blanketfort

[mutter] - Hello, far away friends! Send me your news and views and musings! I'm off to picnic in the park.

[mutter] - very much so

[mutter] - Oh so busy: dreaming, wikiing, reading, procrastinating, and putting together my friend Jaysun's new Ironwork Gallery site, TriskeleForge.com, whom you should keep in mind for your future metalworking needs :)

[mutter] - Oh so glad to see sunlight and blossoms and heat. (as is cat). I remain addicted to Wikipedia nonetheless. Saving the world one edit at a time.

[misc] - venezia-biennale/otaku/tourroom. This first shot is dreamy. I so want a block of designer apts underneath my bed. Each decorated in the styles i'd decorate heaven in. The whole bedroom it's in is dreamy too. From the sculptural walls to the display cabinets. (ignore the bedsheets and rug). Until you realize that if you keep clicking the blue arrows underneath, it's a choose-your-own-adventure inside a store!

Vintage Technology: Calculators

Top 10 Strangest Computer Mice & Top 10 Strangest MP3 Players & The Top 10 weirdest keyboards & Top Ten Coolest Laptop Cases & Top 20 Strangest Gadgets and Accessories

Circuit Roulette (and regedit roulette in the comments)

Tomorrow is the annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel race, down Lombard St in SF.

the life you lead. Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

circadian ambush!
"huh? wha'? bright@!"
ow.

my math skills are impaired from too many ½+½+½+½+½+¼+more midnight cookie justifications.
practical math is my anti-sugar (see also)

[mutter] - The Five Things tag meme (thanks john!)
What were you doing ten years ago?
Finishing grade 12. Deny deny, repress repress. Ommmmm.

What were you doing one year ago?
reading quietly. panicking quietly. puttering quietly. watching the cat be cat-like.

Five snacks you enjoy:
regular: Coooookies. muffins. chocolate bars. yoghurt. bananas.
special: banana bread. sex-in-a-pan. spice cake. crème brûlée. häagen-dazs (cookie dough).

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
egads. umm, i like instrumental or electronic this decade. But if i wasnt repressing my teen-angst years, i could probably singalong with most of NineInchNails "The Downward Spiral". Oh and, Pixies "Where is my mind?". I'd like to be able to understand the words to, and singalong with, Pizzicato Five and Stereolab. (i think. depending on what they're singing ;) i never understand lyrics and don't usually try. it's generally bad poetry.)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
build a house. travel with cat and friend to japan for a year. buy more possessions and worry about them. eat out more. seed money for entrepreneurial friends.

Five things you like doing:
reading. watching. listening. snoozing. imagining.

Five things you would never wear again:
huh? odd question. ummm. a wig and frock. (does that photo still exist amanda? goddamnit..)

Five favorite toys:
I'm gonna go with the my-childhood-toys subgenotype: lego, tonka truck, bubbles, yo-yo, rc-cars.

I tag: Beth Cherry, Claire Robertson, Michael Barrish, Paul Ford, and Matt Webb,

[mutter] - a pretty girl stole (absconded with!) my scarf last week. i wonder where they are now. should i put up signs? "lost: scarf. dark blue. answers to the name of quiddity"
--update-- it returned! i hope it had fun with her.

[misc] - am taking a break until january. until then...

Firefox 1.5 has been released. Now includes automatic updates, among many other improvements. Go download. Now. You will be pleased.

visit Cute Overload

grin at the Temporary park(ing). now that's art.

Don't watch Aeon Flux, do watch Serenity. Don't read newspapers, do read comics. Don't make resolutions, do eat and drink too much. Get more exercise and drink more water, make whimsical gestures and dream your days away. Happy holidays.

Who are you people anyway? [mumble at me, a 2 sentence synopsis of your life. (much thanks for the random mumblings kyle. :) words make me happy.]

escape the noise, and kill some hours, with the JayIsGames nominess for web-game of the year

[mutter] - i still want carnivorous butterflies (to replace the mosquitos), but we can start with purely buffalo-parasitic variants.

[mutter] - merry stuffmass to you.

[stuff] - a quiet month. lots of summer and sun. (re)reading lots of classics. listening to zammuto and lovage. buried in email, cat naps, and good intentions.

[sigh] - i crave holographic rain.

[me] - if i didnt have the wrist-band, i'd think it was all a dream. what with the waking at 5:30am with itchy, swollen hands and face, an unprecedented and indecipherable allergic reaction. thank you VicGeneral for taking great care of a tired and scared me. (it's been a wierd week all round.)

[mumble] - need a gallery for international toast shape standards.

[need] - an evil-o-meter. tells you how evil the world is today, on a scale of "look" and "dont look" outside your burrow.

[media] - Blue tits get their own show. Now take this to the next level, with thousands of species, all in their native habitats, cameras embedded in nests and warrens and dens and burrows, broadcast to the net and compiled into an access-on-demand database so we can create our own time lapse edits, and watch the nurturing of an entire generation of fauna.
Similarly, i want access to more foreign channels, purely for background static. To give the hum of human existence without the distraction of recognizable dialogue. [commercials/advertisements are generally most annoying due to voice-overs that you can't not listen to..)

[me] - sick nick. tea and blankets.

[mumble] - [edited for errors. due to editor incompetance. nothing to see here, move along, move along.]

[all the way down] - connotation implication derivation ramification insinuation extrapolation permutation

[stuff] - religion is a fascinating lie, that i am adamantly against anyone taking seriously.

1. pajamas first
2. ????
3. profit!

[eyes] - have potatoes

[%#&!@] - wwnd? *sigh* who am i again? line!?

everyday, my heart must race least once with exertion.

everyday, read something you do not understand.

i need to remember how to make noise.

[naval] - quite related.

[wish] - They're the size of alligators!

Modern organized religion seems so lacking in imagination.

[apparently] - "FËå® î§ tHË þöwË® tHåt |îV˧ îñ ¥öµ® §öµ|, Ðöñt Fö®ÇË ît Ðöñt þµ§H ît, Jµ§t Fö||öw ît." - tagline

[life] - Things feel poised for a shift. Grandad is in his last days, i'm re-overwhelmed with projects, the weather just had a costume change, and the camel is dropping straw all over the road. Stuff. lots of it.

and in between naps, i snooze.

but, but, maybe; just maybe, only ... she,

*sigh*. probably not.

[laundry] - i feel some kind of need to either change my life or become more contented with my life, with all the pros and cons of each battling it out in the guise of friends.

it's not that the web has been slowing down development, rather you've been catching up.

[other stuff] - allow repetition.

habits are habitual.

5000 hippies fall into an army barracks. Do the hippies learn hierarchy and detachment, or do the troops turn on and drop out?

re: going to the crazy bin. the thing is, can you handle the lack of distractions.

selling a single idea is a lot harder than selling a complete lifestyle.

a hobby becomes an art when ego or skill increase sufficiently in size.

everybody responds to mob mentality, they just need the right mob to identify with.

One of those silly (spontaneous) statements i'll regret in the morning. Time to start airing the mental laundry [like bad poetry but worse]. Linkless days i shall post (in reverse or occuring order) edit-free errata from the "other stuff.txt" file [desktop scratchpad/notes-to-self]. neuro-analysae welcome. samples:

cats books and computers. the only things im missing are health and a partner.
therefore this summer needs health, productivity and some flirting.

bee-cauuse aaaa spoonful of sugar helps the fructose, go down; the glucose, go down; the sucrose go down. a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go dOown, in The most deeliiightfuuuul waaaaay.

logic in the flaws
and for
flaws in the logic

people prefer complexity in different areas of life. everythng is simple&complex and worthy of connoisseurship. some like complicated tea, some an ambiguous band, many enjoy a complex spirituality.

all the lighting turned high-key. turn it down.

be afraid. [apologies in advance [i cant help it. quit making me quit things.]]. [[[*gah*]]]

You can't just quit fearing bugs. you can't simply ignore and forget something you have strong feelings about. you have to develop a new attitude to replace the fear/habit/belief/etc with.
feel contempt for the bugs instead. or take glee in their intracacy and design. or
[probably this is how parts of hypnosis work?]

[sustenance] - avocado and cheese, or peanut butter and banana sandwiches, on sourdough bread.

assertive people glom ontu assertive statements; reticent people seem to usually prefer somewhat ambiguous phrasing.

[me] - currently dreaming about furniture and stereos.

[to do] - -DAILY-
stretch
breathe - [now. always.]
cook - [nourish? play?]
read - [yes!]
talk - [all, whenever, whatever. some, few, special. why? sigh.]
write - [trying]
move - [walk (saunter stroll stumble), climb (leap bound scramble), ride (fly flow fling)]
think - [*giggle*]
make - [ >8) 's at people.]

[mumbling in the dark] -
less is more.
grey is gray.
words are.

[one step forward, two ...] - Microsoft admits serious flaw in 'e-wallet' technology (11/02/2001)
and
Microsoft antitrust battle settled (11/03/2001).

"what?" exclaimed the generation, "You had said 'Every Portion in Moderation'? We thought you proclaimed 'A Moderate Portion of Everything', how foolish of us!"

reinventing yourself rarely succeeds, but is often a good path to self-rediscovery.

my religious text is written in post-it notes. Did you know... The smallest Post-it® Note is .591" x 1.969" (page markers). The largest is the Post-it® Easel Pad, measuring 25 inches by 30 inches.

my truth is someone elses lie.
one of those thoughts that pops up every few months (like thinking about my future death) that can be contempated and then forgotten again until the next time, because it can never be figured out. i like those.
but you can't write them down and think about them all the time, because then you would become a philosopher, and their tendency to proselytize makes them annoying.
so many questions so many questions so many questions. with so many answers and so many truths.
gonna lapse into poetry if im not careful. fsking headache.

life is a rollercoaster. pass the barf bag

is it better to live for the little things or for the big things? the vacations in hawaii or the hint of aroma from a nearby bakery...

I'm still pretty dubious about planes. I mean it's thousands of pounds of solid steel hurtling through the air. And its staying up because of physics. Not due to legs, but balancing atop a tiny puff of pressure. Physics i tell you! . pure madness.

"what if someone's hung a webcam outside my bedroom window..?"
i hate my brain, sometimes .

happy friday the 13th and a full moon to you.

blanketfort is happy to play host to friend owen's new toy, the Designomatic.


i'm happy because my recent excursions in intellectual masochism have proved fruitful. i seem to have redesigned my bathroom as a mecca to travel and to toilet paper (oh so soft, pure, organic and warm; and yet so industrial and geometric), my bedroom as an archeology dig, and my workarea as a feline palace.

if by the time i hit 65, i'm not world renowned for something interesting, i think i'll just have to create the first publically known and seen work of art that is guaranteed to drive quite mad anyone who views it. sadly this entails me going quite mad, which im not sure is an experience i really want to end my life with, but who knows.

having so much fun going as slowly as possible through the few boxes of childhood toys i managed to hold on to. i've got a new bucket next to my front door full of small pocket sized objects. sort of a random grab bag for a fiddle toy for the day. i'll quit smoking yet i tell ya!

way too many interesting projects on the go to even think about, a happy cat on my lap, and a full and useful day behind me. it doesnt get much better than this.
but how do you explain to a hypothetical teenager that s/he is going to value contentment/satisfaction over excitement later on in life?

well, a minor redesign of the frontpage, but not much else. i'm still enjoying the sun, poking smot, nuzzling cat tummies, and sipping sour apple martini's on my new porch. hope you are doing equally well, whoever you are :)

i will have "made it" when i have people who keep my sinks 1/4 full of ice at all times.

so, its been a while.
the cats have been fighting the elephants, the teddy bears are planning an invasion, and the squirrels are still hallucinationing. i'm living in the amazonian rain forest, making trips in time, exploring the boundaries of decadence, and talking up a veritable storm.
it's bloody good to remember what "happy" and " home" mean after these last few years..

i wish people would stop whispering to me through the walls, ceiling and floor.

sorry i haven't been posting stuff lately, but i've turned my apartment door into my new blog. its a lot more fun. damn i love this building.
changing daily, i've been sticking to or around my door: post-it notes with random thoughts or interesting questions on them, sheets of bubblewrap for people to take, origami sheep grazing on the hideous green 70's carpeting, rubber chickens with arrows in them and a sign saying "they almost escaped", and other assorted madnesses. i highly encourage it if your circumstances permit.

suspension of disbelief

i can't get over how incredibly peaceful my new place is. I wake up every morning and think that it's Sunday because i can't hear a constant stream of cars going by.
the walls are really thin, so i can hear my neighbours a lot, but they're a great bunch of people, and it actually just feels quite comforting. almost like having roomates, but without all the drawbacks.
*deep happy sigh*
back to organizing furniture.

oh, and Calypso loves the place. (obligatory bad photos to come.)

well. im back. miss me?
i love my new place. its almost perfect. still lots of stuff to do before its home though, so back to work i go. besides, i have a lot of reading and links to catch up on...

well. i move house tommorow, and no 'net connection for 6 days. i think i'll be visiting friends with modems a lot.
i'm mostly curious as to how my cat is going to deal with the whole thing. She's been acting even more neurotically than usual for the last few days, as all the things she knows get put in boxes and dissappear. I guess that means she's still inheriting my neurosese.
wish me luck :)

fire and speech were the first two headtrips our ancestors ever made. The first time, aside from the imagination and the odd mistaken plant eating, that we were able to understand things in vast new ways. The only other experience with varying perspectives on life would've been through changing emotions. The rage of a battle, the pain of injuries, the elation of coitus.
I'm really stuck on this idea that the enjoyment of life is all about experiencing new ways of looking at it. Hunting, exercise and sex (if you're doing it right) are all about getting back to an animal nature, moving moment by moment on adrenalin and instinct. the study of and creation of art and science and navel gazing (of the good variety) enable you to mentally step outside your normal perspective. All providing emotional filters to strap over our eyes and make the world a new kind of technicolour.

theres just no point in being serious. life is too short to go around being serious all the time.

if i were to go back to high school again, i could have so much more fun.
wear pyjamas more often, bake more cookies, impromptu perfomances of The Hunting of the Snark in hallways, create more art and more smiles.

days dont get much more frustrating than this. first i was hit by a virus which deleted all my registry files. once i finally got fed up with trying to fix it, i elected to just reinstall windows (yet again), and forgot to back up my bookmarks folder.
i want to use one of my "rewind-life-by-two-days" tokens now please.

i think the one big thing i'm going to miss about my current apartment is the rain pounding on my roof during a downpour.
its such a comforting noise.

unanimous unmentioned assumptions

it's so wonderfully quiet at this time of the morning. I can actually hear my cigarette peacefully burning away between my fingers. The sky is tinged a very pale blue as the sun slowly approaches reaching over the horizon. The air is cold but the blanket is warm.

standing on my porch, after too much coffee, jiggering slightly, almost start dancing quietly to the silence to burn off some of the happy nervous energy, but then i realized that neighbours might be watching, and "what if they had video cameras or something, that'd be on America's Funniest...." and thought to myself "i must remember not to dance on my front porch" and grinned to myself. Then it hit me, that this is a terrible thought, and that of course i should be dancing on my porch. Everyone should be happy to dance silently on their porch in the middle of the night. this is something terribly wrong with society.

so. for the second time in a week, i've got a dead battery from leaving my headlights on all day.
they really need to make things more nick-proof. *sigh*

good lord am i in a bad mood.
i havent been actually Pissed Right Off in a long time. First off i had another really bad dream, this time with a population of nothing but the girls i've had a crush on in my life, who are all dating all the guys i've ever hated in my life. Then i wake up to some asshole knocking loudly on every door in the building, and get up ready to confront whoever it is, REALLY hoping that it is someone trying to convert me to their religion so that i can just go off on them. Unfortunately it was just the vancouver phone book person, so i made do with glaring at him till he felt sufficiently uncomfortable to scuttle away. I think the milk i had in my bowl of cereal just now was slightly sour, and i've run out of cigarettes.

goddamn it gets bright early. now im tempted to just stay up all night.

I was about to make a comment about how noone ever seems to email me, and I have no idea who is actually reading this site (presumming someone is); but then I remembered that I have 4 month old emails I still haven't gotten around to replying to (sorry malc, it's coming, really).

slow sad classical music quietly in the foreground, rain coming down pitterpatterpitterpatter on my ceiling, thoughts fluttering down from the roof of my skull.

good thing to remember: your hot water is included in the rent, and when you're having a really bad day you can stand under the cascading hot water for as long as you want.
ahhhhhh....

good god good nap. what year is it again?

he's not dead, he's just cardiacally challenged.

Maybe we should start getting kids stoned on pot, and find some method that works incredibly well to teach them how math can be fascinating. Explain so that i understand, the beauty of physics. Get me staring at a picture of a movie car crash scene, and help me draw in, with my mind, the arrows of active kinetic and potential forces within the picture. Perform Shakespeare whilst I lie on my back staring down a grass hill at this mesmerizing performance of the bard.

Give me serious and deep rituals (pattern language style) around it, and give me hits of acid whilst we dissect flowers, keeping a counselor nearby who knows how to handle "i'm a flower murderer" trips. Walk us in a grassy field at night and explain the mysteries of the sky to us whilst we lie on our backs, and smoke, and pass around binoculars. Show us through art museums in private tours and magically explain what the artists were like, Shaw or Twain style.

i really love the idea that you can conduct music at one speed using one hand (eg 3/3), and conduct at a different speed using the other hand (eg 4/4). It takes some training and some fierce concentration, but it is possible. Trying it without knowing how, the mind explodes at trying to conceive what kind of state of mind would have to be possible in order to achieve it. What other completely different states of mind can I achieve without straying from the realm of "sane man" (using whatever definition you please)?

I think this is the huge attraction of both books and drugs. This is also the thrill of languages, games, activities and every type of art.

i'm trying to plan out what i can do with the kitchen in my new place (yes its still 3 weeks away, but i'm obsessed). trying to make it interesting, without going over the top, whilst keeping it easy and pleasant to use.

possible bad ideas:
-halloween to whatever degree the entire room, making it a witch's kitchen.
plastic spiders and eyeballs and teeth in jars, scrawly handwritten labels
for everything, dried herbs hanging in bunches, into one cupboard build a
gentle outward sloping ramp and build a lightweight paper mache screaming
head which is attached at the temples via two strings to inside the cupboard
so when the door is opened the head rolls out and falls down to dangle at
face height, etc (what to do with microwave and other appliances...?)

-take all the doors off of the top cupboards and just arrange the contents
aesthetically (and by country)

-b&w i think the counters/cupboards are all black and white, so continue the
theme with all the b&w postcards/photographs/posters i already have.

-chinese style: use my entire set of chinese dining ware as main dishes,
decorate room with scrolls, proper wooden cutting board, little chinese
jars, woks, bamboo baskets and art, kitchen gods altar,

i really could go for one of those excercise machines that you can sit on while you type. with the pedals and the slow gentle motion from a pedalow. tip the room up so that im at a 30degree angle in a tall backed, comfy office chair, keyboard and mouse right under my fingers, cat sprawled out on my belly and purring gently. hmmMMMmmmm.

you realize something brilliant (or so sounding at the time anyway), and try to argue it through in your head to explain to someone, and then realize that the complete opposite of your conclusions is true. love it.

my cat is staring at me something fierce. usually i just block her out (she literally does sit 6 feet away staring at me for hours at a time everyday, sitting next to her foodbowl on the kitchen linoleum) but now i can just feel her staring at me, and the black outline of her shape in the periphery of my vision is standing out with such contrast thats its burning an image into that side of my brain.

wow, that was a damn good misread: my eyes panned down and read "Take-out cartoons litter my coffee table", which hit my train of thought like a car the villians left in the middle of the tracks.
those bastards.

dont dip your cookies in your orange juice. it's the other mug.

what is your favourite physical feature?
i like my hands. they're not good looking hands by any means, they're just normal hands. but i still think they're quite wondrous. i may just be a meat puppet within which to house my soul, but damnit, i can sure pull those strings...

life is my homework, and when i hit 70, i'm going to try and get it all done the night before it needs to be handed in.
*twitch*

you know whats really bizarre? old notebooks
apparantly, in 1996 i did a two day long flag-waving course. what the hell is flag waving? and why don't i remember any of this?

I'm Moving!
i'm so happy!
just down a few blocks, but to a much nicer neighbourhood and into a building full of friends.
yay!

of course, now i'm going to be useless for the rest of the month whilst i visualise where furniture is going to go and how things should get packed

Vicarious. i think im living vicariously through my cat. which isnt altogether a bad thing or a bad idea. there really isnt much better than a big sunny field to lie in. that space-station sized scratching-post i bought her? i think i enjoy it more than her. watching her nose and paw twitch as she chases dream butterflies? it's almost as much fun as being there.

the sun.
the sun is good.
the sun is good because it powers my magnifying glass.
the sun is good because it creates that wispy, wild, tail of smoke from the burning trail in the smouldering wood i hold in my hand, oh so pungent of bonfires and barbeques, writhing and twisting in the currents of the air.

i cant stop thinking about this quote from the Wired interview with Brian Eno: "the curator, the editor, the compiler, and the anthologist have become such big figures. They are all people whose job it is to digest things, and to connect them together."
It has obvious implications to weblogs, but also to the internet in general. A great human effort is going into reproducing old knowledge in a new medium. The printing press has been invented all over again. Organizations like Project Gutenberg or the Online Books Page are rapidly putting thousands of books into electronic form. If companies such as Sony have their way (which they surely will) then soon all works of film and music will be available digitally via the internet.
Whats really great about this recompiling of works, is that it makes it available to a wider audience, who in turn are inspired and produce their own content. The inner eyelid movies of thousands of souls are suddenly only a moment away.

one of the things that im slowly coming to terms with, is that i'm not special. sure im a unique one-of-a-kind individual, but there are 8 billion other unique individuals out there. this is way too large a number to conceive of. i cant even comprehend that my friends exist when they're not in my field of vision.
every day i am utterly startled by the idea that as i am going to sleep, there are millions and millions of people going to work, and children going to school.
heck, i still get a big thrill out of looking at my hand and flexing my fingers. thats some neat stuff going on. existence really is quite spectacular.

one of the things i miss most about my parents, is knowing i'll never again fall asleep to the sounds of them hosting a party downstairs. thats probably the sound that defines being a child for me. the clink of glasses, the bursts of varying pitches of laughter, the gentle rumble from the men with deep voices, the bad music in the background.

what sounds define childhood for you?

scratch that.
the rest of the world is a really wierd tradition.
north america is a really bad habit.

the prom is a very wierd north american tradition.
the idea of going to one huge party, that is organized decorated and run by the school you've been trying to escape from for 12 years, where all these formerly rebellious teenagers whom you couldnt get to conform with each other if you paid them are suddenly wearing tuxedos and formal gowns, with chaperones and no liquer ("you lick 'er" "no, you lick 'er"), is very very odd.
actually, most of north america is a very wierd tradition.

i dont understand web-cams. why do people initially aquire them? it surely cant be for video-conferencing (no matter how many expense accounts claim so), so is it a cheap and severely limited digital camera replacement? is it subconscious (or even conscious) exhibitionism? and then once you've gotten one, how does your usage pattern correspond to your original intent? do you send videograms to unsuspecting friends? or take "risque" pictures of yourself and giggle whilst imagining actually posting them to your webpage? or take dubious shots of pets and co-workers? or even, (god forbid), video-conference?

i've come to the conclusion that i am a cat that can talk, and any girlfriend i find in the near future that is a good match, would have to be someone that wants a cat that can talk whilst fully understanding exactly what that means.

i was talking with owen about how i wished that my cat could talk, and he wondered if i really did. Would i actually want to hear what she would say? Given all the concepts behind language, which would need to be understood in order to use a language (and supposing that she doesnt actually know these concepts in her current noncommunicative state), how would she regard me when given this capacity for conscious thought? She would be suddenly aware of the ideas and preconceptions behind words such as "pet" and "animal". Would she look differently upon being given cat-food, and being made to use a litter box? Would she feel like a prisoner now that she knows the idea of freedom?
Or would her animal nature override the human frailties of language, and leave her still regarding me as a surrogate mother?
What would your pet say if she/he could talk?

i wonder what a lion on catnip is like...

i really like taking long walks at night. the world after the witching hour has
past is quiet, dark and crisp. the glow from the orange streetlights gives a
warm hue to everything it touches, and the shadows enfold whatever visions
your inner eyelids can conjure up. the rustle of leaves and distant passing
cars add a soundtrack that only lulls you deeper into the step, step, step,
rhythm of your passage.

however, sometimes it just doesnt work out. sometimes every shadow contains dark
memories, around every corner is someone waiting to jump out at you, every
noise seems to build and build and build until they drum into your mind. its
like those dreams where you're fighting someone, but all your punches are
going in slowmotion. i dont like those nights.