I went to school.
I am slacking off more.
I need summer. The excessive free time triggers an existential crisis that shows me the value of work and a schedule.
Speaking of existential crisis, I'm semi having one, because I met this girl, and I don't really like her very much, but she reminds me a lot of myself. Does this mean that I'm a bad person or that I'm very self-critical and thus I don't like her because I don't like myself?
She's like you? And you don't like her? Good, you won't have any moral qualms setting her up on a date with me :P
Ok, next door are playing terrible music at a really obnoxious volume. I'm going to put my big speakers against the wall, turn the amp to around 6, and play this
Ok, next door are playing terrible music at a really obnoxious volume. I'm going to put my big speakers against the wall, turn the amp to around 6, and play this
Inveterate and cynical audio nuts, common at the Big U, would walk into their room and freeze solid, such was Fenrick's System, its skyscraping rack of obscure black slabs with no lights, knobs, or switches, the 600-watt Black Hole Hyperspace Energy Nexus Field Amp that sat alone like the Kaaba, the shielded coaxial cables thrown out across the room to the six speaker stacks that made it look like an enormous sonic slime mold in spawn. Klein himself knew a few things about stereos, having a system that could reproduce Bach about as well as the American Megaveristy Chamber Orchestra, and it galled him.
To begin with there was the music. That was bad enough, but Klein had associated with musical Mau Maus since junior high, and could inure himself to it in the same way that he kept himself from jumping up and shouting back at television commercials. It was the Go Big Red Fan that really got to him. "Okay, okay, let's just accept as a given that your music is worth playing. Now, even assuming that, why spend six thousand dollars on a perfect system with no extraneous noises in it, and then, then, cool it with a noisy fan that couldn't fetch six bucks at a fire sale?" Still, Fenrick would ignore him. "I mean, you amaze me sometimes. You can't think at all, can you? I mean, you're not even a sentient being, if you look at it strictly."
...
If it was not clear which of them had air rights, they would wage sonic wars.
They both got out of class at 3:30. Each would spend twenty minutes dashing through the labyrinthine ways of the Monoplex, pounding fruitlessly on elevator buttons and bounding up steps three at a time, palpitating at the though of having to listen to his roommate's music until at least midnight. Often as not, one would explode from the elevator on E07S, veer around to the corridor, and with disgust feel the other's tunes pulsing victoriously through the floor. Sometimes, though, they would arrive simultaneously and power up their Systems together. The first time they tried this, about halfway through September, the room's circuit breaker shut down. They sat in darkness and silence for above half an hour, each knowing that if he left his stereo to turn the power back on, the other would have his going full blast by the time he returned. This impasse was concluded by a simultaneous two-tower fire drill that kept both out of the room for three hours.
Subsequently John Wesley Fenrick ran a fifty-foot tri-lead extension cord down the hallway and into the Social Lounge, and plugged his System into that. This meant that he could now shut down Klein's stereo simply by turning on his burger-maker, donut-maker, blow-dryer and bun-warmer simultaneously, shutting off the room's circuit breaker. But Klein was only three feet from the extension cord and thus could easily shut Fenrick down with a tug. So these tactics were not resorted to; the duelists preferred, against all reason, to wait each other out.
Klein used organ music, usually lush garbled Romantic masterpieces or what he called Atomic Bach. Fenrick had the edge in system power, but most of that year's music was not as dense as, say, Heavy Metal had been in its prime, and so this difference was usually erased by the thinness of his ammunition. This did not mean, however, that we had any trouble hearing him.
The Systems would trade salvos as the volume controls were brought up as high as they could go, the screaming guitars-from-Hell power chords on one side matched by the subterranean greasegun blasts of the 32-foot reed stops on the other. As both recordings piled into the thick of things, the combatants would turn to their long thin frequency equalizers and shove all channels up to full blast like Mr. Spock beaming a live antimatter bomb into Deep Space. Finally the filters would be thrown off and the loudness switches on, and the speakers would distort and crackle with strain as huge wattages pulsed through their magnet coils. Sometimes, Klein would use Bach's "Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor," and at the end of each phrase the bass line would plunge back down home to that old low C, and Klein's sub-woofers would pick up the temblor of the 64-foot pipes and magnify it until he could watch the naked speaker cones thrash away at the air. This particular note happened to be the natural resonating frequency of the main hallways, which were cut into 64-foot, 3-inch halves by the fire doors (Klein and I measured one while drunk), and therefore the resonant frequency of every other hall in every other wing of all the towers of the Plex, and so at these moments everything in the world would vibrate at sixteen cycles per second; beds would tremble, large objects would float off the edges of tables, and tables and chairs themselves would buzz around the rooms of their own volition. The occasional wandering bat who might be in the hall would take off in random flight, his sensors jammed by the noise, beating his wings against the standing waves in the corridor in an effort to escape.
"But the intensity of the desire for unity is no longer news to us, since its frustration has been marked in recent years by the shattering of hermeneutic serenity and by the rise of a certain dogmatism, perplexingly inconsistent with the public aims of ideological pluralism."
The guy who wrote this is an asshole BUT I FIGURED HIS SHIT OUT AND NOW I AM GOING TO RAPE HIM
I AM GOING TO RAPE HIM
with textual analysis. not with my penis. but even so.
I thought unity was referring to personal relationships at first. It made no sense that way, even after I looked up "hermeneutic."
he's talking about unity in the body of canonical literature. he's also a fucker.
I went to school.
I am slacking off more.
I need summer. The excessive free time triggers an existential crisis that shows me the value of work and a schedule.
Speaking of existential crisis, I'm semi having one, because I met this girl, and I don't really like her very much, but she reminds me a lot of myself. Does this mean that I'm a bad person or that I'm very self-critical and thus I don't like her because I don't like myself?
I'm sorry, I can't get the image of hot lesbian sexing out of my mind
Glad to know I'm not the only one who stopped at "I met this girl"
Ok, next door are playing terrible music at a really obnoxious volume. I'm going to put my big speakers against the wall, turn the amp to around 6, and play this
Inveterate and cynical audio nuts, common at the Big U, would walk into their room and freeze solid, such was Fenrick's System, its skyscraping rack of obscure black slabs with no lights, knobs, or switches, the 600-watt Black Hole Hyperspace Energy Nexus Field Amp that sat alone like the Kaaba, the shielded coaxial cables thrown out across the room to the six speaker stacks that made it look like an enormous sonic slime mold in spawn. Klein himself knew a few things about stereos, having a system that could reproduce Bach about as well as the American Megaveristy Chamber Orchestra, and it galled him.
To begin with there was the music. That was bad enough, but Klein had associated with musical Mau Maus since junior high, and could inure himself to it in the same way that he kept himself from jumping up and shouting back at television commercials. It was the Go Big Red Fan that really got to him. "Okay, okay, let's just accept as a given that your music is worth playing. Now, even assuming that, why spend six thousand dollars on a perfect system with no extraneous noises in it, and then, then, cool it with a noisy fan that couldn't fetch six bucks at a fire sale?" Still, Fenrick would ignore him. "I mean, you amaze me sometimes. You can't think at all, can you? I mean, you're not even a sentient being, if you look at it strictly."
...
If it was not clear which of them had air rights, they would wage sonic wars.
They both got out of class at 3:30. Each would spend twenty minutes dashing through the labyrinthine ways of the Monoplex, pounding fruitlessly on elevator buttons and bounding up steps three at a time, palpitating at the though of having to listen to his roommate's music until at least midnight. Often as not, one would explode from the elevator on E07S, veer around to the corridor, and with disgust feel the other's tunes pulsing victoriously through the floor. Sometimes, though, they would arrive simultaneously and power up their Systems together. The first time they tried this, about halfway through September, the room's circuit breaker shut down. They sat in darkness and silence for above half an hour, each knowing that if he left his stereo to turn the power back on, the other would have his going full blast by the time he returned. This impasse was concluded by a simultaneous two-tower fire drill that kept both out of the room for three hours.
Subsequently John Wesley Fenrick ran a fifty-foot tri-lead extension cord down the hallway and into the Social Lounge, and plugged his System into that. This meant that he could now shut down Klein's stereo simply by turning on his burger-maker, donut-maker, blow-dryer and bun-warmer simultaneously, shutting off the room's circuit breaker. But Klein was only three feet from the extension cord and thus could easily shut Fenrick down with a tug. So these tactics were not resorted to; the duelists preferred, against all reason, to wait each other out.
Klein used organ music, usually lush garbled Romantic masterpieces or what he called Atomic Bach. Fenrick had the edge in system power, but most of that year's music was not as dense as, say, Heavy Metal had been in its prime, and so this difference was usually erased by the thinness of his ammunition. This did not mean, however, that we had any trouble hearing him.
The Systems would trade salvos as the volume controls were brought up as high as they could go, the screaming guitars-from-Hell power chords on one side matched by the subterranean greasegun blasts of the 32-foot reed stops on the other. As both recordings piled into the thick of things, the combatants would turn to their long thin frequency equalizers and shove all channels up to full blast like Mr. Spock beaming a live antimatter bomb into Deep Space. Finally the filters would be thrown off and the loudness switches on, and the speakers would distort and crackle with strain as huge wattages pulsed through their magnet coils. Sometimes, Klein would use Bach's "Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor," and at the end of each phrase the bass line would plunge back down home to that old low C, and Klein's sub-woofers would pick up the temblor of the 64-foot pipes and magnify it until he could watch the naked speaker cones thrash away at the air. This particular note happened to be the natural resonating frequency of the main hallways, which were cut into 64-foot, 3-inch halves by the fire doors (Klein and I measured one while drunk), and therefore the resonant frequency of every other hall in every other wing of all the towers of the Plex, and so at these moments everything in the world would vibrate at sixteen cycles per second; beds would tremble, large objects would float off the edges of tables, and tables and chairs themselves would buzz around the rooms of their own volition. The occasional wandering bat who might be in the hall would take off in random flight, his sensors jammed by the noise, beating his wings against the standing waves in the corridor in an effort to escape.
Spoiled for huge. I love Neal Stephenson.
What's that from? I've read a substantial portion of his output, but don't recognise that.
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Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
japan's dueling stereo story reminded me of this part from the beginning of The Big U, which is a book written by Neal Stephenson back in the 80s before he actually became a good writer. The writing itself is pretty good, but the plotline is a huge mess, I could barely get through the book. Still, it had some fun excerpts, such as the one I just typed out from the book.
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DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2008
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
Random "Does Echo hate the US or something?" quote of the day:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.
Random "Does Echo hate the US or something?" quote of the day:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
At this point I don't think Stephenson is so much a "nerd" writer as a "bad" writer. Snow Crash being the odd one out of course.
But seriously, Crypto, Diamond Age etc... all turned into utter trash by the end.
Random "Does Echo hate the US or something?" quote of the day:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.
Why do you love crime
ITT Echo wants the terrorists to win.
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Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
You don't have to be much of a nerd to follow him, though. I managed to sail through Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, and Diamond Age with no problem, and I know next to nothing about cryptology, programming, or nanotechnology.
Have your friend read Zodiac, it's about environmental science and should be easy enough for just about anybody to follow. Even my mother was able to finish it.
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
At this point I don't think Stephenson is so much a "nerd" writer as a "bad" writer. Snow Crash being the odd one out of course.
But seriously, Crypto, Diamond Age etc... all turned into utter trash by the end.
I like his style a lot, but man does he not know how to end a book.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited April 2008
I hate paying rent.
This insult is compounded by the fact that our real estate agency is too incompetent to sort out a payment solution that doesn't involve someone paying it Face to Face on Saturday mornings.
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Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
At this point I don't think Stephenson is so much a "nerd" writer as a "bad" writer. Snow Crash being the odd one out of course.
But seriously, Crypto, Diamond Age etc... all turned into utter trash by the end.
I like his style a lot, but man does he not know how to end a book.
This, basically.
And yet, I love his writing style so much that even with the aforementioned flaws he managed to be one of my five favorite authors.
Random "Does Echo hate the US or something?" quote of the day:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.
Why do you hate Freedom
Fixed.
Also, personally I like most of Stephenson's stuff. but I'm in no state to start talking literature.
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DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
At this point I don't think Stephenson is so much a "nerd" writer as a "bad" writer. Snow Crash being the odd one out of course.
But seriously, Crypto, Diamond Age etc... all turned into utter trash by the end.
I like his style a lot, but man does he not know how to end a book.
oh fuck, 30 pages until I hit my page limit, aroghahagohblahrlahg
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
At this point I don't think Stephenson is so much a "nerd" writer as a "bad" writer. Snow Crash being the odd one out of course.
But seriously, Crypto, Diamond Age etc... all turned into utter trash by the end.
I like his style a lot, but man does he not know how to end a book.
This, basically.
And yet, I love his writing style so much that even with the aforementioned flaws he managed to be one of my five favorite authors.
I think it was the last 3rd of Diamond Age that really killed Stephenson for me. Ok, the end of Crypto was silly and dumb but bearable. Diamond Age made me hate the man and by extension even the things he has written that I previously enjoyed.
The end of Snow Crash was like "ok, awesome samurai hackers with sweet motorcycles and fucking railguns and dudes with glass knives and a hot skater chick aaaaaaaaaand..... alright. We're done. Everyone go home now."
Neal Stephenson writes the worst female characters ever.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
At this point I don't think Stephenson is so much a "nerd" writer as a "bad" writer. Snow Crash being the odd one out of course.
But seriously, Crypto, Diamond Age etc... all turned into utter trash by the end.
I like his style a lot, but man does he not know how to end a book.
This, basically.
And yet, I love his writing style so much that even with the aforementioned flaws he managed to be one of my five favorite authors.
I think it was the last 3rd of Diamond Age that really killed Stephenson for me. Ok, the end of Crypto was silly and dumb but bearable. Diamond Age made me hate the man and by extension even the things he has written that I previously enjoyed.
*shrug* I'm pretty easygoing about this kind of stuff, I guess. I mean, I didn't like the ending of Diamond Age, to the point where I won't ever read it again, but I wouldn't say it "killed" Stephenson for me. The worst I feel is a bit of frustration, because that book had so much potential, and he didn't really fulfill it.
I went to school.
I am slacking off more.
I need summer. The excessive free time triggers an existential crisis that shows me the value of work and a schedule.
Speaking of existential crisis, I'm semi having one, because I met this girl, and I don't really like her very much, but she reminds me a lot of myself. Does this mean that I'm a bad person or that I'm very self-critical and thus I don't like her because I don't like myself?
If you know you don't like yourself then why is it a problem that you don't like personifications of your dislike IE other people who are like you.
I went to school.
I am slacking off more.
I need summer. The excessive free time triggers an existential crisis that shows me the value of work and a schedule.
Speaking of existential crisis, I'm semi having one, because I met this girl, and I don't really like her very much, but she reminds me a lot of myself. Does this mean that I'm a bad person or that I'm very self-critical and thus I don't like her because I don't like myself?
If you know you don't like yourself then why is it a problem that you don't like personifications of your dislike IE other people who are like you.
In the commentary for the new(ish) Futurama movie Matt Groening was talking about how they made it so anytime a character met a time-travel duplicate of themselves they always hate each other on sight.
I went to school.
I am slacking off more.
I need summer. The excessive free time triggers an existential crisis that shows me the value of work and a schedule.
Speaking of existential crisis, I'm semi having one, because I met this girl, and I don't really like her very much, but she reminds me a lot of myself. Does this mean that I'm a bad person or that I'm very self-critical and thus I don't like her because I don't like myself?
If you know you don't like yourself then why is it a problem that you don't like personifications of your dislike IE other people who are like you.
It's true that Irene wrote a bad sentence.
But you didn't read it very well did you?
Irene said that she met a girl who is like her, and she dislikes the other girl.
She doesn't know whether this makes her a bad person for disliking someone or whether she doesn't like this other girl because she associates her self hate with dislike of people who aren't like her.
I'm essentially saying that I think its the latter.
In the commentary for the new(ish) Futurama movie Matt Groening was talking about how they made it so anytime a character met a time-travel duplicate of themselves they always hate each other on sight.
This strikes me as something that would fundamentally be true.
I went to school.
I am slacking off more.
I need summer. The excessive free time triggers an existential crisis that shows me the value of work and a schedule.
Speaking of existential crisis, I'm semi having one, because I met this girl, and I don't really like her very much, but she reminds me a lot of myself. Does this mean that I'm a bad person or that I'm very self-critical and thus I don't like her because I don't like myself?
If you know you don't like yourself then why is it a problem that you don't like personifications of your dislike IE other people who are like you.
It's true that Irene wrote a bad sentence.
But you didn't read it very well did you?
Irene said that she met a girl who is like her, and she dislikes the other girl.
She doesn't know whether this makes her a bad person for disliking someone or whether she doesn't like this other girl because she associates her self hate with dislike of people who aren't like her.
I'm essentially saying that I think its the latter.
I can see how you got what you did.
I guess I just don't think self-critical=hates self
Posts
Phrenology or Come Alive? It's on both.
and I'm now just playing Prefuse 73 and Kid Koala.
Spoiled for huge. I love Neal Stephenson.
I am Jack's complete lack of sleep.
he's talking about unity in the body of canonical literature. he's also a fucker.
:?:
I need music that'll carry through a fairly substantial sandstone wall. I'm playing duelling stereos, you see.
and Butt rock? What?
Newest Moby album would work.
What's that from? I've read a substantial portion of his output, but don't recognise that.
japan's dueling stereo story reminded me of this part from the beginning of The Big U, which is a book written by Neal Stephenson back in the 80s before he actually became a good writer. The writing itself is pretty good, but the plotline is a huge mess, I could barely get through the book. Still, it had some fun excerpts, such as the one I just typed out from the book.
This is true. He's very much a "nerd" writer, though. I have a friend who can easily follow Kerouac and Ginsberg, but Stephenson confuses the shit out of him.
Actually I do.
At this point I don't think Stephenson is so much a "nerd" writer as a "bad" writer. Snow Crash being the odd one out of course.
But seriously, Crypto, Diamond Age etc... all turned into utter trash by the end.
ITT Echo wants the terrorists to win.
You don't have to be much of a nerd to follow him, though. I managed to sail through Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, and Diamond Age with no problem, and I know next to nothing about cryptology, programming, or nanotechnology.
Have your friend read Zodiac, it's about environmental science and should be easy enough for just about anybody to follow. Even my mother was able to finish it.
I like his style a lot, but man does he not know how to end a book.
This insult is compounded by the fact that our real estate agency is too incompetent to sort out a payment solution that doesn't involve someone paying it Face to Face on Saturday mornings.
This, basically.
And yet, I love his writing style so much that even with the aforementioned flaws he managed to be one of my five favorite authors.
Fixed.
Also, personally I like most of Stephenson's stuff. but I'm in no state to start talking literature.
oh fuck, 30 pages until I hit my page limit, aroghahagohblahrlahg
I think it was the last 3rd of Diamond Age that really killed Stephenson for me. Ok, the end of Crypto was silly and dumb but bearable. Diamond Age made me hate the man and by extension even the things he has written that I previously enjoyed.
Of course they're now both sitting looking at me funny.
*shrug* I'm pretty easygoing about this kind of stuff, I guess. I mean, I didn't like the ending of Diamond Age, to the point where I won't ever read it again, but I wouldn't say it "killed" Stephenson for me. The worst I feel is a bit of frustration, because that book had so much potential, and he didn't really fulfill it.
If you know you don't like yourself then why is it a problem that you don't like personifications of your dislike IE other people who are like you.
It's true that Irene wrote a bad sentence.
But you didn't read it very well did you?
IT WILL CONSUME YOU
Those certainly are some unorthodox trousers.
Irene said that she met a girl who is like her, and she dislikes the other girl.
She doesn't know whether this makes her a bad person for disliking someone or whether she doesn't like this other girl because she associates her self hate with dislike of people who aren't like her.
I'm essentially saying that I think its the latter.
I can see how you got what you did.
I guess I just don't think self-critical=hates self
hate is such a strong word.
Your cat? Or just one that happened to be passing?
Neighbour's cat that waited for me (cunning little bugger he is), and received his customary petting.
He loves me, that much is sure.