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As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed—“Almost rather I had seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”
      “What was it, Sir?” said Flask.
      “The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld and returned to their ports to tell of it.”

Moby-Dick, 1851
NEWS



3-17-09  No one reads this column
Guys, FURL sucks. It has sucked for years, and I'm sorry I've been using it. I have switched over to delicious; I would have done this much sooner, but they made it really difficult the last time I tried.


4-21-08  Archives
Uhmm, apparently archives haven't really been working since late 2006. THANX for the heads up guys! They are temporarily fixed, and will stay temporarily fixed until I migrate to new software/layout. I have said some hilarious things in the last 7 years, that future generations will feel lucky I preserved. Go check them out.


1-18-08  new iPhone icon
Woah, it's been 3 years since the last news update! Fuzzysquid now has a webclips icon for your iPhone! It'll automagically show up when you add FS to your home screen. Atom and RSS feeds have been available for a few years now, but I never made special mention of it.


1-14-05  LJ images
Since it seems to be popular, and it's been linked in a lot of different places besides here, I've decided to post the LJ Images page. At least in the news, at least for now. It's also getting some Google ads because you LiveJournal people are sucking up all my bandwidth (35% for that one page!)


4-02-04  FURL
Check out what I've been browsing: FURL.net bookmark archive. Not much commentary, relevance, or sequitur—but it's what's keeping this blog from turning into a meme dumpster.





LINKS

    SQUID STUFF

  1. TONMO - The Octopus News Magazine Online. Invaluable.
  2. Angrywhale - Meet Leonard. He's an angry sort of whale.
  3. The Squid Blog - From the Laughing Squid people.



    PEOPLE I KNOW

  4. Moxyberry - Where the cousin is at. Her bookmarks here.
  5. Cranky User - Brian's bookmarks. Updated, unlike his site.
  6. Rosenstock - Her other ride is your mom.
  7. Lauren - Wet Hot Singaporean Blogging.
  8. Universal Donor - Like the prime number shitting bear, but with terrible back pain.
  9. Olivia - Who receives special dispensation from our usual policies.
BLAG  read the archive


Sunday, August 31, 2003
moxy 11:29 PM (0)

 
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After reading this week's NY Times cover story on Sofia Ford Coppola, I am inexplicably fascinated. This must be explained.

Friday, August 29, 2003
dannyboy 11:22 PM (0)

 
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I don't see my relatives much, but tonight I realized that I come from very good stock. My grandfather the poet, who is close to 90 years old, is still sharp. He has everyone's phone number memorized, and can recite at command without hesitation. Ok. I'm 23, and I don't even know my own phone number. My grandma, is the only person in my family that shows any physical affection. I think this is because she could give a fuck what everyone else thinks. She's also a cranky old broad that gives my dad grief for tipping too much. My uncle reads books like this (which I'm still undecided on), and when I mentioned I had read it as well, he eagerly brought out three books by this fellow, and urged me to borrow them. His wife, my aunt, then told me I work too hard and I should make time for love. Indeed. Everyone else is pleasant despite the fact I'm grumpy, and some even stuff large bills into my pockets and tell me to keep it a secret.

Wednesday, August 27, 2003
dannyboy 12:13 PM (0)

 
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You know that article in the Merc. news where I said some jerk ruined Friendster for me? That was taken completely out of context, and no, it wasn't you. So stop being paranoid.

dannyboy 9:26 AM (0)
 
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 It seems I should clear some things up about my last post. I don't believe it's impossible for there to be meaningful exchange between two people. I don't think the best that we can get is overt, and superficial, meanings like, "I'm hungry." The issue is that our realities are not objective, in the least. Even in shared experience, it is our perception that is our reality--if you and I both look at the stapler on my desk, there is no inherent truth to that stapler, but only our unique experience of that stapler. So how can one describe with accuracy how one feels about that stapler, when there is no common ground? Even our words are just generalities; my idea of sky blue is not your idea of sky blue. No, not even pantone chips or RGB values will make things any clearer. I'm speaking of a fundamental disconnect.

What we do have is approximations, and for the most part, they are sufficient. Your experience of the stapler is approximate to mine, close enough that we can talk about how much better it would be to have a red Swingline. But my point is, no one will ever know truly what my experience is. And all of our forms of expression--art, music, literature, pink dual mohawk--these are our attempts to connect ourselves to each other. Which works, as long as we accept that they are only approximations. And perhaps they're also a desperate search for the hoped common ground, the true objective substrate from which our experiences arise. Because our nature abhors a vacuum.

Tuesday, August 26, 2003
dannyboy 10:52 AM (0)

 
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Here is what I think: I think it's indescribably hard for (any) two people to connect with each other in a meaningful way. The amount of meaning lost as a thought coalesces in my head, as it turns into language, as I turn it into words that come out of my mouth, and as the reverse happens in you--I think this strips away everything that is not explicit and easy. Even worse, is when you do this through text, like you know, the stuff you're reading right now.

And I think that's okay. I think that people are fundamentally alone; stripping away all the security of people and things that we surround ourselves with, we are by ourselves, always.

Which is at odds with what I know of statistics and the Universe. Once you look at everything at a large enough scale, it all becomes recursive. That is, all possible configurations of the little bits that make up everything is exhausted, and it begins to repeat. On a smaller scale, there are 6 billion people in the world. I'm overly fond of saying that even if you were one in a million there would be 3000 of you in China.

"So what's the point, Depressio?", you're asking. Well, that once you get sufficiently complicated, or intimate, it should be hard to communicate with someone. And if you find someone who can complete your sentences, then you're either lucky, or predictable. Wait, that's not it. What I'm saying is, if you read my site and you e-mail me--or alternately if I e-mail you... I'm ok with that exchange, by itself in it's entirety. I won't be offended if we find we run out of things to say. If you think of anything, I'll still be here.

My contradictory statement is this: there is a huge void of un-meaning that separates any and every two people; meanwhile, there are hundreds of people within driving distance who are exactly (enough) like you.

If you can bridge that void, even just long enough to be able to write one e-mail, then that's a victory. You may rage against my notion that we are trapped in the second circle of interpersonal relationship hell, but I rather like it here.

Monday, August 25, 2003
dannyboy 11:04 PM (0)

 
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Friday, August 22, 2003
dannyboy 7:07 PM (0)

 
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Going to LA! See you when I get back!

moxy 3:32 PM (0)
 
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 The subject of a piece of junk mail I received today:

    RE: critical an orgasm is just the beginning

The beginning of what, exactly?

dannyboy 11:35 AM (0)
 
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 I'd like to announce to the world my wishes for my funeral arrangements, if for some reason my plans of immortality don't work out. Pay attention. If you let me rot in the ground I swear to Jeebuz I'm going to come back and haunt you all. I will NOT buy some asshole funeral director a new Cadillac! Fuckers. Cremate me and do the following with my remains:

- 1/3 of me shall be sprinkled into the ocean off the Northern California coast

- 1/3 of me shall be thrown in the faces of mine enemies

- The final 1/3 of me shall be blasted into space and achieve orbit around the earth, where my eternal spirit will look down upon creation and laugh at your mortal miseries.

Thus sayeth Daniel, and so it shall be.

Total estimated cost: still much lower than what a traditional funeral would be.

Thursday, August 21, 2003
dannyboy 2:13 PM (0)

 
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re: burningman
"Man, I'm like gonna be, so toasted at flamingguy, like getting in touch with my inner spirit and like man, ya know, totally out there and connected. It's totally deep, like tao-like.. Yeah. Eh, what?"

Wednesday, August 20, 2003
dannyboy 2:18 PM (0)

 
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We are now reverse-social-engineering this worm attack by collecting a list of spoofed and spammed addresses. The key seems to be Fletcher's mom (which is unusual as the key is usually Jessie's mom. HI-OH!), who received e-mail from my old CMU account, but has only had e-mail for a year. Other interesting evidence is that I've only used the fuzzysquid address since I left college, but I'm receiving lots of mail from old andrew contacts. Right now my guess is an administrative machine in the School of Design office.

dannyboy 12:50 PM (0)
 
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 Well, we (collectively) are in the middle of a series of worm attacks, and hopefully everyone got patched and secured in time. Which, I know to be untrue, as evidenced by all the e-mails I've gotten today with a subject line of "re: Thanks!" Yeah, thanks jerk. But I forgive your attempts at spreading contagion to me, because I use OSX and none of this virus/worm nonsense affects me anyway--but I've pretty much given up on mailing you back and saying "you've got a virus" because the inevitable reply is "no I don't." Oh really. Guess who's not getting a Christmas card this year.

On the bright side, I am fascinated by all the people who I don't know, who have my e-mail address somewhere on their computer. I've been trying to figure out what the connections are all morning--like the woman who I think I e-mailed once with about dog breeding, while I was at CMU, who is now at UVA... which confuses me because I didn't have my fuzzysquid address then. I wish these worms would attack more, as I want to know who has my e-mail address but has never written me.

UPDATE: the from address is spoofed, so I couldn't lash out at those responsible even if I wanted to, but I think there's one or several infected computers on the CMU network that is sending everyone I know (and their mom--literally) e-mail. More info about the Sobig.F worm. So if you or your mother have gotten strange e-mails (seemingly) from me today, please ignore. Unless of course you're Jessie's mom, in which case, Thanks!

Monday, August 18, 2003
dannyboy 12:30 PM (0)

 
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Best picture of Keywon, evar. More pictures on Besigner.

Sunday, August 17, 2003
dannyboy 11:21 PM (0)

 
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I'm quoted in an article about Friendster in today's edition of the San Jose Mercury News.

Friday, August 15, 2003
dannyboy 1:44 PM (0)

 
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Sounds like the guy who started friendster is a total jackass buzzkill.

Thursday, August 14, 2003
dannyboy 3:47 PM (0)

 
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WHAT'S THE MATTER EAST COAST? No power to facilitate a witty reply? Suckers!

dannyboy 3:39 PM (0)
 
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 On second thought, perhaps my fiancée will view the whole engagement process for what it is--a misogynistic relic--and we can get married in Vegas, by Elvis, like I've always wanted. I still want wedding bands though. Possibly from a box of cracker jacks.

Which... makes me think I may need to build myself a robot girlfriend.

dannyboy 3:19 PM (0)
 
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 Oh, I heard the entire east coast recently blew up or something. So... HA! No more California energy jokes for YOU!

dannyboy 3:18 PM (0)
 
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 Wired has a fascinating article about synthetic diamonds. This is very good news for me (and any potential brides of mine), as there was no way I would ever buy a natural diamond. The idea of artificial scarcity pisses me off, as does the ethical consequences of supporting billion dollar thugs. It's nice to know I can now wear my principles around my finger.

moxy 8:30 AM (0)
 
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 You're from New York City. Our newspaper is elitist (the NY Times rules supreme and sniffs uninterestedly at the local Daily News and New York Post,) our real estate is elitist (hello Upper East Side) and our hipsters are as elitist as they come (isn't that what makes a hipster 'hip'?) Of course you are elitist - anything less would be entirely unacceptable.

Wednesday, August 13, 2003
dannyboy 12:14 PM (0)

 
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And what's so bad about being an elitist anyway? Hey I like Survivor. And I enjoy it without any sense of irony at all.

dannyboy 12:12 PM (0)
 
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 What's wrong with my brain? Every time, and I do mean EVERY GODDAMNED TIME I drink coffee, I get a stomach ache. And every single time I do, I'm convinced it'll be different for some reason. Stupid delicious latte.

Also, you all know by now that I try to suppress my feelings of elitism, for the sake of the children. But it's hard, because I'm sure our caveman ancestors who had discovered fire and were happy and warm and had cooked food, pointed and laughed at the other cavemen who insisted they were just as happy sleeping in the cold and gnawing on raw meat. So what it comes down to is, I think I'm better than you because I AM better, you hairy ape!

(Please, no pointing out what I said in paragraph 1 and applying it to paragraph 2.)

Anyway, sorry. I'll try to keep it down. This post is brought to you by Microsoft, whose software I'm forced to use on a daily basis. I'm just glad my personal work doesn't depend on it.

Saturday, August 09, 2003
dannyboy 8:50 PM (0)

 
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dannyboy 7:49 PM (0)
 
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 "I'm not driving to Oakland to see ugly girls." - JM

Also, it should be noted that if you've attempted to go skydiving on 5 separate occasions over 3 years, and they've all been prevented last minute by inclement weather, or most recently, mechanical difficulties with your car, then perhaps you should listen to what the universe is trying to tell you and take up knitting instead.

Friday, August 08, 2003
dannyboy 1:10 PM (0)

 
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Hot XXX Octopus Action! from the Cephalopod Database. Damn, I wish I had chromatophores.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003
dannyboy 11:29 PM (0)

 
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Also, I am still in physical misery 24 hours a day, because of the mouth incident. I am sick of this. I am not exaggerating when I say I have never been in this much pain. Not when I broke bones, split open my chin and had to get 6 stitches. The only thing that comes close was when I ate a plate of spaghetti I left out for 6 hours in college, and I was rolled up into a ball of pain, whimpering, and tears the entire night. That kind of constant, reassuring pain, would be nice right about now. Because that went away after one night. For the last 5 days every time I've tried to eat anything I end up throwing most of it out. I eat, and I get ANGRY because it hurts so goddamned much. I want to get mad at someone but there's no one to blame! People. This is the kind of directionless anger that produced the Futurists! FUTURISTS! And of course, just speaking is a tear-inducing struggle. AND SO OF COURSE THIS IS THE WEEK WHEN THE ROOMMATE NEEDS TO TALK EVERY NIGHT, WHEN MY SISTER NEEDS HOURS OF PHONE TECH SUPPORT, AND WHERE THE BRIGHT AND SUNNY SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS WANTS AN INTERVIEW

dannyboy 11:16 PM (0)
 
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 The Roommate is a reporter for a local paper. Her colleague at the SJ Merc. News called me this afternoon to interview me for a story he's writing on Friendster. All that I told him were LIES. I have a basic distrust for journalists because they're always looking for an angle that's not there. And if there isn't a story, they'll manufacture one. Damn their oily hides. Also, I mistrust them because The Roommate is TRYING TO KILL ME--most recently by littering the living room with 3" nails and putting all the knives in the drying rack blade up.

Tuesday, August 05, 2003
dannyboy 10:45 AM (0)

 
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Well duh. You're not white, so therefore, you're uninteresting to all the Asian girls over there. And what the hell, I thought all the Japanese had fiber connections running straight into their heads. Could my fears, of a horde of Japanese giant robots rampaging through the west coast, be unfounded?

rurouni 4:58 AM (0)
 
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 I am now in my 'city' of Aizuwakamatsu, Japan. Somehow it takes a week to get a working phone, and another 2 weeks after that to get internet access. I don't get it at all. Anyways, plenty of misadventures and wacky cultural things that I'll post once I get my laptop hooked up. Oddly, the one place in the world I don't make asian friends...is in asia! By the way, I with you on the girls and bathroom dan.

Monday, August 04, 2003
dannyboy 10:25 AM (0)

 
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When? Now? No, not now. First link is to an easy article in the Guardian about the mess that is timekeeping. Second link goes to an as-of-yet unverified article about a supposed wunderkind and his new theory about time being unquantizable. The original paper exists here.

So what does it all mean? I don't believe in time as a dimension, at least not in the way one can quantize spatial dimensions. Kant's transcendental idealism appeals to me, because I feel if time does exist, or rather if we exist inside of time, then it seems logical for us to be unable to perceive it truly, or indeed, conceive of anything without it.

dannyboy 9:38 AM (0)
 
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 I should clarify that I have no real evidence that she was the one who did it, as there were plenty of drunken college students in the area, and I did live a block away from a strip club and the... fun part of town. But I like to think that I was being persecuted for my avocation of violent social revolution.

dannyboy 12:00 AM (0)
 
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 Readers, the following post is addressed specifically to the ladies: You are absolutely filthy, disgusting beasts. Particularly when you're herded together, say, in a shared living situation. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The way to a man's heart is actually through a GODDAMN CLEAN FUCKING BATHROOM. Now I don't care if the rest of your life/house is in order, and I find that I much prefer women who are not afraid to live in piles like I do, but truly, honestly, the vile things that I've seen make me want to scrape out my eyeballs with a grapefruit spoon.

Lord grant me serenity.

In other news I'm am in so much pain right now I want to beat myself unconscious with the table lamp. It hurts to eat or talk. I'm hungry and pissed.

I'm not sure why, but tonight I'm reminded of Junior year of college when the girls upstairs invited us up for a few beers and a smoke. We had been living in the same building for almost a full year and never spoke to each other before. And then that night they rang our door, falling-over drunk. I proceeded to get into a huge fight with one of them over ideologies (I can't remember what exactly--free-will, loss of agency and violence, maybe) and the next morning I found the windshield wipers on my car bent upwards. The young couple with child that lived on our floor moved out shortly thereafter.

Sunday, August 03, 2003
dannyboy 8:41 PM (0)

 
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Maybe people shouldn't fight against ambivalence. We gave up the black & white a long time ago, so why not accept that things are complicated, and so, your feelings for them would be also. In the end what makes us isn't that we are one or another, but that we've decided one or another.





 
   
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