Axes seem to hold a special place in the collective consciousness of English speakers. Why is it, exactly, that we speak of axe murderers (usually in the context of “I’m not an…”), but we don’t attach the weapon of choice to the descriptions of other murderers? One never speaks of a knife murderer, or a gun murderer, or a blunt-instrument murderer…
When I was last in Chicago, dayo and I drove about three hours into Wisconsin to see a house.
Not just any house. To understand this particular house, imagine that you were a space alien. Imagine that you came from a strange culture that did not build buildings. Maybe you lived in caves, or, I dunno, burrowed parasitically into the flesh of gigantic alien space walruses or something. Or maybe you lived in trees like the elves in The Lord of the Rings, and went everywhere barefoot because your fantastically advanced magic hadn’t ever got so far as to develop shoes.
Anyway, the point is that you don’t build buildings. And then, let’s suppose you’d heard of a thing called a “house,” which was an enclosed structure divided into “rooms.” Armed with this knowledge, you set out to design and build a house, but you weren’t quite clear on what exactly a “room” was.
If you were this space alien, the house that you built would probably be The House on the Rock. The Web site and the brochures describe it as the “grand vision” of a guy named Alex Jordan, but I’d say it’s not so much a “grand vision” as it is a study in ad-hoc chaos and arguably the world’s greatest monument to obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It’s an enclosed structure. It’s probably about a hundred thousand square feet or so, and it’s three stories tall, more or less. I say “more or less” because it wasn’t so much “designed” as it was thrown together over time by a man whose grasp of architecture and construction was theoretical at best, and the result is…um, well, it’s hard to actually call it a building, really.
You go in, and you find that it’s a hallway. It’s kind of like being inside a living organism, like the organic space ship on that science fiction TV series whose name I can’t remember with the one chick who’s really hot and shoots lots of people, only more so. The hallway winds and twists and ascends and descends more or less at random, and occasionally it widens out into a place with a bed, or a table, or some other object of furniture you might expect to find in a domicile. It’s hard to say how many rooms there are in this house, because the house doesn’t really do “rooms.” Wide spots in the hallway-tunnel-alien-innards-thing pass for rooms, for the most part, and going from one place to another sometimes involves taking a route that’s…unexpected.
I took many pictures, and they’re very large. For those of you who don’t mind the crushing bandwidth: onward!
Microsoft, in their ongoing efforts to make computers and computer-related products easier to use, has an Official Windows Vista Help Page explaining how to open the box that Windows Vista comes in.
If they need a Web page explaining how to open the box, the cynic in me suggests that they’re still a little fuzzy on this whole idea of “user-friendly”…
The Internet is a great place to see things you’ve never seen before. No, I’m not talking about videos of people falling down the stairs or hot lesbian sex with alien tentacle monsters; you can get those in real life on most weekends. I mean…other stuff. Strange stuff. Stuff that Man Was Not Meant to Know.
Like, for example, Cthulu/Winnie The Pooh fiction.
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
That’s not dead which can eternal lie,
And in aeons strange even Death may die —
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.
And it’s not just isolated little bits. This stuff is everywhere. And its not just Pooh. Even Dr. Seuss has a dark and brooding madness lurking beneath the surface.
And it gets stranger. Everyone knows about the Great Pumpkin, who rises from the pumpkin patch to fly about the world. But few know the full truth, the eldritch horror of the Great Old Pumpkin. Fewer still have learned that truth and not been driven mad.
This content-free post brought to you by the letter C and the number–oh, God, I can see forever!
So last night, I went to bed very late. I don’t know if it was spending the entire day playing World of Warcraft, or eating little besides leftover Subway and frozen microwave dinners, or perhaps the fact that I was working on my Web site every time I was waiting for my mage to recover mana, but for some reason I was visited by the spirit of Steve Jobs in my dreams.
The dreams were so vivid that when I woke up, I could almost feel the presence of Steve there in my bedroom. I remember talking to the Great Mr. Jobs about the inside skinny at Apple, and learning some rather…remarkable things. A small part of our conversation:
Me: So when Apple switched from PowerPC processors to Intel processors, you made it possible for users to run their old PowerPC programs.
Steve: Yes. We created an emulation program called Rosetta, which emulates a PowerPc processor on an Intel processor.
Me: Other people have done the same thing before; there’s an open-source program called PearPC that runs Mac OS X on Intel computers. But it’s very slow. I’ve seen it run; it takes about half an hour to boot. How did you get Rosetta to run so fast?
Steve: Well, for technical reasons, emulating a RISC processor like a PowerPC on a CISC processor like the ones Intel makes is very difficult to do. At first, our emulation program was very slow, too.
But then we thought, what if the laws of physics are changed? Is it possible that under different fundamental laws, emulating a RISC processor on CISC architecture might be easy? So when our engineers started going down that path, we discovered we could get much better performance.
Me: Come again?
Steve: It’s quite simple, really. Rather than emulating a processor, what if Rosetta emulated an entire universe–one where the laws of physics made running PowerPC code on an Intel chip easy? We searched through a large number of parallel universes, and found one where the basic physical properties of the universe gave us the results we wanted.
Me: Wait a minute. Are you telling me that Rosetta doesn’t emulate a processor, it emulates an entire universe?
Steve: Exactly! We got the idea from watching The Matrix. When you launch a PowerPC application, Rosetta brings a new universe into being. This particular universe has non-Euclidean geometry; it turns out that Euclidean geometry is particularly bad for emulating RISC on CISC.
Within the laws of this universe, it’s easy to run PowerPC applications on the Intel processor found in all our current computers, like our best-selling iMac or our high-end Mac Pro.
The only drawback to this approach is memory. Emulating an entire universe within Mac OS X requires significant memory, which is why we recommend that our users who still find themselves running legacy PowerPC applications install at least two gigabytes of RAM. You can add more memory to your computer as a build-to-order option from the Apple store.
Me: And this actually works?
Steve: Oh, yes. Emulating an entire universe involves more overhead, of course, but the speed advantage you get by running RISC code on a CISC processor in non-Euclidean space more than makes up for it.
Me: I’ve noticed that when I keep my computer running for a long time, PowerPC apps can suddenly start to slow down.
Steve: Yes. We’ve observed that issue in our labs as well. It has to do with the formation of life in the parallel universe.
Me: What??!
Steve: If you let Rosetta run for long enough, eventually life will arise in the universe it creates. Because emulating the complex functions of life is a processor-intensive task, the performance of PowerPC applications can diminish over time.
It’s impossible to predict precisely when this slowdown will occur, because life doesn’t always arise at the same time or in the same way. We’ve found that on an eight-core Mac Pro system, it usually takes about three or four days for life to appear. On an iMac or a MacBook, it can take longer.
When this happens, we recommend that our users quit all their Rosetta applications. This causes Rosetta to destroy the parallel universe. When you launch a PowerPC application again, Rosetta will create a brand-new universe without life in it, and performance will be restored.
Me: Is any of this life…intelligent?
Steve: Sometimes. If you let your PowerPC applications run long enough, you may see intelligent life inside of Rosetta. When this happens, you’ll notice a significant slowdown of your PowerPC apps. We recommend that you quit all your apps at this point.
Me: Waitaminit–isn’t that murder?
Steve: Technically, no.
Me: But…you’re destroying an entire universe full of sapient life!
Steve: If you look at it that way, sure. We look at it as freeing system resources.
Me: But…it’s life!
Steve: Yes. We thought about releasing a game based on Rosetta, to compete with The Sims. The game would allow the user to interact with the parallel universe created by Rosetta and take a hand in shaping the life that formed there.
Me: And?
Steve: It turns out our market research shows that people only want to play with games that emulate human life. And not just human life, but middle-class twentieth-century American human life. Dealing with non-human sapience in a non-Euclidean universe didn’t have the same draw, so in the end we left it out of iLife ’08. However, we’re working on a smart backup feature for Leopard that we’re very excited about.
Me: Do you mean Time Machine?
Steve: Oh, no. That’s a data recovery app that folds the fabric of space-time to recover accidentally deleted files by grabbing them from a past version of this universe. The new smart backup feature uses the intelligence of sapient life in a parallel universe. But that’s all I can say about it right—
And then I woke up. No more WoW and frozen TV dinners for me, I think.
Television ad for juice, which combines lesbian sex with just the slightest suggestion of a golden shower fetish. I have no idea whether to call this “not safe for work” or not.
All the other things I’ve called the “funniest thing ever?” All lies. The real funniest thing ever:
It takes a random Family Circus cartoon and pairs it with a random Nietzsche quote. merovingian, I think this is right up your alley. The Family Circus is arguably the most dreadful, insipid, flaccid, banal comic ever created by man, but Nietzsche makes it all good. A few of my favorites:
The following is from an email posted to one of the mailing lists I subscribe to (or, more precisely, a mailing list I was subscribed to by the list owners, out of the blue). I swear I’m not making any of this up; you just can’t invent comedy this good.
Ahem.
COME SPEND A DAY WITH THE GOD SQUAD!
http://uthc.tv/
Come… Let Us Love You!! Unconditionally. No matter what. All Day. Overnight. Eternally. We are The God Squad. A Self-Identified, Self-Realized “family” of Transformational Energy Workers, Evolutionary Change Agents and Shamanic Entertainers who have been guided to combine and distill our significant individual backgrounds in a vast assortment of Personal Growth Modalities to offer YOU a Life-Changing Experience of Sustainable Bliss… […]Lots & lots of Genuine Caring & Affection! Experience the natural high, total purification and ecstatic peace that arise instantaneously – and can be cultivated to last forever… from total-immersion focused contact with Awakened Mentors who have transcended jealousy, possessiveness, guilt and shame. Our respective paths have brought us together with what we feel is a singularly unique approach to continuous well-being… We understand and rely upon the Supreme Power of Unrestricted Love to relieve, nurture, restore and rejuvenate ourselves and all whom we engage with… Through guided touch, sound, breath, stillness, connection with nature, high-vibration living foods, profound mind-expanding conversation and spontaneous, sensual, innocent childlike play… you will feel more deeply seen, honored, appreciated and accepted for the beauty of Who You Truly Are… than you may ever have before in your life. We invite you to spend a full day (8 hours) – or perhaps a day and a night (22 hours), in our company. Extended – and Corporate Retreats/Workshops/Events are also available. […]
The God Squad is currently accepting ADVANCE RESERVATIONS for 8-hour and 22-hour Total-Immersion transformation experiences. Suggested Donation up to $2400 (8-hour) $3000 (22 hour)* *(includes up to 2-hours of “diad-time” with Tes AND overnight snuggle privileges with one or more of our practitioners!) tax-deductible –
sliding scale – trade exchange – apprenticeship group rates available yes2tes.com […]PRIVATE SESSIONS WIT TES NOW AVAILABLE… suggested donation $200 per hour. Satisfaction Guaranteed We
look forward to serving you.
Damn. Just…damn. I don’t even know where to begin. Shamantic Entertainers who distill their lives into Personal Growth Modalities…folks, you just can’t get enough of that for my entertainment dollar. And for three thousand dollars, you get two hours of “diad time” with Tess, and overnight snuggle privileges! Oh, boy!
Now, let’s see. $3,000 for two hours… If I’m doing my math right, that means you’re paying $25 a minute for your “diad time,” or about forty-one cents a second–and I thought my cell phone plan was expensive. I sure hope that’s some quality “diad time” there; at those prices, she better swallow.
Of course, the price goes down by nearly an order of magnitude if you don’t want the overnight snuggle privileges; maybe that’s a value-added service the rest of the industry should adopt.
Seriously, though, certain corners of the poly community have in the last few years been overrun by this kind of rubbish. It’s almost enough to make me look for a different word for what I am, just to keep my distance from the pay-for-play “Shamanic Entertainers” who sell private sessions and snuggle privileges in the name of universal consciousness awakening.
