Modulating & Deriving

Software. When I was just a wee little lad, my father gave to me a Commodore 64 computer. In those days, there existed a different kind of internet. Sure there were telecommunications, but I wasn’t privy to data over telephone until I was eleven. That was in 1988. The internet has been around since before my time.

I was a pretty clever kid – naïve and too trusting, perhaps. I haven’t changed much. I loved that computer. The software it brought to life was nothing short of astonishing. I remember waking up early before school just to load some silly new game into memory… my Dad, on his way to work, scolding me for being so helplessly beholden to the pixels and programming.

In those days, programmers were my rock stars. They were all male. Men made computers, and women were more comfortable with a Rolodex.   

It’s easy to laugh at some of the dense graphics inhabiting the software showpieces of yesteryear, but as a layman I must say that even a barely functional computer program takes a certain level of genius to conjure. My hat is off to those programmers of yore. Thank you for bringing a little magic into this drunk’s childhood. Keep on modulating and deriving, ye overlooked mages of bits and bytes!

  

Turban Wearing Witch Doctors

I found this in an obscure corner of the internet and thought I'd share:

"Nobody gets me down more than my own Mom & Dad most of the time, but there's also all those God Damned Muslims who are always getting in my way with their veiled threats. Scheming. Perpetually scheming Arabs who are so hard to satisfy. They're like a bunch of girls.

Another identifiable group that pisses me off are those turban wearers. Please don't get me wrong... I do appreciate their struggle and their strife, and I could never be critical of anyone's fashion choices, but quit making false accusations against me. I can hardly take a cab ride without some turban wearing witch doctor insisting I've stolen their map. It makes me think they just want to fight or some shit.

People who wear their glasses too much infuriate me to no end. Take those God Damned things off your face, for Christ's sake. Glasses-wearers. Get a gosh-darn monocle if you always need to refocus; for Christ's sake."

You God Damned Serfs

The City of Edmonton ate this small-town boy alive. I almost "made it" though. I once had a fairly decent blue-collar job that started at $60K / year. Not too shabby for someone with few credentials and a chip on their shoulder. But alas, my fervent hatred of work-working merited a reluctant dismissal after only three months.

In the six years I lived downtown, I made some bad music videos that totally bombed. The earliest entries on this blog are a vestige to the fruitless turbulence of my futile experiences.

Tonight I made some worthless art:

Done using Microsoft Paint

I drew this one freehand and then scanned / coloured it.

Today, each meaningless day I awake to do meaningless things is more painful than the last. I no longer care who gets elected to whatever public office, nor how many thousands of Middle Easterners are being slaughtered. I don't care about sports, girls, cars, money, friends, or prestige. Today, all I care about is whether or not I have another tasteless beer to drink.

Revenue Canada can go and suckle the meat flaps of their co-workers for all I care. I don't care. I don't care that hard working people without a pot to piss in are coerced into paying tax so some well-connected kid can get a nice job designing bad logos for $90K / year.

Abortion is the number one antidote for pseudo-Christianity. Certain media outlets will try to convince you that it's radical Muslims, but really it's all those doctors - the practitioners who are so busy planning their own vacation time that they're above properly washing their own hands - who are too willing to switch-on the baby vacuum.

I don't care. I don't care if you feed your young to the family pet. All the power to you. You could nail your unborn child to a hubcap and I'd probably laugh.

So eat your young, buy some running shoes, and file your taxes you God Damned serfs. Make sure to pay your abortionist with a credit card so it's not so painful.

Good night, and God bless.


  

Letterheads and Better Heads

What's in a name? Are we strolling through some specific campus of a specific post-secondary educational institute of Alberta, or shall we just say, "Meh. Campus Alberta," and leave it at that?

Change that letterhead or else!

Or else what? We'll no longer get a piece of all the funding you've already taken away?

It's not that I really have a stake anyway, folks. I've no intention of ever enrolling in university classes, nor do I have any kids who might one day attend to worry about yet. Maybe there's good reasoning behind homogenizing post-secondary education across the province. I just find the whole thing laughable. It's like the wild west. Brand that cow, Chuckles! Either that U of A sow gets a searing hot Campus Alberta mark in its rump or I'm not the Deputy Premier!

Whatever. I don't think the U of A should worry too much. It's just a stamp on a letterhead. It's not as if Hon. Thomas Lukaszuk can erase a century of geo-academia by simply redesigning a logo. The important people won't forget. If the alumni of the U of A are as resourceful as I know them to be, they'll conjure-up all manner of adaptive strategies to counteract such pettiness.

So have have fun with your power trip, Tommy Boy, and keep telling yourself that: Campus Alberta ROCKS!