Two lines from Kafka's Amerika really stood out to me when i read them recently. As Karl is walking away from New York along the road, the line "The occasional automobile shot out of the fog, and all three turned their heads towards these cars, which were usually enormous and so striking in appearance and so fleetingly present there was no time to notice whether they had any occupants or not."

It is amazing how precise Kafka pinpoints a feeling of awe and wonderment at the sight of an American automobile whizzing by a pedestrian on the road. It calls to mind the oversized "space age" cars we Americans were so fond of during the fifties and sixties; yet this book was written years before, and by a man who never even visited the US. Kafka writes in such a way as to make the normal seem surreal, not in the same vein as Gabriel Garcia Marquez with his fantastic realism, but in an uncanny manner, the simple act of a car passing on the road becomes an event, a large imposing symbol of American ingenuity personified.

The second line comes after Karl realizes that it will be harder to leave the US if he is in the interior of the country rather than New York. His traveling companions convince him to continue away from the city and it reads "Even then he wouldn't have gone if he hadn't told himself that it was probably better for him to go to a place from which it would be less easy to return home. It would be better for his work and his general progress, if he had no useless thoughts to distract him."

That line is particularly telling about the character and his work ethic. Being distracted by alternative prospects is undesirable to him. His desire, it seems is to be locked into a situation so as to attack it head on, certainly an interesting way to approach life.

This is where I talk about myself in comparison to the book, a bit of the community college wearing off on me. Sometimes I wish my options in life weren't so wide open as they are. The tradeoff to living in such an interconnected world is that the possibilities seem to sap the desire to attack any of them with a level of vigor that gets anything accomplished. The knowledge that what one is doing at that moment is the best possible choice is desirable by most, I assume, perhaps incorrectly, and limited options help facilitate those feelings.

taco time
taco tico is disgusting.

Writing this in the text editor of my Mac minus an internet connection.

We (Marcella, my father and I) drove from New Orleans to Miami all last night and made it around 9:00. The overwhelming desire to blog is strange, but I must satisfy it. I slept for most of the drive, only to arrive and discuss family stuff, most of which went over my head, as this side of the family is totally foreign to me.**just discovered, there is a dial up connection somewhere in this house. I shudder at the thought.** So far the best use of my iBook has been watching Home Movies Season 1 DVD while driving. I hooked up the tape adapter to the stereo out on my comp. and VOILA! Surround Sound in the piece! I even did a little dance in the car. Yay me. Maybe I'll brave some Cuban coffee to wake my ass up, I feel like a zombie. Nope, it's gone. Guess it's the Red Balls when we leave the 'burbs. This place is scary. Scary in a way only suburbs are. The little dog named "Scooter." The army of cats outside, the mango tree in the backyard. That shit scares me.

Random Thoughts On Burmese Days

The great thing about Burmese Days is in it's ability to convey the excesses of British occupation in such subtle ways. Orwell tends to emphasize the minutiae of human experience and manages to infuse great humanity in them. When the main character gets snubbed by a woman he has fallen for, he retires to his home to drink himself stupid. "Half a glass of gin, and just enough water to make it palatable." His manservant sees his master in this condition,\ and begins to undress his master, bathe him, shave him, and put him to bed without rousing him. In that simple exchange, all one needs to know about the relationship that has formed between the Indians and the occupying British is shown.

he's an ordinary man

he drives an old car

but he passes through tolls

like a movie star

i have stinky feet.

It's 6 am and I can't get to sleep. I'll probably edit this bit of garbage when I see it in the morning. Er, noontime I mean.

Work ought to be oodles of fun, especially since I'm going to spend the better part of the mornning with a badass staplegun and feet upon feet of cat5 cable, in an effort to get a second line to the network at my desk that I can use for this sweet,sweet laptop.

The integration of the Java Dev Kit into Tiger took some getting used to, the OS ain't too shabby. Built in support for J2SE5.0 would have been nice, but beggars can't be choosers. The only reason it bugged me was my editor couldn't recognize the 1.5 compiler and kept reverting to the 1.4.2, so I had to get a beta of the latest release of the editor (drJava) http://drjava.sourceforge.net/ to resolve it. At least it made me more familiar with the GUI, which I know next to nothing about.

I'm so partiicular about having a machine I work on just the way I like it, I'll up the screen resolution even if I'm only using it for a few minutes. Getting this little thing working just the way I want will probably take most of the summer, but I am really looking forward to tinkering with it.

When a laptop is ordered from the other side of the planet, Shanghai to be exact, the fedex tracking info gives the illusion of your package traveling through time

I don't get involved in the Mac/PC argument, otherwise i'd tout time travel as one of the 200 new features of the Tiger OS. I am a relatively new initiate into the cult of Mac. I wouldn't call myself a 'switcher' only because I hated the 'switch' ad campaign, plus Windows has always blew. Using Windows was not a choice (neither was DOS) so it isn't really a switch. And considering I only play videogames in Windows and use Fedora Core 3 64Bit for everything else(still learning it tho, I am not teh leet), and we use Solaris at school, working on another platform sounds like a h00t. Especially a pretty looking Unix platform encased in bulletproof glass, so I can protect myself in the hood.

I wasn't planning on seeing Star Wars Episode III, at least not anytime soon. Geek though I am, waiting in line next to some guy who thinks just because he puts on some big ass headphones he looks like Princess Leia. A trio of guys in stormtrooper outfits. 150 red faced Darth Mauls. Not my cup of tea. Not to mention, the opening on Wednesday(technically Thursday) was at 12:01 midnight; being rested for a hard day of reading /. at work was much more important to me than being the guy who saw it first.

Enter the Food and Wine show on local AM radio 1350 in New Orleans. Tom Fitzmorris, the obese food and wine critic was hosting his show at a local restaurant that sounded deliciously out of my price range. As I'm driving home he says, voice lacking a trace of excitement, 'Anyone interested in seeing the new Star Wars movie tonight, just come on down to Casablanca's(the aforementioned restaurant), I've got two admit two passes to give out to the first ones here. Immediately my brain began to do some questionable math: Take the distance from restaurant (6 miles), guestimate the number of Star Wars fans who actually listen to a food and wine show on AM radio -1, consider that most radio listeners are probably tied up in rush hour traffic which leaves me to take shortcuts, and finally, regardless of the outcome of the endeavor, my comic shop of choice is mere doors away from the restaurant, so it will not have been in vain.

Speeding to my destination, thoughts begin to fly around my brain: when I get there, will the Moroccan hostess just look at me funny and dismiss me? just how fat IS Tom Fitzmorris anyway? will they still have tickets? am I going to meet Tom? is it proper to take the tickets and run, or does etiquette dictate I stay and have some food? do I have my GBA in the event of a long line sitting? I'm kind of neurotic about unknown situations, so going out on a limb and attempting for free tix from a radio host at a strange restaurant is a bit much for me. Needless to say, the tickets were MINE! (needless because otherwise this story would suck even more than it alreay does)

Walking toward the comic shop I considered bursting in, screening pass in had as if to say, 'G33KS WHO PRETEND TO BE CULTURED 0WN!!1!!1', but seeing as it was new comic book day(that's Wednesday for the uninitiated) there were too many geeks to risk life and ticket to brag to the hardcore. I could imagine a smelly manga fan beating me about the head and shoulders with an oversized manga hardcover and yoinking my ticket, I could not let that happen.

The movie was the best of the prequels, the guy I went with hated it, but the rest of the theater seemed to dig it. **SPOILER ALERT** Annakin has twins and turns into Darth Vader. Sorry.

I tell myself that Patrick Bateman had more shit in his bathroom than I do. I do that to make myself feel more like a badass, and less like a woman when it comes to "personal care" products. I swear to Christmas, I have so much shit in there. The complete line of Gilette skincare products, (minus the face wash, that's Bjore, and it bugs me daily that the facial care stuff is not all from one source, not to mention that Bjore discontinued the stuff I use currently so I couldn't keep using it if I wanted to (stream of consciousness parenthesis)) the body wash with collagen elastin, whatever the fuck that is, anti-perspirant deodorant and the just plain smelly kind, Very Sexy(tm) colonge, a goddamn loofah. And now I have to go put on some face moisturizer because my face feels dry. Geek Chic. I need to go stab a bum in the eyes for the purpose of de-emasculation. Be sure to use an after shave with little or no alchol in it, because that will dry out your skin, and make you look older. --American Psycho himself, Patrick Bateman

Snap.... I've been a slashdot member for months now, but only today have I posted my first comment to a story, and I just found this goofy journal thingy. Guess I'll fill it with crap that no one will want to read because that's what you do with these things. /. journal it's cooler than LJ because it uses symbols rather than letters.... oh yeah, and all the geeks.