My Musings

PS-Ashley Rocks!

Sunday, December 29, 2002

Nationals, Part One: The Plane Ride

On and off throughout the course of the entire winter break this year, I’ve been trying to write a huge, monster entry about my weekend at the chess nationals in Atlanta held earlier this month. Almost immediately I saw that the entry was getting nowhere. Quick to grab the problem by the reins, I began an unrelenting campaign to end it, primarily by whining a whole lot about my writer’s block to everybody. This is what I generally do to try to solve a lot of my problems, such as the fact—as I’m sure I’ve mentioned about fifty times already to any of you who I see on a somewhat regular basis—that I’ve lost my biology book. Instead of doing something like, say, perhaps looking for the book, I instinctively see ways to bring it up in virtually any conversation. I don’t even do it on purpose. Guys—if you’re sick of hearing me complain about how I lost my biology book, I am really truly sorry, it just seems to acquire relevance to every single topic. Like the chess tournament. My lost biology book HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the chess tournament, and yet here I am, going on and on about it. But just to give you an example:

Person: I can’t believe we have a bio test tomorrow. I don’t know anything.
Boris: I know! And what’s worse, I lost my biology book, so I can’t even study the dang stuff.

Person: I don’t have a study hall because it doesn’t fit into my schedule.
Boris: Oh, I would DIE if I didn’t have a study hall. I use it sometimes to do math and history, and since I lost my bio book, I have to use the one in the study hall to read the assignments.

Person: Oh no! I left my wallet with 500 dollars cash and a signed blank check that I was planning to give to Harry and all my credit cards and my home address on top of a bar stool at the strip club I went to last Saturday!!
Boris: Well, at least you didn’t lose your biology book, like I did. It’s the most expensive book you could lose and I have to read all the chapters in study hall.

So you see, it somehow becomes extremely relevant to every single facet of my life that I, Boris Dvorkin, lost my biology book. Now, in the case of the biology book, whining, I’m sad to admit, doesn’t help. But in the course of my wailing about my awful case of writer’s block, I stumbled upon Lila, who offered me some wonderful advice. Confessing that she really lacks the attention span to read anything that lasts longer than about 19 letters, Lila suggested that I ditch the whole monster entry idea and just write about the tournament in a series of installments, which would allow me to hold true to the one page limit. I was hesitant at first, but coming up with no better solution myself, I decided to follow Lila’s advice. This first installment was supposed to be about the plane ride to Atlanta, but as you can see I’m already nearing a page and I haven’t even gotten to the part of the story where I wake up, much less the actual flight. I got carried away with the whole biology book thing, which frankly I don’t know how I got started on, and I’m too lazy to check, and too lazy to delete all this and start over, so I guess I’ll take another crack at writing about the plane ride up to Atlanta in an upcoming entry.

.: posted by Boris 6:07 PM

Sunday, December 22, 2002

Little Kids

I hate little kids. They’re mean and stupid. Mean, because they make fun of fat kids. And stupid, because they don’t realize that it’s not necessarily the fat kids’ fault that they’re fat. Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Aha! I found a hole in Boris’s logic! His sole basis for saying that kids are mean is the fact that they make fun of fat kids, but obviously fat kids don’t make fun of themselves, thus they are not mean, thus not all little kids are mean, and thus Boris is wrong, as usual.”

I have to admit, that was pretty impressive of you. It’s a pretty good argument. Very good, actually, when one considers that you came up with it in, what, ten seconds, probably less, however long it takes to read four sentences. Unfortunately, you’re wrong. Here’s why: take a fat kid and give him liposuction, turn him into one of the normal kids, and you know what he’ll do? He’ll turn right around and start making fun of the fat kids that used to be his friends. We all know it’s true. In fact, it serves as even greater proof of how evil little kids are. I hate them.

.: posted by Boris 10:36 PM

Sunday, December 08, 2002

Crack Confusion

Much as it may embarrass me to do so, I have to bring up something serious that was recently brought to my attention. In the previous blog entry I described a blue fish AIM tongue smiley as looking like “a large quantity of crack was recently forced up its nasal tract.” But as Marina pointed out,

fly197: one does NOT snort crack! that's cocaine

I frankly don’t know anything about drugs and have no idea what crack and cocaine are like. For all I know they come in pink chewable tablets sold in childproof aspirin bottles in aisle 5 at CVS. Marina, on the other hand, I’m sure has years of personal first-hand experience with drugs of all kinds, so I’ll have to trust her here. I hereby make an official correction to my blog: the description of the fish smiley in the “Smileys” entry should read that the fish looked like “a large quantity of cocaine was recently forced up its nasal tract,” not that “a large quantity of crack was recently forced up its nasal tract.” And let me just say that whatever was forced up the nasal tract of the idiot who designed those terrifying animal smileys, I greatly appreciate the keen eyes of the readers that make this a better blog. If you ever fined even the most minutest mistakes in here please don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll be sure to fix them right away and make fun of you a lot about it.

Since I still have half a page left, I guess I’ll use it to tie up some loose ends. Michelle’s blogs are gone from the links section because she’s given up doing them. Part of this is my fault, and the other part is that Blogger seems to hold some sort of personal grudge against Michelle’s computer. The problems started when I offered to put links into Michelle’s blog. She gave me her password and we were all set, but when I logged into her name I found that I couldn’t get into her blogs. Michelle logged out to see what the problem was and when she logged back in, she could no longer get into her blogs, either. We emailed Blogger about it but since they have so many users it’s doubtful that they will ever reply. So Michelle made a new blog. But then after a while she couldn’t get into THAT, either, whereas I could. Basically I think Michelle’s computer pissed Blogger off at some point—maybe it had an affair with Blogger’s mom—and now Blogger is doling out revenge. Whatever happened, Michelle is ticked off and not doing blogs anymore. The links section looks awfully short and pathetic without Michelle’s blogs in there, and I hope that Michelle’s computer and Blogger sort out whatever trivial personal quarrels they had so that Michelle can start writing again.

On a happier note, Adam’s connection to Redace got fixed and his web page is now officially being updated again. I added a link to his site and I urge you all to take a look. In addition to having entries personally written by Adam in a blog-like fashion, the site has a huge collection of downloadable MIDI files and all of Adam’s widely heralded quote lists, plus other goodies. For those of you who have seen my computer, the background I have on it was taken from one of the numerous images Adam has on his site, way back in the day when it was still at Stargate and all the pictures were in a nice thumb-nailed section. Now they’re in a parent directory and you don’t see the picture until you actually click on it, but since Adam’s updating his site again maybe he’ll change that…(nudge nudge)

.: posted by Boris 2:04 PM

Monday, December 02, 2002

Smileys

Andy, I put this blog here for you so that you don’t get jealous of the fact that Mandy and I talk online all the time. This is what we invariably end up talking about:

Chessmen15: mind if I tell Steven? :-D
Buffy4386: WHY are you using that face?
Chessmen15: because I'm kidding
Chessmen15: though!
Chessmen15: it does leave you with the opportunity to say yes
Buffy4386: You do no it shows up as :-D, right?
Chessmen15: yes...
Chessmen15: what did you think I meant?
Buffy4386: And not an actualy face....
Chessmen15: oh no
Chessmen15: ohhh no
Chessmen15: you don't see the faces anymore!
Buffy4386: Do a smiley
Chessmen15: :-)
Chessmen15: :-P
Chessmen15: :-D
Buffy4386: You're doing the command wrong!!
Buffy4386: : - P
Chessmen15: Mandy...they are on my screen...
Buffy4386: Not : - d
Chessmen15: as smileys...
Chessmen15: wait
Chessmen15: so when I type :-D do you see a smiley or just a compressed version of : - d
Buffy4386: Does that show up? B/c that's : - P
Chessmen15: yes, it shows up
Buffy4386: A compressed version.
Chessmen15: oh dear
Chessmen15: Mandy!
Chessmen15: now look what you've done!
Buffy4386: Type in :- P
Chessmen15: :-P
Chessmen15: it's a smiley over here
Buffy4386: There!
Chessmen15: what?!
Buffy4386: I'm SO rigjt
Buffy4386: right
Chessmen15: whoa, whoa, whoa
Chessmen15: I've been typing them in the same way all along
Chessmen15: :-P :-P :-P :-P
Buffy4386: There, those are ALL correct.
Chessmen15: wha...?
Chessmen15: okay, how about:
Chessmen15: :-D
Buffy4386: No
Chessmen15: well then!

Okay, I realize that this is longer than a page already, but just barely, and it’s pretty fast reading anyway. And the conversation kept going. For another three pages. I thought about posting it all here, but it’s hard to follow and, frankly, not very funny. At all. Or even remotely interesting. So I just cut it there to give you all a sense of the sort of deep and meaningful exchanges Mandy and I share online. Because online smileys are extremely important things, and if we don’t argue and whine about them to no effect, nobody will. And Mandy, for the love of god, those blue fish are awful. Could you just delete AOL and start using AIM and the regular yellow smiley faces like normal people? Please? I’d like to argue more about various smiley issues, but I have a nagging feeling that I will get to talk about them again with Mandy soon and I don’t want to use up all my fuel here. Coming up next: Mandy and I Make Fun Of Each Other’s Typos. Actually while I was typing this, it happened again:

Buffy4386: And Kenny had a microphone in his thing, so he was talking to me.
Buffy4386: It was SOOO cool.
Chessmen15: cool!
Chessmen15: neeeeat
Buffy4386: I was jumping around with enjoymen.
Chessmen15: hehe
Buffy4386: t
Chessmen15: yeah
Buffy4386: [psycho grinning blue fish]
Chessmen15: enjoymen is just a...funny word
Buffy4386: [the psycho blue fish has now stopped grinning and is instead sticking out his/her/its tongue in an attempt to appear kidding and playful, but that only makes it look as though a large quantity of crack was recently forced up its nasal tract]
Chessmen15: if you delete the intervening words, you get...
Chessmen15: I...enjoymen
Buffy4386: That's funn.y Now you're being like Steven thiough. I..kill...
Chessmen15: what?!
Chessmen15: ohhh
Buffy4386: Remeber....
Buffy4386: ?
Buffy4386: +m
Chessmen15: gotcha gotcha
Chessmen15: kkkikill
Buffy4386: Yeah!
Buffy4386: That!
Chessmen15: yep
Buffy4386: Yes indeedy.

Whoo, here I am at three pages. But just for the record, this entry so far only has…599 words. The previous one, however, which was only a page long, had…680. I figure I’m in the clear. And with these parting words, I part you.

.: posted by Boris 10:07 PM

Sunday, December 01, 2002

This Blog Entry Is Really Really Short, I Swear!

To make a long story short—and trust me, I could turn this into such a long story that it would make you want to disengage your spinal cord from the rest of your body—at euchre club yesterday we were all talking about my last blog entry and Steven was like, “Huh? What happened with Dan?”, and I snottily replied, “Well, SOMEBODY hasn’t been reading my blog!”, to which Steven retorted, “I don’t READ your blog—my god, it’s so LONG!”

That earnestly hurt. When Andy first complained about my blog’s propensity for digression and wandering, I wrote it off as lack of taste on Andy’s part. But I now wonder how I could have been so dumb. Though as a young kid Andy hated reading, he now reads more than just about anybody I know. So if there’s something he’s not willing to read, and he has a reason for not reading it, then perhaps the person who writes the thing which he is not willing to read should do something about it. It’s sad that it took another person’s complaint for me to realize this, but, I suppose, better late than never. There have now been two people who have told me that my blog entries are too long, compared to zero who have told me that they are either too short or of the proper length, so starting now I have imposed a limit of one single-spaced page, including spaces, on all my blog entries.

Today’s entry—which, if you will note, is really only half a page long because I just wasted the first half of the page talking about how my blog can only be a page long, which if you think about it is a pretty dumb thing to do if you only have a page in which to write something, but then again, my brilliance, as Marina would say, knows no bounds—is about my spacebar. I don’t know the exact statistics here but I’m fairly sure that the spacebar is the most often-pressed key on the keyboard, and I use the keyboard a lot, so naturally I really love my spacebar. Unfortunately some members of my household don’t fully seem to grasp the proper level of respect that the spacebar deserves, so when I returned home in mid-July after three weeks at debate camp I found my spacebar broken. Somehow it had been unhinged in my absence, functioning only when hit square in the middle. Fortunately this is where I usually hit it anyway, but few things are as aggravating as periodically hitting the spacebar off to the right or left and having it not respond, forcing you to grumble and backspace and try again. You know it’s a sad world when a man can’t leave for debate camp without knowing if his spacebar will be whole when he returns. I asked Dan about it online and he tried to give me a walkthrough of how to fix it. While my fiddlings with it seemed to help a little, the poor spacebar was still depressingly broken.

So imagine my surprise when at euchre club yesterday Dan emerged from my computer room having successfully accomplished in about 16 seconds what I had been trying in vain for four months. “Oh, by the way Boris, your spacebar’s fixed.” I could only stare at Dan in overjoyed shock and mumble thanks as I prepared to bow before him and kiss his feet. Regrettably I didn’t get that far because a pressing game of euchre could be heard calling us, but I would like to take this moment to thank Dan from the bottom of my heart for fixing my spacebar, and also to say that that I am nearing a page already, which means I must stop. If this upsets you, feel free to take it up with Andy and Steven. And if it doesn’t, then you suck, because I WANT TO KEEP WRITING THIS ENTRY DAMMIT BUT I HAVE TO STOP NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo…