Listening to the Icelandic interpretation of a pre-dawn glow. Where her eyes are glossed dreamscapingly and the electrons don't allow you to touch her hair that, though inches away, eludes. She has won it, hasn't she? Yet, one mustn't ever admit defeat. This stiff bristle of an upper lip is all that stands between me and disaster, complete and utter. I will lose her. This is the factuality that comes and sings betwixt the statues I've built among my heartmuscle. This is the gray morning. This is the false surrender that comes before the battle's true green rage flows.

this morning's post was pure whimsy, and i have to admit that i haven't felt like that in a long time. like all of you, i approach the event horizon of despair with each new joyful dungheap of a perlish morning sky #{ 'when all one can see stretched out before him is the endless monastic evenings, surrounded by the mind-deadening wretches of hill and dale.' }# truly and truly, i do declare. also, i may consider visiting you daily, so step lightly now, lightly...

i am a poet. i don't write blogs, but i could. i think i may begin. yes, let's, then, let's do it all, all the tawdry nervesinking nonsense. let's bathe in it! what would it take to fly past all these browning hills into the frightening vasty nights? really people, come on! what the fuck are we waiting for? do we need to raise the share prices a quarter of a point or what? die this scruffy morning worksick land!

What follows is the text of an e-mail that I sent to feedback@scifi.com today. If you agree (or are bored), please join me in my campaign to rid SCIFI of the evil that has begun to plague it!

To Whom it may concern:

I am writing because of my concerns about your recent programming decisions. I'll cut to the chase -- ECW wrestling is idiotic, and I fail to understand what appeal it's supposed to have to science fiction fans. Also, the influence from NBC is becoming a little hamfisted, and, frankly, it stinks. Last night's 'preview' of NBC's Fall lineup? Utterly crass. I'd happily trade either of them (preferably both) for some Farscape, Lexx, Firefly, anything that at least pretends to be tangentially related to science fiction. Frankly, your lineup is starting to pick up the undeniable stench of something designed by a focus group to appeal to '18-35 year old males with disposable income'. Well, guess what? I am one of those guys. I'm 28, and I think the wrestling, etc. is poisoning the well. Please tell that to whatever guy/gal makes these decisions; I'm getting the sinking feeling that somebody at SCIFI (or NBC) thinks that you can 'broaden your appeal' with this junk. I have to strongly disagree.

I have to imagine that there are people at your network who feel the same way I do. If that's the case, my message to those folks is: _please_ do continue to fight this! The soul of your network is at stake.

Good luck,
Richard Loveland

Just finished a short proggie that takes flat text files and transforms them into totally unstyled, dead-dog ugly (read:b&w) HTML pages. Lazy bastard that I am, I stole the basic concepts from KDE's KATE text editor, thus only partially reinventing the wheel. What language did I use for this world-changing project, you ask? Common Lisp, of course!

I'm turning into a real Lisp fanboy, what can I say. Even without knowing 'shit from shinola' as far as programming is concerned (as the saying goes), I'm finding the power of Lisp to be pretty intoxicating, even if there isn't always an obvious way to do what I want. That's where the CL Hyperspec comes in. It's just about the most gi-normous document I've ever had the fortune not to have to read. Having said that, it's really incredibly useful (if a bit dry at times).

Also, I love Peter Seibel's book, Practical Common Lisp. I want to marry it, then divorce it, then use our kids as weapons against it (Yeah. Really). It's almost a reference in its own right, as it puts a lot of functionality at your fingertips right from the get-go. Hell, I've already got a little file with some cool little utility functions that I half-wrote, half-plagiarized to do file I/O and stuff (in addition to my world-changing HTML generation program. No, I won't remember you when I'm famous.). Needless to say, I'm lovin' this Lisp thing right now (although Python's still pretty cool too. I haven't forgotten you!).

I left this as a guestbook entry at a Mr. Rainer Joswig's site, and
though I know it sounds a little naive and "cheerleady," I thought I'd
like to post it here. Any gratuitous comments about what a complete
n00b I am will be greatly appreciated, of course:

Hi there. Why am I here? Well, about a year ago I began studying
programming on my own as a private interest. I started out playing
around with a beginners' online course in C (Thank you Steve Summit!),
then came a bit of Perl (a *very* brief bit), and after working through
a couple of books on Python (_How to Think Like a Computer Scientist_
and _A Byte of Python_), I've come to Lisp (I'm currently working
through Peter Seibel's book). It is amazing, and for me represents a
difference in kind from any other language I've seen so far. While I am
pretty ignorant of the "state of the art" in the world of computation,
I am very interested in Lisp Machines and the idea that (if I
understand correctly) they embodied: that the entire system's
capability is available to the user, that every function written for
the operating system is also available in one's own environment. That
sounds light years ahead of doing everything with C and flat text
files, which seems analogous to doing things by hand. I work as a
Language Tutor for students with Dyslexia, with no formal training
whatsoever in Computer Science, so I have a lot of difficulty
understanding what is so frightening about the world of Lisp, Scheme,
et al (That isn't to say that I know all there is to know, of course).
I like to think of myself as a bright enough guy, but the truth is that
there isn't anything that extraordinary about my intellect, and I'm
sure that the average programmer is at least as smart as I am (and sure
knows a lot more). I think I begin to understand Steve Yegge when he
writes about the way that languages are perceived as religions, since I
can't really understand why anyone who claims to have a serious
interest in computers and programming wouldn't want to visit the ideas
that are unique to Lisp. Anyway, that's probably enough rambling for a
guestbook entry...