October 2002 - Happy Halloweenie
RayzRealm (c) October, 2002

Ahhh October, a month filled with brisk clear football weather days and waning daylight hours, culminating in the high unholy day of Halloween. This year allied forces will be knocking on Saddam's bunker door, "trick or treat" dressed in level-4 suits and blue United Nations helmets, demanding all of his nuclear, biological and chemical treats, or else 250,000 of their friends will egg his his house with daisy cutters, bunker busters and cruise missiles, "infidels! here take some of this baklava as treats, I have no other treats to give you, my cupboard is bare."

Friday October 4

There should be the equivalent of the Witness Isn't it a beautiful sight darling. Protection Program to protect netizens from the axis of evil spammers. When my ISP transferred from UltraNet to RCN, I enjoyed almost 2 months of spam free bliss. They have finally caught up with me with a vengeance. Once again I'm back to getting 25 to 40 spams a day promising me bigger, more voluptuous breasts, a penis of ICBM proportions, never-ending erections, more hair, whiter teeth, look 30 years younger, firmer buns, economy size 24 pack abs, popularity beyond my wildest dreams, earning millions of $$$'s without lifting a finger, plus smut offerings of high school cheerleaders being gang raped by outlaw lesbian bikers, terrorists and wild dogs. I should know by now that whenever you sign up for any free online group or service, there are hidden costs. What I should do is sign up for a couple of those free e-mail services and direct all spam to those addresses as my legal e-mail address, then they can bounce spam back and forth in and endless bandwidth tennis match. I suppose it serves me right for updating my memberships to reflect my new address. I could have been a stinker and submitted president@whitehouse.gov as my e-mail address.

None of the search engines have picked up my updated web site URL, except a couple of the gay ones. It's strange that Bigboote's Area51 is not a gay site, but the gay search sites have updated my index page. I should cut the Lambda Nebula page loose from Area51 to forever wander aimlessly in the endless void of the cyber-space bit bucket. Any gay bois who stumble upon Area51 expecting waving rainbow flags, naked pictures and circuit party maps to titillate the homophile senses will be sorely disappointed and probably demand they money back; I'm not pretty, an old geezer who could not fetch a second glance in the sexual/dating market place; gay, bi or straight. If on the other hand, they are looking for a twisted Sustiva or bad acid trip excursion into a parallel universe, then Area51 might just be what they are looking for.

Before any of you notice the word "Sustiva" and wonder what it is, to save you looking it up in a search engine, while I was on vacation I had conversations with some gay men I know who are HIV positive and on one of the drug cocktails containing this drug. Sustiva is one of those drugs, that is "supposed" to help keep the virus at bay, but one of the side effects is very bizarre nightmares, hallucinations, strange thoughts and other psychological special effects. One guy told me about driving to work and having a headless woman in an evening gown sitting next to him talking. Another had realistic repetitive dreams about being in a Nazi concentration camp where the guards looked just like Dubya, Ashcroft and Jerry Falwell. Still another told me about sitting in a men's room stall and having faces and arms of dead people come through the walls at him. The drug warnings claim that only a small minority of people taking the drug experience these side effects. Everyone I knew had to stop taking the drugs because the side effects never went away. Western medicine always seems to have as many harmful side effects as benefits. Our medicine is modeled after our warfare. There might be a dime store despot running some stink water third world country. Here are a couple of informational links regarding Sustiva, Sustiva Information, Tips on Taking Sustiva, The Best, Worst & Weirdest 1998 - Poz

Through the modern day miracle (electronic slight of hand) of the web, I stumbled upon an interesting site returned during my Sustiva search, Prozacspotlight.org, contains anti-depressant info and some of their side effects. The absolute volume of information on any subject you could think of is out there somewhere in cyberspace, ripe for the picking. Web searches do not always tell the truth about returned sites. Whenever I have gone into AltaVista to search on people who have linked to Bigboote's Area51, it always returns animated porno gifs at the top of each page, when there is nothing pornographic about my site. In one of the animated images a woman is getting screwed doggie style. After more than a year of this animation, she must be getting pretty sore, or at least tired. My Sustiva search also returned a boatload of what look to be very interesting alternative news and guerilla info sites that have nothing to do with HIV meds or drugs in general. After I have had some time to evaluate the ones I bookmarked, they'll probably find their way into the pages of Area51. Those of you who are crazy or bored enough to visit Bigboote's Area51 might never have come across pointers to such a wealth of useless trivial bandwidth wasting knowledge in more genteel, mainstream web sites; and it's all linked for free here!

This has been one hell of a week at work after being on vacation for 9 days; deadlines, projects, fire drills and all the normal madness that comes with the IT territory. I've probably blasted out, tested and debugged a billion lines of code this week, and only scratched the surface, whew! Call it job security; for now. I've also been fighting off some sort of bug that I hope is nothing to worry about. I began having the runaway trots after the weekend retreat, feeling nauseous and achy, and this week it seems to have gotten worse. The world today is such a cheery festering pus bag of disease. I dine out a lot, so for all I know I may have picked up a Guatemalan fruit fly virus.

Here is this week's harvest of linked articles that you won't find listed in the White House, "Must read for all Americans" reading list. Enjoy!

Monday October 7

This past weekend was one of mostly quiet contemplation and as I watched people, thought about the many conversations my old friend Bob and I have had about how messed up we all are. Some of us are open about the fact, but most chose not to face themselves; we're all broken and twisted in various ways. Judeo/Christian culture calls it the "fallen state of man", but whatever it is, most of us seem to gravitate toward that which is poisonous, which helps feed the collective social crazies.

Let's face it, most of us harbor a secret desire to caress the tiger, walk along the third rail barefoot, stick our fingers in wall outlets, lay our hand on a hot stove. Adrenaline is an addictive drug, and there are many ways of getting a fix; having unprotected sex, public sex, driving too fast, getting drunk or stoned, gambling, bungie jumping, sky diving, fighting wars; you get my general drift. There are those fortunates who have no desire to stroke the fur of a hungry tiger, or more commonly to associate with and gravitate to people who are toxic to the mind and spirit.

I spent a lot of time thinking back to a lot of people I knew and was involved with in my younger days. They were exciting, popular, daring and had an aura that just sucked me right in. They were like the "Richard Corey's" of the world, and as much as I tried to keep up with and be like them, I always fell by the wayside, in the end feeling even more empty and alone than before I tried following in their footsteps.

I've always been locked into a 9 to 5 treadmill and envied those who could pull up roots and take a year off to take a road trip around the country. There was always a romance about the vagabond, who could roam free, meeting friends and lovers wherever they went, and always land on their feet unharmed. As much as I wish I were a freer spirit, it's not in my basic makeup, which was established in my youth. Whenever I have tried boxing outside my weight, I wound up down on the mat for the count.

Saturday I packed my knapsack with water, some fresh fruit and a book and set off to walk along the Minuteman Bike Path, stopping at Spy Pond to read, feed the wild ducks, stare out over the water and think. I must have thrown my back out again; I was one hurting puppy Saturday evening. I wound up watching "Changing Lanes" with Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck. The movie buff who runs the cafe at work recommended it, so I took it home over the weekend to watch. I identified with Jackson's character, a guy just struggling to get by, who crosses paths with the arrogant lawyer played by Affleck, after a fender bender on the expressway. It was one of those "when worlds collide" sort of stories, which I enjoyed watching.

Today I woke up truly hurting. My back was tied in knots and I hardly left my cubicle all day, but did get all the preliminary coding done and tested, and it all seems to work as I imagined. I designed the procedure to be table driven, which makes it a lot more flexible, requiring fewer coding changes. Of course by the time this is ready for production, powers that be will have changed all the rules. As much as I like programming, I feel like Sisyphus most of the time.

Friday October 11

Yes, It's been another "You Bet Your Badge" week, feeling like the little Dutch boy who does not have enough fingers to stick in all of the holes in the dyke. Sigh! a long weekend that I'll probably have to work part of to catch up. That's ok, it's supposed to rain most of the weekend anyway, plus being kept continually busy is job security.

This past year has certainly been one of lunacy and chaos, with our prez out there saber rattling around the globe, child abductions and now a string of sniper killings in and around our nation's capital. I have been wondering to myself how long it was going to take for some of our home grown loonies to go postal in the current atmosphere of chaos, uncertainly, growing unemployment, poverty and frustration. If Dubya is serious about 86'ing Saddam, he should capture the sniper and send him on an undercover mission to Iraq to get Doctor Evil. From the media hysteria, whoever the sniper is, it sounds like he's a better marksman than a lot of law enforcement officials. One thing that's scary is how many domestic certifiable nut cases are running around loose, "America, land of the free, lock and load, smok'em is ya got'em." I pray that they catch this person or people soon.

God is getting another bad rap. This guy has been leaving Tarot cards for the cops signed god. If God was interesting in snuffing random people, I doubt he'd resort gun fire, not when he has fire and brimstone, lightning bolts, meteors and plagues at his disposal. And I don't remember Jesus ever saying, "blessed are the gun toters, for they shall be as God." I must be weird, I was never interested in guns or personal weaponry at any time in my life. While all the other boys were begging their parents for a .22 rifle or BB gun, an oscilloscope, VTVM or signal generator kit was on my wish list.

I cannot say I sympathize with the sniper, the Columbine shooters or other headliners of mayhem and terror for any of their unspeakable acts, but I have some basic thoughts on what drives them. My two big passions when I was younger were technology and psychology. In another lifetime I think I may have been a pretty darn good FBI profiler if I had pursued a career in psychology instead of high tech.

I borrowed "A Beautiful Mind", about John Nash's descent into madness and back from the cafeteria at work and watched if last night. It was a reminder that any of us under the wrong conditions of biological and/or environmental conditions could "wig out", taking a cat nap from reality.

Sorry kids, no interesting articles today. I've been too busy at work for any news surfing, but have found a number of interesting links to be added to the Area51 Infirmary page after I have had a chance to explore the sites.

Friday October 18

I've been up to my eyeballs in IT hell this week. If anything can go wrong, it has, but that comes with the territory. I think I've also gotten some sort of bug, symptoms are sore throat and losing my voice. There seems to be a lot of this going around recently.

I'm stressed at work, stressed mentally and stressed over our gummint's shenanigans. With all the stress, my immune system is probably running a quart low right now. My depressive cycles have increased since a year ago September 11. I still have a deep gut feel that when (not if) Dubya attacks Iraq, we're in for a long bumpy ride. I should surf the 2(X)Ist underwear site to see if they carry lead lined athletic briefs; I may be needing them.

I picked up a previously viewed DVD of "K-Pax" with Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. I personally liked it, as it had a feel similar to "American Beauty", but with a totally different story line.

Here's this week's list of articles from ports of call I visited during the week. It appears another blah do-nothing weekend is on the works

Monday October 21

Last Friday night I watched "We Were Soldiers", starring Mel Gibson. The guy in the cafe at work warned me to be in the right frame of mind to view this movie. He was right; it was powerful, pretty gut wrenching captured the insanity which was Viet Nam, or any other war for that matter. Before the Bush Cartel send our men and women into battle with Iraq (for oil) they should all seriously watch this movie.

Saturday: I met Bob, who accompanied me to the tree pozzum retreat, in town for lunch at the Living Center. I got into Boston a bit early so browsed at Barnes and Noble for a while. I picked up a copy of George Carlin's "Napalm and Silly Putty" while I was there. I need to read something light witty, irreverent, and Carlin fits the bill here.

After lunch Bob and I wandered around town, then headed back to my place for a snack and movies. I'm always subjecting him to dark, mind numbing movies, so asked him to pick one, "a comedy". Hmm, I had not watched "To Wong Foo" in a while, which is a light, humorous, although touching story about a group of drag queens on a cross country odyssey. I always forget to route the movie sound through my audio system (when I'm alone I never think of it), even though the line out from my DVD and TV are connected to one of the auxiliary inputs on my system. It's like watching a totally different movie.

After that I queued up a few episodes of Michael Moore's, "The Awful Truth", which I was surprised Bob really liked, then it was crash time.

Sunday: After we had coffee and pastry, drove into Harvard Square, where I dropped him off, then went to Au Bon Pain for another coffee and book/music browsing session. Yahoo! I was not aware that "Koyaanisqatsi" had been released on DVD, so picked up a copy for only $15, plus Stephen King's, "The Stand", also on DVD for under $20. In my opinion, The Stand is one of the movies they did a better job of producing from one of King's best works.

It's "Head of the Charles" Regatta week in Cambridge, so the Square was rather crowded. I didn't feel much like battling crowds so made my creep over to Davis Square in Somerville and had a late lunch at what is becoming a fave place to eat, "The Burren" Irish Pub, nothing fancy, just lot's of good hearty food, and cheap!

I had not seen Paul's family since last July, so spent the rest of the afternoon visiting them. Sunday night I curled up reading "Napalm and Silly Putty", since my usual Sunday night lineup on FOX was preempted for sports. The end of the world would be pre-empted for sports.

Tuesday October 22

I have not felt like cooking at all for the past few years. Since Paul passed away, it seems silly cooking my usual consumable delicacies in quantities that would feed an Army battalion "for one". Thank goodness the cafeteria at work serves full meals that rival some restaurants and for from $3-4 (it's subsidized). I find myself eating light at night; mostly fruit, veggies, soup or a sandwich, and dine out on weekends at my usual dependable haunts.

I almost forgot about the smoked beef salami stick I picked up last Saturday for Bob and I to nibble on with cheese and crackers while watching movies. Over half was still left, so I had a bowl of tomato soup and a salami, cheddar cheese and mustard sandwich tonight. I get away with eating this crap once in a while, since my normal diet is rich in all the gummint recommended grains, fruits and vegetables.

I've always liked prepared deli meats, but only partake of them occasionally. As the father (who was a meat packing company executive) of an old girlfriend told me, "that salami sure is good, isn't it. I won't spoil it by telling you what's in it."

Processed meat contains many interesting ingredients; bones, tails, brains, intestines, severed fingers from meat cutters, the parts that aliens left behind during cattle mutilations, the neighbor's missing cat Fluffy, the other neighbor's menacing pit bull Thor, the remains of a Chilean soccer team that crashed in the Andes, the Lindberg baby's ear, missing homeless people, teenage runaways, bodies the Mafia dumped in ditches, aborted fetuses, foreskins, rodents and vermin, emptied ashtrays, old sweat socks and jockstraps left in Y lockers, enriched uranium and plutonium to retard spoilage, and lastly, tasty spices to mask the taste and smell of what you are eating. Now doesn't that make you want to run out and order a Hindenburg sized Dagwood sandwich with the works.

When I was in high school I worked part time in the meat department of a supermarket, so I know a little about what goes on behind those one way mirrored walls. If something starts turning green and slimy, looks jaundiced, or begins moving around under it's own power, whack it with a mallet until it stops moving, wash it off, put some food dye on it, re-package it and it's as good as new.

There's a lot of talk in the news lately about tightening up regulations on "organic food". I'm sure with the current administration, petrochemicals will count as organic food, since oil is carbon based and made from old fermented plants and dinosaurs and occurs in nature. At times I wonder how "oil" fits into God's divine plan. Perhaps God is a major stock holder in the big oil companies and votes Republican.

I found some interesting ports of call during today's Kamikaze web run and will examine them more later in the week to see if they are worthy of a place among the millions of Commie, Pinko, Liberal, Feminist, Homo agenda site links that already reside on Area51.

I found the following link while browsing today's posting on Bartcop.com. At first I though this site must be a joke, but after reading most of what the guy wrote, realized he's dead serious. This kid makes John Ashcroft and the Taliban look like a bunch of tree hugging, rainbow flag waving sissies. A few of his proposals are to outlaw the wearing of blue jeans, reinstate prohibition, make watching porn a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment, banning marriage between people of differing race (he claims to not be racist), put all homosexuals in mental hospitals, etc, etc. He also has a "Fag Facts" page which every self respecting gay person should read and heed. You'll learn a ton of useful facts about homosexuality that I'll bet you never dreamed existed, which will make you the center of attention at your next Fire Island or P-Town cocktail party. I'd love to know where these facts came from. I personally do not support the "alleged" gay agenda, but have known a lot of gay people in my day.

The kid's not on drugs, so he can't be stoned. As an added bonus, he wants to run for public office, bringing his wisdom and morality to the unwashed heathen masses. Ladies and Gentlemen I bring you a possible future president of the United States, The Anti-Porn Guy. There won't be enough prisons and Gulags to go around, after this dude assumes the Oval Office. This country gets crazier by the minute. Please Jesus, take me now!

I'll end today's venting with a thought. I've always felt that many people who scream the loudest about nullifying man's free will, banning any and everything they claim as offensive, harbor secret desires for what it is they hate the most. Quite a few "fag bashers" found out later they were closeted homosexuals. I've known people who screamed about the evils of porn, who themselves were addicted to the stuff. I was addicted to porn until my "pornograph" broke and stores just don't sell pornographs any more (obsolete technology), so I have nothing to play it on. And then there are those who are just plain old "blue noses". I'm curious about outlawing Levi's. There must be some "Old Time Gospel Hour" sermon or passage form Leviticus that is taken in some context that blue jeans are the devil's work. Or could it be that they just look sexy on certain people. I'll write myself a note to burn all my Levi 501's this weekend.

Sunday October 27

It's amazing but sad, that so many people I have been talking with lately are in various states of (clinical) depression. I'm sure the drug companies are thrilled at the continuous sounds of "ka-ching ka-ching", as their coffers fill. I know a lot of people who are out of work, or working and in fear of losing their jobs "Thank you GOP!" It's comforting to know that the pharmaceutical industry is more than willing to supply us with overpriced concoctions to alleviate depression, anxiety, phobia, obsessive thinking, obesity and lack of sexual drive. I wonder how much of the limp willie syndrome is caused in part from stress, anxiety and depression. You can't even enjoy sex any more without worrying about dis-ease.

So far I have remained busy at work, which is no ironclad guarantee of job security. I've been playing around with JavaScript lately in response to a Marketing department request for web report enhancements, plus the day to day fire drills.

I spent yesterday visiting Bob up in New Hampshire, mostly catching up and discussing programming tips. I brought along my VHS copy of Koyaananisqatsi to give him. We went to the mall to aimlessly window shop, then went to Ruby Tuesday's for an early dinner, returning to Chez Bob for coffee, chat and to watch the film. I was going to visit Warren today, but once again my back was acting up, probably from all the rain and dampness we had yesterday.

I received 2 very nice e-mails from Area51 visitors telling me they loved the site and thought I was a good writer (I have them fooled). Two legitimate e-mails are better than none on a daily count of 25-40 spams a day.

I was going to be the Grinch that stole Halloween and not buy any candy to hand out to the candy terrorists on Thursday, but broke down and picked up 8 bags of mini candy bars at CVS, all stuff I like; Butterfinger, Milky Way, Snickers, Three Musketeers and Mounds bars. Just watch, this year I'll get 5-10 kids instead of the usual 100-150.

Finally here are this week's list of literary junk food for thought from around the web.

Wednesday October 30

As soon as I heard on the news that Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash, without thinking, I knew this was not an accident. The timing is too convenient, and he was one of the only real threats to the GOP cartel. When I asked a few people what they thought of this news, they said, "Be afraid, be very afraid". Too many weird things have been happening since Dubya assumed the throne; 9-11, market crash, Beltway sniper, escalating crime rates, paranoia, etc. I just pray that we all live through the remainder of his term in office, and pray even harder that he does not get re-elected and is replaced by someone who truly has the best interests of the American people and those in other countries in mind.

It's weird but for the past 20 years I have known on some level that 2003-2004 are going to be pivotal in human history, and no, I have never read Nostradamus or consulted with "The Psychic Friends Network". I dunno, maybe the playing field will get leveled by an asteroid or comet, or more likely, we'll be in the midst of WWIII. On the other hand maybe nothing will happen. I'm probably feeling like millions of other Americans, who are silently waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I'm going to end the November flight recorder a day or so early. I have not been feeling that well lately in body, mind or spirit. In ending, here are this month's last batch of alternative news articles. Enjoy!

Shalom, Ray