mh-z web-log

My take on Yoga:
: …down(ward) dog, ok now smoothly transition into dying chicken, now assume the dinosaur pose and place your tongue on your big toe, focusing on the dark energy of the universe while I play the Imperial March theme from Star Wars… now breathe in, breathe out, you should all sound like Darth Vader, excellent, excellent…

Q: Why did the chicken cross the moebius strip?

A: To get to the same side!

Looking back over some old papers and documents: This is from a processor (CPU) design lab I had in my last year of college. Among the authors of the lab report is a fellow named Cary Wun. Isn’t that a great name for a computer scientist? Or a mathematician? We implemented an “Am2901 Four-Bit Bipolar Microprocessor Slice” while drinking Orange Slice, and you just need a guy named Cary Wun on your team if you’re going to do that. Chips with mood disorders are tough to deal with, after all.

I confuse all these movies: ”The Sixth Day”, ”The Seventh Gate”, ”The Sixth Sense”, ”The Twelfth Gate”, etc.

Strangely, I am not confused about ”The Fifth Element”, ”Seven”, or ”Twelve Monkeys”.

”Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” confuses me, but for different reasons.

How often does it happen that I realize I’ve left my phone in the car and that that’s why nobody has called me all evening, though I hadn’t realized it had been so quiet until the immediately prior realization that this phone was not in my vicinity? Pretty often.

I’ll call the prior paragraph: “Adventures in English Grammar, Part the 763rd”.

“Hamster will be scourge across the face of the earth, enabling the free swapping of ham via peer-to-peer networks until the ham industry has been brought to its knees by such rampant ham piracy, and the HIAA (Ham Industry Association of America) is able to successfully sue the makers of Hamster and get them thrown into the legal hamper. Then other, better Hamster clones will be created and the HIAA will have no recourse but to sue sweet little old grandmothers who bake ham pies (with illegally obtained ham) and sprinkle themselves with sugar (that’s why they’re sweet) and ten year old girls who just wanted the latest hit by Jimmy Eat Ham as played on the hammond organ (and who are, by the way, made of slugs and snails and puppy dog tails) instead of buying the hammophone recording.”

Maybe coughing jarred something lose in my brain that had been sticking before; maybe I have way too much to do this week, but for some reason I feel like I can think and focus about twice as well as I could before. Remember the movie Phenomenon, where John Travolta, who wasn’t a particularly bright guy, suddenly is hit with something and can move pencils with his mind and recite a reverse-alphabetical list of animals quickly just off the top of his head? Well, that’s not me, as I can’t move pencils with my mind (I am weak in The Force (low midichlorian count (damn you, George Lucas, I thought I could learn to manipulate The Force but you just had to go and tell me it’s genetic))) but I can recite a reverse alphabetical list of animals pretty quickly! Let’s see, there’s… zebra, yak, x-rayed zebra, walrus, vented whale, unicorn, tamarin, snake, rhinoceros, quail, pony, okra, newt, muskrat, lemur, koala, jabberwock, isoceles iguana, horse, gecko, falcon, elephant, dog, cat, bear, alligator! Hmm, that took a while, but the vented whale is an interesting beast, to say the least, and beware the jabberwock, my son (the jaws that bite, the claws that catch).

Anyway, I was sick, and now I’m almost all better besides a lingering cough, but I already feel much better than before I was sick, both mentally and physically, and I don’t know why but it’s a pretty nice side effect. Beware the jubjub bird and shun the frumious bandersnatch.

Yiddish. (For some reason that last word of the three looks better with a ’sh’ rather than a ’sch’, maybe because the ’sh’ sound indicates it isn’t emphasized as much as ’sch’.) My grandparents (native English speakers) on my father’s side speak it a little, so I picked up some words and phrases. I believe their parents spoke it and they decided to learn enough to communicate; when I was little, they would speak it around my siblings and I when they didn’t want us to understand something. But it was always a pidgin Yiddish, with English words thrown in as necessary to expand the vocabulary. Generally if I asked my grandparents would explain what they had said (it wasn’t a top secret code, just for side conversations that didn’t involve the kids), and so I learned a few words that way. Nothing near what it would take to be able to speak, though. The language has plenty of colorful phrases, particularly curses: one I remember is, “may all your teeth fall out except one, and in that one you should have a toothache” (which I never actually knew how to say in Yiddish, but with a curse like that, who cares how it originally sounded). There were some phrases my grandma taught us also and which we repeated with great delight, such as “hock me nish ken chynick” (literally, “stop banging my teakettle”, or “stop bothering me”) or she’d say “haltzachein” (“hold your horses”).

Looking through the referer (which I know is spelled with two r’s, but that’s how the Apache people did it, so sue me, no wait, sue them, not me, no wait, they make good software, don’t sue them either) logs. Here’s a list of the odder search terms people typed into Google to find my site:

barbecued monkeys, santorum lube fecal matter, king fern, naked people, the humanoid tankmon, kate supnik, vivarin nodoz comparison, escalator accidents hong kong, reptiles infinity, picture omelette du fromage

Let’s analyze the list in some more depth:

barbecued monkeys : Mmm, barbecued monkey! It’s what’s for dinner. I talked about monkeys and barbecues in separate captions on one of the Hong Kong photo album pages… but my mouth is watering. Maybe this particular (naked) person was researching forest fires or something.

santorum lube fecal matter : Um… I have no clue where this came from. Let’s just continue our movement down the page…

king fern : Bow down before me, ferny peons. Peonies? A picture of some ferns is posted around here somewhere. But hey, I’m still thinking about that (poor) barbecued monkey (*drool*).

naked people : …Because underneath our clothes, everyone is naked. Just think about that next time you walk (naked) down the street. Now since this is such a prudish site, I don’t think the word “naked” has existed here (until now), making the aforementioned search result a strange one.

the human tankmon : What is this, mon? I am the human tankmon, mon. And although I’m omniscient (or mon-iscient), I still don’t know what this is or where it came from.

kate supnik : Sup mon, you know who this tankmon is?

vivarin nodoz comparison : Yeah, I wrote about this, and I hope the searcher found the article, because my review, personally being a caffeine conneiseur, was very in-depth and enlightening. Unfortunately it’s not online now (I have swaths of archive to put back up), but I’ll work on getting that up soon, because the whole World Wide Web is indeed a poorer place for lack of that article.

escalator accidents hong kong : It’s discomforting to think of what happens in an escalator accident, but hopefully (as in elevators) there are safeguards in place. Are there a disproportionate number of escalator accidents in Hong Kong? It did seem to me that the escalators there moved about 50% faster than escalators in my part of the world (which was rather cool). At here I certainly see the page that lead to this hit.

reptiles infinity : Why do I think immediately of M. C. Escher? And then I think of M. C. Hammer, and then I think no, I’m going back to thinking about Escher, thank you very much. Perhaps I talked about him once before, though this I do not recall.

picture omelette du fromage : Ha ha ha. Maybe because I mentioned an episode of Dexter’s Laboratory where all he could say was “omelette du fromage”, due to some sort of curse or other.

So there you have it. And about all this I have just one thing to say, while making a Vulcan V-sign:

Omelette. Du fromage.

Simon, I mean Thomas, says “touch your nose” (with your tongue) but instead I reply:

Persimmons are good! Regular milk (nonfat: blegh, doesn’t count) is good! Soy milk (a.k.a, then, “soy bean juice”) is good, particularly the chocolate flavored (oh no, more beans!) variety. And yet they say I’m a picky eater? Hmm…

Think of regular milk (a.k.a. “cow juice”) and where THAT comes from, as opposed to our nice green soy beans, eh?

Fun with CraigsList, in a fit of boredom/procrastination: I think I posted this a while ago, but going through some old email and running into it again, I feel like issuing a re-release. Like the new edition of the original Star Wars DVDs. (George Lucas’s table scraps, anyone?) So anyway, long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away:

—–Original Message—–
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 10:20 PM
To: anon-26012335@craigslist.org
Subject: Dear God – 30

Dear anonymous poster,

I don’t do favors. I only grant requests to those righteous individuals who have afflicted themselves by living lifetimes of self-imposed needless suffering and prayed to Me thrice daily, praising with fervor and zeal My every atom of existence because I am so supremely great.

:)

<<”Can you please do me a favor and bring someone into my life? Make him be compassionate, playful, HOT as can be, sensual, a hero in my eyes, loving, and HOT. Did I mention hot?

P.S. It’d be nice if he was a little bit tall…like me.”>>

Needless to say, this person, whomsoever she was, did not reply. Or not so needless– isn’t the emoticon a subtle hint to be intrigued by my dryly super sarcastic sense of humor? Sarcasmic.

Sarcastic people should be taken outside and shot. Or maybe I should have mentioned something about how hot (and did I mention, hot?) and by the way, tall, I am.

(After taking off jacket) ah, that’s better.

(After taking off elevator heels) ah, feels good to not be banging my head on doorways all the time. But wait, either those were stilts or I still am pretty tall!

Where socks go: I was loading my laundry into the washing machine, with the basket on the dryer. I accidentally knocked a few odd socks off behind the washer/dryer, and there’s no way to get to them without a grabber device (which I don’t have) or moving one of the machines (which isn’t worth the trouble, and anyway, they’re hooked up to the wall via pipes or tubing somehow which I don’t want to disturb). Therefore, I am leaving said socks behind there. One day someone will get them out, but in the meantime, I know exactly where they’ve gone, and it’s not to another dimension. Unless there’s a portal to another dimension behind the washer/dryer, which I concede is possible.

Embryonic stem-cell research: To not pursue it would be throwing out the baby with the bath-water.

K. asked me to proofread her personal statement wherein she expressed her reasons for wanting to join something called the Joint Center:

—–Original Message—–
From: K.
To: Mike H.

The goals of the paper:

brief statement of career aims and basis of interst in the Joint Center.

Here’s the organizations mission, which im supposed to be intersted in:

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies informs and illuminates the nation’s major public policy debates through research, analysis, and information dissemination in order to: improve the socioeconomic status of black Americans and other minorities; expand their effective participation in the political and public policy arenas; and promote communications and relationships across racial and ethnic lines to strengthen the nation’s pluralistic society.

Ok, sounds nice, but… you know I just couldn’t resist. I proofread her personal statement (solidly written, K.) and then wrote a personal statement (ha ha) of my own, as follows. Think she should submit this one?? Yeah, definitely:

I would like to work for the Joint Center because I, too, believe marijuana should be legalized, and I support the cause of a center from which to distribute joints to all who desire them, for medicinal purposes or otherwise. From a personal standpoint I am a strong joint advocate because joints (and I’m not talking about the elbow kind) play a significant role in my life. That’s because I smoke two joints in the morning and I smoke two joints at night; additionally, I smoke two joints in the afternoon: it makes me feel all right. I believe everyone should have the right to feel all right.

I believe I can contribute to the Joint Center by managing and designing the campaigns whereby its message of peace and love (of joints) can be spread. In fact, I have several such campaigns in mind, beginning with one having the aforementioned phrase as its slogan: “The Right to Feel All Right”. We will take to the streets with our message and march to the capital of Caul-ee-four-nee-uh where we will petition our Governator for the right to wend our weed to the wide world, to pipe our pot publicly, to gracefully grow our grass… to have The Right to Feel All Right.

I know the Joint Center is right for me, and I know I am right for the Joint Center. I hope that, therefore, I am high on your list of candidates. Thank you.

Fine, I’ll answer the question: BS is for Brilliant Scientist; MS is for Mad Scientist.

Then there’s PhD, which means Phenomenally Dumb. Just kidding. I can’t malign our fine nation’s beyond Brilliant, beyond Mad professors that way. PhD means Doctor of Philosophy, but the French way, which is backwards. Like how SI stands for “System Internationale” when it could just as easily have been “International System”, or LN stands for “Logarithm Naturale”. Le Big Mac. Oh but look, further research says I’m wrong: PhD is Latin, not French, for Philosophiae Doctor. (No, I don’t like ligatures.) That would likely be philosophy in the old sense, as in, where science is natural philosophy, not the “What is the nature of reality? Why are we here? Where do socks go? God is dead!” variety.

So there you have it.

If this was a technology column, I would write something about how great Google Desktop Search is, because I just typed in some particular keywords and pulled out this old email conversation snippet with an old roommate of mine. But it’s not, so I won’t. I have no opinion on Google Desktop Search. See, I’m not even linking to it. There, that proves it.

—–Original Message—–
From: rr
Sent: 06 March, 2002 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: Delivery Notification: Delivery was successful, wonder of wonders

hey, i didnt mean the computer guy had your personality in any way–i just said that his sentence structure was very similar. that is all–but it is enough to make e uncomfortable.

e=me.

ok.

me squared.

—–Original Message—–
From: mh
Re: me cubed. wait, don’t do that.
Date: Mar 6, 2002 – 1:52pm

Oh, ok. Hmm… I didn’t notice that. Yeah, but can he have sentence structures like THIS?:

(Music starts playing. I start rapping along in some incredibly complex sentence structures and sticking my arms out at odd angles in an angry manner. Of course the song has to have a line telling everyone to put their hands way up in the air and wave them all around like they just don’t care. Every rap song has that line. Maybe mine just says it in an overly complex way.)

Um… I will call you shortly.

Actually I will call you R____. But I will speak to you on the household telecommunications device shortly.

me3

So this person’s sentence structures reminded her of my sentence structures, which are (or were), apparently, very unique. Well, I’m pleased to have achieved that level of individuality through sentence structure. It’s something I’m (*sniff*) proud of, after a lifetime of hard work, honing these sentence structures, trying to make this world a better place through my work, improving the lives of (*sniffle*) the downtrodden children and the trodden-upon babies. That’s why I’m so proud to be able to (*SNIFF*) accept this award, and to thank you all for your unlimited quantities of sympathy and support. Thank you.

For lack of additional material, and because I thought this was a rather wry bit of wry-ting. Gwen, I assure you, this does not cheapen the fact that I originally wrote it solely as a comment to an entry in your blog.

You have to be careful about cursing around librarians. They’re a sensitive type, I hope you know. Nevermind that they went to school with the rest of us and even had to attend college for a long time to get their doctorates (yes, librarians need doctorates… or was it just masters’?) and were exposed to just as much profanity as the rest of us and should supposedly then be inured to it. That’s really, for whatever reason, not the case. They are also afraid of carrots. Well, carrots are okay shredded, but a whole carrot will cause librarians to shriek with fear, thereby disobeying their own charter of maintaining quiet in the library.

I’m sorry to hear about the puddle. I think you should get your revenge by stomping on it. That’ll cause it to retaliate and you’d have a fight: Gwen vs The Puddle. Sounds like a wrestler. The Puddle. And now, we bring you the fight of the season, The Rock versus The Puddle. Or maybe it’s The Rock versus The Scissors…

The Rock: The Rock is going to lay the smack down!
The Scissors: I will cut you up, and why can’t you use pronouns like everyone else?
Announcer: Let’s get ready to rumble! And The Rock crushes The Scissors! And it’s over!

Something’s making me think the outcome was predetermined… Anyway, it’s a bright sunny day, but there may still be puddles out there, so watch out.

Don’t make me pull this trigger. Anyway, I got an AOL 9.0 (optimized!) CD in the mail, which states “1099 hours FREE!” in huge letters and then in tiny letters, “for 50 days”. Let us figure: if I want to extract the most value from this deal, it means I need to use AOL for 22 hours each day. Hmm, maybe there’s something funny or interesting to say about this, but, um, I’m at a loss… I think the problem is that I touched the CD, and it’s sapping my brain cells remotely. Ah, the CD is pretty, though! Ok, you could PAY me and I wouldn’t want to use AOL for ONE hour in 5,000 days, I don’t care how much they optimize it. (What does that mean, anyway? For all you non-programmers out there, I’m a programmer, and I still have no clue what they mean.) Okay, enough AOL. It induced me to write this (rather lame) paragraph and waste enough of my time as it is. Instead I could be chatting on, uh, AOL Instant Messenger!

Sp ceMarine: A full day of concert-going while tired? Good luck with that… I hope you brought a comfortable pillow "just in case", you know…
Sp ceMarine: No pun intended, too.
Sp ceMarine: I love it when that happens.

The beginnings of a fascinating and highly intellectual conversation:

(Used without permission, credit not given where due.)

(Sue me, I like it!)

"Underwriting, this is Michael."
"Ichael?"
"Michael."
"EIGEL?"
"No, MICHAEL."
"EIGEL."
"No, uh, how can I help you?"