zachariahskylab

So I finally pirated a boot disc of Windows xp so my old Turing machine is back online. As I was wondering what anti-virus software I should install it occurred to me that I no longer require antivirus or anti-spy/malware sinceI now have a workable version of windows to reinstall at my command. So that's my new antivirus, I just re-install Windows XP every morning. The only problem with the plan are all the customization questions they ask that stop the install, so I have to sit there and click yes, no, yes to all the questions.

Is there any easier OS than Windows? Should I try Linux? Why hasn't anyone else thought of this? Basically I back up all my important data on my gmail account and then reload windows every morning. It's the best antivirus defense I know of because I'm no longer playing their game.

Why doesn't someone invent a super-quick installing Operating system that includes a suite of the necessary programs such as adobe acrobat, open-office word, and the like... or has it already been done and I'm just not aware of it?

It seems to me that most computers are leaning towers of layer after layer of old software that's buggy and ready to collapse at any moment. Doesn't it make more sense to start from scratch, if not every day, then every new project?

And although reinstalling is a pain, and certainly annoying, it takes much less time than disk defragmentation.

Of course it's possible that I'm an idiot. I'm not ruling that out.

The leaves poet now. All by themselves, I just listen. The music drives by in muscular convertibles with hydraulics, heavy bass. The arguments sit outside all day, drinking beer and posturing over the political ideals they share, playing over everything and anything except religion- held sacred for curses and swear words. The tobacco chews itself.

The marriage fights itself. I observe. How skillfully the tender spoken words come back with razor edges, biting into soft emotional flesh, old memories thrown like salt on the open wound. All the rights become wrongs and the anger gathers into a heavy silence. Doors slam themselves. Porcelain plates commit suicide on the waxed veneer of the kitchen linoleum. The inevitability of broken things will always make itself apparent, sooner or later. And sooner or later the tears come easily, automatically. And once in a great while, an apology blossoms forth spontaneously from the earth. It's the way of things.

Wars happen too. All by themselves without any outside help. They always have their auspicious point of commencement: The Shot Heard Round the World, The Sinking of the Lusitania, The Day of Infamy. A great shouting energy arises on both sides, growing louder and more terrible, explicit, bloody and visceral than anyone could possibly imagine until it escalates like a big brass band in a great opera house of olden times booming louder and wilder than ever before, reverbrating back and forth in a frenzied climax of violence threatening to shake the walls down and destroy the foundations until finally enough young men die terrible, brutal deaths and it is all over as quickly as it began, forgotten by everyone except veterans and 6th graders. Wars happen. All the time.

The answer found itself long ago. It appeared beneath the words written by sages hiding in the mountains. They quickly covered it up and sealed it in dust but they could not destroy it. The dust always blows back in through the cracks. The dust dances in a vortex of time and space between the stars, hiding in secret places no scientific eye can see. The dust always finds a way to birth more dust and where there are rocks beware of miracles. The judgement makes itself. It is so obvious you must be drunk to see it. The brokenhearted pianist finds himself a stable equilibrium inside the madness of the dancing crowd.

The game of time will continue to be played for a little while longer. The whirling dervishes will continue to outline the dimensions of the Most High God, or the Most Low, or the Most Superlative Concept Fathomable like a Golden Spiral Thread of Infinity WEAVING ITSELF THROUGH THE FABRIC OF SPACE AND TIME LIKE TINY INFINITESMEAL MULTIDIMENSIONAL STRINGS EXISTING EVERYWHERE AND AT ALL TIME... but it's still important to feed the cats and water the plants, (although it can be argued that they feed and water themselves,) and going back to my father's religion it may well be said that the habit of walking home each day with hammer in hand may well attain to the salvation of the cuss words.

These things go without saying. And yet while I procrastinate doing all the things that make a broken system work, half-seconds of the supernatural find me, whispers from old ghosts, friendly reminders from across the pond.

I officially have the swine flu AKA H1N1. Since it started making the news last summer I've wanted to get it, just to get it over with. Just like how I deal with monsters in my nightmares, I turn around and face them... I wanted to get swine flu so I could conquer it and not have to be afraid anymore. And now I have it! So although I am sick with all of its symptoms and I know it will only get worse, I feel so happy!

At the very least it will be worth it so I don't have to get vaccinated. I hate needles. I'd rather be sick for a week than get pricked in the arm by some clumsy student nurse who was out drinking the night before.

I like having Swine Flu because I know I am experiencing world history firsthand. I mean I'm constantly experiencing world history firsthand, but now I have a handle on it. The pandemic has become MINE! I don't have to watch the news, I'm taking part in the news. It makes me feel warm and bubbly, a part of a larger community of people with various illnesses and germs that we share with one another.

[MELODRAMA WARNING]

Of course today is only the first day of slight fever. It's going to be worse before it gets better. And if I die then I'd just like to say to everyone that I've had a really good time with all (6 billion) of you!

[END MELODRAMA]

Luckily everything's pretty much unpacked and my work has slowed down a little bit. Unfortunately my computer got a fatal system error at some point during the night. Blue screen says fatal system error c00021a... tried rebooting in safe mode and every other mode I can but it freezes up during the windows logo load screen. I've googled the problem and the only viable solution for me is to repair it with a copy of windows xp. But I don't have a copy of windows xp, and they cost 80$

I can use my wife's laptop so I still have internet.

Anyone know a good way to pirate windows xp from the internet? Or should we not discuss it online in case THEY are watching us? Maybe I need a good place to download a blueberry pie recipe? (Hint... hint...)

The good news is that I seem to have Swine Flu immunity. The bad news is that my wife does not. So while she has been terribly sick for the last two weeks, I have had the pleasure to move us and all of our belongings from the old apartment to the new house.

Also I haven't been able to access the internet for over a week. So I have crapton of pictures to share. Lucky you guys.

OLD APARTMENT:



General messiness.



Yes, that seashell got stuck to the wall, don't ask me how. I moved the dresser and it just sort of stayed there.



She tried to help, but kept getting sicker and sicker.



Old apartment, fleet of vehicles.


NEW HOUSE (renting)



Erika painted earlier in the month.



Charlemagne and Vercingetorix!



We're going for "Grandma-style" in the sun-room.



This is technically the front door but we use it like the back door.



Cats like the sun room.



Secondary bedroom is more like the storage room for right now.



This is the Doing-it room (AKA MASTER BEDROOM!



This shower makes up for all the defects of the new place.



Kitchen mess.



This is the entry way from the drive way, AKA dining room



I love the garage. Makes me want to do manly stuff. Like cut things and burn them.




I had to take pictures while moving to keep my sanity. Moving mattresses down stairs by yourself is not easy for novice jedis. Fortunately I am not a novice Jedi.

Thank you for your indulgence.

Eye Halve a Spelling Chequer

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

(Sauce Unknown)

It's only in my hopelessness that i have hope,
I can only boast of my own humility,
I only pray when I can't believe,
I only ask for what I can't have.

I can know who I am or where I'm going
but never both at the same time.

I can't change myself, and inevitably,
I change, subject to forces of erosion,
responding to stimuli, unconsciously,
shifting my perspective out of habit, and then
becoming my shifted perspective.

This life is heavy like an acid trip of DMT
fixed in the nut of the brain sometime between conception
and birth, a hallucination of virtual reality, like the dreaming
of a long sleeping god who is a thousand gods, who
is not a god at all or even a being or a person or a thing, but strangely,
after all, there is Something rather than nothing, and that is fairly remarkable
to say the least.

In between video games, sex, and the necessary needless activity we call "work",
I sometimes get a glimpse in the periphary of conscious thought, or maybe I just imagined it,
maybe I don't really know how to think properly after all and my brain has gotten stuck
in an infinite feedback loop which only stops at death, a statistically probable
hypothetical future state of my being, or non-state of my non-being, having bled outside the lines
into the non-dualism which I believe I almost can see in the eyes of Krishna when I try hard to make sense
of the pattern.

BEFORE:



AFTER:



BEFORE:



AFTER:



AND final gratuitous:



They look even better than I thought they would, and the whole thing was done under budget, (the floors were finished for less than $350...) I remember the most beautiful floor I've ever seen in my life was in the top floor of Mike Szuberla's Winthrop house. Those floors still haunt my dreams as a metaphor for unattainable perfection. (He must have done at least 12 coats of poly-urethane. They are the Sistine Chapel of wooden floors.)

Also I want to say as a disclaimer that I don't hate my wife. We actually get along fairly well when we're not trying to kill each other. (I'm required to say this.)

I spent my life crafting slivers of thought into a tight lattice of ideas fit to contain the most precious concept I could theoretically fathom, squeezed tightly inside and hammered shut. Pitched three times and blessed for twenty bucks by a holy man on the street corner, my ship was ready to sail- my love child, a water tight ark of God sent into the godless spaces between the stars.

How many nights I've lied awake contemplating the ship of God adrift among the stars, choking myself with tears. I want it to sail forever waiting to spring forth like forked lightning East to West. This particular symbol imbued with all meaning floats amidst the chaos bearing my heart and soul, my prayers and doubt streaming an endless litany of formless thought gushing towards the infinite unknown.

Day after day, pounding in the ideas, nailing down a solid routine, standing firm against the blasting winds of critical thought, I found a ritual that made sense, a pattern of actions that I could defend if necessary. All I needed was the magic touch, that certain something just around the corner, the imminent instantaneous illumination of everything, if I could only remain patient. Day after day, again and again, repeating the ritual over and over that I might get it right and spark a metamorphosis of my being, if not in this life, then in the next. I remained faithful.

I sailed my ship of God, sealed it tight, pitched it three times and, (blessed by a holy man down the street,) let it drift downstream to the whims of water and the wind. No propellant, no wheels within wheels, no blazing electrum flashed across the heavens. My ship has sailed, the ship that wore my fingers to the bone, air-tight, a sealed vessel where I set my God, the invisible, eternal Lord of the Universe and launched him into space. I wanted to set him free of Earth's orbit into the godless spaces between the stars.

It was not enough to devote myself to the work. In bed I would whisper the words to myself in an endless fugue of circular prayer. Words like grace, mercy, salvation... stripped of meaning through overuse, became pure birdsong. The rhythm became the content of the message, the sounds dissolved into the night as I struggled to stutter the Unmentionable Name of God in the privacy of my own home hoping against hope that after I am gone, my silhouette will remain etched on the wall of eternity after the last super anti-matter bomb wipes out everything and the universe collapses and explodes again into ancient unknown new beginnings...

I lost my ship of God amidst the godless spaces between the stars, pitched three times and tightly sealed by a homeless man living on the street. I've stopped dreaming of castles in the air built of sand. The angel has stopped calling, and I'm left alone with my ritual of prayer and scaffolding of thought to find a place for myself amidst the godless spaces wandering between the stars.

New apartment. Stolen camera. Finished floors. More Merton.  Disconnection, not enough time for anything, irritable, restless, unhappy.

New commitment to the "good life" as defined by myself:

-Writing quickly, efficiently, and well; often, much.

-Being active, acting, getting physical exercise (Driving a car gives me the illusion of exertion, but purely mental.)

-Doing new things, starting new hobbies, or picking up old ones, having projects to work on at home.

-Housework fundamentally continual and non-stop, only a daily routine will be effective against slobbiness.

-General, universal attitude of my being should be open, aware, and expectant, as opposed to narrow, distracted, and bored.

Again, the problem of inertia. Always easier to slow down or stop than to start moving in the first place. I recommend focusing on the following areas:

1. Prayer, openness (mental awareness of sensory stimuli, (a kind of deep listening to all of the senses at once in order to buffer the sense of being from the windshield of the senses,)) and meditation.

2. Writing, blogging, and emails, (communication.)

3. Work, doing a good job in a timely manner. (Also learning when and how to say, "no.")

4. Erika- getting out of the house at least once a week for an adventure of sorts.

Staying up late's fine if I'm acting in a productive manner, otherwise best go to bed and try again in the morning.Things to avoid wasting too much time on:

1. Computer games.
2. Internet scatology (porn)
3. Television

A desperate lunge to roll myself off the track of unhealthy habits and into the bushes of fruitful spontaneity. I've dissipated myself with worthless activities. The charge with which I entrusted myself has been neglected. I find myself in the midst of a situation that came about as a result of my decisions, but which I never actively chose.

I used to have a lot of opinions about everything. I'm finding I have fewer opinions on fewer subjects as I get older. Usually no right or wrong answer exists. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is only a recent offshoot of the tree of life.

( New Place Pics )




While we were taking these pictures we found two feral kittens in one of the trees of our yard.

If this apartment looks too good to be true for the price, it is. The catch is that before we can move in I have to sand and re-finish all the floors which are the ugliest most beat up floors I've ever seen. (and I've seen some bad floors.)

Dear Jean

On behalf of the WASP team, we wish to let it be known that the
object we provisionally called star "WASP-9" is not the host to
a transiting planet.

Detailed analysis of spectroscopic observations made with HARPS to
observe the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect have revealed the presence of
a faint, strongly-broadened stellar spectrum underlying the
narrower profile of the host star. The broad spectrum shows orbital
motion on a 0.66667-day period and the spectroscopic signature of
a transit by a fainter stellar companion. The object thus appears
to be a hierarchical stellar multiple; the transits are diluted eclipses
of the fainter stellar binary.

As astrophysical false positives go, this one was very, very subtle.
The transit depths showed no obvious dependence on wavelength. Combined
photometric and RV models yielded sensible solutions. There was no
strong evidence of correlated line-bisector and velocity variation,
presumably due to the extreme rotational broadening of the background
binary spectrum.

We'd be very grateful if you could post this announcement on the
exoplanet.eu site, and remove "WASP-9" from the lists of

- Candidates detected by radial velocity or astrometry
- Transiting planets


[Somehow I got on this email list of exoplanetary researchers and I love the sneak peeks it gives me into the crazy world of astrophysics. For example, everyone once in a while there's a job opening for researcher (with a phd in mathematics and physics preferred.)]

Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy is a very exciting book. The uncertainty principle is oddly like St. John of the Cross. (The Cloud of Unknowing- 1591.) As God in the highest eludes the grasp of concepts, being Pure Act, so the ultimate constitution of matter cannot be reduced to conceptual terms. There is, logically speaking, nothing there that we can objectively know. (Unless you want to use the abstact concept of pure potency, but what does that mean?)

This seems to me to be the end of conventional nineteenth -century materialism- which funnily enough, now appears exactly for what it was: a "faith," and not science at all. To be more precise, let us say a "myth," which was accepted on faith in the "authority of science." But on this authority the Russians still buy it as faith. Materialism is the opium of the masses. It is an article of faith that the mechanical laws of motion, electronic activity, etc., must be a confirmation of dialectical materialism. That is that. Believe or perish.

Heisenberg shows that the naive objectivity of conventional physics is on the same mythical plane as the ancient conviction that the sun revolved around the earth. The Soviets now struggle against reality to maintain this naively objective view. Eppur' si muove.

Yet with great sophistication, the quantum theory also accounts for the "factual" concepts of everyday life, knowing that they are to be taken into account as part of the observer's reality: and this destroys the myth of the completely seperate and detached observer, looking at everything with scientific objectivity. The observer is part of the observed. We are part of nature and our knowledge of nature is nothing if not knowledge of nature as known by us, who are parts of it.

(Thomas Merton- Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander- 1963)

They polluted the atmosphere with radiation before I was ever born. It causes me to question everything I learned, everything I took for granted, everything I thought was true and right and rational. They tested hydrogen bombs in low Earth orbit hundreds of times before I was conceived. Long enough for the dying atoms to enter my mother's body and change things ever so slightly in a way no one will ever know.

I have to question everything. I have to clear my mind of everything I thought I knew. No one told me that I shouldn't trust anyone- that we are all suspect, having subjected ourselves to mass doses of radiation. There isn't a single living person who remembers a time before the Great War. The War to End All Wars that began the century of the greatest wars of all time. Not a single memory from before that time exists anymore. Total war is all we've ever known.

I am a child of these wars. A child of Nuclear bombs. Before I was born the sky was filled with hundreds of blasts. Rainbow bombs... radiation belts stretching across low Earth orbit. It all made sense at the time.

How can I believe anything they've told me. Kindergarten should carry a disclaimer. This society may not know what it's talking about. Your parents may have received large doses of gamma rays. Your grandparents took part in the largest war in human history and your great grandparents invented mustard gas. But you'll learn all about that along with how to be a good, caring, civilized person.




I can't really trust myself anymore.