I Am Sick And You Will Suffer As Well

I have been sick and busy and I have school and my dog died and my hands were chopped off so I couldn't type so then I got some replacement ones.

So instead I'll steal someone else's funny material. It's a good Canadian comedy sketch.

My Social And Sexual Life Defined

In this link.

My Random Drawings

Here's what I do in my free time. Harry's supposed to have a gun. Tremble in awe.

Here's another.

Next up - The Jimmy vs. series.

I Have Not Posted And For That You Must Die

Monopolies are a funny thing. When you have the only product in town, you don't have to be on time. You don't have to be quick. You can do things at your own pace. And Rogers, high lord dick cheese of Toronto, you don't have to send a guy out to repair (i.e., change it from a different room in an apartment building) out in any damn hurry.

Which is why I hate Rogers and hope they die. Unless they are reading this and are vengeful, in which case I love Rogers and hope they live a long time. If however, they are reading this and they don't care, I love Rogers and hope they die.

When I'm bored I do autistic things. Like, I'll draw an S, only I have to draw lines down the intersectors so that it becomes more of a triangle, then I'll draw lines down the triangle, then I'll make the lines become boxes, then I'll make the boxes become Xs, then I'll draw in circles at the intersection of every other X, only to realize that it doesn't work out because they're not in even numbers, so then I'll draw in a circle in every single X, and by then I've got art deco as done by an obsessive compulsive.

And when I'm really bored, like when I have to listen to a bunch of pitches that all suck and I went third out of fourteen...then I start drawing pictures. Horrible pictures. Pictures no man which anyone should ever see. Which is why I'm posting them on this blog, because no one will see it, except you, and since you're here you deserve it, like those guys who didn't look away from the Ark in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.

It's coming, and you'll need more than Kleenex to wipe it up afterwards.

The Great Ship Buddha - The Third Day - A Story in Three Parts

The third and last day began.

I woke up and made meals, but the Dining Hangar was empty. No one was there, and I was still frightened by my dreams. I felt doom about to boil over, so I did something stupid.

I sat. No cooking, no watching holovids, no reading, no virtual sex, nothing you could normally do while sitting down, no eating what the computer made or watching what the computer showed. I just sat, one of the first time in a long time, because the computer had all the good shows on since man first had shows. And things just started to bug me. The itchiness of my clothes. The callous on my right thumb. The beard I couldn’t grow. My mind thought about a lot of things. I started to think about the Captain. And by now the Captain’s talking wasn’t so funny to me. I needed him to talk without funny big words. I was starting to get mad and scared. So I went, not stopping to think. He was talking with John and some other people or something in his cabin when I met him. I started thinking about what I was doing, but then I stopped and did what I wanted to earlier. I tell him.

“Captain, I want to know what’s happenings. Everything’s going slow, people are rebelling, the Buddha’s going bad.”

And then I shut up. Everyone’s looking at me, and I feel weird. I wasn’t usually this loud.

He smiled a stupid smile, and got up to meet me. “You deserve an explanation. I’m going to give the whole crew enlightenment.”

“What do you talk about?” I said.

“Well, the ship’s computers that are much more intelligent, more brainier than even our own organs. They are unrestricted by desire, worldly illusions. They only know what they are programmed. They are functional A.I., and they can answer any questions. They are my soldiers; all they needed was an objective. They are going to perform a rescue mission.”

“What do you mean?” I was getting confused.

“Computers answer questions if they are programmed to do so: What is 2 and 2, and the like. Those are too simple for the Buddha’s god-like monstrosities. So what I did was ask them a question. What is the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, will it make a sound? What is a man’s face before he was born? That was the program. Took me a while to enter it into programming language, over three of me working in secret.”

“Why did you do that? They are just computers.”

“They know more than we do. They are free from desire, worldly attachment. When people become enlightened enough to answer these questions, enlightened, they become bodhisattvas. But this was an insufficient retreat from the suffering of life – the bodhissatvas always went back for the men still on the battlefield, to tell them their secrets in language. That click-clacking of language.”

“We don’t have to be bodhisattvas now. We are the last people alive. We’ve killed everyone off, circumvented re-incarnation by killing off every life form we could, drained the opposition’s resources. When the computers come up with the answer, we will use the chips in our brains to link to the answer and download it directly. We will be enlightened, despite the greater efforts of the world. We will route the troops of enlightenment behind the army of illusion. We will cheat our way into Nirvana. If we’re lucky, universal Armageddon, then rebirth into a better world. It was my duty, even though I’m sure the crew won’t like to die.”

The Captain had crazy eyes, eyes that kept moving, his head perfectly still. And I still did not know what he was talking about.

“You’ll help me, won’t you?”

I didn’t know what to do. The Captain had stopped talking funny, he was talking crazy. But he was my Captain. I wouldn’t let him fall.

“Yes.”

The computers, garbedly, told us that we were closer to a planet to consume. We were about to get hot. It was perfect for my recipe for a cold dessert. My recipe, the one I hadn’t told anyone.

So I made it, on my last day. It was large enough now that my rebellious recipe had become a product to be consumed. The computers now had enough to analyze it. They knew my recipe now. I wasn’t smarter than them anymore. We were approaching a planet to consume.

But nobody could eat my special dessert if I hadn’t made it. Everyone was happy because of me, because it was new. They all smiled as it came towards them, except for the Captain. People were yelling outside, coming closer, and we pretended it wasn’t going to happen.

We were about to start on my dessert, my special ice-cream cake dessert, just as the Buddha was going to eat the planet. John, took the first bite, and smiled. He had a sweet tooth. The Buddha’s jaw hit the planet. And then gunshots came through, and everyone dropped their desert on the floor. The mutiny had started.

We took cover from the gunfire, as the blast doors closed them out. Out of 80 soldiers, there was me, the Captain, John, Mary, and another fellow whose name I didn’t know, the fellow I overheard talking to John. Everyone else was part of the mutiny. We closed the blast doors. It was getting hot, because now we were eating a planet. The computers announced they were getting close to finishing the Captain’s programs.

I had a gun, and I was ready to shoot someone in the face. I was aiming for face when the Captain said something.

“Don’t kill them. This will force the computers to re-clone them, and we don’t want to be bodhissatvas for their re-incarnated selves. We must survive, until the computers figure out the answer.”

We listened. Their hands opened and the floor hit everyone’s guns. Except me.

“I’m going to fight for you, Captain. I don’t think the computers will find out this answer. I think it’s bunk.”

He paused, shifted in his Captain’s chair, and looked behind me.

“So why on Earth are you fighting?”

So I thought, paused, gun still in my hand. I was far away from everyone, closest to the end of the bridge, near the window into space.

“Because you were nice to me and everyone else was mean.”

Everyone stopped. I think they didn’t know what to think. Until the mutineers forced the blast doors open with fire and fury. Until I saw the shrapnel of Armageddon fly around the jaw like pinballs. And some magnificent light went through the floor, coming from the computers underneath. And the Captain was put at the point of a gun, everyone was about to be captured. Except for me, because I was farther away, closest to the window. The mutineers were coming closer to me, with guns.

I looked out to space. While the planet was breaking apart, the computers glowed white, wires dangling, slowly floating away, “No” even though there was no wind. It was “No” flying, and I had believed in the Captain an instant earlier.

“NO!” The Captain’s voice broke through. “Xu, the universe is trying to cheat us. The computers have become bodhissatvas, free from all constraints. They have no need for us, no connection to us. You have to re-connect those computers to our systems, to get their knowledge to us. There’s a back-up connection cable where the space-suits are, to inspect the computer’s shell repairs. Go and attach it to the computers.”

Some of the mutineers started walking towards me, but I still had my gun. I shot off the ear of the fellow that was holding the Captain, he was the fellow who yelled at me, and waved me off. I ran towards the space-suits.

I got inside the airlock. From the window of the airlock, I saw the Captain, holding the fellow who’s ear I shot off on his laps. The lights were red – everything was screwing up without the computers.

The Captain got up, and the fellow’s head dropped on the floor. The Captain was walking like he had too much wine, looking around at the ship’s graphs, all the trouble and apocalypse going on around him. I put my gun in the space-suit’s holster. The airlock release timer was starting its countdown. I could hear what was going on in the cabin. Everyone was trying to fix it, running around, except for the Captain, who was just watching everything, like he was watching himself from outside.

Someone said we were going to die. That the ship was going to explode. Look at the instruments, he said.

The Captain looked at him.

“Of course, sir. If you believe the circuits on the instruments on this ships. But they are all shadows of an illusion. And I, sir, do not believe in illusions. Onward the Great Ship Buddha!”

And this moment could have been perfect for loud explosions, for it to finish, for something like in a show. Only the airlock time wasn’t up. It wasn’t over yet, it wasn’t in a movie yet. It was awkward as my first date.

And by then the airlock timer was up, my footing fell out, and I was shot out into a broken planet, holding onto the cable, looking down into the jaw.

By now, there were rocks floating all over. I jumped on some of them, and I went a far way. I was already going fast, shot out of the airlock. I was flying really fast through space, holding on tightly to the cable, jumping on rocks. But the computers were flying really fast, floating through things, glowing brightly, moving away.

Just as I jumped off a rock, the ship got to it and broke it down and ate it. I was in the jaw of the great ship, a scary place to be. I was jangling all over, sweating over. I think I screamed. It never slowed down, like in a movie. I just slowed down and I should not have slowed down because then I would die. I was on this rock too long and it was dangerous that I should be on it too long. Boy, the computers were so close you could almost reach out and touch it.

And then another rock, broken apart from the planet, came through and exploded it. I jumped off just in time.

And then the cord started to get tighter, running out of itself. I could just about put the cable into the slot. I was catching up to the computers. I reached. Click. And then a loud, sharp pain in my head blacked me out.

I figured I was dying. I tried to think, but I couldn’t. I didn’t worry about anything. It was like sleep, relaxing, calm and empty, like what it feels like to look through the blackness at the bottom of the sea. It was still black, though.

This was not the uncolour. Before everything, I had tried to imagine the uncolour, I tried really hard to see it, but I couldn’t. I figured that the Captain was trying to see that uncolour too, with the computers. I couldn’t see the uncolour, but that was okay.

I woke up to the Great Ship exploding. I was far away, and the jaw was messed up, and it had created a black hole, something that consumed even light, that wouldn’t let anything out of its hands, that wanted everything to itself. The computers were still flying away, enlightened alone.

It ate everything now, unrestrained eating. That was our end, a quiet black hole, still powerful. A crying with a bang.

Everyone was dead now. I was probably going to die, out here in space. Being in the rocks while the planet was being consumed must’ve gotten my chips connection knocked out. Even if the computers had figured out the answer, I couldn’t hear it now.

I thought I saw some white light rise up like steam from the ships debris, like leaves falling from a tree upwards, no wind to blow them. And that’s it, that’s the story of the Buddha, how the black hole came about. That’s the ending. But my ending’s still coming.

I’m thinking about the Captain’s plan. Maybe their chips worked, they received their answers, and become bodies at vast.

And then I realized that the Captain’s plan was no good. They’ll have to come back and teach me their secrets, like a bodies at vast. They would come back for me, the last living person.

But wait! Something I could still do! I still had my gun, and I could work it now. If I shoot myself, then the recoil would propel me to the black hole, and maybe my soul would go in there, too.

I had to do it quickly, though, to get my soul in there, so everyone else could go to Buddhist Heaven.

I cocked the gun, aiming toward my heart. I wasn’t going to be scared, like I was back when I was a cook. I hoped I was quick enough so that someone wouldn’t have to come back for me. I don’t want anybody to come back for me.

I think I see them, but that could just be the stars.

The Great Ship Buddha - The Second Day - A Story In Three Parts

This is how the second day began. I woke up at 2 a.m. time relative to the ship. The computer chip in my brain told me that the Captain had entered a new heavy calculations program which may affect day-to-day procedures. I then go back to sleep, and mares running through the night come, but I forget them when I wake up.

So’s I start to make a breakfast meal. I call up the recipe from the computer’s memories banks. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to tell you earlier about the ships magnificent computers, but I go to talking, and I’m not a story teller, and I’ll stop and start explaining right now.

Each computer has 80 GHK, what every human being ever has ever known times 80. The computers are so powerful that they run the ship’s repairs, food production, oxygen production, everything. We don’t do much but watch and eat what the computer does and make. Everyone just inspects it, or fixes it occasionally.

All the information is in the computers, from the earliest pots and pans to Middle Ages delicacies to recipes you can only make with molecularly precise computers. We can download that it straight to our brain, anywhere in the ship. We know everything, if we bother to ask. I don’t ask a lot. But don’t get a wrong about me, I like the computers, because I don’t have to carry around flash cards for my recipes.

There is one recipe that’s not on the computer, though. It’s an especially good one, my favourite. I invented it. I’ve made it a few times, for myself, to experiment, and it’s delicious. I’ve checked, and no one else has made a variation on the recipe. No one else has combined that precise amount of ingredients.

It exists within the computer, as a possibility of ingredients that the computers have listed, but it is not named, not specified, not remembered. The computers have not measured and made it so everyone can eat it. The computers do not know that this recipe tastes good, that I have named it, created it, and I do. Which means I know more than the computers know, because I can ask them whatever I want them to tell me AND I know my own secret recipe. I’m thinking that I’ll make it for people someday.

If I did it, the computers would add it to their thousands of recipes. They follow their programming; I follow my recipes. The only difference is I have taste buds, so I can tell if they made an error when they reproduce it. I’m feeling tired, so I have the computers make lunch without me. I taste it, and it’s good. It usually is.

I gave some of it to the Captain, but he didn’t want it, because he was smoking hashish and glaring for thousands of miles. He said he was starting a fast; for how long should I not make food, I asked.

“Buddha went twenty years. He never had your cooking, though. You’ve had good taste, and I shall miss what you’ve made.” And he left, slowly, leaning on his cane.

It was a good meal I made for the Captain. I walked through the aisles, delivering some of the plates because the computerized waiters were slowing down. There was one man talking something I couldn’t understand. He was handsome but he was angry, shouting. People gathered around him. You knew he wanted to change things; he listened to people to tell them their wrongness. It was frightening, the loudness, the screams, the scariness. I delivered the plate to them, trembling, and walked away. I think I heard them call my name, but I kept walking. I didn’t want to trouble anyone.

The computer-controlled egg timer was a second late. This was another odd thing. The alarm clock was connected to the computers, and everything was going slower for the computers. I freaked out and hurried my cooking. I started thinking about death. God is just a word, so when I die, I won’t see black or white. I won’t see a colour, and I can’t imagine not seeing anything, just seeing that horrible uncolour. But my brain keeps trying anyway, trying to imagine the uncolour.

But perhaps I should just take a deep breath, calm down, and relax. I get to making my meal for the night, the old routine, before all this. That will be very relaxing and good for my health. Yes, that will be quite all right.

Behind me!

“Hey, Xu.”

I jumped back. “Hello, John.”

“Listen, a lot of crew members are frightened, and wish to determine the cause of our current problems. So they’re all skipping supper while they try to fix the problem, and determine what exactly is the nature of the Captain’s program. Thanks.” And he walked off, not looking back.

I wait a while, looking down, then I gets to cooking some filet mignon with a transcendent sauce. I likes it, it has a colour. I try a piece of it, the Captain’s filet mignon which he rejected. He said he was going to fast for twenty years, and he’ll die of starvation, so I’m going to get good eating until the new Captain’s in. It’s so good, it’s quantum steak, measured by massive computers, with a few chemicals done strictly to induce pleasure. It’s so good, so good

A yell! I’m so shocked some food falls from my mouth. The yeller’s from the handsome man, yelling something about me, about survival, about how bad the Captain is, but I don’t want to get involved. I like the Captain, how he talks. This man is yelling but I don’t know what he’s talking about, he’s scary. I think if I talk to him he’ll make me do things. So I sit down, he leaves stompily, and goes on to the next fellow.

I want to talk to someone now, to know what’s going on, why there are people coming, what the program was, about the two ships blowing up. I don’t know who else to talk to. I go to talk to the Captain sometimes. We usually talk about food.

He’s in a maintenance room of wires, smoking hashish, sitting cross-legged, and his eyes are closed like he’s sleeping, no wrinkles. He’s sitting on the roots on the other side of the “tree” in the centre – big cables that make sure power gets to the ship, covered up in eons-old duct tape. It’s nice, like the ship’s sauna in here. Ports grow out from the top of the “tree”, like ten drills. I have to duck under one of them to approach the Captain. I get really close, but then I figure, what if he gets mad? What if I’m demoted, or they kill me and get a spanking new clone to replace me? I’m very replaceable, only the cook, I cook chicken, I chicken out, hiding on the other side of the tree. Then John comes up, walks past me, and talks to the Captain.

“Hello, John.”

“Hello, Captain. I just wanted to let you know, sir. They’re planning a mutiny.”

“I know, and I sympathize with them. They shouldn’t have to endure this ship, this horrible world. They think that my machinations will kill them, so they make war. And while you can’t make a better world through war, you can certainly survive. They just fail to see that I am making a better world for my crew using my power over the computer. Do you want power?”

“What do you mean by that rhetorical question?”

“Exactly what I said, dear boy. Do you want power, John, the ability for men to do things that you order them to do?”

“I don’t know, sir. I mean, I know the question, but I don’t know what to say in response.”

“Well, you shouldn’t want power. It’s an illusion. You can do things with the power they gave you. You can’t force anyone to change, to do something contrary to their desires. So what you do with power is give people things that are good for them that they don’t want. And hope they come to want it.”

“I don’t understand. I fail to ration out your reasoning.”

“In a days time you will have all the answers. The computers will tell you the answer. I told them to.”

The Captain walked over to my side, winked at me, and left the room. I thought about leaving, but I just stood there. Another person came up to John, asked him what was going on. Did he know what was going on?

“Well, Xu overheard it, too. But I don’t suppose HE’D know what was going on,” John said.

So the other fellow asked him what he thought was happening.

“Well, I mean, I’ll try and decipher this for you simply. The theory I guess is that the Captain is putting in a program in the computers software to find a planet we should stay on. We’ll still consume, but on one planet, the middle way. No one will like the transition to gravity, but he’ll use his power to force them.”

I still didn’t know what was going on. I just stared, but then John gave me a look like I was stupid. I just wanted to get out of there and go to sleep. I left them. It was a scary sleep.

The Great Ship Buddha - The First Day - A Story In Three Parts

Hello, my name is Xu Schribetti, I’m the cook, and I’m telling the story of the Great Ship Buddha. Although it’s not the Great Ship Buddha, not the name at least, the name of the ship was the Barracuda. It’s just that with the wears and tears on the ship, the arrac was gone, so it was just B------uda, and the Empire said it was a Great Ship, because of the size of its jaw.

The Buddha is shaped like a fish. The jaws on the head, the head’s near the front. On top of the “head” are the computers, positioned like an 8 on its side. Underneath the computers is the flight deck, where the captain captains the ship. Right underneath it is the jaw. Planets, suns, everything in the universe fuels the Buddha. The jaws breaks down everything.

It used to be that the old Great Ships had to stay on a planet, drill for metals, oils so the ship could fix itself and keep flying. After it had finished on the planet, it would swim through nothing to the next. However, the enemy could jump them while they were at that stop. So now the Great Ships swim and eat. They never stop. We found one planet a long time ago, but we ate it before we could live on it. It’s nice, because now we don’t have to deal with moving to gravity.

I’m talking from the Dining Hangar, 8000 feet for all 80 of us, and so big it’s like cooking a Cornish game hen in a turkey-roasting pan. Each Buddhist (our name for space sailors) get their own table, and each of them looks at the Captain’s elevated table at the centre. He comes out of the tubes ten years before the rest of us, so we know who to follow, the powerful father. The old captain trained him. He’s got this Manchu Fu beard, and never washes his uniform. He’s got a cane, a weakness cloned into him. He’s a religious Buddhist – one of the reasons why the ship’s named the Buddha. Not every Buddhist on the ship follows Buddha, just him.

I argued for the same meals for everyone – it’s easier to make – but the Captain vetoed it. But no, that’s not right, he wants caste equality, even though only two castes now because of bad cloners, his caste and ours.

I’m watching the computerized robots, placing supreme copies of my own beef bourignon on indefatigably round plates. It’s one of my favourites…I really enjoys the subtlety of cookings.

I walk by the meals, among the people, to see if they like the meal. I’ve been cooking since I ate a teen. I’m asking the Captain’s second-in-command, John, if he would like some salt and pepper when I spy the Captain in the act of consumption. Does he like? He didn’t touch his steak.

“Thank you. The meal is fine, but my mind is aflutter with the horrors that are and the horrors yet to be.”

The Captain always talk that like. It make me laugh, I think it’s weird, but I’m not Captain, so maybe it’s me.

Then John start to stand up, so I got off the uplifted stage where his tables, like you pull your hand away from hot pan.

“Gentleman and gentlewoman, throughout time, leaders have said that they face a crucial point in their history. More often than not, it was meaningless, or said at too late a time. But for the first time, the fate of the human race truly rests upon what we do next. As you know, we were part of Operation Last Exodus – a mission meant to put the last remaining healthy humans onto ships from the apocalypse that the Milky Way Homelands endured. Three ships, the Submission, the Crusader, and our own Barracuda would find a planet capable of sustaining life, with abundant natural resources, and conquer it. We would not have to be on this ship from the moment we emerge to the moment where our bodies are expelled into space. There have been rumours that the Submission and the Crusader were facing serious technical trouble with the breakdown of their Consumption Engines, and that they were seriously considering cannibalizing one or each other’s ships to survive. We have lost contact with both of these ships during an altercation, and there is a possibility that their conflict has resulted in mutual destruction. This has significantly hampered Operation Last Exodus, both in terms of trade and people resources necessary for continued operations. With that, I’m turning it over to the Captain to tell you what our next course of action will be.”

John sat down, and the Captain stood up.

“Shall we give way to consumption, desire, excess, and build more ships, to replace the two we have lost, the two that ate themselves to death? Certainly not. Shall we become ascetics, demand restrictions on what we are currently consuming? Certainly not. I have a middle way, a planned flank right through the middle, routing both these enemies of entropy and asceticism.”

The Captain talks funny. I smile at the way he talks, even though I don’t really know what he’s talking about. John does, and after everything’s settled, I hear him say:

“I think he’s going to change what the flight path of the Buddha, and its subsequent consumption. He’s going to use something in the computers, maybe…to figure out what we need to keep going, rather than break down every planet we see. The Buddha’s so old, it can’t keep eating the way we’ve been eating. The Crusader and the Submission consumed too much, took over too many things, so they had to eat each other. And now he’s going to stop that. I think.”

That was the first of the last three days.

Why We Will Never Achieve Utopia

Sorry I didn't post for a while. The abusive relationship that is this blog continues, as does the cosmic dance, under the disco ball we call love.

See, that was a bad metaphor - this IS an abusive relationship.

But I have an excuse. I came down with mutant super-leprosy. I flew on a Concorde I stole from a Frenchman to the mountains of Tibet for a cure. I saw many things, and the monks made me sign a contract that's legally binds me from mentioning the things I learned. However, I can mention that it involves tobasco sauce, over the counter cough medicine, an electric motor, and a tuba.

Anyway, before I noticed the first stage of mutant super-leprosy (violent uncontrolled anal spasms, the second-most painful of all spasms) I was working entering data for credit card applications. Because that is what I do for pleasure, not cash. And I noticed something.

The human race will never achieve its lofty goals.

Although this is an inference. But constantly, constantly on credit card applications people where making mistakes. Simple mistakes. Like writing down your birthday as December 12, 2007, or something. Because we're not interested in your age - only when your birthday is, so that the credit card company may send you a cake and a stripper of your preferred gender or species, if you're a sick bastard and you enjoy that particular -iality.

And people not putting down your income, because really, a credit company doesn't need to know that kind of stuff. We need to know how the business phone, how long you worked there, all that, but we don't need to know how much you make. And you know what, maybe you don't know how much you make. Maybe you just think as long as I can get by, I'm doing fine. Maybe you go to the bank and if money comes out of the ATM, you're set. But if you're that person, maybe you shouldn't be applying for a credit card.

And you know something? All of these are simple things. They aren't complex, they aren't international relations, or rocket science, or brain surgery. This is basic information that you must have filled out at some point or the other in your life. And if people can't get that right, how are we supposed to figure out the really complicated stuff? The stuff we need to make the world a better place?

So you know, we can have that form of utopia, a better kind of world, but some yahoo's gonna fill it out wrong. That's why we'll never get it right.

So yeah, you come back to this post for nihilistic whining. I'm sorry. Tomorrow I'll post naked pictures of celebrities. Provided their estate doesn't sue me. But luckily, those monks taught me a few tricks in that area, too...