So there I was, on my way to Scrabble Club, which I would never not go to after so lobbying for it's return, when I noticed something rustling in the bushes.

"Hey you, c'mere", said the bushes

I so went there, and a little man dressed all in green popped out

"Aye sir, you must come to my land! We're being plagued by a goblin horde and only you can stop them! You'll be King for life, it'll be sweet!"

But I remained resolute. No, I told him, I could not be King, for I had to go to Scrabble Club. And on I went, and was almost there, when I was transported to a strange dimension of swirling colours. You could almost pick a geometric pattern out at the edges of your eyes, but if you looked it went away. Three hooded figures came towards me (I say 'figures', though this is inaccurate, as they were more like humanoid gray. And I say came, but this is also inaccurate, as everything was just swirling colours, there was no distance, but nevertheless, they came towards me) and said

"Sir, for a few minutes of your time we will give you all the knowledge there is to no. You will be the wisest in your world, a sage beyond all your world has produced. A new Golden Era will come about due to your wisdom! Only a few minutes of your time!"

"No, for I must go to Scrabble Club"

"Scrabble Club? But you could--"

"Scrabble Club."

Then they sorta shrugged and I was sent back. I shook some colours off and was almost at the door when suddenly I was surrounded by a brilliant light. When it subsided, there were a bunch of aliens looking at me. Not even consistent aliens, but all different sorts: there was one that looked like it was covered in huge orange dreads (its whole body, I mean), a couple of angry reptilian sorts, and then a bunch of cliche grey ones working the controls. The orange one said,

"Meedle-beep!"

Which prompted one of the reptilian ones to shout "Tell us all you know!". I didn't know reptilian aliens could spit when they talk, but they do. Anyway, I told him

"I have to go to Scrabble Club"

But they wouldn't let me go! He gargled something at Mr. Meedle-beep, who said,

"Meedle-beep!"

And they wouldn't let me go. And they told me to tell them all I knew again. And I told them I had to be at Scrabble Club, and they told me to Tell Us All You Know!, and I told 'em how I knew that Scrabble Club was going on and we went 'round like that for a while, when finally Mr. Meedle-beep poofed out a bit of air and said,

"Meedle-beep!"

Which apparently means, "Tell us all you know about this 'Scrabble'! spit spit spit". So I described the basic outline, the point system and all as best I could remember and they sent out one of the grays and he came back with a Scrabble board. Mr. Meedle-beep told me,

"Meedle-beep!"

And as I was starting to get the hang of it I stopped the Reptilian and told them "Alright, I'll teach you". And I taught them how to play (apparently Meedle-beep! is just for speaking, and he can write English perfectly well, though curiously enough the Reptiles could only seem to get the hang of three and seven letter words), and Mr. Meedle-beep said,

"Meedle-beep!"

Which, roughly translated, means "Very well, here is my proposal: you will play with us a game of Scrabble. If you win, you can go, if you lose, we will anally probe you." And to satisfy something that's always bothered me I asked him why exactly they did anal probes, and he did that poofing thing again and said that it was none of my business (Well, actually he said "Meedle-beep!", but you have to read between the lines with these things).

So anyway, we played a game of Scrabble, and I admit I was a bit off that night. Maybe it was the Nocturnalism or maybe his Meedle-beeping was throwing me off, but I could just not play. So we were getting towards the end of the game and I was even behind the Reptian, when I shouted

"Hey, look over there!"

And they looked, and then I killed them all. I could've switched the scores or something, I suppose, but no, I think this is better. Luckily the controls were in English, and there was an instruction manual, also in English, so I got home just fine. So I parked the spaceship outside, all cloaked and everything, and ran to Scrabble Club. But everyone was gone.

I had missed Scrabble Club. So now I'm out the Kingship of a fantasy world, out all the knowledge of the world, I missed Scrabble Club, and on top of that I can't find the damned spaceship again. Anyway, that's the short story of why I wasn't at Scrabble Club. I guess it's good I didn't get anal-probed, but nevertheless, the evening was entirely unsatisfactory.
1:20 AM

Attention: to many of you this is irrelevent. However, a select few of you have come under the power of spam viruses. These (legal) viruses infect people and make them send out links to a site which in turn infects the new visitors. They manage to get people to do this by having "games" which are little more than seeing who can spam the most. I won't provide any links, as I don't want to encourage this, but they're out there.

Now I'm quite sick of it, and am hereby providing notice that any time I see any of these under any medium, I'm reporting the person as a spammer. It's for your own good.
3:58 AM

I actually meant to talk about this earlier, but then important things like the Amish and anarchic torture came up, which reminds me: the nuns got thrown in federal prison. As well as one priest. They got thrown in prison for crossing the line cops established around the School of the Americas (now has some different name that I can't be bothered memorizing). The School of the Americas, if you're unaware, is where they train dictators for Latin America. Graduates include Maneul Noreiga, and some others, but I'm just going off the top of my head and he's all I can remember. Anyway, go to soaw.org for more info.

Returning to the people about whom I originally meant to speak: the Luddites. The Luddites have gotten a bad rap in history. Once upon a time, a young Ned Lud, either through craziness or clumsiness, destroyed two frameworking machines. So after that, when machines were destroyed, people said 'Oh, must've been Ned Lud'. So, now to the early ninteenth century. The Industrial Revolution was beginning in England, and mechanical weaving-frames had just come out. These essentially obsoleted (yes, I verbed it) the weavers, who were understandably upset about this. So they grouped together and released a list of demands: they wanted better wages, less unemployment, and a halt to the use of mechanical weaving-frames. One of their chief complaints was that the weaving-frames did shoddy work, so it was an affront to their craftsmanship. When they didn't get demands, they took it upon themselves to get rid of the frames, and set about smashing them.

This actually worked, for a while; the Lords and Ladies employing them started using weavers more and with better pay. The Luddites were extremely popular with the masses, but alas, the nobles saw this as setting a bad precedent (if the lower class realises it can get what it wants, well...), so they sent out a huge army. It took 12,000 men to finally subdue them, but when they did the Luddites were very dead. And forever stained in history. Because ever since, if you want to say someone is resisting progress, you call them a Luddite. Which is fair, I suppose; they did resist progress, but using it as an insult? These guys were pretty damn mighty, they saw that their art was threatened and they acted in defense of it. That they were ultimately unsuccessful doesn't mean we should attack them.

This is why Luddites are on the list of people to recieve Alex's Seal of Approval. It's a growing list, and I'm really not trying for a theme here, finding one group every time, as there aren't enough groups I approve of to last all that long, but that's how it's turned out so far. Anyway, as the list stands, it is:

Nuns, and Monx to a lesser degree
The Amish
Luddites

And if we ever make an Alex's Seal of Disapproval, it'll have:

Philosophy
Modern Art
Ads

Heehee...Amish and Luddites on one side, Philosophy and Modern Art on the other, I'm becoming quite the anti-intellectual. Ah, well. Anyway, I feel vaguely like I had something else to say, but I can always post again later, so I'm bowing out.
2:49 AM

There are some things that they don't tell you when you're growing up. They don't tell you that elementary school is pretty worthless, that you would be a better 'artist' than a lot of the yabbos that do it, or that there are things called 'pet therapists'. Really, the last one is enough to cry. Anyway, what they really don't tell you about is Rumspringa. I just found out about it myself. For almost all their life, the Amish are a extremely orthodox people, following harsh rules: little technology is allowed, women have one job (bear children), etc.

But!

But at 16 the young Amish teenager enters something called 'Rumspringa'. Here they are allowed to experiment with everything, and they do. They drink, do drugs, and sleep together quite casually. They have huge parties that combine the three evils of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. In '99, two Amish teens were arrested for selling millions of dollars worth of cocaine (just Rumspringa, officer!) If at the end of Rumspringa (no predefined time, just when the kid feels like it) they still want to be Amish then they are welcomed back in, but they have to sell all the stuff and go back to abiding strictly by Amish rules.

Wow.

My source for this, by the way, is all from reading about some documentary called The Devil's Playground. I haven't actually seen this. Anyway, I'm going to go sulk that I wasn't born Amish.

Update: this was confirmed by this article, which contains the line 'On this night, deputies report "Buggy all over the road ... headed toward (State Route)168 1 mph."'
1:39 AM

ITS tells me they're going to cut me off the internet at the end of, err, yesterday, so I better hurry.

I feel vaguely embarassed to be an anarchist... http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,2763,883074,00.html. On behalf of all anarchists to the fascists/commies: heh. whoops. our bad!

Really, I think this says something about Modern Art. It hadn't even been around that long by the Spanish Civil War, and people were already using it for torture. This pretty much describes how I feel when I'm forced to look at Modern Art. I know I'm unculture, but what I want out of art is for it to look pretty. The number of people who have seen a picture and seriously been influenced to somehow dramatically change their lives is pretty low, so if we accept it's a secondary mode of communication to writing/speaking (forms which have transformed countless people), and it has to have some purpose, I say that purpose should be to look pretty.

Modern Art, on the other hand, says that that purpose should be to be as cryptic as possible. This makes the artist seem really intelligent, because look, I called this perfectly normal thing art, aren't I so clever! Tee-hee! It also makes the curator of the museum look intelligent-I recognise this as art because he said so!-and visitors to the museum smart-we appreciate art!-and people that think it's pointless, we look dumb. We're not part of the club of people that 'get it', and we're not even sure what 'it' is to get. So basically it's a great ego-boost for the artist and all his friends, and he gets paid! I would become a modern artist, but I don't have the skills necessary to maintain that level of pretension.

I'm not saying there's not modern art I like. For instance, in the Chicago Art Institute there's a corner of one room that's kept continually restocked with candies that you can eat, as an art exhibit. I'm sure it's saying that art should be more tactile and we don't appreciate its sweetness or something, but what it really says to me is 'eat me, I'm strawberry flavoured!'. And anything that says that is ok in my book. And then there are modern arts that actually are pretty, and those are of course ok. Jackson Pollock-and for anyone who's going to start talking about how Pollock wasn't really modern art or something, no, I don't care- I have to give grudging respect. Apparently his works had a strict fractal form. Which is pretty cool. They even think that they can date the work of a Pollock and tell the difference between a real and a fake using this.

Of course, some cynics might point out that anytime you have to use advanced mathematical techniques to be able to tell if something is a fake God might be sending you a clue that it isn't really art.

Fractals, for that matter, are pretty. We were being shown some in Astronomy class today (to illustrate science...no matter how far you got in, there was still more to get), and he turned off the lights and everything, and it was very pretty. Astronomy is a bit of a disappointment, I might add. What I had thought would be that we would spend all our time in those chairs that lean down, looking at the ceiling, which would have a starmap, and he would point out various constellations to us. Instead, here we are, learning about the Scientific Method. I can't tell you how many times I've learnt about the Scientific Method. It seems every teacher assumes all the ones prior to himself somehow forgot to teach about the Scientific Method, and that finally he will bring to light just what we're doing. Gee, thanks.

Well, I'm going to post this before I lost my internet connection.


PS Jenny, if you read this, or Mom to pass it on to Jenny, I don't hate you and had in fact unblocked you earlier today. I only blocked you to keep me from doing dumb stuff like recommending more music to you, but I don't want to piss anyone off, so you're unblocked.
1:12 AM

Monday, January 27, 2003

 

 

Sunday, January 26, 2003

 

 

Saturday, January 25, 2003