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so currently we rehearse in this shared studio-by-the-hour place. it comes out to about $36 a week, which is way better than renting a garage or shack

so we were arriving at the band practice space yesterday (saturday), and noticed it was totally empty. we usually do sundays with 3 or 4 other bands, or weekdays which are totally packed. we were literally the only ones there that day. after laughing about it for a little bit, realized that it was cause everyone else had something better to do on a Saturday night, either with friends or family. eh.

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also, odds are I’ll give up on twitter for microblogging and go back to this. I’ll use twitter for social stuff but that’s probably it

so a quick shitting on inception:

the ending is supposed to be ambiguous. very clever. the plan is that the director goes “see, the people who want a simple movie can say ‘see, everything’s fine at the end’, while people who want a deep movie can say ‘see, he’s dreaming at the end’ and everyone wins. i’m so great send me money”.

the problem with this blatant attempt at starting giant web forum wars on whether he’s sleeping or not is that there’s flaws in physics/timing throughout the movie that make it impossible that it’s not fiction. you can’t argue details when there’s holes in the movie. in particular:
– the timing is off for how much time passes as the van falls from the bridge in the other dreams
– why does the lack of gravity not propagate down the chains of realities?
– why does the music not slow down 20 times in each layer of reality?
– floatie dude uses bombs to propel the elevator without gravity. that’s fine, that works. problem is that the people wake up when the elevator hits the ground, not when the bombs go off, despite the kick being exactly the same in both cases
– and frankly, how do his kids know his phone number?

the only possible explanation of the movie is that he’s dreaming the whole time, which means inception itself is just a dream, and the whole movie is pointless. meh.

so having read the (138 page) prop 8 judgement, it’s as much as a slaughter as the trial was. the defense basically failed to present a case. i’m not even saying they presented badly, i mean they literally had no case. they had two witnesses, one of whom was discredit and his testimony not allowed, and the other only talked about gay rights in a political power sense. absolutely no testimony was entered into record saying that gay marriage will hurt straight marriage, children, or society.

it’s pretty much the perfect scenario for gay rights. they got upheld on every point, the judge found in their favor both on equal rights and due process of law basis, and no matter which way district 9 rules, it’ll go to the supreme court where a 5-4 in their favor is likely.

in fact, the best thing for the anti-gays to do right now, strategically, is to not appeal. i’m hoping their pride will blind them. in fact, i’m sorta expecting it.

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addendum: oh, but the anti-gays did have one of their experts testify that if “prop 8 is overturned, one by one the states will fall into satan’s hands”. so that’s gonna go well with the “this isn’t religious bigotry” argument

(this is true)

so I’m in the airport, bored, running “tail -f | strings -20 | more” on all wireless traffic. my screen is basically scrolling weird characters while i tap space

guy sits down next to me and unlocks his laptop from pgp full drive encryption. points at my flood of text and asks
“what are you doing?”
“reading people’s email” (I’m not actually, it’s almost all just noise)
“oh”
then proceeds to log into yahoo mail.

you can give lead a user to gpg, but you can’t make him think

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btw, if you see a network happily called “Free Public Wifi”, that for some reason is running adhoc instead of managed, yeah, don’t join it.

better advice is “don’t join public networks in general unless you tunnel or vpn”, but whateves

i haven’t gotten a worried phone call from my mother yet, so i guess no one saw it on twitter: new ink

had i had known how painful sternum tattoos are i probably would have gone for some shorter word.

oil exec’s wife got hit by a pipe bomb sent to their house as a box of chocolates. there was a tv report on it, and it’s re this story, but the text doesn’t mention they’re oil execs.

in other news, being in the 2% that controlls 90% of the wealth doesn’t help in stopping bullets.

conversation snippets from my vicinity, provided without contexts:

“if it wasn’t for pity fucks, i’d get no pity at all”

“weaponize those hips and i could probably sell it to the pentagon”

“he’s just a piece of skin around her dick”

in other news, apparently my vicinity’s clever phrases apparently all sound sexual in nature.

things travel with things. when you are inspired, suddenly you see inspiration in everything

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“after all, what’s been missing in the European fight for socialism over the last 100 years, is the element of ‘madness’”

so remember the “pit of ultimate darkness” skits by the kids in the hall? the simon + manservant hecubus ones? the “pick a card, any card” “no!” “evil!” ones?

that’s sorta what visiting this gallery was like.

hey, there’s an art show coming to LA, it has paintings and prints by blake, crowley, anger, cameron, laffoley, and others. let’s check out their website

what’s this? a flash-only splash page? evil
the entire front page is images, no text? evil
the press release for the show is just a scan of the handout? evil
hours not listed anywhere on the site? evil
it’s on sunset blvd right by beverly hills? evil
once you get there, the only thing to mark it as the place you’re going to is small white print on the black glass doors? evil
absolutely no names, titles, or numbers description next to any painting? evil
programs hidden at the back of the gallery? evil
program not containing anything but author names, titles, and mediums of paintings? evil
no way to link which painting is which in the program other than by guesstimating position from ones you recognize? evil
actually displaying crowley’s slightly kindergardenish painting skills? evil
yes indeed. yesterday i looked into the face of evil, and it was slightly confusing and inconvenient.

and for those (like me) who wondered how laffoley gets text onto his painting-like things, he uses sticker letters that he then clearcoats over

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also, amber got me an octopus in a jar. it’s sitting across on the other audio speaker across from the civet skull

some people like big cities, others like bigotry and when the twain meet we get things like the prop 8 trial.

closing arguments came through today. the plaintiffs pretty much summarized their side of the trial in a few hours, while the defense took the rather unusual course of saying (this is not a paraphrase) “we don’t need to prove our case” on most the issues. so on things like the purpose of marriage is to procreate (despite the fact that people who can’t have kids can marry) and on the claim that gay marriage will hurt straight people, they punted and claimed they don’t need to show evidence, it’s enough for them to say that’s the case.

who knows, it might work. this whole trial is a slight ‘who cares’ since this round is just for bragging rights: it’s going straight to 9th district court for next year where it will win, then supreme court after, where it will lose, since judges vote on party lines. it’s silly, but that’s how the world runs. our future course of civil rights really is up to a bunch of cardiologists who will be trying to keep some justices alive.

tangently, yes, to the anti-gays marriage really is about procreation. more specifically, to them all of sex is about procreation, and all actions taken are supposed to be related to raising families. any deviation from this plan is, well, a deviation. and so deviation by deviation we slide towards a deviant nation where procreation isn’t the only manifestation for showing an affectation of affection.