-
from a lacerated sky
2004-01-15 11:20:40
I didn't do much yesterday. Being laid up with an abraded Achilles sucks. I did find out how to do some of my homework, and I did get _Glorious Burden_. It's great, but not as good as it could have been if half the non-Gettysburg songs didn't suck. Of course, listening to its orchestrations for several hours on end (you can't listen to Gettysburg and not immediately hit repeat...at first anyway), and I was more than ready for grinding, simplistic thrash-death. Too bad that won't work for either the book or the video.
I start work tomorrow night, so I'm probably going to be asleep instead of writing this time tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll get a good swack of the book done tonight.
--Kai out
-
by the river near an evil place
2004-01-14 10:23:47
I did it last night. A little more than two months after I crossed 200 pages, I went up over 300, and boy isn't it a nice feeling. I'm about halfway done chapter 15 (maybe a little less), and figure on finishing it hopefully tonight, definitely by the end of the week. Despite the thick problem set I have to deal with for Crypto and the task and a half (400 MB download wtf) ahead of me in Compilers, I'm looking at finishing the book before the end of the month; a quarter of 16 is already written, and the rewriting that 12 is going to force in the last chapter will be pretty minimal.
I've been keeping an 'annotated' version of the book, which currently holds about 220 footnotes, mostly for kicks, but partly to keep my own referentiality straight. It's also turned out to help me think more clearly about what I'm writing; reading through in that more academic context has shown me several things that I didn't realize (or didn't recall, seeing as one of them was in the first sentence, which has been down for about 3 years) I had put in. Going into critic mode instead of writer-mode hasn't produced any immediately discernable effects on the writing so far, but it's good to be able to supply orthogonality without having to find another reader, particularly for unfinished chapters.
If I finish this month, I'll be able to do editing, smoothing, and continuity check in time to spend spring break (I think the last week of February) shopping it to literary agents. Publish time creeps ever closer.
Iced Earth's _Glorious Burden_ should be out today. Hopefully, Borders (now strike-free) will stock it; they had a copy of _The Reckoning_ the last time I was in, so there's hope in that regard. If not, I'm stuck not buying it for a while. I can't believe Ripper's recent comments about how Jon Schaffer acts like a dick when drunk. Nine out of ten fired members of Iced Earth agree: Jon Schaffer often acts like a dick even when sober. Was Judas Priest ever busy enough when he was with them for him not to keep up with the news and notice this? Weren't they supposed to go out on tour together? Isn't it normal to do a little research about people you're going to go out in caravan for three weeks with first? Yes, I'm disappointed that Jon's so eager to piss away his success, but I'm also disappointed that Tim Owens, who has basically been handed TWO metal-fan's-dream-jobs on a plate, can be this much of a bonehead.
TIM WILL HAVE PRUNE JUICE!! TIM WILL HAVE PRUNE JUICE!!!!
--Kai out
-
sleight of the firm hand
2004-01-13 13:59:21
I cut through two more bits for the video, leaving only 12 titles. At best that's 6 days' worth of work, but it won't premiere before the 31st in any case, and I'm well enough to start writing again, so that's more like 12 days of work. Classes will also be picking up shortly (need to find some DCO boxen), and I got that job that I thought I wouldn't. Must not be too many people willing to work overnight on a Friday. No problem here, though; I can go to sleep after lunch, wake up at seven, grab a nice hot pizza for breakfast, do my shift, do some drafting while I'm not making rounds (it's security for a conference center), then head home and sleep till 4 or so; noon if I have to do Animania. That's the only downside, and it's only once a month.
I picked up a rare Emperor bootleg this weekend, a rehearsal from 1993, before Faust went to jail, while Mortiis was still in the band. I paid too much (~10 bucks, secondhand), but I'm not too burned up about it. The Nightside material already sounded killer, despite Ihsahn's ghey press-on fingernails (good thing Samoth had most of the solos), and I finally realized why Mortiis started doing the prosthetic-nose thing when he went solo. He's got a bona-fide Italian-class honker, which looks really weird on a Nordic dude. Cheaper to extend it and make it part of the act than to chop it off, I guess.
I also read most of the first four volumes of Bremen (props to TW), which DOES make me mad that it has not been animated. It's got Japanese aggro-rock (like NY punk versus LA metal, driven over the top), lots of violence, sleaze, humor, and a little depth to top things off. Mass cool, and definitely joining FPoJ (now out of Raijin, it seems for good) and Eagle on the Damnit Animate This Or The Bunny Gets It List.
And I also found out that I'm a gun owner. I thought when I wrote that crap yesterday that I was a disinterested third-party, involved just in the constitutional-mechanics angle, but now it seems that by moving to Michigan with a TM EBB pistol, I should be looking into joining the NRA. Stoo-pid.
Here's what happened. This dude from the next town over was stopped by the police and found to be carrying on his person a $20 spring airsoft pistol like most army-navy stores currently have under a counter or somewhere. He got a $50 fine and the pistol confiscated because any device that throws a projectile through a barrel, except air-, gas-, or spring-powered smoothbores designed for loads no larger than .177 inch, is considered a firearm by the state of Michigan (airsoft weapons are .24 inch bore). The dude here is not an innocent; his pistol was remilled (the orange paint required around the forend by law was removed), so by carrying it outside his house he was kind of asking for trouble, but there are bigger issues involved.
It's plain to see from this example that there is something hugely wrong with the gun laws in this state. What defines a dangerous weapon isn't bore size or propulsion method, but terminal ballistics, which is a function of load and velocity. There are pellet guns out there that will put a .177 lead caplet out of the muzzle at over 1000 feet per second, which is approaching the low end of cartridge handguns, has some impressive penetrating power, and will easily do permanent damage to any soft tissue unlucky enough to get in its way at most engagement ranges. My airsoft gun is advertised at 150 fps, but most of the time, the battery isn't strong enough to do more than 120. The pellet is a 6mm ball of biodegradable plastic, which even when driven out of an AEG in excess of 400 fps, has difficulty leaving a welt through clothing at more than contact ranges. In this state at least, the second is a dangerous firearm and the first is not.
It's been plain basically since the start of civilization that civil societies are more stable and safe when unstable people are less well-armed than the stable people who have a stake in the society. That's why we don't allow minor children, convicted felons, and anyone who doesn't want to buy their gun face-to-face (mail and internet sales of firearms require a dealer's license) to buy firearms, even though any and all of these people could easily go to a supermarket, pick up a Michael-Myers-style carving knife, and go on a terror spree all the same. The right to buy weapons may be the right to be free, but the regulation of weapons is what makes a civil society work. Those who can be trusted with them are allowed arms; everyone else is not, for their own protection as much as everyone else's.
But the laws gotta make sense, and not be stupid. Airsoft shouldn't be the same as firearms. They're just not dangerous. Yes, you can shoot through a coffee can with a Sun Project M40, but you have to hot-rod it with an overdose of red gas, feed it metal ammunition, and stand no more than a meter away, but by the same token, you can swap a few springs around in a semi-auto-only AK-47 and turn it into an unregistered machine gun. The state can't be responsible for keeping backyard mechanics away from stupid ways to injure themselves; its role is to keep unsafe contraptions like those mentioned above from being sold in the first place, and to base laws on what the products being offered are at base. Yes, you can put an eye out with an airsoft pellet at point blank range. That's why they don't let people under 18 buy them. You can put an eye out at point-blank range with a G.I Joe missile, too, and nobody's going to arrest you for carrying one of those in your pocket.
There are three lessons that can be learned from this incident:
a) The government is always right, so I should throw my EBB pistol in the river and tell the police about Harrys' display of spring pistols, since it's apparently against the law to sell guns in Ann Arbor.
b) This one stupidity proves that all gun control laws are bad and should be repealed. Everyone should own as many machine guns as they want, and, preferably, carry one at all times. Vote George Bush.
c) We can't trust anyone in politics to make sensible gun laws any more. Time to start activistizing for a return to sanity: an intelligent definition of "assault weapon" (how may convenience stores have been held up at bayonet-point, anyhow?) and a firm classification of airsoft weapons as Not Guns.
So naturally I chose b. Life doesn't get interesting until you have to check for incoming automatic-weapons fire before going out to get the morning paper. </joke>.
Remember this little incident the next time the left starts talking about "we need more and tougher gun control" or the right starts talking about "we need to enforce the gun laws we have". We don't need more or less laws. We need laws that make SENSE.
--Kai out
-
overpaid meat magicians
2004-01-12 10:27:24
I need to make a phone call, do some shopping, and go to class before I get moving on the book again (the video is a lost cause for premiere this week, despite a ton of work on the weekend), but first I need to get this off my chest.
Gen. Clark, one of the leading intelligent people in the presidential race, has stated "We use assault weapons in the army; folks who want to use them should enlist." The problem with this is that while it's perfectly true, it's misleading. "Assault weapons" in modern discourse refers to stuff banned by the 1994 Brady Bill, which is due to expire this fall. It doesn't have any relationship to the assault rifles used in the military, which are already covered by the eminently sensible 1986 machine gun ban.
Right now, an "assault weapon" consists of anything made with at least two of the parts on the ATF's list of proscribed parts, which include removable flash hiders and bayonet lugs. Thus, a World-War-II-vintage M1 rifle could be built into this configuration, but an AR-15 with non-removable muzzle brake would be a-ok. So not only does the ban raise dangerous questions for continued firearms ownership, but it also creates stupid technical holes.
For obvious reasons, the government has an interest in keeping the latest developments in military ordinance out of the hands of civilians. Thus it's entirely sensible that normal people aren't allowed to own fully-automatic or select-fire arms. But this government in the USA was founded by guerilla warfare, through near-military-standard weapons in the hands of concerned civilians who found themselved opposed to the direction of their government. We have checks and balances between governmental branches to prevent dictatorship. We need popular firearms ownership as a final check on tyranny.
That's what the Second Amendment is all about. It's not for hunting, or personal protection, or even sporting purposes. Americans have a right to carry guns because we believe that we have the right to protect ourselves from our own government, and to impose a new one by revolution if necessary.
I don't believe that now is necessarily the time for revolution, or that the current system will ever get that badly broken. But keeping arms and keeping practiced in them is a final hedge against being wrong on that regard. I don't own a 'black rifle' right now, and I'm not 100% sure that I ever will. But I'm not about to sit still and let the government permanently decide the question in the negative.
It's like the failsafe statement at the bottom of a program. You want to write perfect code, that will handle every situation with correct execution. But you still put in a line to return a default value just in case you didn't think of every eventuality, to prevent your program from going out of control. The civilian deterrent is that "return 0". If we built a perfect system, we'd have no need for it; but we are not so naive or egotistical as to trust ourselves to build perfect systems.
That's it, hopefully I'll have info on video progress next time instead of huge dumb political screeds.
--Kai out
-
in the world beyond the world
2004-01-10 09:49:57
Kinda productive day, last night into today. I cut through two more shows (D.N. Angel and Cooking Master Boy), got thoroughly sick of listening to Nightingale's _Alive Again_, and applied for a job that I don't think I'll get. I should be working more on the book, but I need to finish kicking this cold first. It's hard to maintain narrative flow when you're up and down hunting for tissues or something to eat. (need to hit the store again...and get some more income going on...)
I'm guardedly optimistic about this term, but I really feel I should be doing more work right now. I can't find any assignments to start on, so it's like I'm missing something. Once the work starts pounding in, though, I'll be missing this slack time instead.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
Current server time: Jan 12, 2026 19:28:10