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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Ted's LiveJournal:
- My other car is the six hundredth digit of Pi.
- My other car is actually my own hooved feet.
- My other car is sixty times the size of a typical sedan, but still proportional in its dimensions, hand-crafted from a hyperdense vanadium alloy, sitting in an oversized parking lot in Nairobi, totally immobile.
- My other car is this sentence.
- My other car is the horrible tickling of a hair on your arm that makes you mistakenly remember you've got spiders on you for the rest of the day.
- My other car is the Mariinsky Ballet company, arranged in perfect harmony to function exactly like a typical automobile -- please note that due to illness or injury the understudy Natalia Dzevulskaya will be replacing Diana Vishneva playing the part of the carburator though.
- My other car is a rational self-interest maximizer with perfect information and complete free will.
- My other car may actually be a windmill, in which case forgive my quixotic delusion.
- My other car is all made of pearls and clockwork, bathed in mist and the chirping of frogs, rumbling its ugly stumbling path from now into oblivion.
- My other car is a well-structures villanelle about a poem that can turn into a car -- like a Transformers robot, but more high-brow.
- My other car is the wailing of a distant star as it slowly collapses from giant to dwarf to nothingness.
- My other car is lurking right behind you, carefully balanced on everything you've got in that room of yours, until the moment you turn around to look, at which point it disappears.
- My other car is the opposite of a car, thus cancelling out my primary car and restoring the balance -- and I hope there won't be an explosion when that happens.
| Monday, July 6th, 2009 | |
| 10:01 am | I have a problem. I'm having a problem. I've never encountered a problem of any kind before, so when this happened, I googled "Problem Solving Worksheet" to find a good way to solve it. (Worksheet taken from ADHD News.) ( Problem Solving Worksheet ) I think I may need to grab another worksheet and start over. Please help. ( Another Worksheet ) This whole "solving" thing is difficult. |
| Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | |
| 10:09 pm | Sunday Shopping On Sunday mornings, I like to go shopping in medieval Europe. You know, just to relax, and build up my immune system. Maybe feel a little smug. Everyone back then was illiterate, so the signs all just showed picture of what they sold: a horseshoe for a blacksmith, a basket for a basket shop, clothes for a clothes store. It makes the shopping experience a little like playing card games with a three year old, and who doesn't like that? This morning six hundred years ago, I was shopping around and decided to take a break and grab some watered-down honey wine. I stopped at an inn called the Rose and Griffin. Except it wasn't an inn at all. It was a roses and griffins store. There were long rows of fragrant roses, and huge cages filled with mythical lion-eagles. "No, no, we're not an inn," said the shopkeeper with a laugh and a shrug, "but people assume that a lot. We get a lot of angry medieval would-be drunken would-be customers." "Do they ever cause trouble?" I asked, noting that the roses were way too expensive for my shopping day. The shopkeeper just chuckled, "Of course not. Nobody comes around to raise a ruckus. My store is full of monsters." He takes credit cards. Anyone want to go in with me on a bulk discount order? |
| Monday, June 29th, 2009 | |
| 5:30 pm | My Other Car (Please select one) ( Play At Home Version! ) |
| Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | |
| 1:55 pm | June My friend Kelley is a Bad Advice Columnist for the local paper. People write in with their questions and problems, and he gives them bad advice. I'm not sure I approve of his vocation, but we've been friends since high school and I figure it's not exactly my place. "I feel kind of uncomfortable with it too," he's told me several times over the years, "but sometimes people just really badly want some bad advice." Anyway, I went to his wedding this weekend. His bride Maryana (well, now his wife) is a mysterious international jewel thief. Again, I'm not so sure I approve, but he's my friend and I want him to be happy. The wedding started out wonderful. The ceremony was beautiful, the reception had a lively string jazz trio, there were stolen precious gemstones everywhere as party favors and decorations, and the country club was just lovely. It was one of those fancy overpriced weddings. Say what you will, but they both looked so happy! You know that wedding tradition where the guests clink their forks against their wine glasses with increasing intensity until the bride and groom kiss, much to the applause of their celebrating friends and family? Well, Kelley and Maryana didn't know it. We started clinking glasses and they didn't notice for a while, distracted by the month of June and the swelling in their hearts. Then they looked around, confused, and wondering why. Eventually they clinked their glasses as well, and when that didn't work, they quietly asked us to stop and we couldn't hear them. We kept it up, clinking in a rising crescendo of expectation. At first we were all excited, then insistent, and finally bitter and resentful. We kept banging the stupid wine glasses. Our wrists were tired and our ears hurt but nobody was willing to back down. Even when someone stopped, someone else would pick up the pace. We had invested too much and didn't want to admit failure and so we kept stubbornly banging, even breaking a few wine glasses. We kept it up for a little over an hour, until finally we gave up. The bride and groom were horrified and puzzled. The guests left with awkward apologies, crunching across broken glass. We never did get to eat the wonderful dinner they had presumably made. Congratulations, Kelley and Maryana! Sorry for ruining your wedding. I wish we knew how to stop. |
| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | |
| 3:54 pm | Bad Slang So, I went to visit the lastrutabegameringue-people again, and yes, they've all started using Lastrutabegameringue-People Rhyming Slang, as I'd suggested. It's not going well for them. And I feel bad for saying that, since they've been so hospitable down here in this reliable. They gave me an amnesia Herman and nice Mountain Dew and took me to their IsadoraAldousHuxley. They served a huge feast with cake and Pliny and thermal and a pickle and some delicious orange-flavored whiny hyperspacial. They bought me a shiny piney-colored omniscient. A automatic people from the lastrutabegameringue-people prole rose up and made me a Fishysizedharassment (written in befuddly on a computer peoplelikemoney) declaring me better than an ogreish. They also gave me a very nice pet steeple. I'm naming him Soimitateadeviant, after my feelings. All their generosity leaves me soft and warm like there's a mew in my troll region. Maybe later it'll turn into a troll stick instead. It tileable exactly gracious of me to complain. It's just that I can't understand an occipital they're saying. It's a total Myserensexipidity of comprehension. They could be warning me about an eleven, or an Extirpated could be explaining the process of hemophiliac, and they might as well be saying Sign or Ingredients as far as I'd know. It's like they have a different occipital for everything. Also, this dog is full of mire. |
| Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | |
| 2:57 pm | New Slang "First of all," they said, "the purpose of rhyming slang isn't to be clever, nor charming, nor linguistically intriguing. And it's also not intended to be a fun word puzzle for you to solve. It's intended to be a way to talk to each other in a way that you can't understand them. Second of all, we're not even Cockney, we're mole-people." "Well, that just means you need a better rhyming slang," I replied happily. ( Mole-People Rhyming Slang ) (Please note: my next post will be written using Mole-People Rhyming Slang. I'll try to incorporate as much rhyming slang as I can.) Current Music: The Shins, "New Slang" |
| Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | |
| 6:27 pm | What do I do with these? I am sitting at my desk, staring at this stack. This easily portable stack of two hundred BART tickets. Each one is charged up to $200. That's forty thousand dollars right here, but what am I going to do with all this BART fare? I swear, if I really want to keep it up as a contract killer, I seriously need to start reading the contracts more closely. |
| Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | |
| 1:14 pm | |
| Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | |
| 9:06 pm | Please help me turn this post into an oak tree! This post will become an oak tree! But to do that, I need your help. 1. If you're reading this on LiveJournal, please print out a copy of this entry and post it on a bulletin board, family refrigerator, or other accepted public-posting area. 2. If you're reading this on a bulletin board, family refrigerator, or similar site, please fold this post into a paper airplane. Then, please go to the top of a really high building and toss this paper airplane off the edge. 3. If you find this paper airplane discarded on the ground somewhere, I apologize for the littering. Please give this folded-up paper airplane to someone with whom you've had conflict, as a gesture of peace and openness. 4. If you've received this probably-dirty folded sheet of paper from someone as a gesture of peace, I assure you that it's not any kind of passive-aggressive maneuver or clever slight. The gesture of peace is quite genuine and I hope you can both reach out and try to share some generosity from your beauitful hearts. Sometimes that's hard, and you do risk getting hurt, but without taking those kinds of risks, we can never really settle our lives into something truly whole and joyous. 5. Oh, also, um, I hate to be a mooch at a special moment like this, but I'm trying to turn this post into an oak tree, so if you get this sheet of paper as a gesture of peace, could you please go to the nearest ocean and toss it in? Thanks. 6. If you find this sheet of paper in the ocean, I apologize for the littering. Please give this soggy piece of paper to a Nomura's jellyfish and also please teach that Nomura's jellyfish how to read. 7. If you are a Nomura's jellyfish and your literacy tutor just gave you this sheet of paper, please take it deep down within the ocean to the Lost City of Nomura, deep beneath the ocean, five hundred miles off the coast of Japan, and give it to one of the robots there. The robot will probably vaporize you. I apologize for that. 8. If you are a guard robot of the Lost City of Nomura, I apologize for the intrusion upon your serene and perfect fallen civilization. Please reactivate your Biomagical Overlords and give them this note. 9. If you are a Biomagical Overlord, please rise from your watery coffin and return to dry land, preferably near San Francisco. Also, please bring this sheet of paper with you and use your Biomagical Incantations to change this piece of paper into a viable oak acorn. 10. Also, please give that acorn to a hair stylist. Don't worry, San Francisco has a lot of really good hair stylists. 11. If you are a hair stylist, and some kind of terrifying magical sea creature just gave you this text in the form of an acorn, I apologize for the rise of the dreaded Biomancer Overlords. It's part of an important project to change my LiveJournal post into an oak tree. Please plant this acorn someplace with fertile soil and plenty of sun. Thanks again for your help, everyone! EDIT: Oh yeah, let's not let this become a Craig Shergold thing, okay? If you see this message in paper form after July 2009, please dispose of it in the nearest receptacle. (You don't need to dispose of electronic copies or acorns, though.) |
| Monday, May 25th, 2009 | |
| 8:15 pm | |
| Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | |
| 8:02 pm | The stupid bucket There was a bucket in the middle of the sidewalk today. A very stupid bucket. I stumbled on it and fell and scuffed my knees. Stupid bucket. When I stood up, two men were standing in front of me, flashing high-tech badges. "You're under arrest for ninth degree murder," the shorter one said, gesturing at the bucket. "What?" I said, "If the bucket had somehow been alive, I sure didn't kill it, and even if I had, the stupid bucket deserved it." "No," the taller one said, flashing his blinky holographic badge again, "We're Time Police. Knocking that bucket over will lead to a chain of events that causes an intentional killing, two hundred and twenty years from now. A very brutal and remorseless one. Since you very indirectly caused it, you're under suspicion of ninth degree murder." "Uh, okay, wait," I said, getting defensive, "even if that was true, that law doesn't exist right now. You can't make ex post facto laws to arrest people in the past. The Constitution forbids it. Even if it's somehow allowed in the future, it's not allowed now." "True," the shorter one said, "but this device here loops time just right so that it's not ex post facto any more." He showed me a little sleek charcoal-grey plastic box with a flashing green light. Darn. "The penalty for ninth-degree murder is a two dollar fine," the taller one said with a shrug, "After all, it's only ninth degree." Relieved, I gave them two dollars. I figured, even if I was being scammed, it was just two dollars. As they left, I realized that two dollars now probably works out to millions 220 years in the future. Stupid bucket! |
| Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | |
| 10:16 pm | Anaesthetic is an aesthetic Here is what they told me at the cafeteria: 1. Every really good musician has their best songs and their so-so songs. You know, art does not thrive in consistency -- without risk it goes stale. 2. At the same time, music is different for the musician and the audience. A musician will have his or her favorite songs, and the audience will have their favorite songs. Sometimes a song is less satisfying to make but more satisfying for an audience. Sometimes a musician's best beloved song will be obscure and never receive much critical or fan base appeal. 3. This particular musician -- the one who will be playing at the cafeteria -- is notable for a three reasons. The first reason was that his favorite music and his audience's favorite music are inverse. He only likes what the audience considers a bomb, and vice versa. Watching his concert is a zero sum game of enjoyment between musician and audience. 4. The second notable thing about this musician is his feelings. Most musicians are notable because they have feelings and a guitar. This musician also has feelings and a guitar. But his set of feelings are untranslatable to others. He doesn't ever feel happy or sad or curious or angry. He feels fembly, or vabtose, or palernous or trank. No, I can't define those words. No, they can't be described as similar to any emotions that you or I know. Through a combination of unusual nutrition, very bad excercise, paint, and genetic mutation, this musician's set of emotions do not intersect the feelings or language of any other human being. He is very good at describing them, I suppose, but I still have no words or explanation besides that which I have already given. 5. He also has a guitar, but it is completely normal, and not one of the three reasons why this particular musician is notable. 6. I was an obstruction to commerce, and could I please stop asking so many questions and finish my purchase so the people in line behind me could get their food too? Seriously. 7. I never did find out the third reason why this particular musician was notable. |
| Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | |
| 12:53 pm | Education "I'm sorry," the admissions officer told me over the phone this morning, "We don't actually install darts in your mouth here at Dartmouth. It's just a name." I still want mouth-darts. Can anyone recommend a better university? |
| Saturday, May 9th, 2009 | |
| 11:33 pm | Boojums So, today is the start of my little vacation. I'm on a floating city a few miles off the coast of California. The buildings are all boats, which works nicely. The sidewalks between the buildings are not sidewalks at all. They're alligators. You walk across the backs of the alligators to get from place to place here. (And who knew there were such things as salt-water alligators?) It's not too hard to keep balance, because there are rope guidelines around, but it's a nervous sensation. I can't shake the feeling that I'm walking on the back of an alpha predator. Being able to say "It's okay, I've done this in video games" is minimally comforting at best. I walked from my hotelboat to a caféboat today to meet some friends I met on the Internet (have you guys heard of this Internet thing? It's handy! You should try it!) and they were very charming and fun. I mentioned to them that I couldn't shake the feeling of danger walking on the backs of alligators, but that I knew it must be safe if the whole city is built on it. They laughed. "No, no, it's very dangerous, actually. Someone gets eaten just about every day. Usually after that, the alligator is full and leaves everyone alone, but still, it's very dangerous. You should be careful." "But, if it's so dangerous, why does everyone still walk around on the alligators?" "You get used to it!" my Internet friend said, "You just have to be careful and be aware of the immense and unpredictable risk. Once you get used to it, you hardly notice. Besides, we're proud of our alligator sidewalks. It's part of what makes our home town so distinctive. We love our alley-gators!" My walk home was terrifying at best. Anyone know the safest way to walk on an alligator? |
| 2:51 am | Handshakes Epilog There is a very common impulse when meeting with a celebrity. You want to say something interesting so the celebrity will remember you. It's awkward for the celebrity, and kind of nervewracking for the non-celebrity, but it's very normal! Stephen Fry writes about it beautifully on his blog. Well, I guess I get the same kind of feeling when I'm speaking with time travelers from the future. Not the past as much, for some reason, but always from the future. This evening, late this evening, you see, I had the opportunity to speak with one. Stammering for something interesting to say, I remembered my conversation from earlier today. "Hey, what happens to Bacon numbers in the future?" I asked. I could feel the stupid in my throat coating the words I spoke. First, it's rude to ask a time traveler about future events. There are all kinds of rules and paradoxes and so on. Second, if I was going to do that, couldn't I ask about world peace or the stock market or maybe some sort of gambling make-money trick or medicine or my own fate or perhaps the free will question? Something useful or important? Well, the time traveler took it in stride, which was nice. "Actually, people on the Internet (or what have you) had a lot of arguments about it and then nobody really cared," she explained, "Like the whole balrog-wings thing, which was resolved only decades after everyone lost interest. The future will not ever become the orgy of middle-class gadgetry obsession that we demand of it. Most people have way too much to worry about, honestly. Which reminds me, do you know where I can buy a live and fertile walrus? I kind of need one to bring back home with me." "Thanks," she added awkwardly afterward. Poll #1397173 Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All Where can she buy a live and fertile walrus? Uh, thanks! |
| Friday, May 8th, 2009 | |
| 7:28 pm | Handshakes First thing this morning, I walked up the wall and stood on the ceiling, and committed to spending the rest of the day in reverse gravity. It was that kind of morning. I needed to climb back down the wall to reach my day clothes, of course. Showering was clumsy, making breakfast, et cetera. Walking along the awnings of the sidewalk, I saw someone else walking down the street in the other direction. He was upside-down too! I waved cheerily and he waved back and approached closer. When we got into friendly awkward greeting range, I recognized him: my old boss from two jobs ago, a lovable drunk! We shook hands and I asked how he was. "I've been thinking," he said in his serious, dreamy way, "about Bacon numbers. Eventually, maybe six hundred years from now if you chain generations of actors just right but maybe much sooner than that, there will not be a single living human being with a Bacon number below seven." I offered him some gum while I thought about that, but some kind of gravity problem happened and the gum ended up on the sidewalk above/below us. "No," I finally said, staring up at the fallen gum, "that's only true if the movie industry continues in the same format it has right now, which seems unlikely. It could very well be that in thirty years, someone splices together a popular worldwide video, distributed online, featuring every human being, and there will not be a single living human being with a Bacon number above one. Even more likely, the idea of a Bacon number will cease to be computable. Or maybe it will just stop being interesting." I didn't even get started about the definition of a living human being. I was pondering asking him about Erdős numbers, but decided against it. We shook hands and said goodbye. |
| Monday, May 4th, 2009 | |
| 8:42 pm | The cross is in the ballpark! Whenever I use a Bluetooth headset, the sound of the activation reminds me of Paul Simon's "The Obvious Child." And then all day I have "The Obvious Child" stuck in my head. And then at the end of the day I change into a giant thirty-foot long serpent for about a month. With blue teeth, as it turns out. I'm typing with my blue teeth now. Youch. |
| Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | |
| 4:21 pm | Unison We sipped our cappuccinos in unison, set them down, and had a moment of polite, comfortable silence to break. ( The most incredible thing happened to me today, we both said, not quite in unison. ) I never did get to finish my story. |
| Monday, April 27th, 2009 | |
| 7:05 pm | |
| Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | |
| 12:41 pm | Advice needed! Poll #1389923 Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All What do you do when your piñata comes to life, fully sapient? |