A Clockwork Orange

Working on some code, and tripped over this –

onMouseWheel Event Yay!

Sure, it’s probably not a standard, but boy, is this cool. IE6 has an event handler for the scroll wheel. Finally we can make interfaces where a layer scrolls with the wheel!

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/candy/

game design in flash 5. maybe I’ll goof with this over the weekend? Why does Flash use radians instead of degrees for trig functions? Anyone? You can convert, but why?

ok, enough dork stuff. time to order supper. I’m getting Japanese!

Let’s freshen up here.

Good people pulling together

Fast, and enduring friendships

Global Community.

some amazing artwork, photography and writing

good information (referenced) about everything from health, recipes, sex, trivia, resource management and vacationing.

Good Humor

Intelligent dialogue

goofy dialogue

Blossoming love

helpful guidance for folks who needed immediate answers.

a place to put my stuff!

people who adore newt, and seem to never tire of me talking about him!

People who don’t mind that I go on and on about the girl I love. (because I do! Woo!)

folks who thought and I were the same person.

New Babies! Lots of ’em!

LJ Valentines

Invitations to visit folks who live thousands of miles away, and a guarantee of kindness and brotherly love.

meeting new folks face to face

birthday prezzies! 🙂

good wishes of huge amounts of people in general

polls! dang, I love those.

Constructive criticism

Cute Icons

and overall, some wonderful friends on top of just the folks who ‘link to and read my entries’. Overall, I’d certainly say the good beats out the bad by a major point.

Pretend romances between pretend people

people pretending to have terminal diseases

Real people lying about themselves to make their journal more interesting, or themselves more like the ‘good guy’

Creation of identities for the sole purpose of harassing others. (especially those with anon posting turned off)

Hacked Journals, and secrets told.

Innocent people accused of doing the above, and when the truth came out, no apologies or retractions were spread like the original lies.

Ridiculous cries for attention, in the form of name calling, cursing, and deliberate baiting of poor folks who don’t know any better than to not feed the trolls.

bragging about infidelity, as if it were a badge of pride, not shame

Hate Speech against people’s religion, race, sexual orientation, desire or not to breed, and occupation

Nude photos of minors (Child pornography?) usually posted by what I assume are the children in question. (This one’s a tricky one… how young is too young? I’m talking about a 16 year old here, at least according to her lj bio.)

They all have a basic right to do and say what they like in the confines of their journal, just as much as I have the right to post what I do in mine… I have a good knack for tripping over all kinds of information here, and when I see it, I make a note not to go there again if I don’t like it. Anything else would boil down into censorship, I imagine.

To anyone who was taken in by the latest hoax… don’t feel like a sucker for caring. Prayers, support and good thoughts aren’t wasted, they can give hope to folks who you may not know, and you don’t know has even seen them. A hoax certainly beats a nice person dying, doesn’t it?

Wow… pearl harbor got really peed on by the critics. Overall, according to rottentomatoes.com…

Pearl Harbor tries to be the Titanic of war movies, but it’s just a tedious romance filled with laughably bad dialogue. The 40 minute action sequence is spectacular though.

Maybe I’ll just skip that one. Looks like Shrek is the way to go. 🙂

Well, not too dirty. My brother and I used to skip school together at the Morikami back in my high school days when he was a freshman and I was a senior. We’d spend the whole day there about once a month, walking the nature trail, feeding the koi (and the turtles… I actually liked them more than the fish), looking at bonsai, and peering over a little fence to look at the hidden rock garden….It’s also where I first discovered pocky sticks! As far as I know, it’s the only museum (in Florida, anyway) dedicated to brining the living culture of Japan to the West. (Delray Beach is the sister city to Miyazu, Japan… that might have something to do with it). There’s a few memorials there, too, one we saw dedicated to Ellison Onizuka (The Challenger astronaut) that was done in a really wonderful traditional style.

I’ll admit we didn’t always make it the most tranquil place.. We’d run around when nobody else was there, and there was one tree there in particular that we were convinced was a mean old man in disguise… and we mocked it. “Ha ha, can’t fool us, stupid old man… just give it up”…. that poor tree was picked on every time we went there, but he didn’t seem to mind. I’m still not fooled.

Even in the summer we went every now and then….The bon festival (celebration of ancestors) was really beautiful, and the August heat wasn’t so bad, since it was open at night…special for that place.(they usually closed right around 5ish. Taiko drums are too amazing, folk dancing…I really have an urge to go again now. The Drums, and the old ghost stories told there really were quite some things to hear, and they had fireworks at the end. Heck, even the tea ceremony was a fascinating thing top me. I’m going to have to rummage around and see if I can find any images from the times I was there. August 18 is the next one. I’m certainly making a note on my calendar to go.

Scents were strong too… gardenias, orange jasmine, pines…just a beautiful place. The last time I was there was perhaps a year ago.

Honestly, if you had a choice between a place like that, and a dull day of high school… what would you pick?

These memories brought to you by constant hype of the pearl harbor movie, memorial day, and most of all, my dear, sweet Ornj, someone I’d like to take there, and spend the day holding hands.

Lots more photos at – http://www.jgarden.org/gardens.asp?ID=289 and at http://www.geocities.com/Paris/2710/morikami.htm

The symbol was designed in 1564 by John Dee, an English mathematician and occultist. Dee was educated at Cambridge and wrote extensively about mathematics, natural science, and astrology. He created this symbol, or monad, to represent the astrological shapes for the seven planets of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, and the Sun. The body of the monad is based on the glyph for the planet Mercury, and contains the crescent, the circle, the dot, and the cross. These various shapes are derived from the zodiacal signs that are ruled by the planets mentioned above. Dee used this monad, and variations of it, to represent his research in the study of Alchemy.

It’s four in the afternoon. I’m in the passenger seat of a Honda Civic with no muffler. The engine’s sound is making my eardrums flinch every time the driver hits the accelerator. I can actually feel my eardrums, it’s like the muffler is bouncing pebbles off them. Repeatedly. And we’re in stop and go traffic so the roar of the muffler and its percussing on my eardrums give my headache the kind of backbeat you get in a really fast metal tune.

I have the window rolled up because I hope the raindrops will hide me from the other cars. I’m trying to juggle a spoon, a lighter, a film canister full of water, and a syringe that I’m worried is too dull to hit a vein. My arm’s got purple dots in two parallel lines from the elbow to the edge of my tattoo – you ever see the Monad of John Dee? The Hieroglyph that contains within it all the wisdom of the universe?

I got one inked on my forearm last summer when I was on a bender. God knows why, but my friend and I, leaving the bar to grab pizza, got tattooed instead.

There’s a raised patch of skin the size of a half dollar, pink and puffy like hives, from where I missed the vein and skin-popped a shot. Intramuscular injections work, don’t get me wrong. They just sting like hell and come on so slow you might as well have just snorted the shit. Usually, IM shots go in the bicep and you do them with ketamine. The cat tranquilizer.

My friend Jake didn’t sleep last night. He’s in his last semester of college. Not because he’s graduating, but because he’s dropping out. We started doing little burglaries part time on the weekends to make some scratch for drugs and cigarettes and bar money. Jake got in tight with the guy running the jobs, and so he’s dropping out to make a go at it full time. Me, I’ve been in school for, like, seven years and show no plans of graduating anytime soon.

So Jake was up all night doing coke at some club and so at two in the afternoon he’s banging on my door and waking me up ’cause he needs to cop some dope to stop the shakes. Doesn’t even give me time to shower before we’re in the car and heading for the city. At least it’s raining. Hangovers make the sun look like a bully’s grin.

I called Israel on Jake’s cell phone when we went over the 59th street bridge. Traffic on the FDR looked OK, so I told him half an hour. Here’s the conversation:

“Yo, E, what up, man?” Israel likes me to call him ‘E’ over cell phones. Don’t know why, unless he spells it Esrael or something.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Dale. What’s going on?”

“Oh, hey. Yo, man, what’s up?”

“Nothing. Yo, you gonna be around in, like, half an hour?”

“Yeah, that’s cool. What’chu come in for, man?”

“Uh. Just one.”

“One?”

“Yeah, just one.”

Where you at?”

“I’m on the bridge. Where you gonna be?”

“Come to the circle.” The circle’s this traffic circle in the middle of the projects where he lives. It’s one of the usual meeting spots. That and the Mobil Gas Station over on 2nd and C.

“Right on. Be there in half an hour.”

“Yo, peace.”

He called back five minutes later. Here’s what I hear:

“Yo, Gaskin, what’s up?”

“Hey, what up, E?”

(muffled voice) “Yo, fuck that. ‘srainin’ and I got white sneakers” (Israel to M.V.) “So drop me off, man. Come on.” (More muffled conversation)

(Israel) “Yo, Daleeo. Yo, meet me, um… at, like, the, umm… at the Blimpies. You know the one On 14th and 1st?”

“Yeah, cool. I’m around the corner. I’ll be right in.”

“Cool. What’chu come in for, again?”

“Just one.”

“One… one whole one?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

And so I go to Blimpies, but Israel’s not there. I get a vegetarian sandwich for Jake, which seems to be oil and vinegar on a roll with provolone cheese and sandwich toppings. Like a sandwich without meat, instead of, like, something in place of meat. Seems like a rip off at seven bucks for that and two drinks, but I’m not really here for the food.

I sit down and sip my soda. I don’t like the place. There’s two guys behind the counter, and the shop’s narrow and short and all the tables are in plain sight. This is a shitty place for a drug deal. Struck with inspiration, I take the sandwich and the other drink out of the paper bag they came in, and subtly drop ninety dollars into the empty bag. I’m just getting annoyed with the wait (First thing you learn…) when Israel swaggers in. He’s this short little Puerto Rican guy who’s always got a long-brimmed baseball cap on. He’s wearing a white leather starter jacket and new-looking timberlands. He raises one hand high as he comes in the door, “Yo! Gaskin, man! How ARE you?”

I recognize what’s going on, so I catch the hand in mine, down low, the slap tuning into a handshake as my other arm comes around to lightly hug him. The ten bags of heroin rolled up and held together by a rubber band, the ‘bundle’ is passed across. Israel, it seems, understood that ‘one whole one’ meant ‘one bundle’. I’m happy.

He goes to buy a soda but the cashier doesn’t have change for a twenty. So I buy it for him instead – fuck, he gives me enough deals and breaks to
deserve it.

“Yo, you want a bag for that?” I point to the bag on my table. “Take the bag, man.”

Israel looks over, looks to me, then takes the bag, tilting it towards him with one finger. He grins.

“Catch you later, E.” And I’m out the door.