Casualty

He was awakened by mortar fire.

"Boom boom boom".

Thinking "What the hell?" he yanked on his pajamas, and rushed outside, where he found a young guy sitting in the street before a plastic replica of a mortar, making shooting noises. When he saw where the mortar was aimed, he realized his house had been shelled.

He raced back inside to check his email and, sure enough, he saw that he was dead. He ran back outside to confront the young guy who was now taking aim at his neighbor's house. "What the fuck do you think you doing, asshole?" he shouted.
"What's it look like?" said the guy.
"Where did you even get a mortar?"
"None of your business, dude."
"Fuck, now I've lost a whole year. I have exams next week!"
"Should have filed for an exemption then." He finished taking aim. "Boom boom boom!"
"In the middle of the city? What the fuck are you doing here shooting heavy weapons anyway?"
"Urban terrorist."

At that moment, he realized how much trouble this idiot had caused him. He would have to reschedule his exams. He'd had a couple of interviews set up with companies for after his graduation, which he would miss. Also Shelly would not be happy to hear he had been killed. And by such a stupid idiotic prank, too. The kid couldn't be older than twenty years.

Right then, he would have liked to punch this asshole right in the mouth.

But he couldn't.

He was dead.

It takes as long as it takes

I just discovered an important skill.

If you're doing basic, hindbrain work, such as sorting mail or something similar, your brain is likely to fire at some point and go "What are you doing? You're wasting your valuable time! This has to go faster!", causing a sense of dread and anxiety to rise up and threaten to engulf you.

If that happens to me, I'll end up doing a botch job of the tedious work, and start working aimlessly on something "more important" to make myself feel good.

That is, that's what I used to do. Now I tell my brain to STFU, adding "The work is proceeding at the right speed. You don't have to do everything as fast as humanly possible. This is going to take a couple of hours, but then it'll be done, and the world will not have ended because I took so long".

It helps, believe me.

Japan: Arriving

Getting to Japan was very pleasant, on the whole. The plane was a brand-new A380, which turned out to be surprisingly quiet. I ended up getting a great seat that had extra leg room. Now I know why they charge triple for business class tickets. Because they are worth it.

Lufthansa's pride and joy

Disembarking, walking through the airport, it slowly started to dawn on me that I had in fact arrived. The walkways, the bamboo and lacquer wall decorations, the recorded voices warning of various dangers, such as falling off the end of a moving walkway, everything was still familiar. I noticed a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. It was good to be back.

After customs, I met Noby-san, who had graciously come to pick me up, and off we went on our merry way. As the train neared Tokyo, I was struck by the way that rice fields gradually gave way to first small village houses, then larger buildings, amd finally the towering blocks of living cubicles that serve as accomodation to the millions of workers that commute into Tokyo each day.

San Francisco, WWDC10

I just left San Francisco, and I wrote a short post about it. Head on over to http://klüpfel.com/travel/san_francisco.html for a post that's a little more pretentiously styled than what I post here.


By the way, Martin looked over that page yesterday, and deleted three <table>s before having breakfast.

The Killing Grounds

Here, we execute the traitors, he said, as we were walking across the vast concrete yard. Everyday we shoot about ten to fifteen. We passed a piece of wall pitted and chipped by a month's worth of bullets. We'll have to repair that section again soon, he continued, it's almost March, but we have to do it in front of a wall, you see. Being, as we are, in the city, we can't expose our loyal citizens to the danger of stray bullets, can we.

Our loyal and peace-loving citizens, you mean, I interjected.

He fixed me with a stony gaze as implacable as the gray concrete surrounding us. Indeed, he said, conveying anything but agreement. I looked away, feeling ill at ease.

As my mind drifted, drawn away from the hot ground and shimmering air, I imagined a scene such as no doubt occured daily on these grounds. A handful of men half dragged, half walking on their own to stand before the wall. Why would anyone walk willingly to their own execution, I wondered. But men are capable of such unfathomable things, I thought, and resigned myself to mere observation. The blindfolds were donned, and stony-faced soldiers appeared on the scene, equal in number to the culprits arrayed before them. In the past, there would be twice as many soldiers as there were criminals, and the ammunition handed out always included one blank cartridge for every pair of soldiers. But ammunition is precious these times.

Why did you choose this section of wall, I asked. No particular reason, he said, we simply picked a spot, and since we have to repair it regularly, we thought we might as well stay in the same place. Not to waste precious resources, he said, looking sideways at me in a way that spoke volumes of his opinion about the situation.

The firing squad assumed its position, and an officer barked out orders, curt, sharply ringing in the morning's quiet. Twelve carbines barked in unison. Splinters of concrete and plaster squirted from the wall behind the condemned, filling the air with the acrid smell of burnt stone. Twelve bodies slumped, then dropped.

We'll have to move it over to that end, I said, to make better use of the space. There will be more room for the witnesses that way.

The spectators, you mean, he replied.

I looked at him sharply. He met my gaze with the same impassive intensity as before. In that instant I recognized him for a man who had seen more than he had ever cared to see, who had been taken to a point beyond reasoning, beyond caring. A man dangerous in many ways. I know you're opposed to the concept, I said.

I am, he said.

Your concerns will be duly noted, I told him.

I have no doubt they will, he said.

From his eyes spoke the full comprehension of what he had just done. The finality of his decision, doubtlessly premeditated, executed in cold blood, chilled me to the bone. I could no longer meet his gaze but dropped my eyes to the stains on the ground, scrubbed over countless times but never fully eradicated.

Too much meta

I was just about to post

Artists: Whatever you're doing: It's not as beautiful, or as new, when you study its history properly. Everything has been done before.

on Twitter, but then I thought, surely that's not gonna be the first 'everything's been done before' tweet ever, and decided against posting it.

No Kindle for Me

I hate hardcover books. They're just too damn big. With the amount of books I read, every little gain of storage space counts, so I always go with paperback editions whenever I can.

Consequently, I was very disappointed to learn that Tokyo Vice by Jake Edelstein is not being released in paperback format until October this year.

Well, what about the Kindle version, I hear you thinking. I considered it, and decided against buying it. It's true that reading the book on the iPhone Kindle app might have been somewhat more tedious that having a physical book, but that 's not the main reason I didn't buy the Kindle version. Neither are concerns about data loss and sudden DRM fubars.

The main deterrent for me is the book's afterlife, after I am finished reading it. When I'm done with the book, I plan to take it to work and show it to my colleagues, who will no doubt grin and nod appreciatively, and then leave it lying around the office for a while, for anyone who comes along to browse at leisure.

And I can't do that with a Kindle book.

Maybe some other time, when the book in question is not one I want to share with other people so much.

I have been reading Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland books in Classics on the iPhone, and I can confirm that you get accustomed to reading on the iPhone.

Ode to the Western Digital Hard Drive I Bought by Mail Order

Sleek and silver

Expensive and Spacious

Sadly too large

So my half-disassembled

Living room mac

Spent the night

Writing zeroes

All over it