miscellaneous

[sanpaku_backup]

I have been meaning to update forever -- so many small things to mention. I'll try to knock off a few here.

- In the midst of grading final papers for my class and preparing for the final tonight. The semester went pretty smoothly and I should have things well set up for next semester, as I feel like I've worked out a lot of the kinks in what I teach. If you're interested, the course home page and all the accumulated links are online. I take a small pride in this.

- I have been hacking up my lungs for the past three weeks. First the Mrs. had it and then I had it; I actually coughed so hard one morning that I gave myself an agonizing back spasm and actually had to lie down for a while. (This is new to me.) It seemed to lessen last week, but then it kicked back in again this week as I had some kind of weird throat cold that tracked whatever Jo brought home from Long Island. It is very bad today. I saw a doctor last week and he told me it was post-nasal drip going down the back of my throat, but I may have to go back if this keeps up. I sound like Joe Camel.

- I bought the PlayStation before Thanksgiving. Actually this doesn't explain my lack of posting (overall the past few weeks have been really productive for me). All I bought was a little football game for $5 and I played a little against my father-in-law. It was somewhat diverting to learn a little more of football than "that guy runs over there and those guys run after him." I mean, you know there's a whole level of strategy involved, but no one who's not a jock ever bothered to learn it. (The Fooblers finally managed to eke out a win, bringing them to 1-12 for the season.)

I did rent GTA last weekend (when the Mrs. was gone), and it was enjoyable to do the things you can do with it, but a little disappointing, because I don't yet own a memory cartridge for the machine, meaning that I had to always start from scratch every time I sat in front of it if I ever wanted to get to any of the interiors.

- Being able to do a little research always makes me feel better, and I've done a little in the past few weeks. It is hard because every time I do it I realize it's been months since I last did it. In the past five years, though, I've actually done most of the research that I set out to do after the diss. was done. This is a bit of an accomplishment, but the bad news is that I didn't find any good "smoking gun" leads to connect my previous research (which went from 1883 to 1915) with other periods, as was my goal. If the ultimate aim was to turn the diss. into a book by making those linkages, it hasn't really panned out. And in the meantime there's a lot of literature in the field to catch up on, if I want to do that.

- I have a wart on my hand that I've been treating with useless Compound W, and after weeks of wearing this stupid band-aid and filing off the acid part, I think it's no smaller than when I started. It's truly maddening.

Other, slightly meatier odds and ends, in friends-only.

Comments

[solipsiae.livejournal.com]

Better get a memory cartridge before too soon! Also: Katamari Damacy.

The course homepage makes me miss college, so well done.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

You know, laurens10 recommended KD too. I saw it, not for rent, but to buy for $15. What's the deal with it?

so well done.
Thank you!

enjoyable!

[flw.livejournal.com]

it was enjoyable to do the things you can do with it

The Missus is gone... time to rape and murder some hookers! la dee dah dee dum doodle doddle dee...

Why hello Miss! Would you like a ride? You would? Splendid! Let us go down to the waterfront, perchance to view some wildlife mayhaps! Hmm, why I am I running out of money? Why is my health exceeding its ordinary 100 points? Why is the car bouncing? Why Miss! Whatever you are doing, it is certainly invigorating! I feel like a new man!

What? You are leaving? Well, I'll just run you over then and get money back... and since I'm at the beach I may as well drive up and down the beach at 100 miles an hour running over beach combers... it's only fair. It certainly beats beating people to death in a back alley with a baseball bat.

Re: enjoyable!

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Yes, when we spoke on the phone the Mrs. asked me to shoot a hooker for her. I did at least show her the game once she came back, to display the shamefulness of the thing. As I told you in LA, the game is terribly, terribly, terribly wrong and entirely immoral and horrible and how do you get to that place where you can pick people off with the rifle and the cops can't find you.

Now, see you revealed that I did not get my six bucks' worth out of the rental, because I didn't know you could have that um experience with the hookers. In fact it took me a couple of days to figure out that you could get guns by running over gangsters. So mostly I ran a lot and then I drove a lot and ran over a lot of people. Which, really, was enough.

Re: enjoyable!

[flw.livejournal.com]

You gotta get it, and hide it somewhere. Like heroin, or something. Someday soon, someone is going to make a computer game where you can make something like avatars ... you know those iconic images that sort of resemble people. You'll be able to make avatars of people you know in the game and TORTURE them... this is coming SOON.

It is odd how GTA:VC is variable enough and big enough to just let you "hang out" in the video world. You can spend hours just driving around listening to the radio. But they have these little cues to remind you to kill people. The guy that mutters something as he passes you. The annoying woman who doesn't buy into your manly view of yourself and is threatening. All real world cues that real world men have to react to by suppressing their urges, but in the video world...

I should make a video game like GTA called "Road Rage" that takes ALL of the little annoying scenarios and lets you ACT on them (in the video world)... The lady that cuts in front of you in line at the Drug Store... Baseball bat, machine gun, flame thrower, pistol, brass knuckles... ahhh, here we are: Samurai Sword! OFF WITH HER HEAD!

Now imagine this game, but you are able to import a cell phone photo and the game makes an avatar approximation of your cell phone photo. So, the next time a lady cuts in front of you at the Kwik-E-Mart (or "shops from the counter") you can surreptitiously snap her photo and then MURDER HER GRUESOMELY later that night.

It's wrong, sure... BUT SOMEONE IS GOING TO DO IT SOON ENOUGH!

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

The doctor told me today that the goal in treating a wart, whether by freezing or acid or whatever, is to try to create inflammation so that the right cells rush to the area and kill the virus. It doesn't seem like the store-bought stuff is strong enough to do it.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

All I know on the subject is from reading Yahoo health -- it says the acid should work but it might take months. The gist of it, if I recall correctly, is that nothing kills the fungus; all you can do is kill the skin somehow and then remove the dead part. The acid does it slowly and the freezing does it quickly. I did have the freezing treatment on my feet once and I remember it as somewhat unpleasant. Also I'm concerned about scarring on my hand. But mostly I don't like having a wart on my fucking hand. What a drag it is getting old etc.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

That's what I had thought too, about killing the skin, but apparently not? Warts are caused by viruses, which are the zombies of the cell world as I understand it, so you probably have to have some kind of special cell-zombie-killing gun. Anyway, the dr. I saw today said that if the freezing didn't work, it was probably because it didn't trigger inflammation. He also said that for warts on hands, Aldara (a prescription cream) works. I have some, but it doesn't work on heels. Unless you scrape off layers and layers and layers of skin. This is disgusting etc.

Miskatonic U.

[flw.livejournal.com]

So, you're teaching at Miskatonic University, eh?

Re: Miskatonic U.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Nah, that's Brown. Though there's a plaque dedicated to HPL next to the library where I do most of my research these days. Most of the places in Arkham/Providence are still here and you should come and see them.

Re: Miskatonic U.

[flw.livejournal.com]

I checked out the syllabus, man! You are aware of the "hyperlink," right? I mean, if you follow all the links that's like thirty five years of reading in the first week... every other word is a link! But it is all fascinating.

Re: Miskatonic U.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

You are aware of the "hyperlink," right?

Um, I thought I was using hyperlinks... or do you mean the fact that URLs are spelled out on the page -- that actually is easier than having to code the page when you are just adapting the page from Word.

There are a lot of links because this is the end of the semester and I wanted them to be able to check out anything I mention in class. For the most part only "hard copy" reading is required.

Re: Miskatonic U.

[flw.livejournal.com]

Well, what I meant was that the pages you refer to are littered with links. So, the temptation is there to flit from link to link to link and get lost and lost and lost.