Life is a write once-run once program. It all starts with conception, where code from two different source trees are spliced together, followed by 9-months of compiling. There’s no beta-testing, so you’re shipped at birth, bugs and all. And at that moment is when your main() function is called. Although the run-time environment provides implementations for your sleep(), eat(), and breathe() functions, you’re left to do the garbage collection. Of course, nowadays we have that third-party application known as the toilet. And on you go, running till you’re terminated somehow. And once that happens, that’s itno re-running the program and no version 2.0. Your source code is still around, but due to environment variables and the dynamic nature of the algorithms involved, a clone would be a different program in itself, not you. The particular flow of bits and bytes that is your stream of consciousness would be gone forever (unless you made a backup!).

Those who do too much at once and especially branch their activities recursively without rest will die of some kind of stack overflow. Some people end life by calling abort() themselves before any exceptional circumstances do so. And the rest of us continue to either execute or idle, surviving any exceptions that life throws at us until an unexpected one is uncaught or irrecoverable. And, in this geeky metaphor, that’s where the essence of life is: exception handling. We all have to do at least some of it at one time or another. But the most robust lives are those that try, try, and try again. No one’s life is perfect, everyone is subject to errors, but the point is to catch any that do crop up. At the top of life’s heirarchy of misfortune is an out_of_luck exception which is subclassed into out_of_work, out_of_money, out_of_time, and others. Without a try/catch block when those events occur, you’re screwed. You can’t look out for all exceptions all the time, though. Your life wouldn’t go anywhere. But it’s important to take into account the common ones, as well as some of life’s curveballs. But that’s a different metaphor altogether.

There walks a man who thinks that
All the movies ever made aren’t very good.
When asked what his idea of a good movie would be,
He says that he doesn’t quite know for sure
But that he’d know it if he saw one.

No one has asked him if he has even seen
All the movies ever made.
It’s likely that he hasn’t and therefore possible that

One of the movies he hasn’t seen would be
One he considered to be good.

And would this hypothetical good movie be
Considered to be good by everyone else?
Anyone else?
Who’s to say;
No one has even asked him if
He’s seen all the movies ever made.
It’s unlikely that he has
But then again, maybe he makes such a claim because
He actually has seen all the movies.

If he did,
Would anyone believe him?
Would he remember how all the movies went?
Was he even paying attention to
Every single one?

As to whether he has or not,
No one seems to care.
Nor does he care that no one cares.
So all is well then.
Walk on you crazy man.
Whatever you say,
Whatever you say.

I used to be a superhero… now look at me; I’m just like everybody else. Maybe even worse off than everyone else. Wasted away by a horrible disease. Wasting my time. Wasted all my money.

I want my old friends, I want my old face, I want my old mind, fuck this time and place. Where did all that time go, anyway? What happened to all those people that I knew? I don’t care about every single person I aquainted myself with, but there’s a number of them that were important in some way. Whether they played a leading role in my life, or were an extra in the background, I miss them. I miss me. Where did my old self go anyway? That may very well be a rhetorical question, as I know where I went. It can all boil down to my sickness if I choose, and that would be perfectly valid. But maybejust maybeI wasn’t vigilant enough. I should have at least had a contingency plan. Even if I couldn’t forsee any possible need for it. Well, here I am now. I’m stuck real good this time. Ugh.

I haven’t touched my guitar much since last summer. The strings need to be changed. Even with the strings it has now, it’s still out of tune. I want my guitar to be in tune so I can hear it sing. I also want to hear myself sing. But not with how my voice is now, just as I don’t care to strum a guitar that’s out of tune. Yes, I know how to tune a guitar, but, but, but??? nevermind that.

I want to sing with my wonderful voice and my perfectly tuned guitar. I want to sing with others; for others. I want to be a part of a band and sing. Maybe even play rthym guitar. I want to sing great songs. Songs that I wrote, perhaps. Yes, I would like to write songs, too. Right now, though, I’d be happy with just knowing how to read musical notation.

There’s just something about my current Windows color scheme that I find striking, especially when I see the green selection on the blue menu. I’m like, “Wow!”. Maybe it’s the same blue-and-green thing that influence corporate logo designers. I’m not sure if the graphic below would give you the same response (displays set to 256 colors may not see it right). It may be when I’m moving my mouse over the menu and the green bar glides along with it. I also think that the toning down of the colors have something to do with it.

Silence.

Yes, I’ve been silent, haven’t I? Silence is bad. So, what’s happened in the midst of my silence and what’s going on now you ask? Lesee??? I’m currently wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and a pair of socks, which is rather common weblogging attire (not that this is necessairily a web loga matter to be dealt with another time, perhaps). I’m still out of work. 7-Eleven hasn’t called me back, so I guess no graveyard shift for me. I’m going to try Starbucks this week. I used to be the richest person I knew! Now I’m the poorest. Well, I don’t know that many people at the moment but I do know some. It’s not like I don’t know anyone else other than myself. Anyway.

What else??? I’m listening to Snap’s I’ve Got The Power as I type this sentence. What I’m listening to from sentence to sentence may vary in any given paragraph in progress. Why? Because I’m verbose at times, I’m prone to stalling mid-keystroke, and I edit my stuff frequently, especially since I can get too verbose. (Now Frank Sinatra is singing New York, New York.) Before I forget, I must mention that I’m waiting for my bananas to ripen. My mother gave them to me today.

I have a slice of salmon that’s been in the freezer for at least a few weeks. I planned on thawing it and eating it raw, as straight sashimi and maybe as part of nigiri and maki. I need to buy imitation crab meat, though. I ate all of what I had before. It’s so yummy and it really does taste like crab! I wonder if it’s possible to imitate shrimp meat? The shrimp would be flattered, yet how flatter they can get, I know not. Now I’m just being silly. Axl is bitching about how Mr. Brownstone won’t leave him alone. He just said “Yowsa”. Hobbes says that. Sometimes.

???or maybe he only said it once.

Believe it or not, but I spent the whole evening searching through my Calvin & Hobbes books and scouring the on-line archives to confirm whether Hobbes ever said yowsa. I found the strip that I was trying to remember. Turns out it was “yow” instead, and that was probably the only time, too, as I don’t think that was ever any kind of catch phrase.

The first entry of this millennium is archived as being posted yesterday.

My first work of art for the year:

It’s simply titled “MarXidad 2001.”