Penny Loaves

haiku redux

clicky wicky

posted by ata' allah at-talib @ 1:17 AM 0 comments

eulogy

Eventually my guilt for threadjacking Vlad's post outweighed my dislike of multiple newsposts, so I decided to delete my completely unrelated comment and post it below.

In other news, SuprNova.org is apparently "down for the count" according to Penny Arcade, a bit of information which is more immediately distressing although possibly less relevant in a big-picture sort of worldview -- which, incidentally, we in the United States frown upon when we are bothered to consider it.

I haven't been able to find any reports confirming Penny Arcade's analysis, but here's a copy of Retspan's (a French antipiracy organization) initial press release about the then-impending lawsuit, and what SuprNova admin Sloncek had to say about it at the time.

SuprNova.org, for those of you who didn't know, was a sort of clearinghouse for BitTorrent trackers of pirated movies, applications, and music. I hear it also had a few legitimate uses, though I have no first-hand experience with those.

Just thought I'd compress the news threads into as few posts as possible. [Edit: Obviously, didn't work out.] Go read some of Nathan's imitation Japanese poetry, the rest of you. Incidentally, some thoughts on the appropriate English translation of the Japanese form. I remember reading a much better analysis of the same subject a few weeks ago, but Google isn't giving me anything.

God, I just finished downloading two files using SuprNova trackers today. I can't help but imagine that this is what it feels like to have a conversation with a friend not suspecting in the least that just the next hour he will temporarily inhabit the same strip of pavement as an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.

posted by ben @ 9:02 PM 0 comments

haiku

i tell you my dreams
in case you hear one and say,
i dreamt you were there

posted by ata' allah at-talib @ 8:34 PM 0 comments

parables

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things." --Zuangzi, by Chaung Chou.

In the Lotus Sutra there's a story of a wealthy man whose son is in his burning house. He tells the child to come out, but the child has no conception of a burning house, and so he stays inside. The man calls out and promises new toys and treats, luring the child out. The father lied, but it was the only way to get his kid out of the burning house. Promise us eternal life, promise us an end to suffering--maybe it has to be done in order to get us out. Our stuff is burning. Our children are burning. Our selves are always, always, burning.

There's a Hindu parable about a man who dreamed that he married a beautiful woman, and in the dream he experiences sixty years of their marriage--imagine his surprise when he wakes up to find that only a few minutes have passed. Yet somehow, later on, he comes across the children he fathered in the dream. I wish I knew more about this story.

posted by ata' allah at-talib @ 1:01 AM 0 comments

Excuse me, guys

Hey everyone, it's good to be part of the family. I'll post some artwork from time to time, but mostly I'm here to screw up the serv--webmaster the site.

So... Ben expressed interest in getting rid of the lime green stuff, but I'd like input from everyone on how I'll mess with the code. Do you guys want major changes? Keep the same layout but change the colors? No change at all, shut up go away? Since Blogger was redesigned by Stopdesign it uses clean, standard code, and I can pretty much make any edits imaginable. If you want it to use a different Blogger template, just let me know which one. My favorites are the ones by Mr. Bowman. Remember, it wont have to look exactly like it, I'll make magic happen if requested.

Anyhoo, this place is full of sexy people, so I'll stop sullying it's pages with my plebeian dialect.

posted by Zak @ 2:29 PM 2 comments

hearing from princeton in about a week

On sunny days, the space is naturally lit by rays from a hidden skylight softened by the plastic covering and the bluish texture of the walls, and a screen-covered window which lends its own gentle glow. Even the tiled floors and walls reflect the muted sunlight, slipping into shadow near the entrance. At the end of the corridor-shaped room, illumated by the ambient light, for all the world like some holy grail awaiting a battered traveler, anticlimatically, incredibly, is a sky-blue porcelain toilet seat of no distinctive make.

This is one of the rooms in my house.

I'll leave the allegorical nuances to more literary minds.

posted by ben @ 1:54 PM 1 comments

sideways

One of the perks of having a driver's license is that I can see a movie whenever I want and not get the why-must-i-be-your-chauffeur spiel from my parents. One of the perks of living in Tenafly is that whoever owns the local theatre has excellent taste in films.

I wonder if it's a bad sign if I watch the character Paul Giamatti tends to always play and think, "Jesus, that's me right there."

posted by ata' allah at-talib @ 9:21 PM 2 comments

so i was wondering

Where do you guys want to take this blog?

Personally, I'd like to make it as multidimensional as possible; I picture a mix of partisan political trash-talk, overly detailed "day in my life" accounts, weird literary experiments and maybe a photograph or two if we could dig them up, and it makes me smile.

Also, I wonder if there are any more invitations that should go out? Eric, could you ask Shannon if she got the email?

This is the sort of thing I'd post privately if only I could figure out how and meanwhile make those stupid "1 comment------>s<------" tags* go away. Argh.


*I'd just like to clarify, the thing that triggers the OCD is the "s" in the word. It may perhaps have been slightly unclear and I wanted to make sure. Again, it's the "s" I'd like removed. Not from all the comments, you understand. Just the ones with-

I wonder if they have medications for this sort of thing.
-----

Oh, one more thing on my wish-list in case any of you have a penchant for webmastering and blogspot allows it: I think it'd be cool if you could edit your signature for a post. So, like, instead of that 10:15 nonsense that it says down here right now, I could write something like "icewolf34 shooby-dooby-doo shooby-dooby doos at 10:15PM. Or maybe it's a good thing that I can't do that after all.

posted by ben @ 9:58 PM 5 comments

how'd they do that?

Sorry I'm adding to the glut of political posts on this blog...

"The closest black woman to most of the liberals accusing Rice of being
incompetent is the maid they periodically accuse of stealing from the liquor
cabinet. " --Ann Coulter's 12.01.04 column

What the...? Did you just see that crazy jujitsu? How the hell is it that they've managed to paint us as the Upper East Side bourgeois pigs? We're the Chardonnay-sipping country club bastards? I feel like something just whizzed by me at Mach 2 and I'm whipping my head to the side. Remember when we were the part of the political spectrum that was jivin' with the labor unions, the farmers, and the inner city folks? It really wasn't so long ago--how the hell have they managed to paint us as them so quickly?

posted by ata' allah at-talib @ 7:08 PM 2 comments

posted by ata' allah at-talib @ 1:30 PM 0 comments