Well, they're still out there...

This morning a truck from the Logistics Management Bureau was getting gassed up at the gas* station down the street from where I work. Just now an Overnight Ground Force Systems truck - redcoated soldier and all - whizzed past my window.

For some reason I suspect my day's Surreality Quota has not been reached yet, and so I am keeping my eye out for the rental truck with 'Moving Tip #42: dollies good, hernias bad' on the side. Yes, I've seen them, I think they belong to Budget Rentacar but I'm not sure.

Today I need to get my work-work done, then do my school-work; I've got to code up a basic implemention of the Knuth-Morris-Pratt search algorithm (I wonder if a huge-ass industrial yellow tank on the back of a bitty little truck labeled VACUUM SERVICES counts towards the Quota) in C++ or Perl**. Tales of slavery, magically dedicated swords, hurricanes, revenge, silent gods, air war vs. shamans with nothing to lose, piracy on the high seas, and lost colonies on mysterious islands are drifting through my head...

(... and another convertible hearse full of flowers, followed by a hearse with the top up, just rolled past my window! Only this time they were silver instead of black! Okay, I think I've met my Quota for the day, although of course that will not stop anything....)

... and the thought of how to fit 'Don't Fear the Reaper' and a campaign set in VicMage.Asia together is entirely too entertaining to put aside. Ah, well. Putting the brain on timeshare mode, work and Perl and game are just going to have to timeslice like every other form of interest I have.

Side note: it's really easy to get motion sick if you spend too long trying to spot every single interesting truck going past your window, when your window looks out onto a moderately busy U.S. Highway.


*I just had the most overwhelming urge to call it a petrol station, possibly because of the proximity of an existing use of the word 'gas'. But possibly because of extended dealings with quintus. Eek.

**Language partisan politics will not be heard. These are the only two languages I have interpreters/compilers for. Deal.

New company to wonder about...

East Coast Relocation Services. Specializing in... well, damned if I know what, the truck rolled out of sight before I could finish reading. It just sounds so... I don't know, euphemistic. (AH-NULD VOICE: "Kahm with mee, yuu'v been... relocated".)

Damn, turns out they specialize in office furniture. Oh well. At least I will always have Smokey's Catastrophe Cleaning and the knowledge that somewhere out there is a parent who thought that 'Cipher Deavours' was a perfectly reasonable name for his or her child.

*prods indigoPerl download* C'mon, you bastard, finish. Or abort. Either way.

To be filed alongside 'Beauty and the Bullets'

A new rendition of one of the most dear-God-we're-all-sick-of-it-by-now heavily interpreted pieces of American literature. I'm not exactly sure how to work the details, but if I know my brain at all, it'll come to me shortly, or at least over the next few days. This was inspired by something I rented and watched quite some time ago in an effort to get some ideas for VicMage.Asia, and while I got some stuff from it for that purpose, the rest of the material has been fermenting in the bottom of my skull. A solemn vow before the Gods, a man going mad in his epic quest for vengeance, a chance at redemption in the shape of a former comrade-in-arms calling on the strength and sanctity of a prior vow of brotherhood...

"The gods will not forgive you this, Ahab!"

Moby-Dick would make an excellent samurai movie, don't you think? I watched the Patrick Stewart version, and the scene where the...

Excuse me, the truck with the 'hernias BAD' sign on it just rolled past my window, obviously the Angel of Surrealism is having too much fun to let go of me today...

... anyway, the Pequod encounters the Rachel stuck with me. (Bear in mind that I never read Moby-Dick in school - I was supposed to, but I didn't, and somehow got away with it. If this point's been hashed out a million times before, my sole excuse is: I didn't pay attention during that bit of class.) There - right there - was Ahab's one chance at redemption. Not the quest to save a human life, solely - although that's a noble enough purpose, the finding of the Captain's boy is not quite enough to turn the key in the lock. No, it's the fact that the Rachel's captain and Ahab were once shipmates. That is a sacred bond, a silent, pre-existing vow of unity that makes a journey back to the light possible - and makes that chance honourable. No matter how great the consequences of the vow of vengeance on the white monster are, even the gods who catch oathbreakers in their sin must recognize a call made in the name of that bond. And even the ones who don't will be forced to yield; were it Greek mythology, the Furies would hound a man who put aside the new vow for the old, but Apollo would drive them off for good for the very sake of that first vow - and be in the right to do so. Somehow the idea of the shipmate bond being called upon - and then thrown aside -for the sake of vengeance upon the creature struck me as something one could so, so easily see in a samurai movie. Especially since Ahab wants vengeance on the same creature that sank the Rachel's captain's boy's boat. Yeah, it'd need a bit of editing and changing, but so what? Replace the whale with the right warlord, have Ishmael telling the tale as a newly masterless ronin, throw in a few foreigners to take the place of Queequeg and the Moor/Filipino harpooner team (the book makes it pretty clear their leader's an Arab type, but says the 'yellow men' were 'inhabitants of the wild Manilas' or something like that; they're Chinese in the movie, so far as I can tell), and you've got an epic saga of honor, betrayal, and agonizing loyalty fit for Kurosawa.

Which reminds me, I gotta watch my copy of The Hidden Fortress at some point soon. I bought it last week and it's just sitting there, calling me.

*snif* I think I'm gonna cry...

Today went downhill fast after the Angel of Surrealism got finished with me. I posted about that under friendlock. Mostly related to world news stuff. I was starting to wonder why I bothered to keep going, instead of just wrapping my arms over my head & pulling my ears like a chimpanzee.... then I checked one of my web-accessible email accounts. This was waiting for me:

I'm a teacher in South Carolina, and I enjoyed your website on ancient China. You described everything in the most easily understandable manner I found on the web.

Thanks very much and keep up the good work.

A total stranger! A total stranger cared about what I had to say!

There's hope after all!

Huz-freakin'-zah!