Thursday, November 22, 2007

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

answers.com

this won't make sense to my constant reader. to answers.com, you know what i'm talking about.

i didn't know this was my last trip, on this broken, rugged excuse for a road, in the back of the rumbling truck. not the rumbling truck, but a rumbling truck, one of hundreds i've used in the tens of (semi-successful) border crosses i've performed before. i sure wished it was my last trip, not without guilt, but without regrets. except one: packing more food. it was cold, i hadn't eaten for two days (unless one had the audacity of counting a dried semilunar crumb of bread and gulp of milk food, in which case the beginning of my fast was lunch of yesterday), and i had at least two more days to go before i got to safety. six days to travel four kilometers. i sat here in my misery, watching a piece of halva discarded in the truck's bed with a mixture of disgust and gluttony. i wondered if it were any more sapid than the bread i had yesterday. the only warmth i had was in the crate of contraband i was sitting on. the epitome of smuggler praxis: we cared more about the stuff than ourselves. at least i wasn't doing it for money, for i believe the cargo is mantic and will deliver us from injustice. well its application will, at least, because, you know, having almost been killed a few times and watching your family killed in front of you adds a certain measure of cynicism and pragmatism which can only be appreciated by those who truly have nothing to lose. or maybe that's my lick and a promise excuse for not taking part more directly in our war, but in the zeitgeist, any resistance is better than no resistance. what serendipity it would be to the enemy that a random shell should kill this divine warrior, and rid them of his evil, and what serendipity it would be to him, to bring him ataraxia. in the meantime, this warrior is eying the halva again, wondering how long halva would keep in this cold.

Friday, November 16, 2007

the facebook pose

i believe one of the most important aspects of the social change facebook has brought about is the facebook pose. i'm not talking about people posing for pictures specifically for facebook, regardless of how creepy the idea is, i'm talking about the pictures people use for their profiles. there are several variants of the pose.

the most popular is the product of haphazard crops on photoshop. you can recognize these by the usual lack of the body one side of the face (where the posers friends once stood/sat/hugged/etc).

the second variant is the "am i being photographed? do i seem completely blase? is this a picture of me but you can't recognize it's me?" picture. these are meant to take the edge off of the egotistical premise fb pics usually generate, but usually end up being silly.

the third variant is the non-me pictures. also some of these are interesting, the most would be better spared some of the rest. examples include flags, cars, babies or some other cheezy item

crow road

She turned to me, during that night, and said, 'Prentice?'
'Mm-hmm?
'Do you think Rory's ... away the crow road? Do you think he's dead?'
I turned on my side, stroked her flank, smoothing my had from thigh to shoulder, then back, 'I really don't know,' I admitted.
She took my hand, kissed it. 'I used to think, sometimes, that he must be dead, because otherwise he'd have been in touch. But I don't know.' There was just enough light seeping in past the curtains to let me see her head shaking. 'I don't know, because people sometimes do things you'd never thought they would ever do.' Her voice broke, and her head turned suddenly; she pushed her face into the bedclothes; I moved over to hold her, just to comfort her; but she kissed, hard, and climbed on top of me.
I had, up until that point, been performing an agonizing reappraisal of the indignant signals of total, quivering, painful exhaustion flooding in from every major muscle I possessed. My body's equivalent of the Chief of Engineering was screaming down the intercom that the system just wouldn't take any more punishment, Jim, and there was no doubt that I really should have been pulling out and powering down just then ...
But, on the other hand, what the heck.
the crow road - iain banks