I have not posted in a while, because I have sequestered myself in the attic until I finish writing a new backend for our calendar database. This may strike you as a weird thing to do, but the attic is comfortable this time of year, quiet, and relatively clean. I have weird mannerisms when I am deep in thought, and when I am in the attic nobody says anything when I pace around the room, pulling my hair and chewing my beard. I have put in fifty hours this week [well, starting Friday after work] and I am thrilled to be able to concentrate so completely. I am making excellent progress. I have assured both Management and (e:dragonlady7) that the overtime will become a vacation in the not too distant future.

I have also promised Management that I will return Monday with my shield or upon it; this does not bode well for my attendance at the housewarming party. The question is not whether I will be there -- I will -- but when.

- Z

is founded on an interesting idea: without Judas, there'd be no betrayal, no passion and death, and no resurrection, and without that - there's not a whole lot of Christianity either. (WIKIPEDIA - Gospel of Judas) Don't think about it too much, it'll blow your mind.

The point being, I've become a bit of a closeted Bob Dylan fan lately, so I went out and bought the 'official' Royal Albert Hall concert recording (WIKIPEDIA - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert). A watershed moment in rock music, &c., &c., of course, and I never realized that Bob Dylan could rock this hard. But if my man over here had not shouted "Judas!" at precisely the moment he did - symbolizing whatever it was he was symbolizing - and had he not been caught on tape - would anybody care about Bob Dylan's 1966 world tour?

Eh, don't worry about it. This is the most genuinely spiteful and venomous recording I have ever heard and I cannot stop listening to it.

Speaking of spite and venom, I have been feeling curmudgeonly lately. Why, just this evening I saw some lacrosse mom park her exceedingly large passenger vehicle in front of a fire hydrant on my street. Well technically she was endangering the lives of residents and a grandstand full of kids, but sometimes you gotta rephrase things in terms people actually care about. So I left a polite little note:

Deep thought of the day:
If I fire-bombed your car,
they would have to tow it
before they put it out.
Have a nice day.

OK, so I don't know what is involved in fire-bombing a car, but the point is that the school year is young and I want to discourage bad behavior in the pups before it becomes habitual. Also, I was amused by the imagery of a flaming car getting towed down the street so that they can get to the fire hydrant to put it out. I am an asshole, but I swear I use my powers for good and not for evil.

- Z

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New journal music: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone," from the "Royal Albert Hall" concert. Play it fucking loud.

Ohhh, so this is what I'm doing wrong. Good news for some, but less so for me: it looks like I'm stuck here for the forseeable future. I'll put off my existential crisis until at least this evening. [Like, how am I even a web developer? Clerical error...] I wonder how many Mac engineering jobs there are in Buffalo that don't involve working for (e:carolinian) 's manic boss.

Also, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day.

- Z

Hiring me has got to be a bizarre experience, but at least I'm having fun with it. Today I put my references on notice:

Some time in the next few days, you may be asked what kind of Worker I am. If you find yourself at a loss for words, you may use any of the following: 'peerless,' 'superlative,' 'exemplary.' True though it may be, 'one of the greatest minds of the modern era' may be mistakenly construed as hyperbole.

...to which the VP of Sales at my last job replied:

You capitalized the word "worker". I fear you've become a Marxist. I shall make this known to potential employers.

I will endeavor to avoid using words such as mongoloid, dotard and ninny.

What a great guy.

- Z

Last night I thought- why don't we go rent a movie? And while we're at it, why don't we visit the new Mondo? Now I'd never been to Mondo before, so I was totally unprepared for the weirdness they call their New Release rack. I idly picked one up and turned it over, and from across the store the clerk goes 'You have to rent that one. It's totally insane.' And I'm like, ok. I mean, he's the boss, right?

So we get home, mix up some drinks, and pop the movie into the computer. The movie, by the way, is called 'Dünyayı kurtaran adam (The Man Who Saves the World),' otherwise known as 'Turkish Star Wars.'

OK- you know how sometimes you see a student film, or something on public access, or like, 'Evil Dead,' and the movie is so bad that it wraps around to being good again? This movie was like that, only it kept going until it was bad again, and then it kept going until it wrapped around to good again. It's not really a remake of Star Wars like I thought it was going to be - but they did lift all kinds of visual effects and that freaky bar scene. The first like fifteen minutes of the movie was some dude talking about nuclear war while two Turkish space cowboys blew stuff up with badly-transferred Star Wars scenes playing behind them in their tie fighters or something. The Death Star is a shell that earthlings built around earth to protect them from the Wizard. The two dudes crash and it's like Planet of the Apes, only with evil skeletons and mummies and bears and robots. There's also this blond babe who can't speak until they find the golden brain. It fucked my shit up.

Murat: Begin your famous whistle which no women can resist.
Ali: [whistles]
Murat: You whistled wrong.
Ali: Why?
Murat: Skeletons came instead of women.

Eventually we learned that you can defeat the Wizard with your brain, or a spiky golden sword, or the Koran. Maybe you need all of them, but we didn't find out because the DVD froze just as he was melting the sword into a pair of gloves.

(e:dragonlady7) says it's like they saw Star Wars without subtitles and remade it. I think it's like the cinematic equivalent of a dance remix of Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, and Flash Gordon. Either way- if 'Dünyayı kurtaran adam' is representative of a Westernized Middle Eastern culture [and I pray to any gods that will listen that it isn't] we have no hope of ever understanding anything that happens there. Mondo also has Turkish Star Trek, Turkish E.T., and Turkish Wizard of Oz.

- Z