Monthly ArchiveOctober 2004
Personal Warugikaiu on 28 Oct 2004
Josh 7 billion, Adrian 2 (not even)
Josh played the absolute best prank ever on me. And i’m not upset by it at all, actually I’m quite simply amazed at it. Amazed and amused. And some other positively descriptive adjective. I don’t think this one will ever be topped.
The Great Paper Prank
Personal Warugikaiu on 20 Oct 2004
Aniel, this is for you.
This is just horrendously funny.
4) Who would win? (Score:5, Funny) - by Call Me Black Cloud
In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?
Neal:
You don’t have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when we did fight.
The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson’s Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson’s arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.
The second time was a few years later when Gibson came through Seattle on his IDORU tour. Between doing some drive-by signings at local bookstores, he came and devastated my quarter of the city. I had been in a trance for seven days and seven nights and was unaware of these goings-on, but he came to me in a vision and taunted me, and left a message on my cellphone. That evening he was doing a reading at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. Swathed in black, I climbed to the top of the hall, mesmerized his snipers, sliced a hole in the roof using a plasma cutter, let myself into the catwalks above the stage, and then leapt down upon him from forty feet above. But I had forgotten that he had once studied in the same monastery as I, and knew all of my techniques. He rolled away at the last moment. I struck only the lectern, smashing it to kindling. Snatching up one jagged shard of oak I adopted the Mountain Tiger position just as you would expect. He pulled off his wireless mike and began to whirl it around his head. From there, the fight proceeded along predictable lines. As a stalemate developed we began to resort more and more to the use of pure energy, modulated by Red Lotus incantations of the third Sung group, which eventually to the collapse of the building’s roof and the loss of eight hundred lives. But as they were only peasants, we did not care.
Our third fight occurred at the Peace Arch on the U.S./Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver. Gibson wished to retire from that sort of lifestyle that required ceaseless training in the martial arts and sleeping outdoors under the rain. He only wished to sit in his garden brushing out novels on rice paper. But honor dictated that he must fight me for a third time first. Of course the Peace Arch did not remain standing for long. Before long my sword arm hung useless at my side. One of my psi blasts kicked up a large divot of earth and rubble, uncovering a silver metallic object, hitherto buried, that seemed to have been crafted by an industrial designer. It was a nitro-veridian device that had been buried there by Sterling. We were able to fly clear before it detonated. The blast caused a seismic rupture that split off a sizable part of Canada and created what we now know as Vancouver Island. This was the last fight between me and Gibson. For both of us, by studying certain ancient prophecies, had independently arrived at the same conclusion, namely that Sterling’s professed interest in industrial design was a mere cover for work in superweapons. Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers’ conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments.
Read the rest of the interview here but that’s the best part.
I love Neal Stephenson. I must read the rest of his books soon.
~Tchau
Personal Warugikaiu on 16 Oct 2004
I’ve got my philosophy
I may complain all the time about the work my father gives me and the ways in which my parents monopolize my time, but the fact is, they don’t. Last year they did, maybe, but even then…
I have had more chances to fuck things up than most children should or indeed do, ever get. I had the opportunity to drive as soon as I was old enough. When that car was totaled, it wasn’t even a week before I was driving again. My grades have never been honor roll, but my parents have always let me get away with only a mild scolding and a “you can do better than this” treatment, which is true. If I had insisted upon going to Northeastern, despite the fact that it cost nearly twice as much, They would have sent me there. And they would bear the expenses. All they ask in return is that I try.
That I try to get good grades.
That I try to set myself up for my future.
That I try to be a good person.
That I try to be a dutiful son.
My father has come to expect that I will help him when he asks, because in recent years, i have. If he wants something done, he can count on me to do it, though perhaps not in the most timely, efficient, or compliant manner (i tend to complain, procrastinate, and make stupid errors). But in general, he knows I want to keep him happy with me, and he’s come to expect that, and he will ask me for things when he wants them done.
Sometimes, in fact, he’ll ask me for things I can’t do. And i’ll try anyway. That’s when I bust deadlines and end up appologizing profusely. But that’s ok. The point is, i like that trust.
And I owe him. The idea that some people have that they don’t owe their parents jack shit is completely ludicrous. By definition, if I would rather be alive than not, I owe him and Mom more than I can ever give them. No matter what. Therefore, when they ask me to do something, I may complain, I may wish I could do something else, and I may even procrastinate, but i will always owe them and want to give them that effort, no matter how much i hate the effort itself.
That being said, i do still reserve the right to complain.
That being said, my parents (especially Dad) do expect more from me than anyone else’s parents I’ve ever met.
Namaste
