Alex the Ugly Duckling

One time I friend of mine gave a Calgary bum some loose change. Insulted, I suppose, the bum threw the coins at my friend, and yelled obscenities at him.

In Canada, our one- and two-dollar denominations are coins (the loonie and toonie, respectively, for those unaware), so I don't know how much that bum was expecting. In any case, this friend doesn't give out change anymore. Not in Calgary, anyway.

There was one street gypsy chick in San Francisco, I used to see her sleeping in doorways in Chinatown. She painted her skin with different
colors of nail polish. So, I saw her down by Civic Center and was going to give her a buck, she starts yelling to the other bums, "Hey! He's got money!" I'm outta there! But there are some sadistic punk-o leatheboys here, hobo humping could become a trend. Anyway, I dunno why you are choosing LA, Northern Cal is better, to me, anyway; there's even a movement to split the state into two states, North and South. As it is, California is the World's 7th largest economy, counting all the countries, so, it's the land of milk and honey, still.

maybe, but I have a good friend there, and it does have its points of interest. other cities I've considered for when I'm done with LA are Portland, Seattle, and Auckland, specifically, as well as Europe, Japan, and northern Africa in general. you're well-travelled, any opinions?

My Maple Shade friend, his wife, the dancer, says Life is a smorgasbord, try a little of everything and go bock for more of what you like. One buddy from Scotland, I admire the way he did it. He's a welder and saves his money to go on trips. When I met him, he'd been married to a beautiful physical fitness chick in San Francisco, he'd gone off to South America for a year, his old-lady's fitness business was doing great, so, she didn't want him back. He saved some more and took-off for Southeast Asia, China, Thailand, the Pacific Islands, etc.. An explanation of my travels would sound stupid because it was
all either chasing after girlfriends, (that's how I found Haddonfield,
that's where Leigh lived) or chasing a job of work. The whole West Coast is good, & Austrailia, NZ, Thailand. I wouldn't want to live in India, but several people have told me to see Dehli, and I want to see Kasmir yet. There's so much good stuff to do and see that it's impossible to get it all done in one lifetime. A big part of the fun is the unexpected along the way, new friends and events that couldn't have been planned. Also, there's a chance that I might end up in Paraguay, they will give you hundreds of acres there, Paraguay has built the World's largest hydroelectric damn, they have an immigration treaty with Japan to import 15,000 technicians a year, so, it's boom-time there. You might take root in LA, lot's of good stuff there, too. What I want on my tombstone: "He lived not wisely, but too well."

I guess Jonas beat me to the thing about Canadian $1 coins but here in Toronto, the Mecca of the bum religion, the homeless are extremely aggressive. There was one instance a couple months back where a bum chased some guy into the street demanding money and he almost kissed a car that drove past. People on the streets also have signs that say "need money for weed." or "the government kicked me out of work so this is how I fight back." One time I went downtown and there were all these kittens in a box and the homeless people that owned them said that money they begged for went to the kittens. This is a good strategy but seeing as how I'm ignorant, I didn't give them money. We also have young kids who squeegee your car windows and then ask for money. Trouble is, they ignore your pleas of "no, get the hell outta here!" and "I just got this washed!" and proceed to wash your windows. There was a real problem with kids vandalizing your car if you didn't pay them so the government ended up kicking a lot of squeegee kids outta the city. Many bums also took shelter in a shanty town by the Toronto harbourfront. The media dubbed it "Tent City" and Home Depot, who owned the land for some reason, said that there were chemicals in the ground and that it's not safe for the homeless. I forget what exactly happened to them but I imagine they're alright because it's gotten increasingly warmer since December, which is when they set up the shanty town. Some people have said that the homeless and runaway kids come from miles to get to Toronto. Supposedly, it is easier to panhandle in Canada. This is probably because us Canadians are too gullible and sympathetic. On a more serious note, when the IOC (International Olympic Committee) came to "preview" Toronto for the 2008 summer games all the homeless were hidden from view in halfway houses and such. People litterally went around and rounded bums up to be taken away. This is a touchy situation but I'm sure the IOC couldn't care less. Frankly, I don't want the damn Summer Olympics here. All that means is that we'll have even more morons running around downtown with cell phones and dorky clothes that identify them as tourists. Not to mention all the stupid ideas our Mayor will come up with to make Toronto look like, as he calls it "the best city in the world."

Jonas, you have to at least acknowledge the email, even I said you don't have to write back...Jeez..

There are a lot of squeegee kids in Van, like around the Science World/Main Street Skytrain Station. I think: Power to the squeegee kids; they're showing some entrpreneurial spirit (whether the Have's like it or not), working (as best as one can without a permament address, especially since the Picasso got shut down for no apparent reason (a café that hired street kids)) for their money, instead of sitting around begging. I give money to those kids too, tho, especially as I've no windshield to be washed, as I've no car. It's the age-old question: do I give money to bums? What if they just use it to get high/drunk/etc? My reasoning is that you're giving, right? So the giving should be unconditional: I have, and you have not, so here is some of mine, that you may have to be used for your own ends. To give depending on what it is used for defeats the purpose of *giving*.

Vancouver has recently inaugarated modified parking metres: Have's who want to feel good by giving money to the poor, yet do not want to actually give to the poor directly, can pump spare change into these metres that is later collected by United Way and distributed. I've not been downtown recently enough to witness these machines in action, but the thought alone disgusts me, for reasons I hope I've implicitly made obvious.

'Wackos everywhere, plague of madness.'

Lucky for you, Danielle, school is winding up, so with no more readings left, I can tackle that e-tome. That was very thoughtful, if not gargantuan. Did you know that 'humungous' is not actually a word? It isn't. Anyway, yeah, I was bit leery as I scrolled down, and down, and down, but then at the end I saw 'Skankin the pickle', and knew that it must be read and responded to in total. So I'll get to that. I also pissed off a webdesigner at www.visitordesign.com over the mess that is www.sonicyouth.com, so I figure if I'm going to have my cake I might as well eat it, too, so after months of it sitting there I'm going finish my website.

But why am I writing so much here, I have homework to do...

Around Washington and in the 'burbs, the bums and junkies have about worn it out. I've done volunteer work with the Central American refugees, of whom there are a lot here, but they usually seem to settle-in, find jobs and a place to live. Hobos are different than bums,
I guess. The Metro subway stops, the pan-handlers were so aggressive that they finally chased them away. I was making some architectural
maps of some bridges and roads for design improvement in Washington, and found that many of the bridges have hobo habitations under them. One bridge had beds and a sofa and floor lamps that the hobos had cleverly wired-in to a nearby street lamp. We mapped part of the Chesapeake&Ohio Canal with GPS satellite location stuff, making the first satellite maps of some of the stuff that George Washington had surveyed. Also, during the construction part, they found some 10,000
year old Indian houses by the Potomac River. I guess it's a form of class-warfare, but I don't like the aggressive bums who are so in-your-face that it is just about like strong-arm robbery. I see the need for family shelters, women's shelters, and like that, but there sure seem to be a lot of crazy crackheads on the street, too. Whatever happened to the Shakespearean winos? I'm kind of glad that the agressive mimes have disappeared.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
humongous
Main Entry: hu.mon.gous
Pronunciation: hyü-'m&[ng]-g&s, yü-, -'mä[ng]-
Function: adjective
Etymology: perhaps alteration of huge + monstrous
Date: circa 1967
Variant(s): also hu.mun.gous /-'m&[ng]-g&s/
: extremely large : HUGE

There's this French movie that involves a famine-stircken Paris where people eat mimes (among others). I think it's called 'Delicatessan'.

I heard tell of a girl who, after having seen 'Soylent Green', didn't know it was made of people.

I guess I just kinda ruined it there for anyone who hasn't seen 'Soylent Green'.

Yeah, I found 'humongous' in the Oxford Dictionary of Slang (sometimes library work can get kind of slow). My Webster's doesn't list it, but then my Webster's has Richard M. Nixon as the current president.

Okay, back to the homework.

But I've always heard it was people anyway.

Last time I was in Vancouver we noticed that all the homeless people looked like they were beat up. They all had bruises and scabs and scrapes all over their faces. I sort of hope that the homeless hold street fighting competitions among themselves but it's probably not true.

Yesterday in San Francisco on the way to Java class this guy holding a sign that said "IMPEACH HANCOCK" on it. Down at the bottom it said something about a rocket society. There was some other non-sensical stuff on his sign. I stopped and asked him about the rocket society, even though my co-workers and I were already late. He was a short asian man and said in a very urgent voice "THE ROCKET SOCIETY IS THE GROUP OF 100 GALAXIES WHO USE FLYING SAUCERS AND FLYING CARS FOR INTER-PLANETARY TRAVEL AND COMMUNICATION AND HAVE BEEN COLLECTIVELY WORKING AGAINST US FOR YEARS." I asked him who Hancock was and he said "PRESIDENT JOHN HANCOCK SHOULD BE IMPEACHED FOR HIS NUMEROUS TREASONOUS ACTIVITIES AND WORKING AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE."

"Isn't it too late to impeach him?" I asked. I didn't think John Hancock was ever president either but wasn't sure so I didn't mention that. He said "WELL AT LEAST WE COULD MAYBE INVESTIGATE AND PROVE HIS TREASONOUS CRIMES AND ALSO HE DIDN'T PAY ME FOR WHEN I WAS A MOVIE STAR."

Swear that he said that.

I had to get going 'cause we were late and I was holding up my co-workers. I'd like to find that guy again though. I've seen him out on Market Street a few times now. Maybe I could track him down for an official thingsihate.org interview.

Most mimes look like they'd be stringier than rabbit meat.

There's this 3-D graphics package that I like because 1) It's freeware,
and 2) It's C++ based line command. But today, I was checking their website
http://www.povray.org
and someone's making a Java-based version of it! So, evidently one will
be able to do some spiffy 3-D graphics with Java.
POV-Ray has an International Raytracing Competition, and they archive
jay-pegs and source-code at:
ftp://irtc.org
I think that it's the best freeware 3-D graphics set-up there is!

delicatessan was done by the same person who did city of lost children (which i fucking loved, but heard the game sucked), and tuvalu (i think that's the title. i could check the university theater schedule or imdb but too lazy). everything i've heard about it goes on about how great it is.
re: soylent green. so what if it's people? whoo fucking hoo. it's all meat to me. in the book it was just soy and lentil.

the director is Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I saw Delicatessen before City was available in the US, and both are good. City is much larger in scope, to the point of being an epic of sorts.
humongous is a real word, so what if it's new. I'd much prefer the language to evolve by the introduction of new words than the streamlining of definitions - buzzwords seem to be the thing now, and the words they use have many meanings other than the currently popular connotation. in a few years, I fear all dictionaries but Oxford's will define harassment as sexual harassment. plus, they'll put the accent on the first syllable. grr.
I'm surprised the cannibal element wasn't in the Soylent Green book. maybe the film's producers needed to make that government more SF dystopic and less a progression of what the US could easily become (you have to remember, World War II was still fresh in people's memories when this movie was made, and the WW's are when most of the big government intrusive evil stuff [like income tax for private citizens] was implemented).
I went to see Burnt By the Sun and All Else Fails at the Killtime in Philly tonight. talked to a hardcore guy who also liked metal (it's always nice to see trans-genre tolerance) and boggled at the leftover Aquarian paintings on the walls. the Killtime is in a crumbling early 20th century vintage warehouse (arched windows and everything) that must have been a hippie crash pad at some point in the '60s or '70s. the most prominent feature was at least 15 x 15' and poorly done. it was of a blond guy standing sideways on a leaping white horse. he had 4 regular white guy arms, plus 5 blue and 5 purple; one white guy head with 2 blue and 2 purple (one of each, as profiles peeking out from behind), and had a sword and a flame in the hands of the white arms on the right side, and a book in the lower one on the left. the upper left arm was empty-handed, but the hand displayed the Eye of Set (eye set in the palm, thumb, index, and middle fingers extended). the purple arms were on his left, and they also had eyes. the blue ones were bleeding from the palm. I wish I'd taken a picture.

This one chick that I know is a school teacher; her speciality is ED's (Emotionally Disdurbeds). So, when I fell in love with this woman, she was about 5'8", 125lbs. and long red hair. Also, she was married. Her husband worked at the White House, but he was on the way out. She called up frantic one evening that there was a bat in her bedroom! So, goodfellow that I am, I get my gloves and go over.
She semi-hysterically guides me into the bedroom where there is a tiny
bat hanging off the curtain rod. It was docile enough, I took it in my hand, walked to the front door and released it. It flew off into the night. Meanwhile, this lady has cropped her hair & bulked-up to 300lbs., but among her redeeming qualities are that she's dropped four prodigious sons, and is half-assed literary. She introduced me to a book titled, "John Dollar," by Marianne Wiggins. It was a cool story
that involved a shipwreck, a survival struggle, and a bit of carnal knowledge. A teacher and her eight female students are castaways on
an island with a paralysed male, whom they assure that everything is alright, the while consuming him a bit at a time! Fun for the whole family...

I haven't read 'Make Room, Make Room' yet -- all of Harry Harrison's stuff I've read is 'Bill The Galactic Hero' (and oh my god, if you haven't read that, what are you doing?? But read 'Starship Troopers' (I'm afraid the movie doesn't count) and the Foundation trilogy first) -- but that Charleton Heston yells out 'Soylent Green is people! It's people! You gotta tell them! You gotta let them know! Soylent Green is peeoopplle!!!' That's just classic.

This Spanish lady was working on her Ph. D. in some kind of way.
It involved the transition of words over time (glottochronology)
and raw word counts (lexicostatistics.) So, my end of the deal was, I
read novels and newspapers from South America to her to type into the
computer, and she's got a thirty-five catagory political action verb
classificatory system that she wonks into the box for some kind of an index of word frequencies and how meanings are moving. Also, in Mexiso City, I was introduced to a nice lady who had an art show of political propaganda posters from Latin America dating from 1850 to
now, the posters are mostly either red, black&white or yellow, black&
white. Viva la Revolucion! It was a big show at the Palacio de Belles Artes in Mexico, D. F.
http://www.ezln.org/

Yeah, I went to a revolutionary propaganda show at the... um... Something-or-other Gallery at UBC. (I want to say Bedmas Gallery, but that's not it at all. That's math. Well, not the 'Gallery' part, obviously. But that'd be a neat idea: 'Solution to Fermat Equation, 1997, pencil on foolscap'.) Lots of red, black, and white, mostly from the 1960's, French and American, possibly more, I can't remember. Lots of good stuff. But there was no poster letting the public know that Soylent Green is people.

Plus, because the gallery was at UBC, there were no hobos.

It was an overwhelming experience, the Escher exhibit at Simon Fraser.
So huge, it was in two different halls. In Burnaby, I guess; it was a lot of up-hill to get there. How is it that anyone is that good and that prolific? When the shock from the exposure to that much greatness
wore off, I felt a sense of relief; you will never get there, so spare yourself the effort. I'm very glad that he gave up on being an architect. Dutch Masters, not just a box of cigars.

Well, Sean, that fine fellow sounds an awful lot like local hero Frank Chiu [sp?]. I too have been enchanted by his peculiar message (though the last time I saw him, the object of his crusade was the much more recent Clinton).

Perhaps one of the funniest things I have ever seen in San Francisco is Frank, kneeling on the sidewalk, manually changing the "tronic" word on his sign. He has the conviction to spontaneously change his message, even in plain sight of his audience.

I admire his persistence and his practicality--advertisers pay for space on the back of his sign.

http://www.whack.org/~skott/guiltied.html
(no fancy-pants web-language skills for me!)

having just recently finished 1984 i am compulsivly comparing everything to it. re: the streamlining of words, that was a major feature of newspeak, that there were no secondary or tertiary definitions to words. free did not mean politically or idelogically free it just meant without (eg, (this is the example in the appendix) the dog is free of fleas). this is a decent site. oxford is the only decent dictionary.
john dollar any relation to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar? one can only hope.
bill the galactic hero: I found a helpful note in my parents copy and they could not remember lending it out or finding it during their readings so have no idea who the mysterious E. is.
lastly, frank chiu=alex chiu's dad? alex says he lives in san francisco. also i recently recieved my immortality rings so i'll be laughing while you peons are rotting in the ground or floating off in space, whichever is easier to make way for my humongous geodesic pleasure dome (as advertised in popular science along with alex chiu).

That's the guy! Damn, I didn't know he was so famous. I like that guy. I certainly hope he's related to Alex Chiu.

Question: With a large number of comments, such as on this page, is the comment system unwieldy? Would you rather have collasped comments? Maybe you'd have to click on a link to see a reply to another comment? I sort of like being able to see everything without having to click anywhere, but, hey, we do it all for you, and I'm in the process of changing a few things..

By the way, putting links in a comment has been enabled now.

the current system is to my liking. if I were to change anything, the recent archives on the left would either 1. look like links (i.e. respond to browser settings as far as "all links are this color/underlined/etc" or 2. instead of using the title as the link icon, have a "read it here" button.
also, the figure painted on the wall in the KillTime is wearing a pendant of a heart, inscribed "IHS," which Clockwork advises is Latinized Hebrew for Jesus.

One solution to the LNC problem is that I will post less!
But I like the way thingsihate.org is, too. Much easier to read
than collapsed like drew, for example. Will you be offering thingsihate.org T-shirts? Is there an official logo? That might be a fun contest! I vote for a skull with batwings and a pirate hat, with a rabbit rampant. Or a chinaman with a sandwich-board, I dunno.

IHS is on a lot of church lecterns, I always thought it was for,
"In His Service"

I like the way the comments are, nice and chronological, which suits their evolving, organic nature (Oh yes: organic). I just like the design of the whole site, nice and simple and easy (see prior comment about web-designer-pissing-offing). It's a fabulous site, Sean!

Links work, but can we boldy format what no one has formatted before?

Odd, that. I guess I'm not too hip to the linking. Perhaps someone could clear that up for me?

That note from 'Bill' is hilarious in its simplicity.

Pinkos: Would you want your sister to marry one?

I vote that the pirate hat should instead be on Cthulhu, who should also be rolling a 7-sided die, wearing a Slayer hat and Donnas shirt, smashing his thumb with a hammer, and exposing his vulva. I couldn't figure out a way to work Moraff's Revenge into the equation.

Noisia, your site is bizarre.

Now that you're done '1984', you must read Huxley's 'Brave New World' and Zamyatin's 'We'. If those don't drag you down far enough, add 'Death of a Salesman', 'Catcher in the Rye', 'Germinal', and 'Hero of our Times'. Then after that soul-destroying experience you can read 'Bill The Galactic Hero' again, and then you'll end up like me. ...Heaven forfend.

Jonas, your link was missing a closing quotation mark. I fixed it.

that was sort of my concern about allowing links before.. that someone might make a link tag that never closes, effectively turning the rest of the text on the page into a link. Guess I'll just watch out for it. Same with bold and underline and blink etc.

uh which site? sexsexworld, shack of lies, musical snob, or my open directory?
yeah, i read catcher in the rye over spring break because it was on a book list for school and i found it while looking through our collection of books. overall impression: distinctly underwhelmed and mildly irritated. perhaps if holden wasn't so inept at dealing with other human beings it would have been better. it seemed that whenever he opened his mouth it all got worse. if the book had been about what he thought about happenings and such it would have been ok. or if he was just less stupid.
also disappointing: nineteen eighty-four(1984(not 1954)) it was ok but it all seemed to go too fast and two immensly important parts were just dropped. 1) during hate week when the enemey is switched from eurasia to eastasia in the middle of a speech and no one notices, they just tear down all the eurasian soldier posters and B) at the end (sorry to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it but if you read it you know it's going to happen) winston doesn't get shot in the back of the head. those two things pretty much ruined it for me. also there is darkness in room 101 in the movie which is just stupid.
i have brave new world on hold at the library because i'm too lazy to go out to whichever branch the copy is at. currently reading invisible monsters and fight club (was reading butcher boy but the whole stream of conciousness thing got tiring to plow through) by chuck palahnuik (i read survivor by him first and they all sort of seem the same with different characters and settings but the same essential themes or self destruction and all that jive don't change. maybe choke will be different) so i'm just going throught the "trendy" book list and feeling ashamed.

I liked Catcher in the Rye.. and pretty much everything else by Salinger except "Seymour: An Introduction" and "Hapworth 16, 1924." I think it's funny that so many Salinger fans are anticpating Hapworth and expecting it to be like his other stuff but are going to be crushed when they finally get it and realize it sucks and they now hate the Seymour character.

Never read 1984 but Brave New World sucks. Stupid ass big government books. They all go in the retard pile, along with anything by Ayn Rand.

Fight Club was good but Survivor and Invisible Monsters weren't, and kind of irritating in places.

Article about homeless people evolving into discussion about books... you guys so crazy.

I recently finished H. P. Lovecraft's "Dream Quest" anthology thingy. It was rather different than the usual Cthulhuian stuff. It was just more enjoyable to read. "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" was totally amazing. It was one of those epic stories that you just like to marvel at.
Another really good book is "Rainbow Six". I'll admit I actually bought the book after I got the PC game (it was so goddamn cool!). The plot in "Rainbow" changed my beliefs about humanity entirely. Its well worth reading if you haven't already done so.
Now, just so that this doesn't sound like a grade 8 book report, Soylent Green has gotta be one of the best movies of all time!

Yeah, I misspelled the link, too. Oh well.

'Brave New World' in the pile with Ayn Rand? Well, to each their own. I've never read any Ayn Rand: I read the back of 'Foundation', and that scared me away.

But if I can make one recommendation to everyone here: 'We Want Some Too: Underground Desire And The Reinvention Of Mass Culture', by Hal Niedzviecki. I just finished it, and it's really impressive. Like an accessible 'Culture Jam', or an active 'Generation X'.

god i wish adbusters would get back to making absolut and ck parodies instead of being so art-faggy. then i would be able to pull pages out and put them on my walls again instead of just flipping through it in the university magazine store and being disappointed with every page. they haven't made a joe chemo ad in years. i need something to stick it to the man with not some fucking minimalist art project.

The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks. the adolescent in question is even more disturbed, plus there's irony and stuff.

A friend left a copy of, "The Professor and the Madman," A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary--
by Simon Winchester. Not to judge a book by it's cover blurb, but the dictionary part was the hook.

I can't believe that they put Animal Farm under the Fantasy section of your booklist, Noisia..Come on now, Orwell next to the frickin Harry Potter writer? That's so not allowed..