key,
But there's no place to hide.

And I hope that she believes
Yes I wonder if she sees
The killer inside me.

-- The Killer Inside, Better Than Ezra


All alone, I open my eyes

Wild ride
Hold your fire
I'm not about to die
Keep back
Let in some air I dare lie down
To stare at the sky
I am wide open
Reaching forever
I fly into the blue

-- Into the Blue, Moby

There's no chance for us, it's all decided for us.
This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us
Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever?
Who dares to love forever, when love must die?

-- Who Wants to Live Forever, Queen


I thought you were special
I thought you should know

-- Special, Garbage

And I thought I'd live forever, but now I'm not so sure
You try to tell me that I'm clever
But that won't take me anyhow, or anywhere with you

-- Stay, Lisa Loeb


Where were you when I was lonesome?
Locked away with freezing cold
Someone flying only stolen
I can't tell this light so old
I don't want to swim the ocean
I don't want to fight the tide
I don't want to swim forever
When it's cold I'd like to die

-- When It's Cold I'd Like To Die, Moby


Stuttering, cold and damp
Steal the warm wind tired friend
Times are gone for honest men
And sometimes far too long for snakes
In my shoes, a walking sleep
And my youth I pray to keep
Heaven send Hell away
No one sings like you anymore

Hang my head, drown my fear
Till you all just disappear

-- Black Hole Sun, Soundgarden


Take this time to figure it out
The wire, the fuse, the things that you doubt
The wheels, the air, the metal, the mouth
Something, something, something

-- In Repair,

In Shadow of the Torturor, Gene Wolfe writes about one of the ancient relics of the Torturors' Guild called the Revolutionary. It "channels lightning," and upon feeling the electricity coursing through your body, it is as if a demon stands in front of you, your worst fear, to strike you down. And then it is over. When the only release your body can cry out for is the sweet release of death, it is denied you.

Severian (the protagonist,a journeyman torturor), slips a kitchen knife to a client that he has come to befriend, for her sentence is death by the Revolutionary. She kills herself. As punishment, many of the torturors wish Severian to die as painfully as possible- the Revolutionary being their chief method. He is not put to the Revolutionary- he is instead asked to leave the guild as a dignitary to the City of Windowless Walls, Thrax. He will be their torturor.

First- music theory that a mathematician can understand. Yes Virginia, there was a Santa after all (of course, he's dead now, or some kind of bizarre particle), and music theory really was about algebraic structures after all.

Hey it isn't any dumber than her, so bugger off, eh? Oh yeah- Malaclypse the Youngerer lent me the first three books of PREACHER, and oh my Genesis is it awesome. Like The Prophecy- but with more sex, and more violence, and a whole lot more smoking. Oh, and funnier- but sadly, no Christopher Walken, and no Elias Koteas. Poor Casey Jones . . . sniff,sniff

But back in "I'm-not-getting-nostalgic-about-Ninja-Turtles-ever-again" Land, two questions press my mind- First, why are Gamecube games so small? They really could be a lot bigger. Second, why are all these women I know flocking to singlehood? I suppose I won't ever know- them being women and all. Back to contemplative mode- why is it that whenever a woman has ever (and this is not the E-V-E-R ever, but the other one) wants to understand how a man thinks about relationships, and I tell them, I receive one of two mood-levels of responses: 1) "It can't be that simple / How boring / You Prick!", or 2) "You'll find somebody someday". It's really the second part that bothers me- I wasn't asking. Does the second part ever end? Or is there a ring, or a rod of seven parts somewhere that I have to destroy to end this torment? (See- thinking like a G^3 again)

Sigh. Well, I suppose this is the part of the story where comforting metaphors of giant schools, nay, universities of fish, and titanic oceans, and Norwegian whaling ships float into my mind's I, and my psyche rests easy once again.

If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, you're not alone. And yet you are alone. So very alone.

There is an expression in French, that my friends have told me many times. Having studied Spanish, New Testament Greek, and 8 days of Latin, I didn't know it before- here we are, esprit de l'escalier- the spirit of the staircase. That thing you could have said, that would have made you win, changed the celestial motion of the planets within your personal life- but you didn't, and so here you are. For inventing a phrase for that feeling, I'll almost give back all the credit I took from the French (except for my one day in Paris when that guy swore at me for no reason- Fuck you, Mister French!). Most of my life recently has been filled with moments where I didn't do anything, and I could/should have done something.

Growing up in Northern Wisconsin, I never thought I would ever have to defend being Christian to anyone. And with most of my friends, it's not a personal thing, but sometimes they just forget, or don't care, or ride me on a rail for it. And right now, I don't know whether I should be angry or limpidly distant. I'm usually not angry- most people would tell you that it can take quite a bit to get my wick twisted, so to speak. Even when I should be. Even when something so personally important to me is skewered mercilessly in the middle of a crisis of faith.

That wasn't today- that was a few months ago. A different dinner conversation, that went where few gamer conversations go- to the point where somebody is offended, and wants to leave, and then leaves. What bothers me isn't that I didn't have the right response- it's the fact that NO response would have been acceptable. That the doctrine of a religion (or church- more specifically someone else's church) and the spirit of everything I hold dear can not, and will not, come apart for the majority of people I know.

Now, I could be wrong- and all these people could actually be more understanding than I take them for- and in retrospect, that's probably the case. The problem for me is how I feel like I can't even become angry when I should. Until recently, there was only one thing that got me angry- it was the big guy picking on the small guy, in whatever way. At our first dance this year, when a bunch of fuckheads decided to come in and tell all the geeks, gamers, and goths what a bunch of losers we were, laugh at us, and then leave. [At Macalester College- a so-called bastion of equality and multiculturalism. It's also been dubbed the most godless school in America by somebody who doesn't matter (Princeton review or somesuch), so fuck all.] I've never been so mad that people nearby have had the look in their eye that I might need to be physically restrained. Until then. And it might have gotten ugly, but not nearly so much for me as for some other people.

For right now, it's behind me. But the subtleness remains, tiny flecks of acid, remorse, Coke. I think I'm too subtle- that's always been my problem. I've never been able to help her understand.

Someone tried to tell me something, don't let the world bring you down
Nothing can do me in before I do myself
So save it for your own and the ones you can help

Want to make it understood
Trying though I never would
Trying though I know it's wrong
Blowing it away and gone
Wishing though I never could
--Blow up the Outside World, Soundgarden

Work on the tableaux class (for MA76) continues- for details, check out the big bad Mathworld. (BTW- Eric Weisstein is a math god) That's what a tableaux is- what I have to do is make r-tuples of them, with entries from 1 to n. If that doesn't make any sense, don't worry- Luckjohn said it best (from a CompSci viewpoint anyway) as something resembling `a linked-list, and another one, and about another half of one.' I'm paraphrasing, of course- 256 characters of 150-proof profanity just doesn't sit well right now.

On to the coolest damn thing of today. As some of you know, I'm into a bit of what psychiatrists like to call an "overly-obsessive-in-a-kinda-freaky-way phase" regarding Cowboy Bebop . And the good person at Big-Big-Truck.com (thank you so much for being alive, Ek) is sitting right there, with one of the most impressive fansites EVER to help me feed my addiction. Here was the clincher for me-

I want you to imagine the following movie: Godfather of Soul James Brown is on the run from the law, with a bounty on his head. He steals the Blues Brothers' car and a wild chase ensues down the streets of Chicago. Except the cops after him are the guys from CHiPS. And Spike is in pursuit overhead in the Swordfish. Oh, and it's 1975. Get the picture? Good, because What Planet Is This is the theme song for THAT MOVIE. When I turned up the volume, the horn section LEAPED OUT OF MY SPEAKERS AND ATE ME ALIVE.

This is the kind of writing that impresses the hell out of me- especially when it's about music. And not only that, but Ek does art, and video, and everything! Ek's got t-shirts and everything!

Okay, so I'm just kindof stupid giddy with somebody who does a touch-up of "Nighthawks", or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" with CB characters, and does it really cool, even. Well tough. Back to the tableaux-mines for this little code-dwarf . . .

All I ever wanted to be was a
Woolly Muffler, on your naked neck.
Double-wrap me when it's cold.
-- Woolly Muffler, Harvey Danger

Too much time has passed by to
lament that we were deeply in love
The wind keeps blowing, while my heart
cannot heal all the tears in it
Someone, cry for me with parched eyes

The Real Folk Blues
I only want to know what true sadness is
Sitting in muddy water
Isn't such a bad life
If it ends after the first time
-- The Real Folk Blues, Yoko Kanno

Last night was another one of our techno-metal-industrial-other dances for the members of the Macalester Gaming Society. I had the middle set- entitled, fittingly enough(?), Harold and the Purple Rocket Launcher .

In retrospect, it was a name I thought of about an hour before the whole shebang started. The dance went, as far as I'm concerned, more fantastical than I'd imagined, even if no more than 16 people were ever there. ("fantastical" is a perfectly cromulent word) Mal and I totally screwed a continuous tempo, even for more than two songs at a time- so everybody who was dancing was pretty damn tired by the end- in fact, only Lyght and Satya were still dancing. Although my tempo crap was less by design, and his was moreso.

Do you ever think that moreso is a Spanish adjective for something? I know I do.

So, I'm doing it again. When I think back to high school, and Crystal, and how everything went to hell. And whether it was my fault, and how much heart I have left to go around. I used to think that it was finite- the necklace, the Canadian necklace, an amethyst dream of innocence regained. I gave my heart away, and I don't know how much of it is left.

Melodrama, probably- but they say that one of the only human emotions is regret. Today is today, and not a chance to remake the past. Do you think she knows? When I'm serious, can anybody tell the difference?

So long, Space Cowboy.
You're going to carry that weight.

Seriously. This "sleeping through everything that should disrupt my sleep" thing has just about pissed me off beyond mortal comprehension. Why do human beings need sleep? I think it's time for an upgrade.

To begin with, I want to never sleep. Just chill, for, say, 4-8 hours at a time. My "crack research" scientists tell me this should work perfectly well, along with the disposable limbs idea I had earlier today, in my dreams. Rock.

Don't forget folks, there's a lot to be learned about being better humans from well-read animals.

While we're on the topic of some serious upgrades, how's about constructing a new language? Apparently, this guy has made three very respectable languages, already in use by races of fantasy beings. No offense, but that's 50 yards ahead of Esperanto, which as far I as can tell is in use only by a certain friend of mine named [YAH noesh] McGhie, and one of his friends, and most of Eastern Europe and Brazil. Klingon, of course, has superseded both Esperanto and Navajo in the "most-used" by human being category- no surprises here, I suppose.

I'm not wearing any pants -
film at eleven

What I've felt, what I've known
Turn the pages, turn to stone
Behind the door, should I open it for you?
What I've felt, what I've known
I'm sick and tired, I stand alone
Will you be there, cuz I'm the one who waits for you
(Because) I'm unforgiven, too
--- Unforgiven T(w)oo, Metallica, as sung by the Sandowski Files

So here I am, in lovely Kirk Hall again, at Macalester College. I live one room away from the former MGS president, who I have succeeded through no skill of my own. It is a white, sunless void. Most of my stuff is out of boxes, and some of it is being used right now.

Priorities being what they are I went to sleep, woke up, assembled my desk, plugged in my computer, and went to eat. I think that's about right.

Only Susan and Luckjohn are back in the area for now. Hopefully, more people will start streaming back onto campus, and clear away the tumbleweeds. For now, it is lonely and desolate, like the rest of Minnesota that surrounds it.

This being my first entry since the new year, and some hang-ups about homework and the like, here's a quick bring-y'all-up-to-speed thing -

• Wisconsin, in December, is the Hoth of America. There is nothing to do except watch for Imperials (old high school classmates), go to bars, and wonder what that smell is. Maybe Han didn't go to a lot of bars, but you know that's what he was thinking.
• How geeky are you when you ask for a computer case as your "big thing" for Christmas? Pretty, I'd wager. And I even got the one with the window, so I can watch my computer do things visible not even to the human eye.
• I saw almost all of my friends from high school that I should like to (Paul, Bill, Joel, Sarah, and others) and entirely too many that I didn't. Life is like that.
• I am some sort of breeding ground for rampant stomach infections. Yeah stomach infections and Christmas!
• I saw Lord of the Rings 4 times. If you haven't seen it, I can discern no good reason as to why you would even be reading this. Thank you Jim, for owning a theater.

So, for now, I have three projects to finish, an advisor to contact, a room to organize, a wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped.

Well, get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything

I think it's time we blow this scene . . .
Get everybody and the stuff together.
Okay- 3, 2, 1, Let's Jam.

- Tank! , The Seatbellts

So, I'm going back to the journal thing. I tried it on kuro5hin for a while, and now I'm here. If you know Dharck, she's off doing the LiveJournal thing now, and I settled on /. until I can get my own LiveJournal (logjam et al.) system working.

Basically, I have this odd feeling that nobody will either care what I write, or read what I've written, because I had no frigging idea that this even existed until about 3 days ago. Having read /. religiously since I was a first-year at Mac, you think they would have mentioned it to a few people (they probably did- I do miss it on occasion, and I don't always have the patience to wade through huge piles of troll-crap and religious hell-flame to find the really cool stuff).

So, finals in my senior year, and I'm a three-legged dog in the kennel from hell: Compiler Design (CS62, for those of you following along at home). My problem isn't my inability to understand the material (while it is difficult, it's nothing that 8 hours and 3 Red Bull [It gives you wings - Erik Slivken] can't fix), my problem is my ability to focus on work long enough, or for that matter, even care that much about what I do. Mostly because I see myself as totally screwed anyways.

Seeing as how I wasn't ready for college when I got here, (my high school was too easy in a "they don't challenge anybody with brains until it's too late" kindof way, not an "I'm a friggin genius" kindof way), I had no study skills, and so I'd been cast down to the tenth levele of hell directly to square one before I could even get started [When mixing metaphors, it is important to shake, and not stir]. I didn't discover what I really loved (Computer Science) until my second semester, making playing catch-up a real bitch. Also, I spend most of my free-time making up for missing the good 'ol BBS days of yore, when the Internet was still in its infancy - I am the geek version of that hippie who missed Woodstock and has been making up for it ever since. While fascinated by the flickering images and bright, shiny colors, my grades are DEFINITELY NOT good enough to get me into any graduate program. Seeing as how what I really want to do is teach CS as a living, there goes all that. I've been shafted by Fate (and not anyone personally) on internships, research fellowships, and even menial IT jobs. Geez, I worked at RadioShack this summer- I am the modern-day fanboy in the field of electronics.

But enough "poor little Doc." I'm taking an incomplete in Compilers, and my program for "Math 76- Topics in Modern Algebra" is moving into the fore-front of what I need to be doing. I'm just so sick of being behind the curve, constantly reminded of how Fate (there's that word again) has dealt me a bad hand- not that I should care, but that grad schools will see a whole bunch of W's on my transcript (withdrawals) and flip out- and not know about the gastroenteritis, the car accident, or any of the rest of it- and furthermore, they won't want to deal with somebody as screwed up as me. Damaged goods, and all. That makes looking forward to what I do during the day that much more challenging.

Maybe it will get better- maybe if I blank long enough I can pretend the world works in totally different ways. Hopefully, I'm just too self-absorbed to understand that what I'm seeing right now isn't all there is. If there's one thing that's keeping me going, it's this: Life is a journey, not a destination. I'm too young to think that I've hit the wall, and it only goes down from here.

Well, here's to character generators for the cyclotomic Hecke algebra H(r,n). Cheers.

Ministers fall into Presidents' clothes-
Presidents fall into evil control-
This is the hole I put my faith in?
What about the Information?

- The Information, Course of Empire