A Penetrating Pondering*

It just occurred to me that in the show Beavis and Butt-Head no home ever challenged or questioned Butt-Head’s name.

Please correct me if I’m wrong. I haven’t watched it exhaustively. I am neither a comprehensive archivist nor a renowned scholar of the works of Mike Judge… Or of anything. But I remember everyone just called him Butt-Head like they were saying Bob or Chris.

If we assume it’s a nickname — which is believable as Butt-Head is certainly a butthead — then someone would have used his proper name. Teachers maybe. But the hippie English teacher who was always trying to get the pair of fat-brains to behave civilly even called him Butt-Head.

If it’s his given name, like on his birth certificate, then that should have come up in conversation. Like “So we’re your parents precognizant, or just assholes?” Or “Can I call you ‘Buth’ for short?”

Beavis and Butt-Head are portrayed as clowns, fools, idiots, but it seems like, at least in their world, everyone has bent to accept Butt-Head’s reality without question. So who’s the fool?

Does this matter? Is it worth the mental effort to ponder? Whatever the answer, the Nosebleed episode has me ROFL every time, and that’s a precious gift from Mike Judge to me.

*Uhhhh huh huh. You said “penetrate.”

Yeah! Yeah! Then you said “Ring.” Heh heh!

But Where Does it Go?

I finally watched #ShangChi. Cool film. Yay for headless pig-chickens. But I’ve got a nag itching in my head.

I know, I know, I should just relax, accept the rule of cool, and enjoy it. And I did. If you experience nags like what is to follow when watching movies, don’t blurt while watching with other people. Enjoy the show and save it for later, like I do here. So here’s the nag. No spoilers.

There’s this dude with a stump for a hand, and a sword blade comes out of the stump. Extends and retracts at will. So where the heck does it go? There’s gotta be a sheathe running up the center of his arm and up past his elbow to hold that blade when it retracts. It’s not a claymore blade, more like a machete, but that’s dang long. He let someone do that kind of surgery on him? And it worked? And can he even bend his elbow when there’s an energized blade shoved up in there?

Next obvious question: what about Wolverine? Those claws are long. When they retract, say the adantium-plated bone spurs nestle just behind his knuckles. So the back ends go through his wrists. Like splints. His wrist must be frozen, immobile. Forget about tennis. No swordplay or karate. No supple subtle motions to his good morning routine, if you get my meaning.

Back to the henchman in Shang Chi. Could it be the blade doesn’t retract?maybe it’s nanotech, or some kind of on-demand collapsing/expanding molecular structure. Right. If that were possible, and someone mastered the design, would they really just use it to stick a sword on a guy and call it good?

Stark had morphing nanotech in the MCU. So it could have been tech stolen from him. But again, if you had that, would you just use it to hide a sword on a guy’s hand stump? Why not just give him a new hand? Then he could cool stuff like, you know, pick things up. Like maybe a selection of weapons. Or a messy sandwich. He’d be a happier dude if he could hold a beer in one hand and a bratwurst in the other. I promise.

Depths of the Flash

It seems to me that the superhero The Flash would have to be super strong, not just super fast. I can’t quote comic book statistics or anything. Can’t remember if he goes supersonic or just really really fast. But let’s say he goes 300mph.

The way he’s always shown, his acceleration is instantaneous. 0-300 in 0 seconds. He does this with his body. Someone smarter than me can calculate the force necessary to propel an adult male to such speeds. His bones do not shatter under the sudden force. His muscles and ligaments, while creating this force, do not shred, do not tear free from his skeleton. He pumps his arms and legs at hummingbird speeds, but his mass is so much greater than a hummingbird’s. His organs do not pulp and bleed under the whip-lash gees. His lungs do not hemmorage from the wind, but take each gulp and transmit the necessary oxygen to his blood.

How many hundreds of strides per second, each blurred footfall slamming the ground, propelling his body at such great speed?

And he can stop on a dime, too. My patellae would turn to bone-dust jelly.

Wouldn’t he have to be immensely strong to do all this? Skeleton strong enough to take the strain, musculature fit enough to expend such force. Surely he could throw a bus. Punch a foe into orbit.

This is what I think about when world building. You may be adding only one extraordinary element to an otherwise familiar world, but that element will exist in that world, and that world will react and adapt to that change. Everything is connected to the environment it exists in. Can’t change one thing in isolation: change one thing, and you change the environment.

Thinking of Haiku

I appreciate the influence of constraint in driving creativity. I work best with limits to work against. I read somewhere long ago that the 5-7-5 structure of Haiku was more of a western invention, imposed by us in translation… Don’t know what that source was, and it was probably wrong. Never be afraid to learn that what you think is correct is incorrect.

I found this interesting source, though: https://poets.org/glossary/haiku

This article supports the 5-7-5 structure as being original, traditional, but a rule that’s been routinely broken (by westerners? Probably by everyone). A poem that breaks the structure is still considered haiku by many, so long as it satisfies other constraints. Brevity, can be spoken in one breath, a sense of enlightenment or insight. So I guess, if you ever write a haiku and hit the perfect expression of meaning in just 4 syllables on the last line, you should still enjoy your haiku.

I use too many words

Like an anxious engineer

My designs weigh too much.

No Lego is Illegal

The word of the day is ‘gobshite’.

I was just reading this article about ‘illegal lego techniques’ and I had to stop. I’m not gonna go look for it, not gonna link it here. If Lego could be a religion, this article was blasphemy.

Hell, maybe lego could be a religion. At the very least, it’s an embodiment of a philosophy about human creativity, ingenuity, and progress. And personally, I find God to exist in human creative power, and I think that sentient beings expressing their greatest potential of creativity is the highest form of worship. You wanna believe in God of some sort? Then God gave you that brain. So use the whole thing, and respect what others have done with theirs.

That was a hell of a digression. Pardon me. Getting back to this offensive article, here are some ideas the author posited:

1. There is a right way to put bricks together.
2. Lego designers intend you to build the sets exactly as designed. If you don’t you’re wrong.
3. It’s really rewarding for your hard work to build a set perfectly.
4. It’s so frustrating to end up with missing pieces.
5. If you put bricks together in a way outside of intention, this is ‘illegal.’

There is so so much wrong with this. I’ll respond in kind, and try to keep it short.

1. Yes, and that ‘right’ way is the way you do it. If you put bricks together in a way you figure out for yourself, you can call this ‘extra right’ if you want. But there is no wrong.
2. Has the author ever actually played with Lego? Or any kind of construction toy? Or paper and crayons, even? Even before the Lego Movie built its whole plot on ‘make what you wanna make,’ every child knew that building your own thing is the real point. Build the set, ‘ooh, ahh, swoosh,’ smash it, pour the bits into the pile, stir, and begin true fun. Make what you wanna.
3. True. Building sets is fun, rewarding, and a great way to learn new techniques, expand beyond your own proclivities. (example: I like working play functions, gears and levers and stuff, but my vision tends toward aesthetic building. When I try to make a function, it tends to be clunky or fragile. I like building sets to get ideas how to make better functions.)
4. I think this author was stupid, or not good at following steps. I mean, I know I was just talking up the virtues of free-wheeling creativity, but if you want to build a set, just do the steps in order, and pay attention. There’s no words, just pictograms. Maybe I’m lucky, but in all the very very many sets I’ve bought, I’ve never once had a missing piece. It’s inconceivable that TLG could achieve a 100% perfect success rate on such a huge production system as theirs. There must be some sets sometimes with a missing piece. But for this author to have seemingly experienced missing pieces on the regular, I suspect he suffers form a bit of a case of gobshitery. Perhaps this sounds harsh, but I stand by it.
5. Piffle, bollocks and codswallop. True, there is a whooooole lot that goes into designing a particular Lego piece. There is a mathematical standard of measure that gives every piece a relationship, oriented in any direction, relative to other pieces. So there are ways to fit almost any piece, at many orientations, relative to other pieces. Most Lego pieces have an ‘up’ and thee are many many ways designed by TLG to circumvent that ‘up’. And that’s just within the system. Sometimes a builder finds an unintended way pieces can be fit together, and it works, and with it the builder can build new things, express artistry through creative engineering. A cheese slope wasn’t meant to slot into a block to achieve SNOT, but so what? It works very very well. The back of a VW beetle wasn’t meant to go onto the front of a Subaru Brat, but it works, so there ya go. Bet this author would also miss the beauty of you expressing your sould in a profound haiku, and just pick on it for not adhering to the imaginary 5-7-5 format rule.

Said I wouldn’t share the link, but here ya go. Don’t read it. Just go do your art. Study all the right techniques. Master them. But then, when you are ready to produce, make it how you love it. Make it work your way.

The Cheese that Brings da Funk

Roquefort has to be the nastiest of cheeses, when judged by smell or appearance. At least the nastiest I’ve cooked with. How’d it ever become accepted as food? Must have been a mistake.

Cheese, or aerial footage of a toxic sludge spill in the Arctic?

I mean really? That band of dry grey-blue mold carving a canyon across it, and it’s edible? You may have heard the quote “He was a brave man who first ate an oyster.” Well, what about the cheese maker who first found a cheese ruined with sludgy blue grey mold, stinking like the flatulence of a dead horse, and thought, “but I am hungry.”

Goat-leggings required.

Look at this little mold cave. Look close. Looks like the kind of guano cavern where I’d expect to find a host of demons giving damned souls shit swirlies for all eternity.

And yet, despite all the squick, I’m gonna eat this hell-smeg, and like it. Stuff it inside halved figs, arrange atop arugula, drop on some pepper, balsamic and evoo, and call it a fancy salad.

Looks like if the Devil made deviled eggs.

Guess there’s a metaphor and a lesson in that. Something about even gross, undesirable things having a place and a purpose or value or whatever. Don’t judge a cheese by its butt-stank?

I dunno. I’ll leave you to find meaning in my Roquefort. It’s half-three. Time for a pint.

Progress Notes

I’m building a website: an interactive choose-your own adventure story. That’s the learning project I set up for myself. Fun with HTML, CSS and Javascript. I want the site to change as the story does.

(It’s far from complete, but it’s here if you want to sniff it.)

Finish the content and function.

The more I learn, the more I must do. After the project is “done,” I think it won’t be. I think I’ll go through these phases:

1. Finish content as is, which is mostly optimized for big screen, regular computing, like it’s 1999. Shows my age.
2. Study reactivity better and optimize the project across devices.
3. Study ARIA practices, roll accessibility features in. I want to learn that stuff well.
4. Offer up images in multiple resolutions, so the browsers can pick best for the connection/device. That’s a funky thing, part of # 2, but maybe I want to do it separately.

There will be more to do. #1 is pretty big, all alone. Finish the story content, all the Js and CSS to do the game-style functions and transform the site. Create and add art that transforms, figure out hovering onclick divs to let the art be seen. Add more linked content. Get the actual story to transform at certain points. Lots to do. Just have to keep reminding myself to divide and conquer.

Hopefully when I’m done with all that, I’ll remember to come back here and begin the other phases.

Writing a better me.

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Someone important said that. Not me, but I’m trying to run with it.

The pandemic sucks. Can’t deny that. I’m in a very fortunate situation: still employed, etc. It’s a health-care job, I’m a bit exposed to risk, though nothing like the exposure risk ER workers face on the daily. Props to them. Can’t complain about putting on gloves, mask and face shield to sell glasses to a population generally compliant with mask-wearing in a region that’s not too hot on the case-load currently, when there’s people donning full-on bunny suits to care for patients who are actually sick and contagious.

So I’m working, and mostly laying low off shift. Bars and restaurants are open in my area, but we’re mostly avoiding them. No theaters, no concerts, no big travel plans. More time at home. So I’m trying, again, to learn to code. I started learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript a couple of years ago. Made good progress, but then got discouraged because I hit a point where I just didn’t know what to study. So many languages, how do I know where to focus my time? How do I learn about the shape of the industry, what skills employers are looking for? How do I make sure I don’t spend weeks learning something that’s obsolete? This is what frustrated me in the past.

So why am I trying again? What changed? As I mentioned, I’ve got more time at home. And then my wife sent me this blog post from Microsoft. There’s a lot of info there, but the gist is that Microsoft, LinkedIn and GitHub have made a lot of learning content free, and a lot of certifications free or very cheap. The learning paths are what got me re-hooked. They provide some structure to self-study, guideposts, and info on how all the different skills work together. Studying different languages on my own a couple of years ago using SoloLearn, inference, intuition, and internet searches got me a good ways. But the lessons were a bit like, “Here’s an adjustable wrench, and how it works. And this is a socket wrench and all the attachments. Aren’t they neat? Now you’re a mechanic!” I made what connections I could. Now that I’ve been following the Linedin Learning Software Developer path for a while, I’ve been getting more info like “here’s how you tell what kind of wrench is best suited for each task, and how to use the tools in conjunction to achieve greatest results.”*

The paths aren’t perfect. There’s still plenty of info I have to hunt for on my own. But my understanding of what I’m missing is getting better. I wish the modules had more project-based learning, as most people learn better by doing, not just absorbing info. I’ve set up my own project, and that’s what I’d advise anyone who wants to get into this: when you start learning code, be ready to start making things you’re interested in from the get-go. Find or create projects for yourself.

*: In case you wonder, I am reasonable wrench-savvy. Hope the analogy holds up. 😛

Good Stuff: L.I.F.E. in the 23rd Century by Jason R. Richter

I realized recently that you can measure the state of the union with Saturday Night Live as a barometer. It’s dark days for America when SNL is entertaining, troubled times when they have material to work with.

Following that notion, it’s no shocker to find a lot of comedy in new dystopian stories, and Jason R. Richter’s L.I.F.E. falls right in that vein. His vision of the future takes some of our brightest* qualities and cranks them to eleven: mindless consumerism, war-mongery, xenophobia, Christano-centrism (is that the word?), dependence on quick-fix psychopharmacology, hyper-sensitivity, reactionism, sheepism, use of the word “freedom” as a distracing bludgeoun while destroying the reality of the concept, our inability to deal with anything, and generally being collectively f$@#-witted.

(*: I said brightest qualities. Most visible, not best.)

I think this needed to be a comedy. Without the buffering jokes, the disheartening reality of the world in this book would hit way too close to the life we live in. It would feel like a tale of tomorrow, not of 200 years in the future. And that’s the point. Comedy functions to package awful concepts in palatable forms. You laugh and say “That’s so true!” But you keep on thinking about the idea, the concept, the warning. And you stop laughing. That is where this book fits; it its credit, and our detriment, L.I.F.E. is more of a mirror than it initially seems to be.

Good Stuff: Abomination

Have you ever had to give a book two attempts?

This was one of those for me.

Gary Whitta’s writing goes deep into both the history of the story and the hearts of the characters, delivering a full, rich immersion into a very real and immediate-feeling Dark-Ages England.

The first time I tried to read Abomination I think I was restless. I usually prefer books that read like a Luc Besson movie; Pow! pow! Blam! …sexy bit… gogoGO BIG FINISH and explode.

Yeah, like that.

Maybe that makes me seem shallow. I dunno. I just get very impatient sometimes. I needed a book that moved fast like a river. Gary Whitta’s writing is more like an ocean current – deep, wide, but don’t think it’s not moving! I promise you, this book takes the werewolf/monster genre to thrilling, brutal, emotionally vibrant new places. (Fun fact: it’s not a wolf.)

The magic, the richness of the characters, the grotesquerie of the fiends in the fully-realized and very immediate historical setting stayed in my mind, and pulled me back when I was ready for a book to really sink into. The light is failing. Autumn’s closing in. Nights are growing longer. Time for a book about grappling with the darkness that lurks within all or us, eh?