Back in time

For the past three days, Terre Haute's fairgrounds have been host to a "Diesel Extravaganza". As it turns out, this consists of assholes with giant trucks accelerating hard all over town, primarily on Hwy 41 of course, and blowing black smoke out of their oversized tailpipes. Now these are not ordinary diesel fuel vehicles, they are modified to have big stovepipe-style exhaust pipes. They are also apparently never maintained or cleaned, so that I am not even kidding a little when I say big fucking cloud of black smoke.

I honestly cannot remember seeing this much black smoke covering the roadways in front of me since I was a kid. That's not specific enough though, I can't remember any vehicles spewing this many toxins into my face since I was in grade school. This, for those who don't know, was in the early nineties. When you combine this with the fact that Terre Haute has very few wi-fi hotspots, people who dress like they're waiting for the new single from Third Eye Blind to come out, and people who actually chew tobacco, I cannot believe I'm still in 2009. I'm almost certain I'm stuck back in time.

News flash, Kurt Cobain just shot himself! Well, we think he did, but his wife might have done it! Pearl Jam have announced they aren't making any more music videos! What will MTV do to fill the airtime? Babylon 5 just started their 3rd season, and it's getting more intense by the second! Star Trek Voyager is slated to begin production later this month. Apparently the captain is going to be *gasp* a woman!

Ugh, I can barely even make fun of this stuff without it causing me pain. I can't believe, with gas (and diesel) prices being what they are (and what they were this time last year), there are still people with big giant smoke-billowing gas-guzzling do-it-yourself monster trucks driving up the road. These people either have far too much disposable income or don't know how to properly spend the income they do have, like on education and dental work for their kids. I'm not the only one who feels this way, too. I've seen many other drivers waving the smoke out of their faces and coughing as these dickless jokers speed off to the next filling station. Those are probably the only people really happy about this event: gas station owners who sell diesel. It's gotta be like Black Friday for them ... although that doesn't necessarily refer to the ink used to write their sales, more to the colour of everything near a road.

In which a geek is relocated

As usual, it's been a long time since I last updated this. Two weeks ago Liz was offered a store manager position for nearly double her assistant manager yearly wages. Only problem was, we would have to move to Terre Haute.

Now it isn't THAT bad, okay? We have a bigger, nicer apartment on the 2nd floor, keyless entry (yes, keyless entry - a keypad on the door locks and unlocks it), a short drive to our respective works, a shorter drive for me back to Evansville for school, and between one to one and a half hours to Indianapolis, where such things as Skyline Chili and Apple are located. Plus there's the whole "Extra money" thing. That's good.

After we found a place to live and determined that I would still have to go to school in Evansville, my dad decided since he wouldn't have access to the truck on weekends, to trade it in for the Cash for Clunkers programme. This is how I now drive a new Hyundai Accent. It doesn't have a radio, but I listened to my computer on the way up and throughout town I don't need it that badly. Apparently I can fuel the car with $20 and change. I put in a $20 yesterday from below a quarter of a tank and it showed "full" afterward.

Living on Eastern time is something that takes a little getting used to. I like it better because the sun rises and sets at comparable times to Britain. Despite this, my dad calls it "Indiana Pretend Time, where they pretend they're in Eastern Time." This joke wasn't as funny as he thought the first time, and the funny value has only depreciated with time.

The process of moving sucks. It's been two years since I last moved, and before that it was a couple months, then nine months, then something like a year except I helped two friends move in between that, then once from overseas, once to overseas, once the fortnight before moving overseas to move across town ... man, fuck moving. I'm not entirely sure why I can't just get all new shit. The only real problem in moving is the giant chest of drawers, which weighs approximately 2.07 John Goodmans. It also has edges that, when I pulled it up the stairs, pressed very hard into my forearm muscles, causing matching bruises that are still there two full days later. I'm going to try my hardest to just push the motherfucker out the window when next we move.

Something that I'm FAIRLY sure happens in Terre Haute but not Evansville: people with big-ass trailers, I mean trailers longer than their primary vehicle, towed behind their truck/car/motorbike starting through the intersection around the time the light changes from yellow to red. Something tells me, Mr JB Hunt lorry driver, that you are not going to make it all the way through, especially since traffic is backed up so much because of that stopped car and the three cop cars required to assist that stopped car.

We still haven't got internet yet, which means I'm doing a lot of driving from wifi hotspot to wifi hotspot. Once or twice I sat around at ISU's library, but they block chat clients, which is inconvenient. There's a Panera Bread just about a mile and a half from the apartment which works in a pinch. Just north of I-70, meaning a quarter mile from the mall, there is a Starbucks that sits just within range of the Drury Inn opposite it on Hwy 41. The problem with this location is the difficulty involved in getting out of the place through the 41/70 intersection traffic (which is only made worse by all the shopping within half a mile of the intersection).

With a quick bit of google mapping, I found a local coffee shop called Coffee Grounds, which somehow manages to sell its stuff cheaper than most coffee shops I've ever been to. It's a really nice place - semi-industrial brick walls with writing on them, a mural on one section of the wall, tables with messages and names carved in, and four drink sizes - regular, tall, grande, and enorme. Much like at Starfucks, I stick with saying "large."

Once again, I'm hoping to start using this space more. It's not like I haven't had the time, I'm just a lazy cunt.

Geek Homework

This is directly from a "geek bio" thing I was asked to do for Inner Geeks.

My name is Lestack and I'm an alcoh- I mean, I'm a geek.

My geekiness began as a child when I learned all I could about the solar system. At that age, I wanted to be an astronaut. Naturally, my talents with maths prevented me becoming an astronaut as an adult. Also my abhorrence for military service, authority, and general lack of interest in learning an entire new language. This interest in all things geeky emerged when I learnt of sci-fi stories of time travel. I was introduced by the Academy Award-nominated film trilogy Back to the Future. To be fair I was introduced to the series via Universal Studios' Back to the Future: The Ride in Orlando. From there it was a short jump to Star Trek IV: The One With The Time Travel And Whales. The next year I saw the Star Wars trilogy on USA network on Christmas Day. For the younger readers, you must understand, many years hence, they used to play other movies on Christmas Day than just A Christmas Story for 24 bloody hours straight. After the new movies came out, or rather after Episode I came out, I fell off the Star Wars wagon, though never quite the whole science fiction wagon. I picked the habit back up one summer when I was bored to bloody tears and had a library membership. I read all the Star Wars books beginning with the Han Solo novels from before the original movie all the way to the New Jedi Order, which at that point had just grown the beard. Off and on I would become interested in other sci-fi franchises. I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy shortly after the death of Douglas Adams, The Colour of Magic on the recommendation of a friend, and The Lord of the Rings because the movies had come out (I'm glad I read them, but I watch the films a lot more). I also picked up the Harry Potter series after having seen the first two films and been greatly impressed with them.

I truly began to branch out from franchise sci-fi when I picked up Matthew Woodring Stover's Heroes Die based on my love of his Star Wars novel Traitor. Stover's writing is a darker territory than anything I'd read before, but it seemed to fit with my interests perfectly. I read his other books when I got a chance, and after the release of Revenge of the Sith (the novelisation was written by Stover), I picked up the Republic Commando novels by Karen Traviss. After enjoying the hell out of them, I picked up her original-universe novels, the Wess'har Wars series. Upon discovering she was writing a tie-in novel for the video game franchise Gears of War, I bought that book having never played a second of the game. To date, I own all the novels written by Karen Traviss, Matthew Stover, Douglas Adams and JK Rowling.

Currently, I am reading the Dune prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson after having completed the audiobook to Dune and met Kevin J Anderson last fall. Attentive buggers may have noticed I lean heavily towards book-format sci-fi, but I am also a fan of Buffy, Angel (some of the series), Firefly, Dollhouse, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, the first series of Heroes, Torchwood, X-files, Red Dwarf, Cowboy Bebop, X-men, V for Vendetta, Shaun of the Dead, Watchmen, Neil Gaiman, Robert A Heinlein, World War Z, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (the first two movies as well). Pay attention, because there will be a quiz.

Outside of geeky things, I am a journalism major, I work at a clothing shop in the mall which shall remain nameless to protect my own ass, I am a major anglophile who wants to live in Boston on the grounds that I don't need a visa, and I use Mac products exclusively. Oh wait, that one was geeky.

Within Inner Geeks, I am the geek liason – I contact the members regarding their contact info and notify them about events and meetings. I also send out spam-porn emails on occasion, but usually only after I've been drinking a lot.

So the wedding stream didn't work. I don't really wanna hear about it :p

Anyway, I'm posting this because R K Milholland said it was okay, and I think it is AWESOME.

Watch the wedding stream

It's the day of my wedding, and I have none of this "nervousness" or "Cold feet" crap people keep asking me about.

Maybe it's because I love my wife-to-be, maybe I just go through with something when I decide to (although if that were true, I'd be out of school already goddammit). But the only thing I'm anxious about is spending any more time with Liz's family. They're leaving after dinner tonight, so it won't be a LOT of time, but last night was fucking too much. There was some sort of attention-whorish drama last night, although I haven't the slightest fucking clue what it was about. I don't really care, all I know is I was sitting in the car for an hour waiting for Liz to finally come outside.

She doesn't need this right now. Hell, she doesn't need this right ever. I used to not understand how someone can kill a family member or an intimate, but after meeting her family, I fucking get it. There are no shortage of lakes and ditches to dump bodies in throughout this great (ha!) state, and even if I got caught, I'm not terribly sure I would be convicted of anything, because these people are god damn awful. Liz has requested me to not kill anyone though, which has put significant dampers on my plans for galactic domination, but I'm respecting her wishes.

I could really do without the self-important attention-seeking childish behaviour from people older than I am, though. Adam, the minister, said we might need somebody on crowd control to keep people out of the way of where we're walking in. I suggested they have nerf guns or water guns full of paint. From there, Rose suggested paintball guns, which I vetoed on the grounds of cost. One of the groomsmen is a Tae Kwan Do instructor though, so hopefully he can pull double duty beating the shit out of stupid people and ... well, standing around. His girlfriend, however, is an MMA student and could probably do a bit of damage. Maybe Cindy can whoop ass.

Watch the action at http://tinyurl.com/wolberwedding - starts at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

There is absolutely no reason for people to speak with accents that make words unintelligible.

Seriously, we're ten years into the 21st century, and I got bitched out at my dad's workplace because a fat stupid redneck rent-a-cop managed to say "Wait here a minute" in a way that made it sound like "Go on ahead". I can't even FATHOM what kind of accent that is that changes the entire meanings of words. The simple answer is he's a lying piece of shit who should've been an abortion, but I can only work with the facts as I know them.

With the amount of television we have, and the amount that radio is gentrified so that all DJs sound like they just did a line of coke during the last commercial, I can't imagine how people can swallow words and sound like Larry the Cable Guy. Certainly there's a remaining minority of people who claim that's "heritage", "culture", and "not raping your ears", but one would think they would at least accidentally speak like a human once in a while.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-accent. I love accents, they're fascinating. But ones that make people unintelligible such as "Southern idiot" and "Wannabe southern idiot" and "general idiot" should have died out by now. So I challenge my readers (all eight of you) to do humanity a favour: If you know someone who sounds like an idiot when they speak, kill them in their sleep. You might find that you've been paying an enormous psychic price for their existence, and the only way to prove this is to chart your increased health upon their deaths.

Or maybe ... nah, I'm pretty sure killing the stupid isn't a bad idea.

This Star Trek will go on forever

It's official: There is a new Star Trek movie out that lives up to the hype.

Well, perhaps I should clarify: I don't remember any hype from any Star Trek movie. I remember being excited for Star Trek Generations in 1994, but in my own defence I was 9 and obsessed with Next Generation. I quickly dropped that particular obsession in time to barely notice First Contact and Insurrection. I worked in a cinema (two, actually) the year Nemesis came out, and so it became the second Trek film I saw at cinemas. I still don't know if it would have been better if I'd not been spoiled by a friend at school, but as it is, it was "okay" overall.

About two years ago I heard they were making Star Trek XI. As a subscriber to the theory that all odd-numbered Trek films are crap, I thought "ugh". When I saw the first teaser trailer, the one with the welder on the hull of the Enterprise, I thought "hmm, I might have to give this one a chance." Once I saw casting reports, I was definitely interested and all but guaranteed to see the film. Then I saw the theatrical trailers.

Holy assballs, batman, were those trailers awesome! My only concern was "Where the fuck does Baby!Kirk get a '66 Corvette?" and "Why are they skydiving?" These concerns evaporated a half-second later when the next shot was totally awesome. Then they showed the scene where Uhura is stripping out of her cadet uniform. Upon subsequent rewatchings of this trailer I noticed something I couldn't believe I'd missed before: These people are ridiculously hot.

Okay, sure, there were some pretty people on the original series, and seriously good-looking people on Next Gen, but nobody was NEARLY as hot as New Kirk (Chris Pine), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and the film's baddie Romulan-from-the-future Nero (Eric Bana). The closest the original series ever got to these never-unphotogenic people was when they used soft lighting on the Lieutenant that Ricardo Montalban's Khan Noonien Singh ended up taking with him and marrying in Space Seed, and that was mostly SOFT LIGHTING.

Moving on from my desire to sex every single person in the film, I have to say the film itself was immensely ballsy. It changes so many details about the Trek universe, something that Trekkies might not like if it weren't for the fact that this film is completely awesome. Kirk is not the same character (although generally the same person) that he is in the original line, or shall we say Prime Universe (as Star Trek Wiki Memory Alpha has taken to calling it). Spock is mostly the same albeit with several backstories changed. And I must allow myself one minor spoiler: Spock and Uhura are totally doin' it. Yes, I said it. Granted, we only see them making out followed by a terrible line delivered by Uhura (who finally has a first name!), but you KNOW there's some hot Pon'farr action going on ... every seven years.

As for how they get away with the changes, JJ Abrams and the writers make use of one of the oldest Trek plot devices: Time travel. Certainly the science is shaky, the continuity is wrong even accounting for the time-travelly alternate-universey wibbley-wobbley-timey-wimey (read up on Star Dates. On second thought, ignore Star Dates completely. The writers always have) but don't let that stop you from enjoying an action-packed summer blockbuster about the importance of interpersonal relationships, especially that of children with their parents. I have seen it twice, and the second time was with my parents on Mother's Day. I think we all took something away from it, and that is the ultimate success of Gene Roddenberry's vision.

boredom leads to urbandictionary, urbandictionary leads to QFM

If today is anything like what the summer will be like, I'm going to be very bored.

I'm working on classwork from home today, but since my internet connection is down I'm actually at the library. Oh, and because I'm a daft bastard I forgot my headphones. Basically, the only thing I can do is copy this audiobook to listen later and try not to kill the bastard in the nearest chair who won't stop texting.

I'm apparently worthless without internet or headphones. When the hell did that happen? What did people do before television, internet, and radio? A quick glance at history books reveals the answer: They went to war. I suppose it's not so strange an idea ... after all, it's taking me some effort to not garrote this chav in the opposite chair. I suppose if I get seriously bored, I can just give in to my anger ... only my hatred can destroy him ... whoops, sorry, started quoting Emperor Palpatine again.

Today's my day off work because I have class for seventeen thousand hours on Tuesdays, so that's what prevents me going to the mall. Also, my loathing of everything at the mall and everyone who shops there, that does play a part. I'm at the library because it's free to read, free to browse the intertubes, and free to just sit there and not do anything. Really, ask anyone using any chair there. All these things being free doesn't stop it being boring though, so I find myself looking out the window behind me, wishing today was tax day and the teabaggers were out. I'll have to come back tomorrow to watch the teabaggers.

Incidentally, I am simultaneously amused and confused by every news report I see on the teabagging protests. It boggles the mind that people can't use urbandictionary.com to find out the alternate definition of anything. For example, shoelace. The reason I chose shoelace is because I looked at my feet. A quick search on urbandictionary.com and I learn that shoelace is also a euphemism for the pattern of ... well, just search it yourselves. But don't say I didn't warn you ... I mean it is urbandictionary.com.

Half the stuff on there I'm sure somebody made up without there being precedent. After searching "Shoelace" it gave me nearby entries alphabetically, and one was "shoekakke". Upon reading the definition, along with that of "shoejob" (the act of a girl stimulating a man to orgasm with her cute shoes), I am reasonably confident that before someone typed all that shit in, nobody had done it before. Thanks to the laws of quantum fetish mechanics (the act of thinking up a strange new fetish causes it to be real) I am sure someone has done it NOW, if for no other reason than to try it out or to see if anyone they know is actually dumb enough to do this.

At least that's what I tell myself as I pour myself a scotch.

Hockey - a diatribe

I have been a hockey fan for as long as I can remember knowing about hockey. Needless to say, I have several (thousand) gripes with the sport, despite maintaining it is the best sport in the history of sport.

First off, icing. What the hell is it? I have watched many hockey matches live, a few on television, and listened to none on the radio but nobody has ever explained this to me. Like any good researcher, I looked on Wikipedia first. According to the article on the subject, icing is “when a player shoots the puck across two red lines, the opposing team's goal line being the last, and the puck remains untouched”. Now I certainly can see why this dangerous act is worthy of penalty. Oh wait, no I don't. Yes, certainly it's boring, and not something players should do as a habit, but is it worthy of completely stopping play and having a referee arm signal? Besides, I thought that was “dumping the puck”; icing just gives the idea that we're penalising people for stopping suddenly in front of each other and causing ice to spray all over each other, and this is a sport where if they don't do that, there will be a lot more injuries than just from fights.

On the subject of fights, the NHL is utter crap. My first NHL game was a St Louis Blues matchup against the New York Islanders. This was back in 1994, when the Blues had Brett Hull, and were sort of somewhat good as opposed to just nearby. Anyway, there was real excitement in the air. There were hard body checks, there were fights, there was shouting and swearing – all a beautiful experience for a nine-year-old boy who is still afraid to say “damn.” Of late though, I have been hard-pressed to see much (if any) fighting on an NHL match. If I want to watch a beautiful game, I would watch football (real football, not American football. I know it can get confusing but I refuse to call it “soccer”). I want to see some action in my hockey, not skating back and forth. Throw a punch or change the name of your sport.

Of course, I have no idea when players stopped fighting in NHL hockey, because for several years now hockey has been almost impossible to find on television. I know in 2006 there was a player lockout which probably didn't help convince any networks to air hockey, and that decision carried over a couple years, but the thing with lockouts and strikes is they don't happen every year, or even every other year. If they did, they'd just declare it a holiday week and write it into the calendar. NBC/Universal must have grown some yarbles of late by starting up NHL Sunday, airing daytime games even during NFL season. Unfortunately I can't commend them too much because NHL Sunday airs just this side of not at all. The last time I saw it was in February, and there are still games to play, therefore games to air! NBC, as well as every other network with a sport division: air some hockey already. We fans south of the snowline are starved for a real sport, and this is the only one that happens in this country between January and April.

We're here to defend wealth

I'm not sure when I decided I hated money, but I think it was around age ten. Yes, ten. I took a good hard look at the function of money in society and decided it was a middleman and therefore could be removed completely. I came up with my own simple way of acquisition of goods and job creation - everyone can go in and take what they need. Nobody steals anything because the idea is meaningless. Everybody works unless it's medically necessary to not work (that would include old age).

I'm well aware of how complicated this would be to do worldwide (because it would be necessary to implement it worldwide), however in our current system, people can go into debt and even bankruptcy before age 25. There is an entire industry based on high-interest short-term loans to people who are already living paycheque to paycheque. There is an entire second industry based on the first one that takes any and all information surrendered at the high-interest loan place and bombards the phone numbers with unsolicited text messages and phone calls at odd hours, and the email addresses with hundreds (at least) of spam messages (how spam messages make any fucking money for anyone I've yet to understand).

Money is theoretically how we determine if someone has worked hard enough to receive certain goods and services. When we throw CEOs, no-talent musicians, professional athletes, and all of Wall Street and the City into the mix, doesn't that completely bastardise that definition? I defy anyone to tell me how a stockbroker works harder than a minimum wage retail worker. I defy anyone to tell me how a professional athlete works harder than a factory worker who works twelve hours per day in dangerous and unhealthy surroundings, and then his bosses try to cut his pay to raise theirs. How the hell do Nickelback deserve all that money they make?

I won't even get started ... that's a fucking lie, I'm already started on the health insurance industry. When people get sick, the options include pay cash for treatment (usually an entirely too-large amount) or already have insurance before you even got sick. Isn't "insurance" a euphemism for "protection racket"? Anyway, the insurance doesn't even work that well because if you already have insurance, odds are it doesn't cover everything. It doesn't necessarily even cover what you need. And even if it does cover what you need, some shitbag at the company can just decide you don't really need this particular procedure. An insurance company isn't there to help its customers, it's there to take their fucking money.

Even if the insurance company DOES pay for some of your treatment, they probably won't pay for the whole thing (which makes PERFECT SENSE!). They'll pay for maybe half to three quarters of the bill, leaving you with a huge amount of money to pay them. Gods help you if you're really sick and need multiple procedures, and even more so if you're young and don't have a lot of money anyway.

Recently I've heard and seen a lot about a move towards universal health coverage. Some of this I've heard from representatives of doctors and insurance companies. The representatives of insurance companies I don't fucking trust - I'm completely certain they only want a law to make god damn sure every human in America has to buy a policy from their existing company, and they can still turn people away for procedures their doctors (you know, the people who are fucking qualified to decide if something is medically necessary) have decided is medically necessary. Frankly, I wouldn't be satisfied if that happened. I guarantee anyone with an existing medical bill will be totally screwed. The only thing I'll be actually satisfied with is full health coverage including psychological, surgical, and preventative treatment.

It worked for every other post-industrial nation in the world; I think we could pull it off.

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Now listening: Billy Bragg - No Power Without Accountability