Kablammo!

This is just getting weird — not only have I been doing 80+ pushups a day for a while now, but today I ended up going for a run.

I think something is wrong with me.

In other news, I finally tried out Rockbox firmware for my iRiver iHP-140. I really should have installed it sooner. On-the-fly playlists, gapless playback, a real shuffle mode, scrolling that doesn’t suck, customizable while-playing screens, and Final Fantasy Legend. And it boots in under a fifth of the time it takes for the stock firmware. If not for a few interface foibles it’ll take me a little while to get used to (and the fact that I can’t seem to have both Rockbox and my custom “Hyvät perät” boot screen installed at the same time), I’d recommend it with no qualifications. As it is I’m recommending it anyway.

Song of the Moment: «Super Car» — Love in Reverse

Easter Sunday 2005, Tampere. Today we pay homage to Jesus’s vaunted resurrection with one of our own. Getting up after three days of Koskenkorva and “Pass the Pan” feels just as hard as rising from the dead, and at least the dead can get some rest.

Lari and I pile into the back seat of Sebastian’s Nissan Sunny and take out his laptop for some in-flight entertainment on the drive to the ferry terminal in Helsinki. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It’s a good film, and it helps pass the time while Seba sits all alone in the front, fuming about having to drive and stay sober.

On board the ferry, as luck would have it we have an encounter with Mikko (Level 23 Loppasuu, Level 1 History Student) and he joins our party. The ferry ride, though it costs around 20 GP, is peaceful and uneventful enough. Lari makes some investments, we play some Kasino, and we have a drink or two. After an encounter with a Piirivalve (we manage to slip past by using our Dokumendid) and some cutscenes, we emerge in Tallinn.

The relevant part of the story is this: In Tallinn, we stop at a Statoil for some gasoline and delicious Kabanosses. More petroleum probably goes into the making of the hotdogs than into the gasoline, but they’re delicious beyond belief so it doesn’t really matter. I take a big bite of my Kabanoss (squirted full of majonees & sinep) on my way out of the Statoil store, expecting to start effortlessly chewing a slightly-vürtsikas homogeneous suspension of hog anus, pig rectum, and shoat sphincter.

Instead I am greeted with a sickening crunch and the feeling of something hard between my molars. I fish it out of my mouth and decide it’s either a chunk of bone or a chunk of tooth. I finish chewing my mouthful of hotdog and swallow it, so I can poke around with my tongue to see if I can find any gaping holes where teeth used to be. Nothing hurts anywhere, but both my lower wisdom teeth just feel… unusual. Perhaps it’s my imagination.

I stand by the automatic doors and inspect the piece of bone/tooth again, and consider walking the 5 meters back over to the counter and complaining. If this were America, I’d probably get a brief mention on the evening news and some kind of settlement from the company after filing a lawsuit. But this isn’t America, and the most I’d end up getting would be a whole lot of attitude and, possibly, a replacement hotdog. But that sounds like a lot of effort for very little payoff.

I look back at the chunk, shrug, flick it onto the floor of the store, and step outside. Even if I’m not going to make a scene about it, I can at least passive-aggressively make somebody else clean it up. As I head over to the Sunny I gingerly and tentatively take another bite of Kabanoss. Nothing hard, nothing out of place — but my molars still feel weird. Obviously they can’t both be broken, since I only felt the chunk of tooth on one side; but I’ve forgotten which side that was. I must be imagining it since they both feel odd, right?

I finish the hotdog, feel my teeth again, and doze off. My decidedly discomforting dreams all feature gaping chasms, open pits, and a harrowing sense of loss. I’m relieved to wake up back in Tartu, where I proceed to look up the number of a local dentist immediately upon getting back to my room.

Three and a half months later, as I’m packing up to go back to America, I still haven’t called.

Song of the Moment: «Chicago» — Django Reinhardt

New York Times pieces that are even marginally science/tech-related are notoriously spotty–my college physics professor read the weekly “Science Times” section for its comedy value, and a recent article stated, without a trace of irony, “Having experimented with Half.com five years ago, when the site was new, I knew it offered the easiest, most streamlined interface available to sell used merchandise at fixed prices.” Five years ago, as I recall, Napster still existed, outpost.com offered free overnight shipping on all orders, and pets.com was buying expensive TV spots (and still existed).

Anyway, a recent article appears to have gotten its facts somewhat straighter:

“There is a very dark, black cloud in this game. It’s not in the hands of kids who live next door to you; it’s organized groups and organized crime.”
…
“As of yet, it’s not at a point where you can point to titles being distributed online and say it accounts for the slump at the box office,” said Joe Fleischer, co-founder of BigChampagne. “But physical-goods piracy is a real problem.”

Song of the Moment: «I Want You Back Again» — The Zombies

• I was in CVS earlier today when their unreasonably chipper Kodak photo-printer kiosk-machine thing told me to, and I quote, “share and enjoy” my pictures with others. I was reminded a little of this bizarre and hilarious poster.

  I suspect that in each case the guy who came up with the message did so with tongue firmly lodged in cheek, and the suit who approved the message did so without a trace of irony, thinking the message was entirely sincere.

• Entropy and information are closely related. The more possibilities that exist for the state of a system, the higher the entropy. Conversely, the more information you have about a system’s state, the lower the entropy–uncertainty is reduced.

  Assuming, for argument’s sake, that the mind is a system to which this is applicable, does that mean that the less you know about my state of mind, the more entropy I’m creating? Is the act of engaging in thought accelerating the heat death of the universe?

• We’ve all seen those goddamn “anti-drug” commercials; we all know how ridiculously preposterous and ineffective they are (answer: just as much as every other goddamn PSA out there). Yesterday, though, I saw one that really took the cake. “Just tell your parents you lost track of her because you were high,” the voiceover intoned while the camera slowly zoomed out while centered on a young child holding a balloon at an amusement park. “Responsibility: the anti-drug.”

  The message this ad appears to be sending is as follows: Are you a fuck-up, a burn-out, or a stoner? Get a girl pregnant and all of your problems will magically disappear because, after all, having children turns you into a wonderful person and magnificent parent. Hell, even Snoop Dogg chilled out after he had a kid. “Responsibility: the anti-drug”? What the fuck, I mean really. Having kids in an attempt to hold together a crumbling marriage is bad enough, but having kids in an attempt to kick a drug habit sounds absolutely unforgivable. How many stories like this is the “National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign” trying to cause?

I was going to say some other stuff too but I forgot what it was.

Song of the Moment: «Lampshade» — Kashmir

After having the song half-written for over a year, I was suddenly seized with an urge to record it at least semi-decently. The song, of course, prominently features “chemically derived?” in the chorus, in a nod to both The Flaming Lips and The Unicorns (the latter of which may very well themselves have been making a nod to the former).

While I was doing this, of course, my vasopressin and oxytocin levels had been at abnormally high levels for a few weeks. Coincidence?

Are these feelings chemically derived?

From Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, a rather good book:

These things are bad for you: sex, high-rise buildings, chocolate, lack of exercise, dictatorship, racism! No, au contraire! Celibacy damages the brain, high-rise buildings bring us closer to God, tests show that a bar of chocolate a day significantly improves children’s academic performance, exercise kills, tyranny is just a part of our culture so I’ll thank you to keep your cultural-imperialist ideas off my fucking fiefdom, and as for racism, let’s not get all preachy about this, it’s better out in the open than under some grubby carpet. That extremist is a moderate! That universal right is culturally specific! This circumcised woman is culturally happy! That Aboriginal whistlecockery is culturally barbaric! Pictures don’t lie! This image has been faked! Free the press! Ban nosy journalists! The novel is dead! Honor is dead! God is dead! Aargh, they’re all alive, and they’re coming after us! That star is rising! No, she’s falling! We dined at nine! We dined at eight! You were on time! No, you were late! East is West! Up is down! Yes is No! In is Out! Lies are Truth! Hate is Love! Two and two makes five! And everything is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds. (p. 352)

And, also:

…He finds that the waiting—another ten years, as she has specified—is preferable to her daily vagaries, her whims. The waiting is at least solid, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, he can lean his weight against it knowing it will not step away at the last instant and let him fall. (p. 370)

Yeah. I need to write a song by last Saturday, but maybe this Saturday will suffice.

Song of the Moment: «State of the Nation» — Shamra

This is my first post as the proud(maybe) owner of a degree from Cooper. In the past year, my unspeakable rage towards the school and everything remotely related to engineering has subsided quite a bit, so now I might not be entirely averse to actually using said degree to look for a job.

In other news, I look just like a rockstar.

Maybe.

» » Continue reading . . .

I’m never as tired as when I’m waking up.

See you in a few days; or, as the case may be, see you never again after a few days from now.

Need to bring certain things to Arne’s relative’s apartment, put other things in suitcases, put still other things in boxes to mail to myself, buy yet other things from stores and curse out loud when they won’t fit in suitcases, and figure out how I’m getting myself and my shit to the airport.

Wish me luck. Or don’t; things will be much more interesting if I’m unlucky.

Also, every time I listen to LCD Soundsystem’s «Never as Tired as When I’m Waking Up» it just makes me wish I were listening to The Beatles’s «Dear Prudence» instead. (Side note: it’s in fact due to LCD Soundsystem that I even bothered to learn how to play «Dear Prudence» in the first place.)

I see some trees, but they’re all in the same forest.

God damn, it certainly feels good to be able to wrap my grubby little fingers around my ticket out of this place. Not that this place is really bad at all, and not that I’m necessarily homesick or anything, but it’ll be interesting to see just how long it takes this year to become nothing more than a collection of photographs and dimly-recollected conversations.

…ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten…

So I’m off to Lithuania tomorrow in the latest instalment of my series of long-pondered but poorly thought-out and carelessly entered-into plans. Wish me luck, or don’t.

Song of the Moment: «Amerimacka» — Thievery Corporation