All Your Base Are Belong To Us — The Kip Lange Homepage

Ah, Valentine’s Day. Now, to break from the norm of navel-contemplating, self-pitying single bloggers out there, I’m going to say: I like Valentine’s Day. Even being single. I have fond memories of rushing around Manhattan trying to find a suitable gift for my girlfriend at the time (ohhh yes, I found a suitable gift, and I was suitably rewarded), with the Empire State Building lit up in pinkish-red the whole time. And one particular Valentine’s Day in which another girlfriend gave me a physical gift which would be rude (although fun and very interesting) to describe here. So, I say, what the hell, who cares if I’m single. I like seeing the couples moon over each other for a day. To sum up: get the hell out there, get your girlfriend some flowers or jewelry, go out to eat, have a blast. As for me…well, my Playstation qualifies as a significant other at this point, so I’ll be sticking with that.

I just don’t know what kind of flowers it likes.

Ah hah! I have succesfully pushed and succeeded in reuniting a couple of old friends, D.F and D.R from California. I’ve also gone on to do a lot of catching up with both of them, especially D.R., who is quite an interesting character and who I never got a chance to get to know well enough on the first go-round.

It all feels karmically acceptable.

In other news, I have been staring at the template for a tri-fold brochure for a little under a week now and nothing is coming to me. I hate that. The only thing to do is to continue to stare harder and harder at the tri-fold brochure template and…well, hell, maybe if I put on my tinfoil hat, aliens will zap ideas into my brain.

I am mired in the middle of The Confusion, the second volume of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, and I must say, I liked the first one, Quicksilver, a good deal more. There’s even more minutiae in this one, especially about trading and movement of money, and it can get quite confusing. That being said, I still really like it.

Ahhhh! I just found this one out yesterday. First, let me preface this by saying that the active ingredient in Benadryl is the same as the active ingredient in Nytol is the same as in Sominex and so on right down the line, which is Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride. That’s the stuff that puts you to sleep (and stops you sniffling, too). Anyway, where a box of Nytol might cost you like $12 for 20 tablets or something — all you have to do is go up to a pharmacist and ask for generic Benadryl or Diphendryamine Hydrochloride (same thing) and you’ll get around 100 pills (same strength as Nytol) for $6. Yes. Amazing, eh? Just found out this one myself.

Anybody who’s ever heard “The Aristocrats” joke, or seen the movie co-produced by Penn and Teller (man, do they rule, how much do I miss the hardcore old MofoExMachina BBS?), or likes South Park…I just ran across this. I was sort of looking for it, but not really, just paging through a lot of versions of “The Aristocrats”. Er. Yeah, I’m a sick bastard. Now, anyway, the point is, I found the link to Cartman’s version of the joke. It’s linked from http://www.wikipedia.org. Right-o, so the link to Cartman’s version, which is frigging hilarious, is right here — Cartman’s “The Aristocrats”. If you have Windows Media Player, it ought to work.

Enjoy. And, by the way, I actually heard this joke before the movie came out. And not from the Hugh Heffner roast. I feel special.

Okay, no I don’t. But go check it out anyway.

Okay, the crazy Costa Ricans who used to host my site gratis (who are really nice people, by the way, because I’m about to insult them) are no longer hosting it — rather, it’s being hosted by a good, sound, thoroughly capitalist young man, so I’m allowed to rant a little. Requirements for being hosted by the Costa Rican liberals was “none of that Nazi shit”, i.e., I was not allowed to say that I am a Republican, express support for Republicans, or espouse any of my political views. By the way, the way people keep calling other people “Nazis” when they disagree with them — from both sides of the aisle — is a rant unto itself.

Right. So what the hell was my point? Iraq. Right. And troop withdrawal. Here’s the first point — most reports from the front, and you can check me on this one, report that the troops really feel they’re making progress towards stability and want to stay there. I personally know a young man who’s re-enlisted twice (head of a sniper squad that was around Basrah during the war). In addition, here’s what really gets me — the detractors of Iraq-rebuilding, those who want to jerk the troops home because we’re “failing”, never bother to look at history. Japan? We spent DECADES rebuilding Japan, and I think we did a rather nice job. Germany? Christ, we STILL have troops in Germany! The German liberals hate it, but we still have them there.

The point is — now, I made this point in an article published right after 9/11 in which I asked “how many of you will be with us when we’re mired down in Iraq?”, which is on another computer, and I believe mirror-cached somewhere in the Internet (it was one of my old Feral Cortexes — man, I KNEW we were going into Iraq when I voted for Bush, for the love of God, way before 9/11). Okay, too many dashes, I’ve confused myself. The point is that the American public has the attention span of a gnat these days. We just can’t commit for the long haul. If we truly committed for the long haul in Iraq, we could have a bastion of stable Democracy and free trade in the Middle East. Yes, yes, call me a raving neo-con, call me wrong, but that’s the Big Vision, and it could happen if we’d only shut up and pitch in together on the whole thing, support the troops, support the Big Vision, and just let it happen. It’s already going very well — as a lot of you know, there are a lot of blogs out there that actually report the good news from Iraq. One that is now defunct because of a career change I believe was called exactly that, “The Good News From Iraq”. There is a LOT of progress and good news, but you don’t read about it in the newspapers, because, with their selective publishing, they want you to focus on the damn car-bombs. Especially liberal rags like the NYT and such.

Okay, I’ll shut up. But consider this an open plea for patience. Americans are good at rebuilding national infrastructure. Japan is the big example. For God’s sake, give it a shot. If Martin Luther King had insisted on racial integration the day after tomorrow, it would have been absurd, would it not? But no, he took a long view of things. I’m saying just that. I might not even live to see a truly thriving and free Iraq, but I think it’s something that’s worth working towards.

Ah. It feels good to be political again. Those of you who wish to call me a Nazi or a rabid neo-con or whatever the hell epithet is the phrase of the day, go right ahead. I don’t mind. 🙂

Ah yes, the title says it all. The Patriots lose in a game of horrendous calls and stupid mental errors when they — given the outcome of the other playoff games — could, conceivably, have won it all again. That really pisses me off.

I’ve come to the end of the first volume of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, Quicksilver — I was quite pleased with the entire thing, even though it did have the uncanny ability to confuse me very quickly — and now I’m trying to decide whether I should pick up one of the other new books I have gotten that are non-Stephenson, or to jump right into The Confusion, which is Volume II of the Baroque Cycle.

For those interested in Stephenson, as an aside, he keeps a small website that he maintains himself at http://www.well.com/user/neal/. Pretty interesting. There are some other “official” websites, but that one really is the most intimate, I think.

The one thing I am happy about is all this rain. I mean, the fact that it’s rain. And not snow. Because it could be snow and then I would have to shovel it and that would SUCK.

Alright. I leave you now. I poop on you now. I go to play Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006 now.

Okay. Lay off for a second. I just need to test something with a dummy post. Yes, yes, all my posts are dummy posts, I can hear you from here…

Well, the relatives have dispersed, and while this is displeasing to my father, it’s sorta nice to have the house back to being quiet. You know, that whole after-the-holidays psychic hangover thing. It always gets postponed a little around here. Now, the trees are coming down, and that depresses me, but what can you do? The Tree Guy (always a guy for everything) is coming to take them away this Saturday.

There really ain’t a hell of a lot going on. Dribs and drabs of contract work (I still wait and pray for electrical casings documentation every day)…and…um…video games. Well, dammit, I have to play them sometime, don’t I? I wonder if I’m going to want all the video game time back when I die. “God, wait, hold on, can I just have those 10 years I spent mastering Metal Gear Solid 2 back? No? Aw, crap…”

Oh, yes, and after resurrecting my old email address, I am STILL getting four hundred or so spam emails a DAY. These are some persistent damn spammers. I must now devise a super ultra-secret email address and give it only to my closer inner circle of advisers…

Ah, well. Hope things are more exciting for everybody else. I’ve resolved to make some New Year’s resolutions, but I can’t seem to get myself to do it. Thppthh!

Right, so there’s snow on the way, and we’re in the middle of the damn highest-range circle, bulls-eye. 6-10 inches. You know, I know people in countries that never get snow that are entranced by it. I’d gladly ship it all to them.

Really bad thing is — I sleep really late. ‘course, if you know me, you know this, but then again, maybe you don’t know me. So, sleeping late as I do, by the time I’ve gotten up, my father, who could easily have a heart attack shoveling snow, has gone out and done some shoveling without waking me up, and I feel evil and generally useless, even though I do tell him to wake me the hell up and get me out there.

And to those people who don’t get snow who are entranced by it — sure, YOU try shoveling it, YOU try driving in it, YOU walk around in it, YOU wait until it turns to blackened slush. “Beautiful” my lily-white arse.

Bah!

Ah. So the holidays are over. The relatives are still here, but the holidays, at least, are over. Time to decompress a little. My parents have an anniversary coming up, and they keep insisting I not get them anything, but I keep wondering if perhaps I should.

I’m DVRing a “Mythbusters” marathon. I have, of course, informed my father that he is not allowed to watch any of it, as he will NOT stop mocking my DVR. Mock not my DVR!

Oh, yes, and J.B. and A.R. are headed over…tomorrow? Tomorrow. Will be good to see them.

I have caught up with S.C. in Germany, in-between absinthe binges, apparently. He has sent me the links to a couple of new “cinema advertisements” he worked on — or maybe they aren’t ads, maybe they’re porn, God only knows, I haven’t checked the links yet…if anyone’s interested, they’re:

http://www.ognito-inc.org/serge/
http://www.rekorder.tv/xmas/

Not much else to report. I have decided NBA Live is playable but not quite as good as my ol’ NBA 2kx series. It has its high points. Er. Right. Happy post-Holidays, all!