Barkerburgh

God, do You know what a Distributed Denial of Service attack is?

I guess You do, because in a way, You invented it, now didn’t You?

(Interesting that in English, the only times personal pronouns are properly always capitalized are when I am referring to myself as ‘I’, and You. Was that Your idea too?)

So, anyway, since I assume You do know about DDOS, I would like to make a suggestion. Modify the concept a bit.

You know all those crazy-@$$ Christian fundamentalists that think they know Your own will better than You do?

Couldn’t You just, You know, take the fear of God out them and put in the love of God? (It’s distributed in the sense of One to Many, as opposed to Many to One, but the metaphor still holds, no matter what P.B. Nerd thinks.)

The reason I’m asking is that today, CNN, via AP is reporting that three crosses were burned in the city of Durham, North Carolina. You know where that is.

And You know that that particular mode of expression is used almost exclusively by the Klan, a group of Your children who hate another group of Your children for no reason. They make up reasons, but they’re bogus. Usually they have to do with colour of skin or misreadings of the Bible, which probably frosts Your lily, I’ll bet. There’s a strong undercurrent of what’s called Evangelical Christianity, an Orwellian Newspeak oxymoron if ever I heard one because Christians are giving themselves a bnm rap these days, and I don’t think these guys know that Evangelical ultimately comes from the ancient Greek for “Good News”. But why am I telling You that?

I know You don’t like to interfere too much with Creation. Neither do I. But, since You have done on many occasions - they’re documented - one more time isn’t going to hurt and could only help.

So here’s my plan, which in a way is Yours. Knowing as You do how complex the human brain is, and how much more complex is the human psychology that is the result, why not just go into all the brains south of the Mason-Dixon Line (to start, there’s way more to do than just that…) and tweak’em a bit.

Don’t tamper with Free Will; I know from personal experience how touchy You are about that. Just adjust things like synapses and brain-chemicals so they’re not all so lame-@$$ stupid. Honestly, Sir, if He!! is other people, these are the other people who He!! is.

Practice on the American bigots first. Then try Canada; we’re not as bad, but there’s still some really sad cases west of the Great Lakes - okay, here in Toronto, too, but there are local checks and balances on them most of the time. Again, why am I telling You?

After that, there’s pus pockets of their kind of nastiness all over the world. I imagine You could do them all at once if You wanted to, but You could make an example of the American bigots and then see if the rest of the world picks up on it. Like in Rwanda or Iraq, or Northern Ireland, You know, basically the whole National Geographic World Atlas index.

If gentle Divine Intervention doesn’t work, may I suggest that You go back to the original definition of Distributed Denial of Service? I would seriously like to see the effect of one of Your really sincere DDOSs on those kind of humans.

Amen and Awomen, Hymns and Hers,

David William Barker

Well, that was a pleasant surprise, after the last, kind of weak, episode.

Last night’s episode of Doctor Who was excellent, a literal spine-tingler, literally. Having been a time-traveller all my life, and having had to wiggle my way out of a few paradoxes, of the Grandfather sort, but not the Grandfather Paradox specifically, I’m a fan of fictional treatments of the issues.

You could tell the Dad was a Star Trek fan, and that he’d seen ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ enough times to get it.

I don’t remember a lot about the character dynamics in the old show, but I must say how I like them in this one. Like Battlestar Galactica, the people come across as people, not SF characters. I like Rose.

And, okay, yeah, Mickey was black, not South Asian.

PS, I was thinking of titling this entry ‘Civility on the Edge of Forever’ cuz everyone in the church was being so stiff-upper-lip and ‘their finest hour’ about everything…

I just got a newsletter update from the Gathering of the Fellowship that the next one will be in Toronto, at the Sheraton Centre (same as last time) from July 1st. to 4th., 2006.

It might have been Denver, and I like Denver, but in your face, Denver!

Now I really have to get a job.

Well, I finally got a stab of disappointment from Doctor Who last week.

It was ~200,000 years in the future and there was this space station in Earth orbit with something going on in another part of it, and the Doctor was helped out by an intelligent, capable black woman.

Yup, too much like the end of the world episode, too soon. It took Star Trek a whole second series to do that, meaning, for the conceptually delayed, that a lot of TNG scripts were fancy-ass reworkings of OS stories, as opposed to continuations or ’so we meet again’ sort of thing…

Still liked it, though.

I didn’t recognize him except in the vague sense that I should have, but the one guy, the Editor, was that guy from ‘Shaun of the Dead’ which I wanted to see but never did.

I’ve been time travelling myself (you should see my tardis, baby) so I know that they’re going to spring some odd surprises on us.

I’ll let one slip. The tardis’s real name is Rosebud. God’s honest.

———————————–

On another topic, Reid lets a guy named ’strategies for texas hold em’ post a comment to his blog, but not his friend (which would be me, if you’re not good at keeping up), who posted a note of concern for his son’s well-being. I’m deeply hurt. I’m laughing though, so it’s probably just a flesh wound.

Spoilers

a quasihaiku nouveau by david barker

Rosebud was a sled.
Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father. And Princess Leia’s.
Soylent Green is people. (Now with more girls!)
Bruce Willis is dead.
Old Yeller gets shot.
Amy’s not a lesbian.
Tyler Durden is the narrator guy.
Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes is - um - I don’t actually know.
Fiona is a she-ogre. (Donkey does Dragon.)
Li Mu Bai dies. Jen dies. Jade Fox dies. Lo is heartbroken. Hsu Lien is heartbroken.
God is Alanis Morissette. And so is Bud Cort.
Alien conquerors’ computers support a Java virtual machine which can be hacked from a Mac laptop. Really.
There are more dinosaurs on another island nearby.
The Mummy returns.
The Japanese did it.
The old lady was lying about the jewel.
Dil is a man in drag.
Frankly, my dear, he doesn’t give a damn.
Jesus gets crucified.
Grace and the children are the real ghosts.
The original Planet of the Apes is really Earth.
Norman Bates’ mother is Norman in drag.
Oz was all a dream.
The thing in the briefcase was probably Marcellus’ mojo.
Kevin Spacey is dead.
Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze.

- fin

Joan of Arcadia has been cancelled.

I am bummed. I have a shitload of other reasons to be bummed, but this is top of the heap right now and for the next fifteen minutes or so.

Here’s some blogger on the topic.

Here’s the USA Today (the World tomorrow!) story.

Here’s what the target demographic is saying on imdb.

If you haven’t already, check out the comments on my last post, about anti-Catholic sentiment.

I haven’t laughed out loud in the library like that since the last time I did it.

Kudos to jk - seriously, that was hilarious - but only one kudo to aiabx because you were on a roll and then stopped. You could have mined that sucker till you hit shale.

Two nuns are ordered to paint a room in the convent, and the last instruction of the Mother Superior is that they must not get even a drop of paint on their habits. After conferring about this for a while, the two nuns decide to lock the door of the room, strip off their habits, and paint in the nude.

In the middle of the project, there comes a knock at the door. “Who is it?”,calls one of the nuns.

“Blind man,” replies a voice from the other side of the door.

The two nuns look at each other and shrug, and deciding that no harm can come from letting a blind man into the room, they open the door.

“Nice boobs,” says the man, “where do you want the blinds?”

So I watched the last episode ever of Star Trek:Enterprise last night.

What the irredeemable fuck?

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, whoever you are (and I know who you are), fuck off, shut up, sit down and go away. “Franchise fatigue”, my ass. You just don’t know how to tell a story. Period. Stop trying. Go try retail instead. Idiots.

To the rabidly irrational fanboys who kept this crap going for way too long, [sarcasm_fyi] thanks a lot [/sarcasm_fyi], and in your face.

To the thirtieth century alien archaeologists reconstructing this period of human history, hello, and I hope things are going well. I owned a significant proportion of everything. I also hope you’ve found evidence of Battlestar Galactica, just so’s you get a balanced picture.

To Majel Barrett, you bear some of the blame for this. Just because a fan means well doesn’t mean - oh, never mind. The damage is done.

To Gene Roddenberry, please, sir, rise from the dead. You couldn’t save the Star Trek universe, but just you - or anybody - rising from the dead would be really cool.

My recent post on why humans are better than Cylons was picked up by a kinda cool little Battlestar Galactica aggregator site called, and I know, Battlestar Aggregatica.

It’s so eclectic in its range that I can’t even call it nerdy, although nerdy’s definitely in the eclectic aesthetic.

There are links to some hot pictures of Grace Park (Boomer, if you need to be be told, a Cylon sleeper agent, ditto), comparisons of BSG to Babylon 5 (which I really should have been into but wasn’t), commercial review and info sites, personal sites and comments like mine, all having something to do some way or other with BSG.

It’s actually an informal ’science project’ by a couple of ‘geeks and fanboys’ of the show.

It’s fun to browse and read, and not, definitely not, to be taken too seriously.

A few minutes later, I am copying a fer-example link from the site: The Fictional Character Who-you-would-shag Meme. Mostly SF&F TV shows, but with variety.