Everything2 New Writeups

Somewhere Else (personal)

2009-11-24T00:27:39Z

Even as I sit in my swivel chair finger-brushing my pencil skirt and shaking my round face "no", it's going on. Happening. Time is taking place. The chronology of the day, be it abhorrent or better, goes from one to two; from pinky to thumb.

The precipice of happening is always there. Darkness and falling and edges, same as always... beautiful, like a gravity star or fusillade, Time swallows.

It was me in winter just then, a spare moment before deadline to imagine happening elsewhere; other than where this pen of mine clicks and the office staff mills with notions of grave importance.

Sometimes I think up ways in which I'd like to be swallowed. Like now, like as the pen clicks.

Somewhere near the equator, walking the line where beach and blue meet high tide. Peeling oranges in Fresno with the music at full blast. Naked beside you on a floor…

Matt Kane Overleaps the Gorge of Death (fiction)

2009-11-23T22:36:31Z

Matt Kane surveyed the scene around him with detached, clinical professionalism. It was one of the worst, most horrifying crime scenes he'd ever seen in his 20 years with the Aluchua County Sheriff's Office (Crime Scene Investigation division). There were at least three bodies here, possibly more -- they'd need to DNA-match all the scattered body parts before they'd be able to get an accurate body count.

"Holy spit, Matt, I ain't seen nothing like this since 'Nam," said Sgt. Edwin "Tex" Abalone. "What kind of sick mind could do this to people?"

"A very sick mind, Sgt. Abalone," said Matt, tucking his sunglasses into his…

Odearism (idea)

2009-11-23T22:32:11Z

Odearism is a term coined by influential documentary film maker Adam Curtis to describe the way in which certain political situations (military conflicts and other social problems) breed a sense of political apathy by the way they are described and represented in the media.

The clip was shown on Charlie Brooker's Newswipe where it is explained with Curtis' usual clear, straightforward articulation.

Essentially, it describes situations that become so complex with bad guys on both sides of any struggle to the extent that they can no longer be broadcast simply as political struggles with a clearly identified binary opposition between evil powerful dominant elite groups against the powerless and ultimately moral resistant forces. Where both victims and oppressors are both viewed as evil, traditional representations invented in the media are left redundant. Then we are exposed only to human beings cruelty towards each other. We can only feign sympathy with the response "Oh dear" as the only…

Beating the market (how-to)

2009-11-23T22:11:27Z

Introduction

In investing, to beat the market is a kind of holy grail. In this writeup, we will first see what we mean with "beating the market". Then, the two most common strategies for beating the market are discussed. I will use stocks as an example, although the principle applies to other markets as well. Then, we will see how we can blend these strategies.

This writeup is meant as an informative piece. It is certainly not meant as investment advice.

What is this market we are trying to beat?

This is a very good question, with no real answer. If we restrict ourselves to stocks, one could argue that if we outperform the index, we have done well. If we restrict ourselves to investing in domestic stocks, it makes sense to pick a domestic index, such as the Xetra DAX for investments in Germany, the S&P 500 in the USA (the Dow Jones is not a very good benchmark, as…

lolcats (person)

2009-11-23T21:29:51Z

Any picture of a cat can be captioned to create a lolcat, but certain lolcats have achieved legendary status and are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent more than ten or fifteen minutes on the Internet. The following cats have been made into memes of their own, which I list below in roughly descending order of popularity.

Ceiling cat. A wide-eyed orange cat peeking through a hole in the ceiling, originally captioned with "CEILING CAT IS WATCHING YOU MASTURBATE," Ceiling Cat has achieved (literally) religious significance among dorks on the Internet. Ceiling Cat represents omnipotence and omniscience, his Godlike powers endlessly parodied and reimagined through shoops and fics. There is a church of Ceiling Cat on Facebook, and he is the central character in the mostly unfunny lolcat Bible.

Longcat. The locus classicus is a photo of a beautiful white cat named Nobiiru who is being

…

the art of poetry (poetry)

2009-11-23T19:59:59Z

Sing, sister, though you are offkey,
Of a thousand knights and evenings cold.
Beneath the moon, beneath the sky,
Setting mutts to howl and birds to fly.

Above the trees, they echo harshly,
Drowning out the poet's dirge.
Between the branches, black and fickle,
On the wing and shedding feathers.

Stopper lips and cease the wailing,
Eke out your art in tears and edits.
Art unwon by callow weepings,
Sharpen knife and sew the heartstrings.

Butcher words and mangle verses,
Cut out whole meat from starving corpses.
With what remains, feed growing flowers,
And walk from field with dredged reminders.

how we treat each other (essay)

2009-11-23T18:40:14Z

I want to talk about how we treat each other. Do you remember when we were kids in primary school, when friendship was real and true? Sure we might have liked some people better than others, but it was all simple and good. We treated friends well, and close friends even better. The unwritten rules were crystal clear. Those were happy, care-free times.

Don't you think things have changed now that we've grown up? How have they changed? Are you more comfortable with your relationships with the world around you today? Personally, I'm not, and here's my theory as to why.

A lot of people these days are hypocrites in the way they treat others and expect to be treated, and I think this is very common among the "educated/affluent" type who grew up being able to get away with it. While it seems personally advantageous because you get the "better end of the deal", this is literally double-standards on integrity, and the realization of compromised integrity can make one uncomfortable…

the lake around which are a thousand tiny fires (log)

2009-11-23T18:29:36Z

around the lake, explaining
midnight and two o'clock almost is
here, then the sky shifted like
a grate and soon stars fell and
are elucidating and hiding
between the trees, she then
reaching a finger behind
her and was beckoning. In the
iris they are
circumnavigating and why
I would be cautious, wove around
the pupil and then we
went skinny-dipping

words (essay)

2009-11-23T18:28:32Z

This is going to sound a little unusual coming from me, but lately I've felt that my vocabulary is rather limited. I came to realise this over the past two months or so, as I've begun to read more books again. I used to be an extensive reader as a child and I've always been very expressive with my thoughts, but I've also always limited myself to the bare minimum when it comes to words. I strongly believe in a simple, minimalistic approach when it comes to communication. Any additional embellishment is unnecessary and only serves to cloud your message and confuse your audience. For the longest time, I was absolutely content with my level of expression and understanding.

Lately though, I've come to realise that there are actually quite a lot of words that I am uncertain about. I've reached the stage where sometimes I quite literally don't have the words I need to properly express myself. I've always pondered, ever since one of my enlightening KI classes, about the relationship…

soulmate (essay)

2009-11-23T18:12:06Z

What is a soulmate? If you believe that there is someone out there who has a divine predisposition to being the "perfect partner" for you... No. The odds are ridiculously against that. There are 6 billion people in the world. If you only have one soulmate in the world, the odds of me being your soulmate is 1/6,000,000,000. It is highly likely that your soulmate might have just died in a landslide, tsunami, earthquake or flood in the past week without you ever having met him or her.

Assuming that in your lifetime, you get to know about than 3,000 people personally (which is a very generous estimate) your chance of ever meeting your soulmate is 1/2,000,000. (To put things in perspective, the chance of you winning 4D is 1/10,000) If you're Singaporean, the chance of you meeting your soulmate in Singapore is 1/1200, assuming you don't mind your soulmate possibly being of the same sex, of a different race and religion, and of any imaginable age gap.

What am I trying to say here? The idea of…

double standards (essay)

2009-11-23T17:58:48Z

When I got together with my girlfriend when we were 13 years old, people used to ask us if we kissed or made out, and be horrified when we said yes. Many thought we were immoral- succumbing to adolescent lust and idealistic fantasies about what love was. I would face this moralistic antagonism throughout my teenage years.

Initially, I lived with it. I figured that perhaps they were right, and I was simply too liberal to be comfortably integrated into a conservative society. Back then, I actually thought that our generation must have been unusually conservative! Obviously, I was wrong. Many of my friends who were so scandalized at my young relationship would later start clubbing before they were old enough to, indulge in underage sex, smoking, drinking, tattoos, piercings, drug abuse- you name it, and I can name someone younger than me who's done it.

I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. If you want to get yourself wasted and wake up every weekend with a…

Banana proof of the existence of God (idea)

2009-11-23T17:52:30Z

In 2006, Christian activist Kirk Cameron starred in a propaganda video which includes, in part, a one-minute segment with Ray Comfort on how the banana is proof of God's existence. Calling the sweet, yellow fruit the atheist's nightmare, Ray Comfort rattled off a list of the banana's unique features that prove it must have been intelligently designed to make it convenient to eat.

These features include a comfortable shape, non-slip grip outer peel (the inner side of the peel famously being a different story), convenient opening tab, and "perforations", which I can only assume refers to the 5 ridges along which the banana naturally peels, since bananas certainly do not have actual perforations. And of course the color of the peel is a natural indicator of its ripeness.

Oddly, Mr. Comfort opens the banana from the wrong end. Since bananas ripen from the other side, the stem is only a convenient opening…

The Pursuit of Happiness (essay)

2009-11-23T17:30:55Z

My advice for the pursuit of happiness:

Don't.

You aren't going to listen, are you? It is your RIGHT to pursue happiness. You have it all planned out. As soon as you finish your degree, get that job, can afford the house with the picket fence, can afford more drugs, get the big screen tv, have your hands on that new computer, get to be live in person at The Game, find your true love, are an astronaut landing on Mars, or (you fill in the blank), you will be entirely and utterly happy.

It is annoying and stupid to watch people fall for this.

My X would want something and would work on getting it. As soon as he'd get it, he'd say, "See, the new motorcycle has made me a better person." At least he was funny.

You continue to think that you can pursue happiness. Do you think you are going to…

constructing a smile out of the loophole in misery (poetry)

2009-11-23T17:13:30Z

Chortling at the cruelty you bestow
Putting together the missing pieces joy
Constructing a smile out of the loophole in misery
I comprehend that's not how you operate
I know it's hard for you to smile
Harder for you to just be nice
I love you though I have no choice
No say in how my heart functions
I do not try to come in its way
Cause I know that the heart's stronger
The mind needs the heart but not vice versa
The heart works just fine
Without the brains logical insight
Just feeling all that comes it way
Judging feelings and not the person, pray
I'm sorry I didn't mean to preach
But not much harm did it do to thee
Maybe you still feel after you release
Your heart from the chains n leash
I want to look in your eyes just once
and see you not see your reflection for once
Look back into mine, feel your pupil melt
Warmth seeping till your heart
Breaking the ice cold shadow sheathe
Hope my smiles warm enough
To lighten your day, your life

artifacts from the boneyard (personal)

2009-11-23T15:33:13Z

When I was eighteen to twenty, I was involved in an informal coffee night in the Upper Midwest that led to acquainting myself with several of the local witches. Among these was a triad of older sorts who'd been around a fair bit. One of these women owned a sheep farm, and every so often, she would invite a few of the local students/ associates of the other woman in the triad up to help out with the farmwork.

The boneyard on her farm was in two parts. The first was a concrete pit where many of the remains of butchered sheep were thrown. This was well away from the house and barn, in the woods out back of the area where the sheep were allowed to graze: visitors such as myself rarely went near it due to the near-constant stench of decomposing flesh.

The second was a field to one side of the barn. This area was pockmarked with dead and dying trees, and a few hardier specimens. The land was riddled with bumps and swells, hollows and holes;…

catwalk (thing)

2009-11-23T14:29:33Z

A catwalk is originally a nautical term. It indicated an elevated walkway on a ship, one which required caution to properly traverse. The user was obliged to walk 'like a cat' - very carefully and sure-footedly - in order to safely pass along it. Modern shipbuilding refers to 'catwalks' as enclosed or covered elevated walkways - used either for bridge access or, on modern ships with large amounts of equipment on deck, to carry their users over the cluttered deck area (Liberty Ship terms). Another nautical reference indicates that long, narrow 'finger piers' are also referred to as catwalks.

The term carried over to refer to similarly constructed passageways in various situations. In a theater, a 'catwalk' is an elevated walkway behind and above the stage, where caution and…

On Goose Shit (poetry)

2009-11-23T09:02:36Z

Keep your eye from heel to toe,
the grass is high it's hard to know.
Lump of dirt or dry goose loaf?
As spring thaws earth it may be both.

So wise lovers in rest and play,
stay on covers by ponds in May.
On soft grass beds fed on spring rain,
with clouds in head and lumps decaying.

For a goose's ass will always drop,
munched up grass in slimy slops,
dried in sun it becomes the dirt,
from the goose's bum so comes
the earth.

Lake of Fire (thing)

2009-11-23T08:31:51Z

Lake of Fire is an American original, first recorded by the Meat Puppets in 1983, on their second eponymous album. More recently, it has been heard on the 1994 Nirvana cover, on Nirvana: Unplugged.

The song itself is a slow-rolling commentary of sorts on the Biblical reference to a literal "Lake of Fire" in Hell. It is a fairly short piece with some neat jangly flashes, some versions running under two minutes. Even within that short play it consists of only two true verses, interspersed between three repetitions of the chorus:

Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to Heaven where the angels fly
They go to the Lake of Fire and fry
(Won't) see them again 'till the fourth of July

The description of the fates of "bad folks" appears to be tongue in cheek (not surprising where the most significant cover shares album space with a cover of …

beanbag (poetry)

2009-11-23T08:08:30Z

/me has a sore back
Twenty minutes later
He sits up in disgust
And launches his body
Into a morphous blob

As I'm sinking into
The familiar rustle
Of polystyrene balls
I can't help but wonder
What is it about beds
That makes beanbags better?

After sleeping in bed
I never feel refreshed
But as I close my eyes
And know I can now rest

wand of nothing (essay)

2009-11-23T06:41:21Z

out in the snowchairs, the lawn
a dark green and petulant, rewinding
other reasons and the premonitions
how convenient,
standing at 12:30 from the
platform and the yellow paint; soon there
came a noise, out in the Boston
irrelevance and the sirens were
howling. The girl with
the forest in her eyes opens
in the cathedral, and said
we are all prophets, but she is
exaggerating

Even though I sleep terribly with another body in the bed (poetry)

2009-11-23T06:39:52Z

Pillows don't breathe against your neck,
there is no gentle rising of the chest
with every in-drawn breath.
No fingers to trace down one's spine,
the touch for which to pine.
No careful caress in the middle of the night,
no half-awake shifting to hold me tight.

No words accurately describe the exact differences between hard ribs beneath my fingers and the softness of a pillow, or the slight mumbling in sleep, without which the world would be silent.

Twisting letters on a page do not tell you what is different between sleeping alone or sleeping together, words are entirely inadequate to explain why I would rather a half-decent night sleep with another than a full one with my arms clutched around a pillow.

I…

Every poem about thunder was written under the protection of a roof, or, at the very least, an empty sky (poetry)

2009-11-23T05:55:08Z

"Every poem about thunder was written under the protection of a roof, or, at the very least, an empty sky" asserts that something is true about each poem ever written about thunder. Specifically, that such poems were written under an empty sky or under the protection of a roof. Symbolically:

∀p ( Pp → (Rp ∨ Sp) )

where

Px ≡ x is a poem about thunder
Rx ≡ x was written under the protection of a roof
Sx ≡ x was written under an empty sky

The truth of this sentence is time-dependent. It may have been true in 1872, but once Johannes Heimmacher stepped out of his front door and started jotting on that napkin in the rain, it became false. It seems so likely that someone, over the course of human history, has written a poem about thunder while outside on even a cloudy day, that it seems this statement is surely false. More rigorously, it is easier to…

The Vortex, or the authoritarian Singularity (idea)

2009-11-23T05:48:33Z

Among the Kurzweil set there is a lot of happy talk about a Singularity describing a point where the rate of change itself accelerates to an asymptote, i.e. reaches infinity as technical advances multiply upon one another, and this is characterized as a radical shift in subjective consciousness that's a clean break from the past way of experiencing time.

This is usually lauded as a benign experience because it's assumed it would solve material scarcity. However there is also the 'rise of the machines' scenario as the Terminator movies visualize, where autonomous networks overtake all human decisionmaking ability and take over the nukes.

The level of corruption and the way it all works and what it's really all about becomes unbelievable to most people. It's about the Great Abyss. Picture a canyon, a deep abyss, surrounded by high walls. And in that Abyss whirls a

…

1 Man 1 Jar (idea)

2009-11-23T05:47:25Z

A young man stood silently in the kitchen, cleaning up from lunch. Scattered on the bench were the remaining few dishes. One hand lay limp at his side, the other clutched a small glass jar. He stared out the window completely motionless, as if transfixed. His lips set in a grim, straight line, and his eyes bore into the horizon like lasers.

Several minutes he remained like this, clearly some kind of storm raging inside his head. Ten people over the past forty-eight hours had asked him on separate occasions if he was ok immediately on sight. A networks of tiny streams of blood had now formed on his arm, but he didn't notice. A small pool had begun to form at his feet. Someone yelled his name, and he was suddenly brought back. The dripping blood caught his eye, drawing his gaze. His head tilted slightly down, but otherwise he still didn't move, watching the blood for…

Giving a bottle to a breastfed baby (person)

2009-11-23T05:24:00Z

My son cozmodiar was breastfed (solely) from birth until about three and a half years. He never received a bottle until he was a little over a year old, and contracted some sort of lower GI tract bug which gave him severe diarrhea and his pediatrician suggested the breast be supplemented with pedialite. I agreed and gave him his first bottle, which he removed from his mouth, gave the evil eye and tossed aside, which amused me immensely. I just stuck the tit in his mouth and drank more liquids.