Here’s a link to some old French fairtyales, illustrated by Virgina Frances Sterrett and written by the Comtesse De Segur. Once in a while, a real gem turns up on openlibrary.org.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

http://www.archive.org/stream/oldfrenchfairyta00sgrich#page/n9/mode/2up

If only Herge had actually spoken to Lovecraft as he lay dying and come up with this.

The Foggy Dew in Coquitlam is one of my favourite watering holes. The staff are friendly, the people usually college-going alcoholics and there’s a live band that won’t do Slayer covers. It was on one cold October night that we decided to re-visit the Dew. Some of us were dressed as priests, others as Heidi, and yet others as cowboys, since Halloween was only a couple of days away.

We settled down to drink some drinks, since we were just very smart. Haven’t you heard, the smart kids drink heavily and listen to brutal death metal nowadays. Anyhow, after letting the warm glow of spirits wash over us, we settled down for some serious pool-playing. I’m not a huge fan of dancing, perhaps because I’m terrible at it, but the godawful noise that passes for music in bars is another reason to stay off the dance floor. There’s usually a live band at the Dew on weekend nights, but they’d cut their set short and we were treated to an endless stream of radio-friendly pap.

No matter, we noticed that the people playing pool with us were very friendly and we struck up a conversation with them. They turned out be from Pender Harbour, which is on the Sunshine Coast in BC. They seemed to be glad to be out of there with phrases such as “Oh yeah, you’d wanna get the fuck out of there as soon as possible” and “There’s nothing there, we came here as soon as we could” recurring throughout the night. Some more drinks followed, some more games were played when we suddenly received a text message from the cowboy on the dance floor: “Am in a fight, come now”. We downed our drinks, hurried to the dance floor but the cowboy was nowhere in sight. After asking the bouncer, we realized he’d been unceremoniously booted off the premises. One of us went outside and got the story from him. He’d been dancing with two girls who looked like grapes, when two meatheads had muscled their way in between him and the girls. He took the strongest possible exception to this, but was snarled at by the meatheads who looked ready to pummel him. The bouncer saw the nascent altercation and decided that the easiest way to defuse the situation was to evict the guy who’d done no wrong. Simply grabbing him by the collar, he was dragged out and dumped on the sidewalk in front of all and sundry.

This naturally angered our friend the cowboy. If he’d been a real-life John Wayne, no prizes for guessing what he’d have done. Unfortunately not all of us can lay people out with a swift haymaker and then stride off into the glorious sunset. It was a good thing that the cowboy chose the better part of valour, since in the time between the beginning of the altercation and the inglorious dumping on the sidewalk, six RCMP cars had arrived at the scene. We weren’t sure why they’d arrived, but they soon disappeared inside the bar. We comforted our friend, who was truly angry, as only the innocent can be when wronged and humiliated. No matter, we waited in the freezing night as our other friends gathered around.

Once the group had re-formed outside, we headed to Denny’s for breakfast at 2 AM, a tradition that almost all of Coquitlam follows after a night at the hallowed Dew. We ate our hash browns and pancakes, while the more drunk among us regaled us with the usual litany of stories that only seem appealing when drunk. We finished at Denny’s and walked back the way we’d come, only to come upon some people jaywalking and yelling at someone in the Extra Foods parking lot. As we got closer, I saw that it was our new friends from Pender Harbour, newcomers to big bad Burnaby. One of them had a regular from the Foggy Dew in a headlock and was punching his face with his big, heavy hand. Luckily for the hapless guy in the lock, the guy was pretty wasted and most of the punches glanced off his cheeks or landed on his forehead, sparing his nose and lips. The guy from Pender Harbour realized he wasn’t inflicting enough damage and threw his victim against the trunk of a nearby car and landed heavily on him, emitting audible sighs as all the air in their bodies escaped. Then he seized him in the headlock again and continued punching him in the face. The victim was struggling with his face pressed against the assailant’s torso, but he was punching away at the side and front for all he was worth. All of this was happening as the Pender Harbour guy’s buddies were yelling at him from across the street to stop being silly and come join them, it was 3 AM for Chrissakes! Finally someone else stepped in, and then someone else and the two were separated. The big guy charged like a bull again, “I’m not leaving until I win!”, and the impromptu referees said, “You win! Go home! Now!”, in a valiant attempt to smother the fight. The best part of all, the assailant had a loopy half-grin on his face, it was all a big game to him. After all, what is there to do in small towns in the interior besides Drink, Fight & Fuck? Trust me, never fight someone from a small town, they’ve probably been in more fracases than you can count.

We walked away from the fight as the lumbering lumberjack jaywalked and joined his group. The night was over and we were home safe. Another Halloween escapade consigned to the history books.

Pretty sweet, wot?

I hate what America has become

Date: 2009-10-28, 9:58PM PDT

There are so many reasons that frankly, it’s hard to pick a place to start:

First of all…..when 28% of you brain dead fucking morons give a blithering IDIOT like Sarah Palin positive approval ratings and think she ought to run for president in 2012, it really makes me sick to know I am lumbered with that many mouth-breathing Cro-Magnons I unfortunately have to consider as my fellow countrymen….trust me…..I don’t. You motherfuckers are beyond help.

And before you go thinking this is a “liberal” based rant…..that brings me to one more item on an ever-lengthening list.

This “Liberal” versus “Conservative” paradigm that so many of you simple dunces buy into…..as BOTH parties sell you out to the multinational corporations, banks and special interests that actually run Washington D.C.)…..you do this STUPID dance every day, blithely detatched from the reality that YOU YOURSELF are helping to DIVIDE AND CONQUER the nation, as you myopically beat your little Hannity/Olberman drum of FUTILE self -righteous indignation. PATHETIC.

THIS is a nation of PUSSIES AND FUCKING COWARDS. If this nation had any BALLS WHATSOEVER, there would be a trail of DEAD MEN SWINGING FROM THE ENDS OF ROPES leading from AIG, thru WALL STREET, the not-so “Federal” reserve, the 9/11 commission, and right through every other set-up con-job you people just buy into like a bunch of CATTLE BEING LED TO SLAUGHTER.

It’s not that Americans don’t give a fuck…..every misled, misdirected group that goes out and crusades for the “Grand Cause” they think is responsible for the decimation of this ONCE great nation proves that…..the problem IS that the problem ISN’T illegal aliens (i.e. Minutemen) or Democrats in Washington (i.e. Teabaggers) or conservative policies (i.e. Code Pink)…….the problem is …… AMERICANS THEMSELVES.

AMERICANS have sat on THEIR ASSES while Washington and the Pentagon have BANKRUPTED THE TREASURY and sent our sons and daughters into MEAT GRINDERS in Iraq and Afghanistan for WMD’s and connections to 9/11 that did NOT EXIST and even AFTER the overwhelming evidence that the intel was “swept all up” (doctored, falsified, unreliable) you STUPID SHEEP keep buying into the BRAIN DEAD notion that somehow, these wars are for the FREEDOM of America.

You’re an IDIOT. They’re wars for EMPIRE.

Your son’s and daughter’s BLOOD is being used as OIL to grease an evil, out of control WAR MACHINE….Your money and financial security is being DEVOURED by Wall St. and the Federal Reserve, with collusion from YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES, and your standard of living is slowly eroding into a two-class system as the middle class is being FORCED INTO EXTINCTION……

……and you do NOTHING to stop ANY of it.

You ignorant FOOLS who send shotgun Emails to all your friends warning of “death panels” and other such HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY PROPAGANDA, yes, you friggin’ GOMERS actually think the Health Insurance Industry has your best interests in mind, and it’s “dat mean ol’ gubmint” that wants to penalize you by providing your family health care that isn’t profit-based.

MEDICARE only got passed because it effectively REMOVED the highest-risk group to the insurance providers (the elderly) from the ‘pool’ of prospective insurees, thereby minimizing their financial exposure. It’s completely lost on most people that catastrophic illness is the main reason for personal bankruptcy….and that 75% of those who had to file HAD health insurance.

And this is the ‘status quo’ many of you are defending. You are BEYOND dense.

America has lost it’s HONOR, as well as it’s collective senses. I don’t wish upon America any malice or catastrophe…..trust me, this is happening with assistance and collusion from the top down, not from some Arab in a cave. I just want to leave peacefully and live in a place that doesn’t have leaders that hope for a “catastrophic and catalyzing event” to promote a war agenda that takes pride in kicking the shit out of unarmed peasants living in the dirt….then blames them for retaliating. Can’t wait to see this dysfunctional madhouse in my rear view mirror.

When you abide by a system of government that you FULLY EXPECT will side AGAINST YOU and WITH corporate lobbyists (MANY of whom represent interests that are not even from the USA) who BRIBE THEM WITH BALES OF CASH….and are working 24/7 to maximize their profits and minimize their potential competition in the marketplace…..all at the expense of you and your family….and don’t lift a FINGER to do ANYTHING TO CHANGE IT……you fucking DESERVE WHAT’S COMING. What might that be…..?

Think Germany and the treaty of Versailles…..when a wheelbarrow full of Deutschmarks is what it took to buy a MEAL.

WHEN the dollar collapses…..not IF, WHEN…..THAT’S when you’ll really begin to see the true definition of FASCISM. The unity of government and corporations to economically and militarily control it’s people. History WILL repeat itself….but if you’re like so many of the morons in the USA who think they’re so smart but don’t know SHIT…..it will all be NEW TO YOU. Good luck…..you’ll need it.

This is the most ARROGANT nation in EXISTANCE, second only to ISRAEL….and since ALL of our politicians are falling over backwards to kiss Israel’s ASS on a daily basis, fully knowing that exposing any inconvenient TRUTH about them equals political SUICIDE….that and the mass media in America that feeds it’s daily ration of BULLSHIT is controlled by individuals biased towards them as well….ANYONE who thinks they know what is going on because they read TIME magazine and watch CNN, FOX news OR MSNBC…..you are DELUSIONAL.

One nation under God….? What a JOKE.

MONEY is God here pal….even people who are reading this who hate the words I typed KNOW this is true. What does it say in your bible about the love of money? The root of all evil, no?

How DARE this nation question human rights abuses of other nations after Abu Ghraib and countless other bombing and torture campaigns, where it was stated it is passable to crush the testicles of young boys in front of their fathers to extract information.

How DARE this nation deign to be the world’s nuclear police when WE are the only nation to ever USE NUKES.

MOST of you actually consider Palestinians as TERRORISTS, when it is THEY who have been occupied, imprisoned behind 25 foot high concrete walls and denied basic human decency by APARTHEID ISRAEL. Those of you who get your info from American media REMAIN IGNORANT OF THE TRUTH.

You’re probably wondering if I’m some Arab, or other person hostile to “America’s Freedoms” lol…. Yeah, you’re really free here…….

Free to go BANKRUPT if you get sick, even if you HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE.

Free to vote on DIEBOLD voting machines that can flip elections and leave no paper trail.

Free to watch your life savings DWINDLE AND EVAPORATE into the pockets of the ROBBER BARONS you PATRONIZE.

Free to watch your JOB get shipped to CHINA….and then you fucking FOOLS buy the goods PRODUCED FORM THOSE JOBS at Wal Mart, further REWARDING AND ENCOURAGING businesses to CONTINUE this pattern. I have never bought a fucking THING from Wal-Mart, and if you have…..you are a simple, stupid FUCKSTICK.

You’re free to be video monitored, photographed by the millisecond at traffic light traps, electronically surveiled, searched with no warrant, shaken down and partially disrobed at airports, free to be told how much shampoo you are allowed to carry in your luggage, free to buy processed foods that give you cancer, genetically altered vegetables that contain neat things like INSECT DNA, free to pay more than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET for pharmeceuticals, free to be the pharmaceutical company’s guinea pig for drugs that have potentially catastrophic side effects, free to have PUBLIC POLICY DICTATED TO YOU by government ‘officials’ that have dual citizenship with ISRAEL, free to have ANY MEANINGFUL TRUTH WITHHELD FROM YOU by the mass media……

…..and free to be one of the ONE OUT OF EVERY HUNDRED AMERICANS living in PRISON.

Land of the free, home of the brave??

More like land of the SHEEP and home of the SLAVE.

Should have let them all drown, Alan. Down to the bottom of Davy Jones’ locker where the fish could pick them clean for millennia. And by extension, let them starve. In the hundreds of thousands. The things you could have exacted for a modicum of respect.

This is interesting. I’d never heard of this before, but it warrants some analysis.

Look at where we sit. more individualistic AND more secular-rational than the good ol’ US. Japan and Sweden are at the top, who would have thought? I wonder how old this is, it shows Eastern and Western Germany. It also misspells Czech as “Chech”. Look how close Poland is to India, it’s not too hard to believe, I guess. How is Turkey more traditional than India or Poland? Kemal must be turning over in his grave.

Also, Uruguay’s secular enough to belong to “Catholic Europe”. I guess they broke out of Latin America after all. Let me know your thoughts.

Today I’ll talk about subscriptions. Not to magazines or anything so banal, but subscribing to the bigger things in life.

So, what is a subscription? A subscription is the amount of emotional investment in a system, belief or otherwise. I suppose the word “belief” is redundant, since there can be no emotional investment unless you agree or disagree vehemently. Consider the case of sports. A subscriber to sports, any sport, is emotionally invested in their sport.  They know many things about their sport that the average layman doesn’t know, and presumably are well-versed in the sport itself. A firsthand knowledge of the system is not required, as seen in the millions of people who follow sports with breathtaking fanaticism but don’t play them.

How can we measure the intensity of such a subscription? It’s not an easy task. A good indicator is the age at which someone was exposed to the system. Any system which can impress someone has a much higher chance of making a subscriber out of them, and you’re always more impressionable when younger. Religion makes spectacular use of this. Witness the Jesuit saying “Give me the child until he is 7, and I will show you the man”.

The amount of friction generated between two people is a direct result of their subscriptions. Perhaps the easiest way to avoid friction and get along with every body is to simply be subscription-free, thereby making you well lubricated for any form of social discourse. This may not be tenable in all contexts, since people usually have subscriptions to their welfare, their kids’ welfare and so on. Apart from the bottom layer of Maslow’s hierarchy, why would anybody commit to anything on an intellectual level? It almost seems as if the minute you subscribe to something, you shear off numerous alternative possibilities that might have been worth exploring.

But is believing in nothing really freedom? Surely one must have some principles to live by. Hoary old apes will tell you about morals and ethics and other watchwords, things you simply must subscribe to, in order to function in society and so on. I’m tempted to say that believing in nothing is possibly the greatest form of freedom you can achieve in the world we live in. Concerned about anti-abortion or pro-life arguments? Not if you don’t care either way. How about religion? The same applies if you breezily ignore them all. What about politics then? Surely, your political views impact your way of life. Not if you skirt that entire can of worms by a mile. Who’s in power and who will be in power has scarcely ever mattered to the average Joe, who is too busy getting skewered by whoever’s in power to even care.

How about holidays like Christmas or the Chinese New Year? Again, a liberating dose of apathy will help you AND your chequebook while others rush to give each other gifts destined for landfills. Plus, you can get so much more done when not surrounded by sycophantic supplicants of whatever man-made festivity is upon you. What about sports? Worried or excited about the Olympics? The World Cup? Some tennis tournament or other ball-and-stick sport? Well, now you don’t have to be if you simply don’t care.

How about things like TV shows or books or movies, where people over-analyze and pore over fictional characters and harangue each other to death over the imagined characteristics of people created by people they’ve never met? How hard do you laugh at people who know too much trivia about a particular TV show you considered stupid and beneath contempt? Exactly. Not worth subscribing to, right? Right.

But, if you cut out music, movies, sports, books, religion, politics and holidays, what are you left with? Some might argue that that makes for a drab existence. I beg to differ. You’re free to sample any of those, just not to subscribe to any of them. The difference is that you’re not burdened with unnecessary obligations to stay updated on anything that you’re not subscribed to. Picture a hockey fan fretting over the trade of one player to some team or another, since that is how those free-wheeling mercenaries operate. Now picture me, who’s blissfully unaware of anything to do with hockey or hockey players or anything as involved as hockey trades. Ignorance truly is bliss.

But what if you really, really like something? Let’s say you really love books by Waugh. Is it not natural to pore over his every word, to analyze the merits and undercurrents of his life’s work? Surely a genius like Waugh deserves a little bit of your time. I’d have to argue that he deserves only as much time as he warrants out of the pantheon of great writers. Perhaps a little less than Dostoevsky or Kipling, but certainly more than someone like Stephen King. But to someone not subscribed to books, these names mean zilch.

So, how does one cultivate a sophisticated, empty veneer through which no subscriptions get through? The answer is simple: cynicism. A cynic knows that there is only one possible outcome to a situation, the worst. He differs from the pessimist in that he can spot the fatal pitfall in the situation and laugh about it, while the pessimist doesn’t exactly chuckle when things go wrong.

Back to subscriptions. This graph shows the proclivity of the average person for the average subscription, based on their age. The average person starts off eager to subscribe, and then it fades with age. This is only natural, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and all that rot. A person who’s more gullible than average might be more willing to subscribe to other things as they age as well, the trick is not to be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

Keep in mind that these are just my initial musings and ramblings on a topic which I’ve been pondering for some time now. Expect the theory to get more polished and refined as time goes by and I come up with a better system for it.

You know it’s a prison state when….

Created by Online Education

I’ve been really busy with work and schoolwork and all that stuff, but I thought I’d post this, in case anyone else has similar issues.

I bought a new XFX Force Nvidia GTX 260 video card and everything was alright. A brand new Windows 7 install and everything looked dandy, until I launched my favourite game: Day of Defeat.

I saw rectangles of every colour, usually purple, on all the textures in the game. Most people I showed the screenshot to had never seen anything exactly like it.

Googling it turned up several probable causes, including:

1. Overclocking
2. Overheating
3. Wrong drivers
4. Windows 7 compatibility mode execution
5. Incorrect voltage levels from the power supply

I hadn’t overclocked my card, but to confirm that it hadn’t been overclocked from the factory, I downloaded Nvidia’s NTune utility and yep, no overclocking. I installed the Windows Xp 64 bit driver and the Windows Vista 64 bit driver, but to no avail. I turned the graphics settings in the Valve engine on low, even though the video card can handle almost any game out today. Not surprisingly, this didn’t fix it.

Then, I disconnected my second monitor, thinking that the dual monitor setup might be screwing with the game, but nope. Thinking it might be the Valve engine, I downloaded some other game demos, BF 2142 and COD 4, but they had the same problem.

Finally, having exhausted all my options, I took the card back to where I bought it: NCIX. They ran some tests on it for a day and then replaced it for me. The new card is fine, nary a texture glitch and everything looks peachy.

I just bought a second monitor, a nice 24″ LCD that seems so much crisper than my ancient 19″ LCD.  Setting up the dual monitor setup in Gentoo isn’t hard at all. I know that X.org has a lot of issues but luckily, setting up dual monitors is straightforward and works out well. I have an older graphics card, the Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT, but it works well, so why change?

First, enable the xinerama flag for all your apps, since you want them to stretch across dual monitors. Just put it in your make.conf

USE="avahi nvidia xvmc acpi xulrunner symlink dri hal java cdr dvd dvdr bitmap-fonts
truetype-fonts type1-fonts nptl nptlonly gtk2 nsplugin pdf glitz svg truetype
lm_sensors xinerama"

Then, re-emerge your entire world, if the xinerama flag was new for you.

emerge -avuDN world

When it’s done, edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and do the following:

1. First, duplicate the device

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 6600 GT"
    BusID          "PCI:4:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 6600 GT"
    BusID          "PCI:4:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

Then, add the second monitor. In my case, it was the first because I wanted the 24″ to be the primary monitor, but it really makes no difference.

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Acer AL1913"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 82.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "BENQ E2400HD"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     55.0 - 85.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

On, the Nvidia 6600 GT, there are two outputs, the analog VGA one and the DVI one. They are called CRT-0 and CRT-1 respectively. To set up your screens, put in the following, taking care to adjust the resolution to what you want

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option      "NoTwinViewXineramaInfo" "False"
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-1, CRT-0"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0; CRT-0: 1024x768
                   +0+0; CRT-0: 800x600 +0+0; CRT-0: 640x480 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Device1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
        Option      "NoTwinViewXineramaInfo" "False"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-1, CRT-0"
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0; CRT-1: 1280x1024
                   +0+0; CRT-1: 1024x768 +0+0; CRT-1: 800x600 +0+0; CRT-1: 640x480 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I wanted the second screen to be to the right of the first screen. You can set it below or above, as your monitors are arranged. For my config, I had

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Simple Layout"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" RightOf "Screen1"
    Screen      1  "Screen1" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

And when you restart X, you should see the login in the middle. I adjusted the taskbar to fill the bottom of the first screen, but not to extend over to the second. You can play around with the settings, or of course, just use nvidia-settings for an easier setup process.

A nasty bug in KWin prevents the maximization of windows to the current monitor, instead stretching them across both monitors. It should be fixed soon and then everything will be perfect.