In the dark I thought I heard somebody call

So I was reading a fic and it had a word count at the top, and I figured 'hey, I could time how long it takes me to read this and figure out how many wpm I read' only I didn't actually think of that until I was two thirds of the way through, so I don't really remember the start time.

But it took at most ninty minutes to read fifty-two thousand words, so um, I'm thinking a reading WPM of five hundred seventy-seven is pretty good.*

Man, I read a lot. Fifty-two thousand words is published novel length, and I can blaze through it in an hour and a half.

* Average reading speed is two hundred WPM. Excellent reading speed is apparently around one thousand WPM. So, yeah.

PEOPLE SUCK ASS.

Er, more on this later, when I stop having an anxiety attack/emotional breakdown as everyone around me desperatly seeks to destroy my life and everything I hold dear.

^_^

Okay, so I have a THREE DAY WEEKEND coming up (any enthusiasm there you see should be read as highly sarcastic) whcih means I am free from Saturday morning to Tuesday night.

I am thinking I should get someone to go draining with me, to that one Dinkytown/University drain me, Charlie, and Emily visited years ago (I'm pretty sure there was a prototypical 'draining report' posted to the blog, but hey I don't remember when it was so you don't get a link) and got all of, like, 300ft down before going back. Mostly because I sucked.

Nevertheless, it's THREE YEARS LATER now, at least, and I think we should go for it again.

(even though I kind of expect John to make frowny faces because... he hates freedom, and Charlie to be inept, and... I don't even think Candice checks the blog ever. So I'll end up going draining alone again. Seriously, if I die I'm totally going to blame you guys)

[EDIT] okay, or not. No three day weekend; they just messed up my schedule. downsides: well, more time at the soul-crushing job, maybe I won't get to visit Arise! for cupcakes today. upsides: more time to spend furthering my hopeless co-worker crush. and I guess $69.37 more in gross income.

Today's Deeply Meaningful dream:

Gerard Way talking about how he wasn't allowed on the hyperspace ship to Mars because he was on a no-fly list on account of not having a work ethic.

So, that's the first time I can actually say concretely that hey, my dream appears to be based totally* on what I del.icio.us'ed over the past few days.

*Well, except for the 'totally random people are getting put onto the no-fly list because of incredibly dumb reasons' article, which I didn't bookmark.

Also, this morning I coughed up blood when I brushed my teeth! Being sick: not for me.

And I got a cover of "Sugar, We're Going Down" as played by a string quartet. There's apparently a whole "Tribute to Fall Out Boy" album. That's so cool.

My subconcious is so much more creative than my concious.

So I have to work tonight (in fourty-five minutes for now, realtime, actually) and I decide to go to sleep early, so I'll have like eleven hours of sleep and so I don't have to worry about my alarm exploding all over my brain.

I sleep for three hours, wake up, stay up for three hours. gg me. At this point I get on AIM to share the news about scientists finding an Earth-like extrasolar planet (seriously, why is everyone not freaking out about this?) and end up, as previously mentioned, staying up for three hours.

So I ended up getting something like five nonconsecutive hours of sleep. This always happens when I try to get, like, thirteen hours of sleep.

But I woke up from a dream about video games with a nice idea.

Okay, the game I was playing was this weird kind of Journey-to-the-West-retelling everyone has heard of. I think the main character was inspired by the Goku character from Elf Only Inn. yeah. And there was some other Goku character too, one with an actual monkey face (and a lot of bishounen angst, which is a hilarious juxtoposition), and blahblahblah. The second party member you get (Goku-monkey was the third) was some nondescript girl character, I dunno.

But anyway, one of the areas you keep traveling through ingame was this big clearing. Really really tall redwood-style trees made up the 'wall' around the area, and knotted roots and whatnot made height-differentials in the floor, etc etc. It's big and peaceful and (most importantly) the room extneds way above your heads, but there's no way to get up there.

Enter SPIRIT WORLD VISION. Apparently it's activated by touching a mushroom? Nice implications there, brain. But the big peaceful clearing turns into a gigantic spiritual chaos. Lots of weird armored ghosts with flamethrowers (than can totally 1hk your dude!) and weird mice with glowing eyes. But also: there are these weird baloon things. You touch one, your character grabs on and you go shooting up in the air, with different colours being different heights reached. There is, of course, some complicated path up to the top but I kept missing the first jump and then getting killed by the flamethrower ghosts. And you want to get to the top because there were... medallions? Rare collectable items, I guess, that had some use.

It seems like a nice mechanic. SPIRIT WORLD VISION. yeah.

ANALYSE MY DREAM WHILE I WORK.

(not spellchecked because that 'fourty-five minutes' has turned into 'half-hour' and oh god still not ready)

I was up for 18 hours, and then I slept for 11 hours. mmm. It's nice to be back in my natural rhythm (for those who don't know it, my normal waking/sleeping pattern involves staying up around 20~ hours at a time and then sleeping for 10~ hours. you could see how this could cause problems) even if it's only for a day or two.

I bought books! Bomb the Suburbs, Anarchism and other essays, Technoscience and Cyberculture, and Beyond Good and Evil (although my version has a differently-coloured cover).

The clerk at Arise! made a joke about getting some light reading. Sadly, this is light reading for me.

Too bad Arise! doesn't carry math books, because I am really wanting to learn some actual, like, useful math. Because pretty much every bit of math I learn becomes useful while programming, almost instantly.

p.s. still freaking out about what to do with my life.

Never let a fat middleaged mexican woman dye your hair, even if it's at a professional salon.

My hair went like this, in the span of 8 hours:

Really bitchin bright red highlights
Really bitchin dark red highlights
Kinda akward maroon highlights
Pinkish/maroon higlights
Bright as hell bubblegum pink highlights

I am now stuck with a 3 month permanent bring pink highlight job.

Fuck.

I just spent the past two hours of my life playing Singularity.

Sadly, once you beat the game there's really no point to play over again. Hopefully in a few releases the tech tree will be broad enough to not be, uh, lame.

"(iv) use the Delicious Software to operate nuclear facilities, life support,
or other mission critical application where human life or property may be at
stake. You understand that the Delicious Software is not designed for such
purposes and that its failure in such cases could lead to death, personal
injury, or severe property or environmental damage for which Delicious is not
responsible."

ah-huh.

Hey Xax, you know "Everything bad is good for you"?

Well, it's hilarious. Anyone 30+ on Amazon.com gave it shit ratings and talked about how everything the author says is bullshit or not backed up, etc.

Anyone 29- is practically heralding the book as being one of the most important "studies" ever made.

It's kinda hilarious, because, you know, all the 30+ people are just bitching because they're from the generation the author talks about being left in the dust now that us youngin's are all videogame and TV'ed up.

So. I'm learning how to swing dance via dance club at my college.

=D

didn't die while draining.

I'll edit this post with a recap later.

next time, I'm bringing a ladder, for serious.

(and the edit!)

okay. so. Set off around four fifteen in the morning, arrived at the drain entrance (same one as last time) at around four forty-five.

The entryway is really misty, seriously. I don't know if I just didn't notice this last time, but the area was suffused with mist. At any rate, walked right up to the 1600ft marker where I turned back last time. As with last time, the water spread out at this point to cover the entire floor. But this time, I didn't care. So I just walked on through, getting my feet slightly damp, and after twenty-five or so feet the stream receded to cover only the center half of the drain. That made me feel kind of lame.

This time I wasn't really paying attention to the offshoots— there were several of them, most were really short (I'm talking under one hundred feet, in most cases under twenty-five feet) and most (but not all) ended in the same kind of circular vertical drain I described in the last post.

There were a lot of Moose Youth Pluto tags on the walls. Although my favourite was one next to the first circular manhole-size chute in the ceiling of the drain— an arrow pointing to it and the words "don't look up". ...Of course, I had to look up. It actually kind of looked like a straight chute up to ground level, although I honestly have no clue. Depth perception + vertical distances + narrow chute = no clue.

At around... I think it was the 3300ft marker, there was an offshoot drain about twenty-five feet deep, from which a lot of water was pouring down. It was loud enough so that one could hear it from the 1600ft marker, actually. But hey, echoes. Labelled on the left side of the entrance was "upshits creek" and then a name I don't remember.

There's a "almost there (100 yards)" tag on the wall at one point before that, I assume pointing to the 'upshits creek' entrance, although since there's another offshoot like, fifty feet further on that I didn't explore it could be pointing to that, too.

Anyway. Between there and the end of the drain, pretty much the only significant thing was another short offshoot, this one reeking really strongly of metal.

5500ft. End of the drain. There's a circular vertical drain, and this one is big enough so that I can see the top of it without stepping inside (which is good for two reasons, those being 1) I don't know how deep the water inside them is and 2) there's a lot of water coming down inside the entire circumference of the drain. seriously, it's like rain) and it appears to simply be the 'main drain' of another, higher up drain.

In fact, I'm fairly sure all of the circular drains are connections to other, higher up drains. Hence, next time I go back I'll be bringing a ladder.

Tags nearby: "I broke the law. It was fun" & the ubiquitous MOOSE YOUTH PLUTO.

On my way back I went in the 1600ft drain and found my vague suspicions were correct: fifteen-or-so feet in, there's a sleep slope (like, 80 degrees up) and another fifteen-or-so feet past that, there's yet another circular drain. Did not try climbing up the slope; even though it's maybe four feet tall it's still covered in gross brown slime.

Next time I really need to get someone to come with me, because hey, using a ladder means potential for FALLING TO ONE'S DEATH. also: I need to get a folding ladder.

I still find it hilarious that we have a grand total of ONE POST in ALL of 2006.

So, now is the time to spill my recent reading material all over you.

And, be grateful: this is probably the only time I'm ever going to actually warn about content of any kind, ever, so enjoy it while it lasts. I'm not even going to be that specific. But yeah, this is (obviously) going to be kind of heavy on derivative works of all kinds, mostly fanfiction, and there's some RPS thrown in there and (again, obviously) a bunch of slash.

Read it anyway.

And then, of course, the length warning. When I say something is 'long', I generally mean, like novel-length, at the least. Usually I mean series-length. When I say 'short' I usually mean what most people mean when they say 'long', because they're illiterate. Allocate some time.

Starting with some of spiralhollow's shorter stories, one about magic and the other about technology.

From there, of course, it's a short step to an e2 writeup about magic and technology. Or rather, magic and science. And from there, to outer space and stars.

But E2 has a lot more (wonderful!) content aside from scifi. Humanity, and life, and dreams, and of course, it just wouldn't be e2 without fables.

But that brings me to the first long work here, The God Eaters, which is an actual published novel these days. Which is totally awesome.

And now, unrelated to any kind of narrative thread I'm attempting to establish in this post, have some Hitherby Dragons. Really, all of Hitherby Dragons is wonderful, so it's hard to excerpt particular segments, but... some are more wonderful than others.

There are some stories about topics dear to my heart, too. Like, transhumanism, or hey, love. It's not that obvious, but I'm kind of a hopeless romantic. A hopeless romantic who dislikes happy endings, because they always feel so forced.

And sometimes I get depressed and have to read depressing stories to feel better. And hey, sometimes I like to read triumphant stories! And sometimes, I just like to read stories.

It wasn't until I noticed how little most people read that I realized how much I read. Because I read a lot. A lot of it's kind of the 'junk food' of reading material, but I still like it. I like it a lot.

You know, I'm pretty sure I still have the backup copy of the Technomancy blog somewhere on a CD.

Anybody want that?

BLOG NOW HOMEPAGE

POST OFTEN MORE

WOO

Because Charlie wanted to know, and because I always get a little uncomfortable when the most recent post is about porn, because you can never tell when everyone will stop posting and leave the post about porn as the most-recent for the next two years.

So, a lot of Serious Architects have been using shipping containers to build houses or apartment buildings. They are generally larger multi-container structures, which is not how I'd do things, as I am poor and containers, while cheap, are still not that cheap. I've seen them range from $75 (for one made from wood) to $260~ (for a 20' metal container) to $1500~ (for a used refrigerated container) to $2000~ (for a new metal container), and seeing as I am poor I'd likely aim for a larger, decent-condition container and see where I can go from there.

I think what I'd be trying would be more like the tiny houses trend more than a big architectureal challenge. Less 'containers as lego blocks' and more 'this holds 2261 cubic feet of space; how do I get the most usable area out of that?', I suppose.

But really I am tired of paying the majority of my paycheck towards pointless housing, with only the promise of further rent hikes in the future.

(and as Charlie pointed out, the biggest issue would be finding a location to put the thing. 20' or 40' shipping containers can't just be thrown around all willy-nilly. whatever, I'm sure I'll either work out location or try a solution unrelated to shipping containers)

Sweet monkey jesus. Yesterday [FURRY PORN AUTHOR 1] reviews my fics on AFFN, today I find out [FURRY PORN AUTHOR 2] +faved my porn on y!gallery while I was away from the internet.

uh. Names not mentioned because I'd be mortified if they actually found this post, but. AUTHOR #1 is like, way more popular than me (mostly because he writes multiparts in popular fandoms, but) and it was very ! to find three reviews by him in my inbox.

AUTHOR #2, on the other hand, was kind of my inspiration for PORNS when I first started writing. Seriously. Way more !!! than AUTHOR #1.

In unrelated news:

• CR & the MOO are down indefinately because no one ever used them and I can't sleep with my computer on.
• So, I'm thinking about seeing if I can buy a shipping container to live in instead of shelling out $565 useless bucks every month for this apartment. We'll... see how that goes

In related news, I'm thinking of writing more porn. We'll really see how that goes. I'm so lazy.

Oh yeah, and I drew this. (but you might not be able to see that because it's on my server which is only on when I'm awake. if you can't, try again in 8 hours). John says I should be a fashion designer when I grow up. I... disagree.

Brian hates freedom. He won't tell me why, but I know it deep in my bones. Why, Brian? Why do you hate freedom?

The XAX show has a new special co-star, Brian!

Muahahaha!

Anyways, college, stuff, things, not much to say, quit WoW, drawing, um... run-on sentances, owning at my classes, taking actual dance lessons etc.

Also, XAX, here's a good thing to do which I AM CURRENTLY DOING:

Look up on MONSTER or JOBTRAK or anything, for a low grade IT job.

Basically right now I'm on the verge of quitting target when I move and landing a job running around telling people how to install ram, update drivers, install windows, and send attachments in the e-mails all day and getting good hours and paid at least 12$ an hour for them.

They required an A+ certification but all I had to do was tell them that A+ certifications are bullshit and I can do anything on it anyways, I just don't feel like taking the classes for something I already know. Went over well.

Seriously, 12 an hour, "did you plug your computer in?"

MUCH BETTER.

Do it =D