Дорогие читатели! Свежих сообщений вполне возможно еще несколько месяцев не будет. Если будут, то скорее всего малосодержательные. Комментировать я буду и дальше. Если вы в курсе, то понимаете. Пожелания удачи принимаются, ну и так далее.

I'm currently listening to Rench, who has finally combined hip hop and bluegrass into a gargantuan mutant crossbreed. Shame it will never get past the backpack crowd and into some kind of commercial success.

Incidentally, according to his website (http://www.renchaudio.com/,) Rench is from Milwaukee, where I lived for about a year and which I loved with all my heart, and plays at Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn, where I used to be a regular, and which I still visit when I'm in NYC. Coincidence? I think not!

Listening to Merle Haggard, who paradoxically isn't quite as good at writing about the things he lived through (prison, tuberculosis, cheating, etc.) as Johnny Cash, who either didn't live through them or did so halfassedly. Still, there's something Villonesque about him.

Also, Toots and the Maytals.

Вот чего подумал. Почему сейчас большинство литературы-жидковатое нечто такое? Какой то сплошной постмодернизм, постирония, хроники унылого говна в общем. Даже научная фантастика и историческая проза, хотя казалось бы, вот где простор, выдумывай-не хочу, но получается такая сплошная проекция кубикла во времени то вперед то назад. Думаю, это потому что если сам писатель раньше не обязательно имел интересную биографию, то он был окружен людьми ее ведшими, и мог из общения с ними подчерпнуть материал. А сейчас все больше унылого говна выращеного унылым говном, из общения с которым можно подчерпнуть только то-же самое. Чем лучше жизнь тем хуже книги в общем. А может и нет, ведь придумали это унылое говно всякие Камю и Сартры, которые как раз выросли в интересные времена. Может все банально сводится к тому что 99 percent of everything is shit, как сказал Курт Воннегут (вроде.)

Люди! Не покупайте компъютеры фирмы Alienware! Такого говна я в жизни не видел. Юго по цене Мерседеса. Думаю, это связанно с покупкой фирмы Dellом.

Перечитываю наверное в пятый раз Криптономикон. Ну какая же охуенная книга. Прекрасный писатель Стивенсон, и где он всего этого нахватался?

Довольно часто, перечитывая книги, я открываю в них массу нового, прежде не замеченного. Например, читая Мастера и Маргариту сейчас я вижу многое что совсем не заметил в первый раз, в 11тилетнем возрасте. Наверное то не универсально и как-то связанно со скоростью чтения. Моя мать, например, читает очень медленно но вникает во все тонкости с первого раза, я же очень быстро но бегло.

Может если мне удастся наконец выучить математику за пределами 10го класса, я смогу в один прекрасный день понять собственно криптографическую часть Криптономикона, но пока что и так неплохо. С первого раза когда я эту книгу прочел, наверное лет в 18, я освоил историю второй мировой войны и общие криптографические понятия, равно как и всякие нюансы военной жизни. В сязи с последним, заметил интересное явление. Прозу на военную тематику я стал воспринимать по большей части с омерзением. Тома Клэнси вообще органически не переношу, всяких ВЕБов Гриффинов тоже. Не получается абстрагироваться и читать также как о пиратах каких-нибудь, то-есть, плевать что там фоксель не той формы итд. А вот со Стивенсоном нет такого. Хотя Клэнси всякие генералы за ручку водили и показывали всякое, Гриффин вообще служил, правда, оффицером и в мирное время, а Стивенсон простой гик.

http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0060512806/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210364388&sr=8-1

I would not have wanted to live during the Inquisition, for obvious reasons. But it doesn't take a religious society to reproduce those reasons. All you need is for it to become accepted that there are viewpoints that automatically require the condemnation of the person who expresses them openly. When this becomes an axiom for the elite of a society, you're well on the way to having an inquisition.

I've got a pretty good grasp on American liberals and conservatives. I grew up in New York City, and spent about half my life in relatively priviledged public schools. My teachers, with few exceptions, were liberal as could be. My classmates were as well. On the other hand, I've spent most of my adult life in the military, where liberals are not an exception, but definitely a minority. I've been something of a political and religious outsider in both worlds.

The American left is definitely by and large not only less tolerant of dissenting opinions than the right, but is also much more likely to argue ad hominem. I've been a guest in the homes of preachers in the Bible belt whose sons I was serving with. They disagreed with my agnosticism, but did not vilify me when I politely doubted Christ's divinity. You can try to express a similarly heretical view in typical liberal company or on line, and watch seemingly educated, well-spoken people turn into shrill zealots in microseconds. You will find your character under attack in the foulest terms.

I don't know what causes this difference. Neal Stephenson hinted at it in Cryptonomicon. He said that the traditionalist Christians are like people with an operator's manual to a car. They have an idea of what falls within the normal parameters, what's critical, and what an appropriate reaction to something wrong is. The postmodernist left is like people who perceived faults in the manual and threw it away. Now, when something goes wrong, they have no idea how to reast, and go to DEFCON 5. A squeaky belt and a thrown rod are now equivalent in seriousness. I don't know if I'm entirely convinced by this explanation.

I do know this. When you have a whole social class that has taboo opinions, expressing which condemns somebody, it's only a matter of time before these opinions paradoxically permeate it, and in the most extreme form. Kind of like how Satanism became widespread among the Catholic French nobility. And its only a matter of time before public morality becomes something for the plebes to follow and for the upper class to privately scoff at and flaunt. Maybe it's happened already, I don't know.

I think it was Colonel Grossman, the military psychologist who wrote On Killing (an excellent book, by the way, even if it did leave me with some reservations) who said that if you look at humanity as split between sheep, wolves and sheepdogs, the sheep will be uncomfortable with the sheepdogs. You know, they look and act uncomfortably similar to wolves, think they're better than the sheep, and so forth. I think that's true, but the corrolary is this: if the sheepdogs do their job well enough, the sheep will eventually fear and despise the sheepdogs much more than the wolves. That's because they'll never see an actual wolf, but will deal with sheepdogs every day. Eventually, even the existence of wolves as a threat will be questioned by the sheep, and any attempt by a sheepdog to explain the necessity for its existence will be greeted with a chorus of indignant bleating.

Something that's incomprehensible to me is people who object to having their blogs read by objectionable people. Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Ying Yang twins can read my shit if they want. At worst, I'll have a bigger audience, at best, they might reconsider some of their depravity.

Got vaccinated for typhoid in the left shoulder today and the 5th anthrax shot in a six-shot series in the right. I'm trying to figure out which sucks more right now, but no luck.

Слушаю R.A. The Rugged Man. Такой трэш рэп что ICP и рядом не стоит. Цитировать не буду, дабы не обидить кого, ибо оно весьма.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Upgrayedd!

I'm starting to get into Tom Waits, mainly the more rocking numbers on Rain Dogs. Is this the onset of musical douchebaggery? Is there a cure, or at least palliative measures?

Пиздец-пиздец. Анимированный Иероним Босх, под Бакетхеда. Через fulguritus

Заново ознакомливаюсь с сербскохорватским. Сильно повезло с учительницей. Язык конечно прикольный. То что женская грудь на нем формально называется дойкой например я знал и раньше, но слово сукоблед мне не встречалось. Кто скажет что оно значит по русски?

I've been re-reading Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation, and was reminded of my recent discussion with shkrobius about whether animals have the capacity for good, evil, remorse and so on. She gives several examples of behavior that I can't explain otherwise without resorting to Skinnerian models of animals as unthinking automata.

Went out to a place called the Rocket Room in town yesterday. It's a good little music club, and sometimes they've got punk or rockabilly bands on. Yesterday, however, it was overrun by dirty hippies. Some little douche with a jew-fro, coke-bottle glasses, a tweed jacket and a checkered scarf wrapped around his neck was on stage, playing a harp-looking thing and bleating something that sounded like that "Lesbian Seagull" song the teacher in Beavis and Butthead sings. Female hippies were sitting cross-legged in front of him, gazing longingly. Male hippies were doing that shambling hippie dance. One of the hippies stopped dancing to answer a phone call on his Motorola RAZR, which I can only assume was made out of recycled Guatemalan pubic hair. Before leaving, I told a few hippies that joke about what's red and orange and looks good on a hippie, which almost made some of them cry.

Also, at another bar, I heard Jane's Addiction for the first time in years, the Nothing's Shocking song. I'd forgotten how good they were. I'm downloading some right now, as well as some Toots and the Maytalls.

Есть ли кто из Сан Диего?

Read an issue of Esquire magazine. I would now really like to see a picture of some dude in an expensive suit hanging from the ceiling, with a little caption telling us how much his suit, shirt, shoes, watch, keychain, chair and designer noose cost.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080404/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_taxes

I can't believe that Bill and Hillary's books have sold $40 million worth in just royalties. Who the fuck would buy them?