No Touch Monkey!

This is a quote from the book Night Watch which I'm currently reading and this quote really stood out.

The context is that there is a revolution brewing in the streets of Anhk-Morpork, and commander of the watch Sam Vimes knows with certainty that it's going to fail via Time Travel knowledge.

There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who'd had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing [a character], with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called "The People." Vimes had spent his life on the streets and had met decent men and fools, and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People.

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed in any case. The found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn't be a revolution or a riot. It'd be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when all the machinery of a city faltered, the wheels stopped turning, and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn't try to bite the sheep next to them.

Labels: cool, Only Human, Story Telling, stupid-people

This Morning's Dream:

I am Donald Duck and Sasquatch has kidnapped my wife Daisy Duck (who I know is Alessandra).

He is on the run to an island off the coast of Alaska. All I have to stop him is gun that shoots water balloons. Which is ineffective.

For some reason Sasquatch decides to take a slow boat, while I take a plane.

I get to the island before Sasquatch and my wife. It is there that I discover that water balloons can freeze and my silly little plastic gun is an ice ball cannon.

Sasquatch is fucked as I fill him full of giant cartoon holes because I've loaded up my ice balls with rocks and frozen grapes. Daisyssandra is mine!

I wake up.

Why Donald Duck? I've discovered that I have a 2 day delay between when I observe something and when it arrives in my dreams. Because I am a lazy man, I have never gotten around to transporting the copy of The Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck from my nightstand to the bookshelf. It's been there for months. And occasionally while Alessandra is getting ready for bed, I page through it and marvel at the art work (which I did Saturday Night), as well as eat grapes and buy some frozen blueberries (which have a funky texture in the bag).


Errata: I munch a lot of ice (which probably figures into the dream as I've been eating a lot of Sonic ice, the best ice in the US) and I bit the tip of my tongue which now sports 2 little cankers on the tip. And they sting something fierce! Talking hurts, eating hurts, even sleeping hurts because I rasp my tongue across my teeth. I've been rinsing with peroxide and putting Zilactin-B on it. The B stands for Benzocaine. It protects and numbs my tongue for a bit, and coats it with some goo, but applying it is like sticking my tongue with a tack and/or splashing acid on it. I want to scream. I have no idea how on earth anyone could possibly live through a tongue bifurcation.


Keeping up my weirdness street cred
I discovered Sunday night that if I type "Say" into my Terminal on my mac that it will use a speech synthesizer. So I used it when I answered the phone when I got a call that night. Wouldn't you know it, it was a telemarketer! Unfortunately I didn't make it past, "She's not here right now" before they hung up. I would have like to carry on a conversation. Maybe next time.

Labels: cool

For National Geographic Channel.

Question: Can I beat BoingBoing to the post?

Labels: cool, video

Yeah, that about sums it up...



Addicting

FFFFOUND! "FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!"

Labels: cool

It's like Dethklock but with "Grandpa's Guitars"

Labels: cool