Half-hearted attempt to keep weblog updated: ready, set, go. School's over & I am now transitioning to summer mode. Have a job now with a small spinoff company that will continue work on a few JDE Design Studio projects. It's exciting but I am still looking for a job on the coasts or abroad, something I can stick with for a year or two & get that all-important 2+ years of experience merit badge.
Was in South Dakota last Monday & Tuesday on business. At one point the 4 lane highway suddenly morphed into a gravel road, and then back again. That was the highlight of the trip for me. Yeah, it was a fun trip.
Then I decided to drive home & see the family, whom I haven't seen since Christmastime. That was great. My sisters are huge now, and I spent half the time remarking on this fact, which puts me right up there with grandparents and other mostly marginal observers of their lives. Saw Ed too though he slept day and night.
Ed & I overhead one little boy telling another little boy the following truism as they climbed a tree: "The nutsac is the wiener. And the wiener is the nutsac." (And at that moment, he achieved enlightenment.) Funny how misguided you are at that age, but you want to know the truth, you want to know.
At home I dug out all those old sci-fi stories I wrote when I was 14 and 15. Young male is oppressed by futuristic society, rebels or otherwise gets revenge, in the process using cool shit like "hyperthermal monochromal boosters." Dialog usually involves only one person. Talking to himself. Or the dialog is empty and declarative, obviously just a plot device. A lamentable reflection of the author's own state of estrangement, ha.
(He clenches his fist and fires the hyperthermal monochromal boosters on his jet pack. "Technology is a beautiful thing," he remarks to himself, hurling headlong towards his adversary. There is a crunching sound when his fist makes contact with the oppressor's nutsac. Which, incidentally, is the wiener.)
Posted by Alan at May 19, 2004 03:00 AMWhy are you wasting your time with programming? You need to get work as a writer--it's not as lucrative as computer stuff, I know, but you could do it from either coast. Or Europe.
Think about it.
Posted by: Katya at May 19, 2004 01:03 PMNow you're making fun of me. But okay I will try to write a little fiction...
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @subjects = qw(i you);
my @verbs = qw(eat smoke respect grope sample);
my @adjectives = qw(friendly wild tasty);
my @objects = qw(monkey hippie breast chemicals);
my $repeat = @ARGV ? shift : 1;
while ($repeat--)
{
my $subject = $subjects[rand scalar(@subjects)];
my $verb = $verbs[rand scalar(@verbs)];
my $adjective = $adjectives[rand scalar(@adjectives)];
my $object = $objects[rand scalar(@objects)];
my @words = ($subject, $verb, 'the', $adjective, $object);
my $sentence = ucfirst(join(' ', @words) . '.');
print $sentence . "\n";
}
Sample output...
You eat the tasty monkey.
I eat the tasty breast.
I respect the tasty chemicals.
I respect the friendly hippie.
You smoke the tasty breast.
You sample the wild chemicals.
I grope the friendly monkey.
I grope the friendly chemicals.
You eat the tasty monkey.
I eat the friendly breast.
You can read the exciting conclusion to this saga in my upcoming book. Then I will write 5 more just like it, and you can read them too. :)
Now all I need is just a good name for the series...(*walks into this one*)...
Posted by: Alan at May 20, 2004 04:58 PM