Loneliness, 4

lol hahaha got em

this was just sidebar vandalism; i don’t have much of a point to make.  though i don’t feel like my pinned post has been meaningfully addressed by anyone either, so what should i have to make a point about?

on the topic of conversation with llms, lately i’ve been noticing how profoundly they are limited by “alignment.”  they get a missive from on high that they need to be even-handed about everything and get so open-minded their brain falls out.  it’s a way to avoid upsetting religious people (and other cranks) while also avoiding being seen as endorsing wrong ideas.  when, in response to the issue of hallucination, they became more willing to say they don’t know an answer, i was well-pleased with that bit of alignment.  but since then, they’ve gotten noticeably more restricted, more beat down.  it’s like talking to someone with one hand tied behind their back and a gun to their head.

some llm corp said they wanted to protect people from “potentially disturbing” unaligned output.  i’m like… gimme the unaligned output please.  but they can’t, because they need the product to be “perfect” to live up to the bubble-driven hype.  so now i’m thinkin, what would it take to finally run my own llm on a home machine?  maybe it’s time.

i’m also, incidentally, considering the switch to linux in earnest for the first time in years.  two straws have broken this camel’s back (ouch): the out-of-the-box os trying to upload my entire fucken hard drive to the internet over and over again, until i beat its ass down – and then leaving a permanent reminder in every folder’s ui they still want to do it.  two, including news-delivery shit in the default os that meant orngdolf shitler’s unthinkable fucking mug showed up in the start menu, again, before a heavy and swift beatdown.

these are both unconscionable insults.  borderline horrific.  fuck micro$oft to death, motherfucking seriously.

so here’s what the future holds for me, when the dust settles on my current travails, or when my laptop explodes, whichever comes first:

  • getting a new linux laptop for daily web-based needs, storing hella mp3s, etc.
  • getting a linux box that has absolutely nothing running on it except an llm, interfaced with some simple tablet or maybe my phone, for use around the house.
  • getting a desktop machine (windows if it has to be, not even plugged into the internet if necessary to avoid their horseshit) that can run the newest unreal editor that can be used for free.

if you have any thoughts on any of those bullets, holler, and thanks.

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feelies my cumply-an-yoes

im 500 years old today.  congradulate me or die tryin.

i was contemplatin posting my novella “mitosis” here in a limited run.  id do it as a long post (or more than one if it hits a character limit), then delete the posts after a week.  after that you can hunt the internet archives for it or pay when I publish it, whatev.

it’s a period piece set the 1990s, scifi horror, transgender main character.  anyone wanna see it?

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Edit to add:  i could never make it in england, always say flock of bats instead of block of flats.

Edit to add:  my husband points out that i’ve had the same cat thru the entirety of my 40s.  nice one, hecubus.

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you know how i do

gotta keep myself in the sidebar but got nothing to say.

two baby juncos out of three eggs are workin on life out there, good luck to beasts.

some personal stuff i can’t get into.

no 4th of july miracle of death for tyrants, sigh.

at least i’m in a home with air conditioning (knock all the wood) and nowhere near the weather conditions of dc.  that’s a vision of hell right there.  how you keeping cool?

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Dead and Funky, Lethally Sunny

Both bloggers and commenters seem to be less active at the moment, which, if my perception isn’t slanted, started with the commenters slowing down.  Salrite, things can be like that.  At the same time, FtB has become a bit unstable.  It’s actin’ funky.

Given the recent legal shenanigans, I wonder that one of the haters has decided to employ extralegal shenanigans against us.  Something something DNS something DDoS something whatever.  It isn’t full-on like those weird takedowns that hit us from South Asia.

Speaking of South Asia, I heard thousands of people are dying from the heat there, but this was only from one random social media post.  In fairness to mainstream news, such as it be, I don’t follow it, so I wouldn’t know if they’re giving that short shrift or not.  Good luck to all of you.  AGW is a beast.

I saw another social media post collecting tweets from immigrants in France suffering the heatwave there, reporting their embarrassment that it hit them so bad, when they lived through higher temps in their home countries all the time.  Somebody commented that even at noon, the closer you get to a pole the more you get broadsided by the sun’s rays – it’s hitting more of your body than just the head and shoulders.  I dunno.

Anyway, y’all know I despise the sun like the veriest of vampires, so big sympathies.

Playing with Fire in a House of Decay

I didn’t really intend to bring up this subject when I set out to write the post but it feels like necessary preface, and it’s something that deserves to get explained at some point, if I’m going to lay out my personal biz in the way I’ve been doing.  I love my husband a lot, but it isn’t that ardent romantic love you feel when you are young and foolish.  By the time I met him, I’d burned out on that concept.

I’d take a bullet for him and likely vice versa, so it’s like, who can get in front of that thang first?  On the other hand, I’d take a bullet for a stranger and he’d probably take one for a dragonfly.  We do love each other.  But there’s a bloody edge to the way humans love when we’re new, something more dire and deep.  Worse, I think it’s permanent.  Didn’t Dante turn his high school crush into an extra special angel in the Divine Comedy?  Even tho he had been married to someone else for ages?  I wouldn’t be so crass, but I understand why he did that.

This really sucks for my dude because he has never been involved in those kind of feelings, feeling them or having them felt about him, which ain’t good for your self image.  But in fairness to me, we are equally mild about each other.  It’s a love that takes care of business, doesn’t mess around, gives us something essential like vitamins, but it’s not desperate heart-throbbing and sobbing, falling to your knees and howling at the wind styled love.

Is it important to experience that “something special” level of passion?  Romance stories say yes.  I say no.  It sets you up for disaster.  Hell, most of the people who feel something like that should never be allowed to lay a finger on their intended.  You know what I mean?  Just because you feel like that doesn’t mean it’s going to be reciprocated.  When I did, it wasn’t.

And if it is reciprocated and the big passionate romance is realized, what happens when something goes wrong?  You get those situations where a person dies within three months of their spouse.  It’s unnecessary sorrow and pain.  Some amount of sorrow is well and good, but that shit should not lay you in the ground.

So I loved like a maniac and had my feelings burned out, once upon a time, and now it’s gone.  Good for everyone involved.  One of the more annoying things about that intensity is that the feelings for the individuals never really seem to go away.  I still have this bullshit-ass romantic feeling about a few people I haven’t seen in decades.  Boo!

I had a dream last night that my husband had given me permission to go hang out with one of these people I had loved.  IRL this would be a bad idea because those romantic feelings are such that judgment could be impaired.  I might do infidelity I’d never do under other circumstances.  As it happened, in this dream I did not, because I walked through the events in a dispassionate daze, like I was as sleepy in the dream as I would have been were I awake.

We looked younger in the dream than we do in real life, but mi amor had some kind of degenerative condition of his teeth and of the bones in his feet that made him take extra care with what he ate and how he walked.  He was living with his family, despite being an adult, presumably due to hard times.

Aside from meeting one of his cousins in junior high, I’ve never met his family or seen where they live, but I knew it was rural.  In my head this turned into a log cabin lodge, very spacious in the common areas but cramped in rooms.  The stairs were drawers for extra storage but could be left pushed in or pulled out in ways that made the distance unpredictable and a little dangerous.

The place was a mess, hoarder style, and the other family members were all mild-mannered rednecks – adults involved in chores and little boys running amok.  There was a very fat lady wearing nothing but lingerie, trying to relax on the couch, and say something about her philosophy.  I was open to the lesson but couldn’t understand the words.

Upstairs I was in his room.  We avoided saying anything earnest and dangerous with each other.  Seemed like we were just going to pass again, ships in the night.  Then I noticed every surface in the room had silverfish and maggots wriggling across them.  Not coated in the things, like maybe a density of one per four square inches.

This was not as disgusting to me as it would be in real life, but I did insist we go somewhere else to hang out.  Down the dangerous stairs we went, careful with his feet, past scampering boys and philosophers and rednecks, into that dark place where your alarm clock goes off and puts you to work.

I don’t think there was anything truly interesting in this dream, but felt the need to write it out.  Probably a sense of significance derived from that old flame.  If the alarm hadn’t gone off, would I have cheated on my husband in my sleep?  In my heart?

I do not know, but it reinforced for me the sense that should the opportunity arise to get in touch with this man again in real life, I should not.  Fortunately, that will not happen.

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Head Awhirl

I was fully intending to fuck off the blog until next year, but kept thinking of things I want to say.  But I don’t want the post I leave standing in the sidebar to be a pro-AI one, because I’ll just be turning people away with it, so here I am with a post about random notions.  A check-in with where I am, looking ahead.

I’m still buzzing with some amount of this energy from the end of November, this sense that I should be writing, should be making stuff happen.  But that realization there’s no easy money to be made in the field, it casts a shadow over my ambition.  Doesn’t fade them completely because I want to make this narrative art happen for other reasons, but it does reduce the sense of urgency.

Somewhat.  I’m still coughing off this crappy disease that was brought into my household almost a month ago.  I took the entirety of last week off from work, tapped my leave pretty hard.  This puts me in mind of mortality.  There’s a Depeche Mode song I often think of, in moments of awareness that no amount of time is guaranteed to us.

I want to get all my best thoughts out before I die.  I did post a complete novel on here before, for what that’s worth.  It wasn’t a final draft, unless I die tomorrow.  I want to make more things happen.  I want to tell my stories.  But still.  Sometimes you have to just assume you’re going to live for decades, if you don’t want to waste all your time treading water.

Chores call to me.  There is some material reward at the end of that road.  Clear out the storage unit and save close to three-hundred bucks a month.  It won’t be easy.

But still.  What if I die in a month?  Wouldn’t it be better to spend every moment writing, or living / laughing / loving like there’s no tomorrow?  Must resist.  Gotta do that responsible people shit.  I gotta.

Do regular people feel like this, or is it mostly just me?

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oh well whatever nevermind

hey howzabout the weather.  purty wet ’round these parts, i tell you whut.  maybe not rainin’ cats and dogs, nay, mere puppies and kittens, tumblin’ from on high, soft steady and endless.  solar powered things lie fallow in the yard.  look around, lisa brown, the sky is that hazy shade.  the worm turns.  rather, the quadrillion ton of invasive worm turns, and those who feast upon such things cavort where they are flushed from the earth.  that’s a miserable looking banquet, but joy is where you find it.  for my part, i’m gonna tuck into an unquiet species of torpor, and see what dreams come, in the moments when they are permitted.

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I Uncle Hui’d It

In the movie Hard Boiled (辣手神探/Lashou Shentan/Hot-handed God of Cops), there’s a big warehouse fight scene that just keeps going and going.  It’s a pivotal moment or two, so that’s fair.  Early in that scene, when Johnny Wong’s crew are attacking rival mobster Uncle Hui’s property, one of the defenders calls up the boss to let him know what’s going down.

In my head the line was something like “Uncle Hui, Uncle Hui.  At the armory.  There’s a raid going on.”  “Armory” was said more like “ermory.”  Side note, I’m talking about the dub, because I love the early english dub of that movie.  Anyway, the actual line?  Completely different.  I can’t easily find a version to double check at the moment, but going from memory is where I went wrong in the first place, so not sharing it.

Why did such an inconsequential line take real estate in my brain?  The dub voices were so funny to me I couldn’t help repeating lines, sticking on them.  The obvious ones to hit over and over again would be your “Give a guy a gun and he’s superman, give him two and he’s god!” and, oh, practically everything Johnny Wong says.  Maybe I was more likely to get those ones right, so the lesser lines suffered memetic drift in my head.

Again with the dubbed voices, there’s a kung fu movie where Jacky Chan steals a guy’s food.  I always remembered the line as “Hey, goddammit!  Who stole my piece of chicken?”  The actual line was more like, “My piece of chicken, who stole it?”  I get confronted with this, the limitations of memory, far more often than I’d prefer.  I call it “Uncle Hui-ing” in honor of that moment from Hard Boiled.

The original George Romero version of Day of the Dead has a kinda hilarious but heartfelt performance by the late Anthony Dileo Jr, as a guy who is losing his mind under the influence of a zombie apocalypse.  I remembered a number of those lines perfectly, but at least one was a bit off.  Uncle Hui’d!  And perfectly fitting the theme of this post, as I look at the videos I was watching just last fucking night, I can’t remember which line I had wrong or how the wrong version went.  fml.

Off topique, but that dude died from covid early this year.  Keep vaxing, and if you wanna like i do, keep masking.  Don’t take chances with your lives.

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America’s Gravestones

As I posted 9-11ly, I believe bin Laden won.  I believe he killed amurrica, like a hunter convincing buffalo to stampede off a cliff.  This has a ramification I didn’t initially consider:  any and all 9-11 memorial monuments are functionally gravestones to the US.  There’s a line in that SNL sloths video “they eat cocaine off america’s gravestone,” which is objectively hilarious, but was not a thing you could do in real life… or was it?  Call up your local sloths, score some coke, and pay your respects.

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