2025.03.08
2024.03.08

2023.03.08
Shout out to the time Pee Wee Herman flew away from ED-209 and met Robocop at the Oscars
I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees.
It's so weird being raised by christians and spending your entire childhood being told to care about others then one day they're just like you're not actually supposed to care about others you stupid socialist
i was in the grocery store and saw an onion on the ground and picked it up, absently saying "poor little guy." behind me a teenage girl started laughing and then stopped and went "aww. i'm sorry for laughing. that's nice actually." and the cycle of cruelty is broken for another generation as a young person realizes that it is not embarrassing to have empathy for another thing that was once living, because certainly to be a lone white onion rolling on the ground in a supermarket would be terrifying to anyone
#this is a poem to me#things that are poems
2022.03.08

(I liked this mockup of a candidate for the first iPhone keyboard)
Stop Venting! It Doesn't Work I guess this article backs some of my preconceptions. I get defensive and second-guess-y about if I'm somehow more repressed than is healthy, but I absolutely think there is wisdom in not letting negative feelings snowball.
Like (or maybe even "as") memes, emotions can serve us by carrying important information but they also have their own agenda of "wanting" to be maintained and propagated.
What's the difference between Republicans and Ukrainians?
Ukrainians defend their Capitol.
2021.03.08
One attempt at summary is: the left hemisphere, besides famously being the seat of language, is rather reductionistic. The right hemisphere tends towards holism.
For a long time I assumed flare ups of outrage (like when stuck in particularly stupid traffic, or at a computer system that JUST CAN'T BE DOING WHAT IT SAYS IT'S DOING) were right-hemisphere. That the right brain is of general feeling, and it's the left brain that applies the rules of society, which are language-based. And the feeling was a burst of right brain before the rules brain left brain could restore order.
But now, I suspect it might be the opposite? The left brain loves is categories and definitions. In those two cases, what's stirring the outrage is the sense that Things Are Not As They Must Be., so maybe that's the part that is provoking the flare. (My aunt mentions how much outrage I'd express when losing a boardgame as a kid...)
Other things:
1. So... is my inner voice, my internal monologue, mostly the product of my left hemisphere? Since it's linguistic? Or is that a misthink, that the left hemisphere is more just the broadcast booth representing a more balanced set of insights?
2. I've witnessed a part of me that just frickin' loves snacks and seems to act like a clever dog - waiting for a moment of inattention or willpower fatigue from the whole to push the organism to going and grabbing that treat. Which hemisphere is doing that? Again previously I would have assumed the mute right hemisphere, transgressing the codified rules understood by the left, but now I don't know.
3. I figure Marie Kondo "joy sparking" - that's GOTTA be a technique to try and engage the right brain-ish holism of getting a feel for what the object really means in our life vs the left brain's reductionistic "well it can still be used for X" or the left brain's sense of "this is a thing I own, that's it's proper category".
I wish I could talk with someone really versed in this stuff. And I'm aware that I might be taking awfully big sips of the Kool Aid, especially since I'm worried Mcgilchrist might end up sounding a bit reactionary to me as he gets into expressing how he thinks society is becoming too left brained, at its own peril.
Decluttering. Why do I feel like I'd be less of a person if I got rid of old video game systems I really don't play much, and are increasingly a bit of a pain to keep going?
And why does that feel less legitimate than feeling diminished if I did another book purge?
It's weirdly an ego thing, books and games are part of my identity. In both cases there's also a semi-legitimate "I might want to reference that book / play that game a bit", and/or show them to someone else. And with both there's a "this is a visible demonstration of my smarts/geek cred".
Like, we aren't our possessions... but we aren't NOT our possessions.
Amazing tweet thread on the history of white supremacy in the USA and how we've treated black people.

2020.03.08
2019.03.08
Oh, Epic Rap Battles of History, it has been a while!

Star Wars is almost totally black-and-white with its moral compass. [We excuse Luke Skywalker for the mass murder of everyone who lives on the Death Star, for example.]
2018.03.08
Trump may be the one populist leader in world history who is too narcissistic to succeed at the narcissist's game of turning himself into a beloved people's tribune.A certain part of the population is just enamored of the "tells it like he sees it" act - even when they don't agree with it. If he had more than a fifth grader's understand of ANYTHING - any of that human grace for learning and growth that says 'gee maybe I don't know everything about everything already', he'd be much more dangerous, and between showing what can be done in our divided, meddled-with nation, as well as exacerbating the divisions and of course not doing anything about the meddling, he's setting the stage for worse to come.

You play the cards they deal you.
Gentleman know of the void, but do not speak of it lest they alarm the lower classes, who might run amok.
FFS, comedy central, if you're going to hog your stuff (like Vonnegut on the Daily Show in 2005) and keep it off Youtube then at least stream the crap properly. DAMN.
Seriously, it's like they're using the same servers they were in 2005.
Oddly better in Safari than Chrome
2017.03.08
he never wrote anything
he wouldn't want
everyone to read.
What a good idea,
and that was way
before there was a web.
(Also I like the countdown to Y2K meter, now over 6000 days negative.) A later quote on the site: "'Bringing the beast stumbling to its feet' -the way John said not build Catalyst", Catalyst being a project I had worked on with him at IDD.
2016.03.08
And one day we won't be. And that is tough to deal with. (Buy my comic! -- haven't started publicizing it yet :-D )
2015.03.08
instagram: @sayhop , Mar 2, 2015
It's nearly seven, and still light out! We've survived the snow, we've made it through the dark. Onward!
2014.03.08
2013.03.08
2012.03.08
Problems are inevitable.
Problems are soluble.
Problems are soluble.
I just finished David Deutsch's book "The Beginning of Infinity". It's a fun read, infuriating at times, but still full of a great optimism.
These two sentences from the book are forming a bit of a mantra for me. I have some deep-seated issues with task-related angst; if I'm not assured of easy and straight forward success, I tend to dillydally and divert my attention to easier, lower-stake wins. But the double promise of this couplet: that yeah, issues almost certainly arise when I'm doing something worthwhile, but you know, they will almost certainly have decent solutions... it's soothing to me, for real.
My inner geek wants to nitpick and say "sure, but there's no promise you're going to LIKE the solutions", but hopefully I'm getting wise enough to squelch that inner naysayer.
On hold with the Mass RMV, using my headphones (w/ mic.) It's like the worst streaming music service ever. (Plus the per minute charge)
My pencil and I are more clever than I.
11:11 make a wish.. I wish for pizza and sushi.. time to go upstairs to the caf and make my wish come true
2011.03.08
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
PROTIP: you can observe more pretty cloud formations if you're wearing sunglasses (I should skip pointing them out to Amber if she's not)
2010.03.08
(I like putting the new music in really heavy notation for a while, so it becomes more a part of my life than it would otherwise before going into the mix with the 2,000 other songs I deem iPod-worthy.)
So, most interesting is the (fairly?) new music I ran into: 3 cheers for Shazam and its ability to ID a tune, and 3 cheers for friends who keep me in mind in their own musical journeys and send me sugestions - or sometimes it's just "making the rounds" online.
- Handlebars (Flobots) - posted this one a while back
- This Too Shall Pass and This Two Shall Pass Live (Ok Go) - both great videos, and I love the marching band stuff...
- The Fear (Lily Allen)
- Samson (Regina Spektor) - man, I'm really digging the stuff of both of these women as of late
- Sweet Child O' Mine (Sheryl Crow)
- Baby Love Child (Pizzicato Five)
- That's Not My Name (The Ting Tings)
- Humdinger (Chucklehead) - Obscure-ish band that was a bit popular around Tufts when I started college there in the early 1990s. Surprised to find it on Amazon
- Criminal (Fiona Apple)
- Don't Speak (No Doubt)
- Happy Birthday (Weird Al Yankovic)
- Extreme Ways (Moby)
- Jessie's Girl (Rick Springfield)
- Jesse's Girl (Matt the Electrician)
- 99 Red Balloons (Nena)
- Sunny (Rhett Miller) - couldn't find a video - I guess this wasn't the original like I thought it was, but it's nice
- Sunny (Boney M) nice disco version is what the movie had...
- Brand New Key (Melanie)
- [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin)
- The Dutchman (Steve Goodman)
- Suddenly Last Summer (2002 Digital Remaster) (The Motels)
- Because I Got High (Afroman)
- Ridin' (Chamillionaire)
- White & Nerdy (Parody of "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone) (Main Version) ("Weird Al" Yankovic)
- Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) (Digable Planets)
- Nickel Bags (Digable Planets)
- Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A.)
- Hard Knock Life (Jay-Z)
- Get Ur Freak On (Missy Elliott)
- B.O.B. (Outkast)
- Fight The Power (Public Enemy)
- We Trying To Stay Alive (Wyclef Jean featuring Refugee Allstars)
- Finally there were a few remixes that I tracked down when the countdown said Peaches and Tone-Loc were touring together...
- Wild Thing (Peaches RMX -- Tone-Loc)
- Funky Cold Medina (Aaron LaCrate & Debonair Samir RMX -- Tone-Loc)
- Bust A Move (Diplo RMX -- Young MC)
- Fack
- My Name Is
- Lose Yourself
- Without Me
- Like Toy Soldiers
- The Real Slim Shady
- Guilty Conscience
- Stan (Feat. Dido
- Shake That (Feat. Nate Dogg)
- dance of the sugar plum fairy (santa)
- jingle bells (santa)
- Beyonce (HARVEYJAMESTM ft. Mary Burgers)
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
iPhone's Visual Voicemail raised the bar, but if Apple was really smart they'd stop showing a separate "missed call" if the caller left voicemail-- it's annoying to have to check two lists. Heck, even an answering machine knows better than that.
It occurs to me that when my cat licks me, I don't know whether that means I'm delicious or filthy.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html - B.F. Skinner, patron saint of video games. Scary stuff, I don't feel so bad about playing so few games these days. Plus, I know "novelty" is what I'm really looking for. Well, that, and the ability to fly a helicopter around.
I guess twitter gmail et al. are my skinner boxes of choice. At least their pellets are based on novelty!
2009.03.08
I wanna tell you something because you're very dear to me. And I hope you understand it comes from the bottom of my damaged, damaged heart. You are the finest piece of ass I ever had, and I don't care who knows it.
Sorry boys, this is Impossible mode. Difficult is winning the Nobel Prize. Impossible is eating the sun.
Just watched 2 automatic clocks (macbook + radio-based) skip 2-3AM. Yay DST-- love sunset coming an hour later.
http://www.cracked.com/article_17103_5-ways-your-brain-messing-with-your-head.html - fun with perception
My "Dinner with Cupid" in the Boston Globe - me, "bit of a round figure"? Humph. Plus: "He was considerate of who had the floor in terms of talking; however, he usually was on that floor" -- do I not leave enough dead space? Hope I spun the Sisyphus thing to not sound like a total jerk.
Earlier this week I was hoping to find a job and maybe romance. Right now I'm pretty happy to have just found the remote.
2008.03.08
2007.03.08
It was... interesting, and kind of fun. At the moment it's a bit stressful, I figure that most of the people didn't rush back home that night to the website to enter their "dates" they'd be potentially interested in seeing again... or... everyone I thought I might have hit it off with didn't feel likewise.
It reminds me that, at heart, I might be a bit of "serial monogamist". I don't think there's been a time in my life when I was doing a lot of casually dating, during high school and college the pattern was flirt a bit, kind of start thinking of yourself "as a couple", then go on dates. So I think the stakes feel higher for everything than they really are. (Though, come to think of it, cutting your losses after a date or two that really made it clear you're nohow "meant for each other" likely takes a good deal of candor and bravery.)
I don't know if the women there have that same issue, and so won't go on a date unless they're pretty certain of a positive result. And in this hopefully brief period of uncertainty for me (no interest? or just not yet returned to the site?) I'm reminded of how long it took, say, Mo to view me as a potential romance rather than as a friendly goofball. Of course, the Mo situation is hardly parallel to a bout of 8-minute-dating, but still.
One thing I didn't read beforehand is: the 8 minutes go by really quickly. You barely have enough time to mutually establish stories before the bell rings and it's time to move on. I suppose it could be argued you should be more focused and goal-oriented in your spiel and the questions you ask, hopefully not to maximize the chance of getting another date, but of quickly sussing out the potential there, and any glaring incompatibilities. Or maybe that's now how these things should work, that the spontaneous rambling is part of the charm.
Another detail is the M/F breakdown. I'm sure this would be potential fodder for a budding sociologist, but according the organizer, for the younger generations, you get about a 2:1 ratio of men to women signing up. By my age, it has evened out, and that trend continues so that the ratio is flipped for the older demographics.
Art of the Moment

I'm not sure about Graffiti Kingdom but much of this is related to the work of Takeo Igarashi...I posted his SmoothTeddy stuff before, haven't yet had time to try out his other stuff. But I took the flower above from his 3D gallery.
2006.03.08
Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? Those who seek the folly of unrelieved 'happiness'--who fear moods, who shun solitude, who do not know the diginity of occasional depression--can find bliss easily enough: in tranquilizing pills, or in senility. The purpose of life is not to be happy.
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
Link of the Moment
TradeTricks.org offers insider's advice from a wide range or pursuits and professions...I haven't read it too deeply yet but it seems like there's a lot of cool ideas and advice.
2005.03.08
In making an as-yet-unpublished essay for the site, I started writing down what, exactly, are the projects I would like to spend my freetime on in the near future...here's the list, in a very rough order matching that in which I'd like to tackle them. (These are all the fairly concrete, often computer-oriented projects, and don't include vacations I'd like to take, some personal-growth issues I have, and other stuff like that.)
- (retroactively addded:) update the Atari 2600 online graphics editors
PlayerPaland PlayfieldPal - Create a javascript-based editor for upcoming Manuel Rotschkar's upcoming "Crazy Balloon" port for the Atari 2600
Write this one hourstracking and display mini-webapp for Dylan he asked for except the jerk hasn't called me back yet.Let the sidebar entries have their own comments boxas well as an upload image feature for sidebar contributors.Figure out my 401K situation once and for all (making sure I've located and/or collated all the ones from my old jobs)- Backup my data directory with my DVD burner and put it someplace away from my 2 computers
Get kisrael.com, kirkjerk.com, and alienbill.com all moved to my new webhost and cancel my accounts with the old webhosts--and clean out all the comments spamGet all these digital photos of my Aunt's off of floppies and onto harddrives and CD-ROMs.Clean out the boxes and to-thrift-store stuff etc from my back room- Extend some more sidebar invites
Clean up my gmail- Take care of all the little things haunting the TODO list on my Palm pilot,
including getting the title of my old car properly transferred to my cousins. And in general stop cruft from forming in my Palm TODO list. And sort out all the random little text bits I have in there while I'm at it. Make this webapp I've talked about with LAN3 that would easily let you take remove linebreaks from text that was formatted to 80 columns, and possibly do some other reformatting tricks.Go through my CDs and make MP3s of "all the good songs".Finish summarizing mundane journal on a monthly basis so I can figure out where 2002 and 2003 went.- Gather quotes from 2004 for use in quote-o-matic viewer.
- Get regular videogame get-togethers going to go along with my friend's regular "psychotronic movie night".
Finish playing through Halo 2 on "Easy" mode- Make "Albert Camus' The Myth Of Sisyphus: the Game" for the 2600
- Investigate making port of old Compute's Gazette game "Heatseeker", first in Java, then for the 2600
- Learn to make Electronic Music and transcribe the basslines and beats that I always come back to when humming and bopping along.
Update my online photoalbums.- Consider making 2600 port of old Vic-20 game "Cosmic Jailbreak"
- Revamp my "k/db" online database program, professionalizing it, maybe porting it to Java, and seeing if it could be as useful to some other people as it has been for me in its Perl/CGI form.
- Clean out and reorganize C:\Data, in particluar add more stuff to the "kirkarchive" structure, as well as make sure my photo archives are as organized as they should be.
- Clean out the kisrael.com backlog.
Learn some new frontend technologies...get better at making professional looking HTML sites, find out if Perl or Java is a better bet for some desktop apps I've been playing around with. Possibly revamp kisrael.com a bit.- Make and publicize a version of good old pixeltime.
- Make and publicize a multiplayer online version of the game "Eat Poop You Cat" (kind of like "telephone" except it alternates between writing a caption for the cartoon you've been handed and writing an illustration for the sentence you just received.)
Redo my startpage kirkzilla(Actually added this just to cross it off right away)2600 Drumpad Program- 2600 music dev kit
Make a version of my k/stencil app that people can play withand have a loveblender contest with it.- play with making posters of old video game characters
- Possible...think about making a frontend to MAME that's more keyboardless friendly than the ones I've seen...if it doesn't already exist.
Make a features page linking to all my java/processing projects.Tool to go over old comments on kisrael.com, especially to highlight comments that were made after the entry passed from the front page.RSS feed and LJ connection for kisrael.com- General utility for renaming files en masse, like photos named after their containing directory.
Add bookmark database thingy to my personal startpage.- Make a "you should check out these sites" bookmarks page on kisrael
kisrael.com feature: "this day on kisrael.com" showing the entries for this date in previous years.- Some kind of simtunes like program.
- Redo getting rid of the comments spam, and some kind of easier way of clearing it out via the web, or maybe connected to a filter service
- Love Blender improvements:
"Comment On This" link (Easy)Prettier Link Codes (Easy-Medium)- Workshop (Medium)
- My Favorites (Medium, but requires...)
Login (Medium-Hard)- Forgot Password recovery (Easy, just need to link...)
Edit/Delete Previous Work (Medium-Hard)- Avatars (Hard)
Member Since / Work Count (Easy-Medium)- Theme/Word of the Week (Easy-Medium)
Remove Survey
- kisrael restrospect should work on "second tueesday of april" type logic as well
- Game idea: gesture based multiplayer online games, ala PacPix, where you draw litle attacking arrows and defending lines (or maybe something w/ X O and square standing for rock scissors paper)
a 3D view of Time passing through a Conway Life game- Sierpinski triangle applet; or maybe ports of more of my Palm PocketC stuff
The list probably isn't complete, but it is a good start. So when I complain about not having enough freetime for "projects", this is what I'd like to be doing.
Maybe I should make a special link to this page, and update it, so that every thing I get done gets crossed out once I do it.
I think I do carry this not-particularly well-founded belief that if I just get this stuff done, my life would bliss and easy from then on in. Heh, though having that kind of freetime would be pretty blissful...
It's funny, when I think about what I really want from vacation time, it's not to go some place nice and isolated and get away from things...it's being someplace with a good net connection and getting lots of time to work on this kind of stuff and still goof off a bit.
Quote of the Moment
I think prime numbers are like life.
They are very logical but you could never work out the rules,
Even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
2004.03.08
"Oh, Lynnie-Pooh"
"My Kirkles..."
As far as diminutive nicknames go, Kirkles ain't so bad. (Though I just now realized that "Lynnie" sounds like "Winnie", as in "the". Huh, wonder if that was intentional.) Mo used it sometimes I think, along with some other folk. Like, Sarah for instance.
My best-highschool-buddy Mike "Woodchuck" Witczak was the most frequent person to tease with that name, though my counter-nickname for him, "Chuckles", outlasted "Kirkles" in regular usage. Alas, both "Woodchuck" (which I thought was a pretty clever play on his last name, he had had it from middle school) and "Chuckles" lost out to the (in my opinion) sadly pedestrian "Mookie" when Mike went to college and joined a geek frat.
(Hmmm--it's like a pointless sidebar, minus the sidebar!)
Tool of the Moment
Speaking of things I'll always associate with high school, there's an awesome Calvin and Hobbes search engine. Its extensively keyword indexed, though I kind of wish there was a way of sorting the results by date.
Link of the Moment
Gamespot has a history of the most controversial videogames. Heh, Chiller.
2003.03.08
So the mystery photos of 8march2003 are...aeriel shots alleged to be a new sea going ship (labeled "Ark II") built way up in some moutains. I say alleged because they just look like blurs to me. And the mysterious faction would allow hiking so near their massive construction project? Anyway.
Moving Advice of the Moment
Good moving advice from the USPS. They really do think of everything.
Quote of the Moment
The indispensable first step to get the things you want from life is this: Decide what you want.It's good advice, though it doesn't mention how you have to be aware of the possible trade-offs. Most of us would like a lot of money, but fewer of us are really willing to bend our lives towards the most money making paths.
Pop Culture of the Moment

Product of the Moment
Interesting, all-in-one PCs, where they stick the whole PC in a keyboard. Almost like an artifact from an alternate timeline, where Commodore 64 and those 8-bits' form factors became the dominant computer type.
2002.03.08
Staute Molesters has been in my backlog since August...it's way more amusing than it has any right to be.
Clown of the Moment

2001.03.08
Quote of the Moment
God is silent, now if only we can get Man to shut up.
Cartoon Quote of the Moment
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy... ...because your philosophy sucks.Lore is a regular feature on The Brunching Shuttlecocks (usually one of the more reliably funny websites.) The entire Lore Archive is worth clicking through.
There's a bunch of talk about genetically modified food. (I just saw a cartoon, two witches in a supermarket looking at GM apples and asking "we're supposed to poison these things twice?") I think the concerns are overblown. There is a danger in not having a diverse agriculture, in having a monoculture more vulnerable to catastrophic faults.
00-3-8
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