The Runcible Blog

Earlier this evening, the shacknet.nu domain expired, and nunames.nu replaced the domain with a parking site. I sent an email to dyndns.org, who are responsible for that domain, and they renewed the domain for another 10 years (!). Their response seemed to indicate that they didn't know they were responsible for shacknet.nu. Either way, everything should be fixed now, and eventually funk.shacknet.nu will be back in DNS across the globe. It's a little annoying though...

update: It looks like it might take up to a whole day for the DNS to propagate! imagine all the important email I'll lose! (not really)

Since I'm not too keen about dyndns.org's reliability (though I really appreciate that they offer some useful free services), I went and bought another domain name. I already bought ADullMoment.com earlier this year, but I haven't really done anything with it other than switch my email to that domain. I had some ideas about content for adullmoment.com, but they were half-baked. Although I'll probably develop some content for that site, I present my newest domain:

Eventually I'd like to move away from funk.shacknet.nu, but that'll take a while. In the meantime, I'll have that nice poem on the front page and maybe a few other things there soon.

This guy at The Nation had something interesting to say about the capture.

Prime Realestate

The news accounts portrayed Saddam's hideout as a "spider hole", an underground ditch, but this little hideaway doesn't look half bad! It looks like a typical cozy one room apartment which might cost several hundred bucks per month in a big city. Sure, there aren't any windows, and there isn't much ventilation, but it appears to be fully equipped with a kitchen, running water, and an oven. There's also a bed, what looks like a couch, and an entertainment center! And considering Saddam had $700,000 cash in his bachelor pad, he could've thrown some extravagant parties! And is it just me, or does this picture remind you of Terry Kiser, A.K.A "Bernie Lomax" from Weekend at Bernie's (not to mention Weekend at Bernie's II)?

Seriously though, I'm a little put-off by the bloodthirstiness and propaganda surrounding Saddam's capture. I can understand why the Iraqi people would want to exact revenge on their former dictator, but when Americans gloat about ousting the dictator, it sounds more like cheering for the home team's touchdown than anything else. Even though he was a brutal tyrant, I wouldn't call for his head on a pike. What good would killing him do? In that picture I see an old man who just lost everything, including his two sons. That can't be a good feeling. Personally I hope he goes to jail for the rest of his short life, but ultimately it should be up to the Iraqi people to decide his fate.

So, although it isn't a popular thing to say, I have mixed feelings about his capture. It's good that he's "off the streets", but I doubt he was pulling any strings from his underground shack. Maybe now the Iraqi people can sleep with a little less fear though. On the other hand, I hope his possible torture and execution doesn't continue the violence he started. Two wrongs don't make a right. Just lock him up and throw away the key.

I wonder if those cheerleading Saddam's capture are also hoping for the swift toppling of Uzbekistan's own tin-pot dictator, Islam Karimov, a man who receives lots of aid from the U.S. and who happens to enjoy boiling his opponents alive. And somehow I doubt today's cheerleaders were making any noise when Saddam was a good buddy of the U.S.

Today's friendly dictator is tomorrow's bitter enemy. It's only a matter of time before every US subject is required to hiss and yell at a picture of Osama bin Forgotten for the "two minutes hate" every day.

Do you ever briefly forget who you are when you wake up in the morning?

Last night I had the most bizarre telephone related experience ever. There is a feature available on the phone that is so cool, weird, and powerful that I almost don't want to reveal what it is lest it become even more abused. But I'll tell you anyway.

It's called Sprint Relay Online, which apparently is a relatively new service. Anyone from anywhere can go to that website, type in a phone number, and be connected with a "relay operator" whose job it is to read aloud to the recipient anything that you type. After the operator reads the text and says "go ahead", you speak your response, and the operator types it for the other party. Talk about a creepy experience! The entire conversation is relayed through an operator in a call center somewhere. You really have to try it out to know what I'm talking about. Here's what their FAQ says:

4. Are there any charges for using Internet Relay?
No, there are no charges for making calls through the Sprint Relay Online. No charges for long distance calls. Free calls!

5. Is it secure? Are my calls private?
Secure! Private! Your calls are handled with full respect to confidentiality. There are security measures to ensure that your calls are made in complete privacy.

I know it's a system designed for the convenience of deaf/mute people, but nothing stopped my friend Amie from typing some totally ridiculous things to me and having an innocent operator swear at me. It's priceless!

I can't even imagine what sort of things those relay operators have to read and type.

Try it out before Sprint realizes the Pandora's box they've just developed. It's like a guilty pleasure (unless you're deaf/mute...in which case, it's a useful service) worth minutes of hilarity.

I wish I could shut off my nose while I'm sleeping. Sometimes early in the morning I wake up to the smell of cooking food. Most recently it was pasta sauce, but it never smells pleasant in the morning. I don't know why; I usually smell oniony meatloaf -- even if it isn't.

While eating at my aunt's house in Derry I saw a typical suburban family taking a stroll around the neighborhood. A little girl, maybe 8 years old, started chasing after her younger brother. Father yelled to her, "You don't run like this! (imitating her flailing arms). Tuck your elbow in!"

If I cared more about those yuppie slugs I would have run out there and dope slapped the guy for giving his kid a hard time about her stride. But I don't care enough. Unfortunately, these suburban kids are growing up in a world of dreadfully boring wealth and eerily quiet neighborhoods. Their parents micro-manage their lives in an attempt to make up for a lost childhood or a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams. It's an urgent rush to cram everything into their little lives as possible -- ballet, football, baseball, pony rides, basketball, karate, music lessons, ad nauseam.

For once I was happy to return to Lawrence, to return to sanity.

Wednesday was the Annual Central Catholic Alumni Cross Country Race (or ACCACCR for the acronym-inclined). Although I had time to think about training for the race, I didn't quite have time to train. But watching was tiring enough. Afterwards, everyone met in the gym for the Annual Post-Race Pizza Fest (APRPF). Nothing mixes better than cross country running and pizza.

Since I hadn't seen any of my former teammates and teachers in about a year, I was curious to see how everyone is handling college, or teaching, or whatever. in the process, I realized a couple mildly profound things:

I still don't have much in common with my classmates/teammates. I didn't throughout high school, and I don't now. It seemed to me that no one had changed much since high school -- that college was merely a continuation of the same homogeneity, the same comforting mediocrity to which everyone aspired in high school. Maybe I'm being too harsh considering I didn't have the time, will, or opportunity to converse deeply with my former acquaintances. But at first glance, everybody looked the same (same as eachother and same as they did two years ago), and, more importantly, everybody conformed to the same roles they did back then.

I sort of talked about it before, but it's more apparent now. I think I spent my high school career trying to fit in with insular people and lost a lot of opportunities to be myself. It's almost like my growth as a person was stunted rather than nourished by my high school experiences. Of course it's not that simple. Decisions I made back then (even ones that prevented me from being myself) make me who I am today -- whoever that is. If I could go back in time to freshman year of high school I'd probably tell myself to be more outgoing, learn more about important issues, and forget about trying to feel validated by one clique or another. Easier said than done.

Another thing I thought: boy, if I was as "cool" in high school as I am today, my life would've been quite different. That sentence is almost laughably embarrassing, but it's true. I feel that I have to clarify, explain, rationalize, elucidate on the "coolness" factor, but I won't. Suffice it to say, I'm not exactly cool now, so that sentence isn't saying much...

These small reunions give me an opportunity to think about high school, try to make sense of my time there and understand the culture of today's inmates. The other 364 days in the year I'd rather just file those memories away in a dusty cabinet. I was once again reminded of the smug, "I'm better than you little high school kids/teachers because I graduated" attitude prevalent in recent graduates. Personally, I try to watch myself and be a little more humble and empathetic, but who knows, I might seem just as smug. At any rate, every year the previous graduating class returns to walk on their tiptoes, stick out their chests, speak with a deeper voice, and sarcastically shake hands with their former teachers. They might say things like, "College is great/sucks", "you still teach here??", "I remember when the lockers were a different color/there was an extra door somewhere/there weren't uniforms/we didn't have as many electives. Now, it's so different!". I overheard one recent grad say that he was just stopping by to pick something up and that he decided a while ago that he didn't want to be "that guy who visits high school every year." Good thinking -- you might get cooties otherwise.

As early as the summer after graduation, high school all of a sudden becomes ancient history; those 4 years can be recalled with a kind of supercilious nostalgia, a naïve superiority that hopefully evaporates with time. It's tough for me to dredge up fond memories of the time. Actually, it's tough to remember anything from high school. My time there passed in a blur like wiping a sponge across a detailed oil painting landscape.

The school essentially molds students into little, productive cogs. Admittedly, we're supposed to be Catholic, "upper-middle-class" cogs, but cogs nonetheless. The credo used to say something about "fostering future leaders" or some such hoo-hah, which seems like a classic example of a roper-doper. Hardly any student understands that message of "leadership". In fact, leadership seems contrary to the idea of a religious education. Sure, there were some leaders -- the officially sanctioned, kosher ones who towed the line. Hey kids, it's cool to be a leader...as long as you follow authority figures!

While I was talking with a religion teacher someone mentioned that another teacher was lecturing about phallic symbols, to which the first teacher expressed concern. I hope he was just kidding though. "Catholic" supposedly means universal, inclusive, but you wouldn't guess that by attending a catholic school. Most of the material is skewed, edited, censored, or otherwise limited. Curiosity is discouraged; creativity is squelched. It's no wonder many of my classmates end up having children too young -- teachers weren't allowed to explain how not to get knocked up.

Though I'm not keen about catholic schools, I can't criticize the teachers who are dedicated to their jobs. Sometimes it seems, however, that the quality control for teachers stinks. There are some good ones, few great ones, and far too many awful ones. A teacher who will remain nameless couldn't believe that my class had close-minded cliques when I tried telling him about it. But isn't that how every high school class is?

To summarize: In high school, everybody tries to figure out which segregated group they belong in, most kids waste time thinking that some other people are cooler and as a result take out their frustrations on others, "leaders" exist in name only, and the school hopes to subdue its population just long enough to package, polish and ship the students off to their next stop in life's assembly line: college. Administrators say, "don't hesitate to come back" with feigned warmth while they dust off their hands and start molding the next batch of cogs.

Enough with high school. That's ancient history, dude.

I look forward to next year's reunion...