Symbols

The vampire movie The Hunger, with Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, shattered the time barrier with it's graphic portrayal of a descent into betrayal and madness. The direction failed to earn as much respect as it should have, but that failure by cinematic peers was decimated by the film's imagery. The film also deals with more than just betrayal. It reveals the deep seated mortality that follows every being, living or undead, and makes horror filled regret something that can be felt at a gut level. The solemn blessings of the Beatitudes, it could be argued, could barely pierce the gloom of the awareness necessary to understand the film from every angle, but nobody need fear it. It's just a movie, after all.

Nursery Times

Hello sushi
Hello planet
first cut blowfish
and then can it
there's a reason
it's well seasoned
but if you don't know how to cook
then damn it

(Music discussion follows)

Hello mutter
Hello fodder
Here I am in
Camp Granada...

[a great song:
Vue Foghe una Candella -> il Soffio del Vento
only heard in mono, however]

Vessel Pussycat

The tree dweller, El Gato Real Wilson Kittorz (Nancy Cat) reads in the dell
While gazed, shrews cruelly muse,
"Triumph denies the knowledge of ages past."
But victory comes to those who persevere,
And the critical will reap their just rewards.

Music Review: Debussy on Vinyl

Much of Debussy's genius vanishes when heard from a vinyl recording. The dynamics of the compositions are lost because there is no way for the music to pause without starting a new track. That entire problem was solved by the compact disc. Translation to digital made it very easy for the music to be distributed without authorization, but that would mean little to Debussy.

- from a mini-lecture by Arlen Speights (predating the recovery of Benjamin Brovman)

The Second: Jain Pilgrimage

No one loses their special idea of freedom. Religion does not burden those who do not want it. We are all free to spin our wheels in the darkness, throwing grime or failing climbs. The images we see, the tastes and smells, the hunger for truth and knowledge, these things concern some people more than the things they feel. Deep down inside of you their is no alarm, because the base never wavers or falters. It will always be there, and none have ever fallen.

Scripting Nautilus [Update]

Payload on Nautilus scripting from Paul Ferrill via Scott Ruecker:

Environment variable
::Description
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS
::Newline-delimited
paths for selected files (only if
local)
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS
::Newline-delimited URIs for selected
files
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI
::The current
location
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_WINDOW_GEOMETRY
::The position and size of the
current window
In Python, you obtain the value of these variables with a single call to
the os.environ.get function as follows:

selected = os.environ.get
('NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS,'')

This call returns a string with paths to all the selected files
delimited with the newline character. Python makes it easy to turn [snip]
into an iterable list with the following line:

targets = selected.splitlines()

Here's the link to this valuable Gnome tool. Of course I'm not a big fan of Gnome. I like the code better. Gnome is ghastly to anyone with insight into operating systems.

[This post was modified twice]

History of a Code Free Climber

The least well thought out written comment of my life may very well have been cynically announcing that I must have downloaded $70 billion worth of music. The fact remains that in the past 15 years my music collection existed solely of purchased compact discs and terrabyte upon terrabyte of live music [see the Live Music Archive]. The live music was allowed by the bands themselves, in the cases where the recordings were of bands and not audio engineered pieces of art under creative commons. That leaves the issue of the hundreds of compact discs I backed up.

I discovered Exact Audio Copy very early in my years of computing. I backed up everything I ever got. The discs have a tendency to become worthless after one real scratch, quite unlike the vinyl I listened to for most of my life. I found that fact intolerable. The exercises in attempting to archive the digital music data proved futile over and over again, however. Hard drive after hard drive became useless, and very quickly the cost of the computer equipment was higher than the cost of the music.

Unfortunately I have an insatiable hunger for knowledge. I learned everything there is to know about media duplication, modification and reproduction. I never capitalized off of any of it. Ffmpeg, demuxing, format conversions (very easy once the Perl receiver and transmitter was up and running), these things all became just elementary at some point. In all honesty, by the time I learned all of it I was barely interested in multimedia (having contracted the contagion known as political opinion).

Moving GIF's: I did not make them, although I could have. Photo manipulation: I only did that for comedy, and only by adding words (except for one unfortunate incident involving a person of import). Video production: I did that, but grew quickly bored [it was all G rated anyway]. 'Nuff said.

United States, Circa 2030

There will be no revolution like the Bolshevik Revolution. By the time society and government fails the majority of the people, people by then relegated to the exponentially growing lower class, people who no longer even remember what the middle class was like, our nation will no longer be free. Our military, if it has not been entirely corporatized by that time, will always follow the orders of the high command, who take their orders from the President of the United States, who in turns follows the advice of "public servants" and politicians who are bought and paid for by the corporate plutarchy. When the majority of the American people get hungry enough and desperate enough, they will most certainly turn to radical dissent, taking any measures they can come up with to survive. When that happens everyone alive to witness the downfall of our civil liberties may remember the voices begging for righteousness and justice over profit and greed, but it will be too late. Martial law will take effect and dissenters will be hunted down as threats to the security of the nation.

The people no longer stand a chance against the might of the military industrial complex. All that will be left to the desperate poor of the future will be house to house searches, mass detentions without the benefit of habeas corpus, interrogations at the hands of people who do it for the greater profit of their businesses, and widespread human rights abuses even to the point of summary executions. Justice will be for the wealthy, and suffering will be what is left for everyone else.

These things will happen if we don't take active steps to stop the current trends of political and socioeconomic ideology. Balancing the budget and reducing the deficit would be great. What would be even greater would be to give every American citizen a fair chance at success. And it would be stupendous to shatter the stranglehold the tiny percentage of wealthy Americans has over everyone else, everyone else. I believe change is possible, but it will take a vast unified political uprising across all social strata, all racial strata, all geographic locations and across all political parties.

We, the people, need to stop blaming one party or the other and start blaming both of them. We need to focus on each individual politician, especially their funding and their loyalties, and refuse to accept anyone who panders to the forces that would turn every American citizen into a dollar sign. It's not a tall order. It sounds like something dramatic or fantastic. All it takes is for you to care enough to make sure your voice is heard. Make sure your friends and neighbors know who they are voting for or against, and for the sake of our children and grandchildren refuse to let corporate lobbyists control our country.

Time is of the essence. Become informed and inform those who aren't informed. Show them cold hard facts. I will do my best to provide facts and references that will make it easier for the average citizen to take a much more active role in changing the way our government treats the people. I have done so in the past, but perhaps too often with a lean to the left. The problem at this point has transcended party lines. It's time we stopped allowing our "leadership" to sell us down the river for the almighty dollar.

To stop the death of the American dream is my greatest hope. My thoughts and prayers are with the people who work hard everyday to such an end. I myself have been to lax in rejoining the battle against the corruption that gnaws away at our freedoms like a cancer, but I hope to give it my best shot again as the future races toward us. Failure is not an option, unless you like the idea of your kids and grandchildren struggling their entire lives only to die in misery and poverty. There simply is no other way to put it. That is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

[not edited, as usual]