January 27th, 2007

In case it wasn’t clear, I think the individual who wrote that fine collection of laws was about as sick as a human being can be and still be capable of rational thought.

Of course, it may be that in terms of human sickness of the mental variety, I’ve seen nothing yet..

January 27th, 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws

One peice of good news – no matter how sick I might happen to be, there’s always someone sicker.

s.

Looks like another perfect day… I love LA!

January 24th, 2007

(and Randy Neumann too!)

One of the twighlight zone things about having submitted myself to the machinations of the modern psychological machine is that I can now think about my emotional states in one level of removal – kind of like I now have meta-emotions. Like, today I was depressed and wanted to sleep all the time, although of course I didn’t because I have to work or else I’ll only plunge further into debt, which can not possibly be good.

But, I do love it here. I’m already looking forward to the weekend, and it’s only weds.

And I love my love lobster. (I got a giant stuffed lobster – bright red – with a heart that says ‘Love Lobster’ – for Christmas. I think it’s my favorite Christmas gift this year)

(I really like stuffed animals. I wonder if this means I’m a meta-furry?)

Hm. My day of the word is meta.

S.

Happiness..

January 22nd, 2007

So, yesterday I took a day off work and went out with Deadman and Kayti to L.A. – we went to a Japanese Italian resteraunt (somehow they managed to blend authentic italian food with a japanese steakhouse atmosphere – it was very different, but pretty tasty – and, at $20 a head including desert, very reasonably priced). Then we went bowling..

I shouldn’t like bowling. I mean, it’s a sport, and I hate sports. Also, I’m fantasticly bad at it (I’ve scored a strike once in my life). However, I really enjoy it, even on the Wii and especially at the bowling alley. However, I hate bowling alone for many of the same reasons that I hate eating alone. So I was really happy that Kayti and Deadman went with me.

Then, we went to Kayti’s current favorite club, which was playing all the 80’s new wave you cared to eat – the DJ got progressively worse as the night wore on, and by the end of the night was trainwrecking about every other crossfade, but it was still fun. My legs are still sore from movin’ on the dance floor, and I didn’t feel threatened or unwelcome by any of the people there, which I sometimes do at a club setting.

When I went to sleep, I realized the emotion I was feeling was contentment, possibly even happiness.

January 18th, 2007

Kayti went to Denver to be with her family, and is coming home tomorrow. I’ve missed her, and look forward to having her back.

Noticably not a rant about religion

January 17th, 2007

Post Christmas and depths of January I think we all need a bit of cheering up.

So… Reply to this post, and I’ll tell you one reason why I like you. Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love. (Stolen from )

Recovering from Christianity..

January 16th, 2007

I’ve discovered it’s very hard to come up with a set of search terms to feed Google to find a support group for helping people recover from religion. Among other things, I suppose there’s some inherent irony (possibly quite a lot) in searching for a 12-step program to help you get over your view of your higher power.

But I do think I’d be better off with like-minded people. I’ve tried visiting Christian chat rooms, and this leads to me understanding why churches get firebombed. [Obviously, as one who is against war and for respect, even thinking about such actions make me inherently unhappy. I did have this rather humerous – to me – vision of me writing down my entire manifesto and going around nailing it to the doors of churches.]

I’m not going to make it out of this universe in one piece, am I?

[I have this interesting view that maybe the reason religions make me so angry is that they’re not right for me, and I resent that other people can just, you know, believe them and be happy. Once I’ve written one that I can just believe and be happy, perhaps I will feel better. The problem with this is that writing a religion is a fscking lot of work, and involves rather a large number of decisions, all of which are difficult]

January 10th, 2007


The basic theory that just about every Christian who irritates the hell out of me subscribes to is that God is absolutely perfect, without flaw.

There’s, um, a problem with that.

Perfection implies, rather seriously, that no incorrect action is possible, and only the most optimal path can be followed.

Congradulations, you have just removed God’s free will.

I suppose that fits right in there with the utter torture that being omnipotent and omnicient would be.

Now, if we could all just try and draw some conclusions that maybe *match* the universe around us, so Sheer would spend less time in mental hospitals?

It’s not that I’m asking for much. I have no problem with the tenet that we may have to take some things on faith that we can’t directly observe.

But, I’ve been listening to Christian talk radio – and, at this point, I’ve vowed to stop – it’s just about the same thing as listening to Rush Limbaugh – i.e., makes me angry, doesn’t change my mind, doesn’t change his mind, and doesn’t improve the universe in any measurable way – but..

We’re supposed to reject the things of this world, according to said station. We’re supposed to believe in the perfection of a entity that time and time again, ordered the utter destruction of collections of self-aware peoples that it/*e had created. We’re supposed to *not* believe that the things of this world – sex, love, rock-n-roll, science fiction, lucid dreaming, chocolate, take your pick – are good, *even though, by the description of the Christians, diety-of-your-choice created them, and this world, and the Devil, and everything else*.

By my latest insanity, diety-of-your-choice didn’t create us (even though I think said diety exists), we just always were. But that’s subject to change next week.

(Strange – and I’m sure very old i.e. every mathematician learned it in kindergarden – thought: How do you split a infinity? Even if you cut it right down the middle, precisely, you still end up with infinity – i.e., what you started with. Well, kind of. As any Phillip K. Dick fan knows, there are subsets of infinity – i.e. different infinities. A whole infinity full of them, in fact. I think the word infinity might be somewhat heavily overloaded – kind of like love.

Galapagos Pictures

January 8th, 2007

All (I think) my Galapagos pictures are up at http://galapagos.sheer.us/gallery2.

Java gurus? FreeTTS & J2ME

January 8th, 2007

I’m trying to figure out a way to decouple the dictionary lookup and synthesis sections of FreeTTS so that it is possible to store something like a phoneme map in a file, and then read it and synthesize from it later. I’m also trying to get the synthesis portion working correctly under J2ME (I’m a glutton for punishment, apparently)

Does anyone have any suggested resources?