LiveJournal Project - June 2002

Month 3 of 79. So far this is proving to be a worthwhile exercise.

Date: 2002-06-03 02:29
Subject: stock price predictions
well, as promised, here are my predictions for tomorrow's closing price of network appliance (NTAP)

pgastock V1 -- this was my first pass, modified so that it didn't quite suck so much as it did a few updates ago. this program assumes that the fluctuations in the price of NTAP (or any other stock) are not at all related to the fluctuations of other stocks. this is probably not a valid assumption in the real world, but then again, who knows? given the past 10 days worth of data, running through 100 passes of 5000 generations each, pga1 predicts:

standard average: 12.87
weighted average: 13.16

what's the difference? for each pass through, the best solution has a certain fitness value. in the standard average solution, i simply sum up these 100 values and divide by 100. in the weighted solution, i assign more weight to solutions which are more fit - so, for example, if generation 45 yields a solution that has a fitness of 1.745e-6 and generation 52 has a solution that has a fitness value of 1.81234e-7, then we say that the solution yielded in G52 is better (it's closer to zero, the ideal) and thus give it more weight when building the average.

pgastock V2 -- for this one, i factored in other stocks. i really didn't have enough time or motivation (fucking xanax!) to sort through the stock market and try to find stocks which are closely related (in my opnion) to network appliance, so i downloaded data for the stocks that make up the nasdaq-100 index and the dow jones industrials, giving me a total of 127 stocks. i also decided to represent the stock data as percentage change instead of the raw numbers - whether or not this is a good idea, i'm really unsure - i'm working with so much data that it's rather intractable from a human viewpoint. anyway, for the sake of time (this program, as you might expect, runs a LOT slower than pga1) i used the following abbreviated parameters: 10 datapoints per stock (that's a total of 1270 points of data) running through 5 passes of 500 generations each. (i'd like to run this one longer, which i'll probably do while i'm sleeping). anyway, pga2 predicts the following, converted from percentage to actual prices:

standard average: 5.33
weighted average: 10.41

as you can see, these numbers are a fuck of a lot different than those produced by pga1. my guess is that a big part of this is due to extraneous data - there are plenty of stocks in the nasdaq-100 index that really have nothing to do with computer storage manufacturers (such as amgen and biogen, two biotech companies). maybe if i allowed the simulation to run longer, the GA would be smart enough to filter these out. we'll see what it says in the morning.

note that i haven't factored in trading volume at all - i may or may not add that as an additional parameter over the course of this exploration.

i've also noticed is that it is EXTREMELY difficult to get consistent results with pga2, and this really bothers me. i'd think that my results would tend to be somewhat consistent between runs, even if they're consistently wrong. although, when i think about the mathematics of it all, i shouldn't be surprised. there's got to be a better way to do it. i guess we'll see what the market has in store for me tomorrow. for now, i sleep.
Mood: curious

Time: 05:39
Subject: grrr.
ok, so i lied. no sleep for me. it's 5:20am and i'm still awake. so i thought i'd run a few more simulations. =/ using pga1 and having it use 3 days worth of data in order to match its predictions (in other words, we use data from days 1-10 to predict day 11, days 2-11 to predict day 12, and days 3-12 to predict day 13) -- that gives us a set of 10 coefficients which theoretically will accurately predict the following day given the previous 10 days worth of data. and since we're looking at it from a larger dataset, theoretically it should give us a better / more accurate result.

does it? who knows. but i'm going to throw up one more prediction.

10 data points, 100,000 generations, 10 passes, using the average error of a 3-day window via pga1 -- 12.89

so what we have now is a bunch of contradictory predictions. that sucks. i'm discounting the guesses generated by pga2 and reported in the previous post, because i think they're both just so bloody wrong that it isn't worth it. that leaves 3 predictions, two of which are very close to each other. consistency, or fluke? who knows.

i was thinking about my reasons for even bothering with this project earlier tonight. believe it or not, i'm not doing it with the hopes of somehow getting rich off the stock market. more than anything, this has turned out to be one of those "just for the fuck of it" projects - you know, the same sorts of reasons that people climb mountains. because it's there. in the end, i probably won't be surprised if it doesn't work (hell, people have been trying to predict the stock market since before i was born, and if some surefire way does exist, i'd be amazed if it hasn't been discovered by now) but at least i can say that i finally got off my ass and crossed off one of those long-standing "to-do" items on my list. in a way, that's kinda scary. there aren't very many things on my "gotta-do" list that have been on there as long as this one. i wonder if this means that when i finish them all that it's time to exit this planet? eh. let's attempt to sleep again.

Time: 14:05
Subject: 4 out 5 predictions can't be wrong...
NTAP closed today at 12.25. i was a good bit off as far as the actual number goes, but 80% of the predictions said that the stock was probably going to go down today. and so it did. =/

and a quiz...
Quiz name: Which Cure album are you?
Results: Wish
Meaning: Who knows.

Date: 2002-06-04 02:17
Subject: let's fuck wit da brain... and tomorrow's stock prices.
it's been awhile since i had anything to say about my experiments in nootropics, mainly because there hasn't been a lot of change. up to this point, i'm definitely satisfied that there is a certain beneficial effect to be had by taking piracetam, but it seems to be contingent upon the amount of food in one's stomach. empty == better. naturally, this would lead me to step two, which is to try different synergistic combinations of drugs to see what kind of results i'll get. so i picked up some centrophenoxine, which is supposed to combine well with piracetam, and we're going to see how it goes.

"Centrophenoxine is a natural synergist with piracetam. Piracetam has shown synergistic learning/memory effects when combined with choline or lecithin in both animal and human studies Centrophenoxine is a better cholinergic than choline or lecithin, as previously discussed." (from this link.)

i've done some reading on rec.drugs.smart and people have all sorts of concoctions and combinations which they say work really well, but i don't think i'm going to mix more than two of these at a time. otherwise i'm unlikely to know what's actually doing what and it'll just become too much shit to keep track of.

....

regarding my stock market simulation... i've got a couple of directions that i'd like to go with future exploration, but i'm unsure as to which one i'm going to try first. on one hand, i still believe that there is a connection between fluctuations in stock prices, and that trying to track the future price of one stock based on that stock alone is probably not the best way to do it. i don't know which stocks are related to which, however, and my last attempt at letting the GA figure it out didn't work too well. so maybe i'll do the ravyn stock index - just track the stocks that i actually own (since those are really the only ones that i care about anyway). another way i'd like to go is try to hybridize my GA with a hill-climbing solution. from the PGApack manual: "hill-climbing heuristics attempt to improve a solution by moving to a better neighbor solution. whenever the neighboring solution is better than the current solution, it replaces the current solution. genetic algorithms and hill-climbing heuristics have complimentary strong and weak points. GAs are good at finding promising areas of the search space, but not as good at fine-tuning within those areas. hill-climbing heuristics, on the other hand, are good at fine-tuning, but lack a global perspective. practice has shown that a hybrid algorithm that combines GAs with hill-climbing heuristics often results in an algorithm that can outperform either one individually." and finally, there's the neural network idea - completely abandon or minimize the use of GAs and go with a neural net solution. i did a preliminary search on google and there seems to be a LOT more work done in this regard, with companies actually selling their predictions that they claim are generated by neural networks. problem is, i know NOTHING about NNs, other than the very basics about what they do.

anyway, here's the projected data for NTAP for tomorrow, courtesy of pga1. looks like the stock's going up.
expected value (weighted average) = 13.00137106386
expected value (standard average) = 12.88530721961

and yes, mar5hmellow, i AM listening to eminem. the apocalypse must be near upon the horizon.
Music: Eminem - Til I Collapse

Time: 05:50
Subject: ravyn is a MORON!!!
yes, it's true, i'm sorry to say. one fucking line of code, so simple it is, yet so badly it hath fucked up my results. notice a couple entries down where i said that the multiple-stock simulator produced values which were WAY WAY off from what the single-stock simulator produced. and now i know why.

i forgot to include this small bit before entering the evaluation loop.

dEval = 0.0;

kick self repeatedly

funny, though, that i didn't make this mistake in the single-stock code.
Music: Talamasca - Halloween
Mood: pissed off

Time: 07:51
Subject: more...
some of you are probably getting really tired of hearing about genetic algorithms and stocks and all that crap. so if you're one of those, skip on by. my LJ has turned into a bit of a research journal these last couple of days. ah well.

anyway, i've implemented a hill-climbing heuristic in my single-stock model, and i've found that it does tend to produce solutions (as far as degree of error) that are an order of magnitude better than the other ones. the way that it works (HC) is that it takes one percent of the population and jiggles it by an amount in the interval [-0.001, 0.001]. this has introduced another problem, though, in that it doesn't seem to like it when i try to run multiple passes. so there's still more work to be done. and although i'm sleep-deprived, i'm also fueled by 2 pills of piracetam and 1 centrophenoxine, and i have to agree that there is indeed one hell of a synergistic effect. i'll be really interested to see how it would work if i were actually well-rested. =/

update... fixed the problem with the multiple-pass hill-climber, so it looks like i've actually completely finished pga1 - the single stock predictor. next thing we'll be doing is refining pga2 - the multiple/interaction predictor. dunno if that's going to happen today or not.

one more update. sleep-deprivation is kicking in as the caffeine wears off. the hill-climbing routine isn't as much better than the normal process as i thought it was, so i'm just taking it out for the sake of processing speed. all that remains is to see where the market goes today. i need a new project. can't spend all my time on this one or i'll get bored with it before it gets done.
Music: Orgy - Blue Monday
Mood: indescribable

Time: 18:22
Subject: success.
NTAP closing price today - 13.11
i'm now 2 for 2.
Tomorrow's expected value for stock NTAP via std. average is 12.354144
Tomorrow's expected value for stock NTAP via weighted. average is 12.233373

Date: 2002-06-06 01:48
Subject: finally, more content than just stock market crap!
well, i have to at least say a little bit about it - today i was wrong. i predicted that NTAP would go down, but in fact it went up. this leads me to believe that trying to make the multiple-stock predictor work better than it currently does is the best way to go if i want to continue with this project, and i think the way i'm going to do this is to examine various index shares and mututal funds to see what their holdings are in order to find stocks which should ideally be categorized together.

anyway....

i've been thinking lately about all the knowledge which at one time had found a home inside my little brain, and how, due to neglect and inactivity, much of it has gone the way of elvis and left the building. today i was looking at all the books on my shelf with such titles as "real analysis with point-set topology" and "statistical physics" and "complex variables" and wondering if it would be possible to re-teach myself all of these things. where would i start? would i go back all the way to linear algebra and first-year differential equations, or might i be able to pick up somewhere a little farther along, maybe with abstract algebra and real analysis? the problem is, i don't know how much confidence i have in what mathematical ability remains in my head. sure, i can read the books and work the problems, but without a professor or someone whose knowledge i trust, i may not know whether or not i'm doing things right. i can work a calculation and look in the back of the book and see if i got the correct answer, but it doesn't work so easily when attempting to prove a theorem. i may drop by asu sometime next week and see if i can chat with any of my old professors and see if they have any advice for me. maybe this sort of intelligence is like riding a bike in that it never really leaves you, no matter how long it's been dormant, and just needs to be reawakened.

what's rather ironic about all of this is that, just like the whole stock market thing, i really don't have much of an end goal in mind. i read an article in MIT's technology review last night in which they named 100 people under the age of 35 that they considered to be the top innovators in the world. as i was reading about the stuff these folks were working on, part of me wandered back to the days when i had dreams of doing research and working on "something cool", and i think that despite my resignation that certain doors in my life are closed forever, that doesn't stop me from wondering "what if" or thinking that perhaps there's still room in this world for the backyard scientist that doesn't have the standard Piled higher, Deeper credentials. either way, i have to do something to keep my brain occupied. maybe i'll take cory's advice and sign up for something during the second summer session at asu, rather than wait for fall to roll around.

the only reason i bothered to go back to school in the first place was because i felt like learning stuff, and i didn't really care whether or not i graduated. i still don't, much to the dismay of the academic advisors, but i'm starting to think that i should at least have some sort of end goal in mind, lest i spin my wheels uselessly. knowledge is to be sought for its own sake, but one cannot live forever moving in no direction. i suppose that's the one drawback to nihilism. motivation is truly hard to come by.

Time: 03:13
Subject: i killed kenny!

Time: 07:18
Subject: i hate stupid people!!!
you know, i like a good debate as much as the next person, especially when engaging someone who's actually intelligent and able to discuss/argue the issues in a coherent, rational format, even if we still disagree at the end of the day, but i absolutely cannot stand people who have no sense of reading comprehension and fail to understand the issue which is actually being discussed. even moreso are the same people who believe that they are in the right, telling me that i should get my facts straight, when all they offer in response is their own bloody opinion which they pass off as truth, failing to provide any factual evidence, at which time i produce real proof and cram it right back down their throats.

fuckin' christ!

garrett, thank you for not being stupid. dan, learn to fucking read.
Mood: pissed off

Time: 21:41
Subject: a sign of days to come?
ok, i couldn't resist. this is taken from cnn.com regarding dubya's speech tonight (which of course i didn't watch):
Saying "America is leading the civilized world in a titanic struggle against terror," President Bush told the nation Thursday night that a sweeping reorganization of the federal government is needed to improve domestic security.

a titanic struggle? hmm, if i remember right, that boat SANK!

Date: 2002-06-07 07:39
Subject: ravyn's random link n' thoughts o' the day.
clicky clicky

yesterday i made an attempt to explain to denise why i hadn't been around much in the last week and a half, and i attributed it to what i called a sort of "motivational crisis" - a state which befalls me at random intervals in which i decide that i really don't give a fuck about much of anything and more or less stay home, don't do jack shit, and really don't even care that i'm not giving a shit about anything. these states eventually pass with my conclusion that i give even less of a shit than before, and then i go back on about my business. i told her that in the end, nothing we do in this life really matters, because when all is said and done, we're going to die. i'm getting the impression that people believe this to be a rather defeatist attitude. i argue, though, that it's not at all defeatist. i don't care, and i don't care that i don't care, but that doesn't mean that i'm going to walk around dressed in all black when it's 110 degrees outside talking about the death of beauty and the angst which i cannot possibly control or communicate to the harsh, uncaring world. gah! all it means is that i recognize that tomorrow i could very well get hit by a bus, and thus there's no point in worry or stress or anxiety. at this point i got the standard spiel that we define our own happiness and if we're in situations that we don't like then we should change them. heh, i seem to recall saying the exact same things here in my LJ not that long ago. i'm starting to think that this is the stock response that we're all programmed to spew out at people, whether or not we actually follow our own advice. much easier to tell someone else to get off his ass than to demount your own donkey.

...changing directions...
i find that people are, by and large, unappealing. i'm not going to say that they're boring and uninteresting, because that implies some sort of knowledge of their beings, which generally i don't have. it may very well be that i could find myself sitting next to the most interesting person on the planet (by my standards, anyway) but my desire to interact with that person to uncover said interesting traits would be virtually nil. cory and i discussed this a bit after incognito on friday. virtually everyone we know in the goth scene was there, from mark and ally to eryc and dan and dave and paula and plenty of people who i know but don't actually know. so in theory, much conversation could have been had. but i find myself thinking "sure, i could go talk to these people, but why do i want to?" is this a limiting perspective? perhaps. or maybe the people on this planet that actually are worth knowing are so few and far between that it's much easier to look at the populated masses as one homogenous blob that contains nothing noteworthy. i think, actually, that theory is what brought me to LJ - it's easy enough to have your own little website where you post thoughts and rants and whatnot, but you still remain isolated from all but those that happen to know you're there. at least when i'm writing these bloody updates or reading about what my friends are doing, i might click a link here, browse a user there, and find someone that has something worth listening to.

....one more tangent....
while engaging in aforementioned behavior, i happened to stumble across the apparently-defunct journal of someone that i used to live with, and at one time actually really cared about, and i noticed that back in august, said person had made a post about a post about a situation which had occurred last year. foolish mortal, if you're going to post your one-sided spin guided by little more than anger because the truth hurts, next time the least you could do is spell my name right. =P

fuckin' christ!

i dunno, after yesterday's brief discussion, i'm tempted now to start signing off all my long-winded updates with that. damn you, djskott. =)
Mood: amused

Date: 2002-06-08 07:33
Subject: cube
the subject line lists the title of the flick i watched last night. and all i'm going to say is that i have never come across a movie which so accurately describes the way i view the world, right down to some exact conversations i can recall having with cory. i'm not going to say ANYTHING about the film - those of you that know me and have seen it will probably understand exactly what i'm talking about. (if you don't know me, but you've seen the movie, think "david worth".)

in any event, if you haven't seen it, it's absolutely recommended - not so much for sheer entertainment value, but as a thoughtful, disturbing, and discussion-worthy experience. i'll be watching this one again.

...random tangent...
the funny thing about the hallucinogenic experience is that for a moment, everything makes complete sense, and you have the answers to all your problems, or at least a perfectly clear picture of your state in the universe and what to do next and how it all works - how simple existence really is - but you still remain aware that when you sober up, you'll go right back to the exact same shit that you thought you had figured out and all these great insights that you may have had while high will either no longer make sense (if you can remember them) or they'll simply be pointless because you won't actually act on them. and then, at about this point during your thought process, you realize that all these profound thoughts that you're having are exactly the same thoughts shared by every other psychonaut and really aren't so profound after all, so you might as well just try to stop thinking and enjoy the ride.

a rather accurate quiz, methinks
Quiz name: What kind of wing are you?
Result: dragon wing
Meaning? Uhh....
Mood: groggy

Date: 2002-06-12 14:35
Subject: regarding the "dirty bomb" suspect.
somewhere in a navy brig in charleston, south carolina, a us citizen is being held in secret without actually being charged with a crime, and unable to meet with his court-appointed attorney. as far as we (the general public) know, he hasn't actually committed any crime, either, yet the .gov tells us that they're certain he was involved in a plot to build and detonate a radiological device in the united states at the direction of al-qaeda.

obviously, none of us want a dirty bomb blowing up in our backyard. but this story should scare the absolute fuck out of anyone who's even remotely aware of what the implications could be. think about this: the .gov relies heavily on precedent to justify its actions. today, we have a us citizen whom we don't even know is actually a terrorist being detained in secret without a lawyer. tomorrow, it may not be surprising if dissidents start to simply disappear, much like the well-documented atrocities in latin america. and you know what? the sheeple will probably not even notice that it's happening, and if they do, they'll just accept it as necessary in the name of security.

on one hand, i say "bravo!" to anyone who'd like to come along and blow the fuck out of washington dc with all those political bastards in it, because there's a cold-hearted side of me that would like to see the assholes get what they deserve. unfortunately, i also know full well that should such a thing happen, the average person will be clamoring to kiss his civil liberties goodbye. and the .gov will be more than happy to oblige.

this clusterfuck called america needs to be obliterated. too bad i don't have enough faith in humanity to think that those doing the rebuilding would do a better job.

Quiz name: Which Action Star Are You?
Results: Neo
Meaning? Um, I dunno... I know kung fu?
Music: Trance Nation 5 CD1
Mood: content

Time: 15:09
Subject: the levels of the matrix.
since i just posted a graphic containing neo, this has started me thinking about the concept of the matrix and the idea of awakening. many people from many different spiritual paths have long believed that that this world is an illusion, and they've sought higher knowledge and enlightenment. some of them even claim to have found it, whether it be "big names" in occult studies like aleister crowley or your local miss cleo down at the new age store. and many people today search for the same things (well, some of them do - far too many are content to be sheeple) and talk of peering past this world of illusion into the "true reality."

but let me propose a thought. for those who've seen the highlander movies, recall the second film, where it is revealed that macleod was not the last one left and that he didn't actually win "the prize" - it was an illusion presented by the bad guy (don't ask me what actor it was, or even what the character's name was) to make macleod think that he had claimed the prize. so what if beyond this world of illusion there is merely another illusion?

our brains are complex entities, able to create reality where reality doesn't exist, and to remove things from perception that are actually there. anyone who's ever taken LSD or other sorts of hallucinogenics can tell you about the visuals that appear, the patterns which coalesce and morph, and how the nature of reality just tends to "change". we know about the placebo effect, too, where a sugar pill can produce the same effects that an actual drug may induce. and we know that when observing subatomic particles, the nature of the results we achieve is dependent upon the type of observation and what we're looking for. (i.e., when we're looking for particle-like behavior from an electron, that's what we get. when we're looking for it to act like a wave, it does.) and when we're looking for esoteric knowledge, perhaps that's what we get, too, because our brains are conditioned that way. they say that seeing is believing. that isn't necessarily a one-way causal statement. believing is seeing, too.

what if, after spending considerable time and energy, we wake up from this matrix into another matrix?
Mood: contemplative

Time: 15:54
Subject: quote.
saw this posted as a comment in soulcutter's livejournal, and thought that it deserved to be reprinted.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins; all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken, 1923

oh yeah, and i want a dalai lama action figure

and one more... be afraid. be very afraid. and be pissed off.
Music: Stereo MCs - Deep Down & Dirty
Mood: amused

Date: 2002-06-13 02:20
Subject: more movies!
tonight's selection: jacob's ladder. yet another weird film, but not nearly as bizarre as the last two that i've watched. cory and i had the basic idea figured out pretty early on, and i started making comparison's to dante's inferno, particularly when i actually saw that the main character was leafing through said story. as it turns out, an alternate title for the movie was, well, dante's inferno. anyone who's read the divine comedy will immediately understand the ladder reference and where along the path it seems that jacob is. anyway, good film, probably wouldn't have paid to see it in the theatre, but for the 2 bucks it costs to rent from blockbuster, it's worth checking out. one thing worth mentioning. on vnv nation's second album, there is a quote which goes something to the effect of "...if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth." now i know where this came from - it's spoken by the chiropractor in this movie.

tomorrow, cory and i are going to see "cats" and then we'll probably watch the other flick, requiem for a dream.

Date: 2002-06-18 17:27
Subject: a quiz with some actual worth? could it be?
this one actually might portray an accurate picture of me in ways that the other ones really don't. it's one of the more well-known personality tests, kinda like myers-briggs, but not - 'tis called the enneagram. anyway, i took the test and my top personality types are 5 (23) and 8 (21). my bottom one is a 2 (3). oh yeah, here's a link to the test i took.

clicky clicky

what's this mean?

The Observer (the Five)
Observers have a need for knowledge and are introverted, curious, analytical, and insightful.

How to Get Along with Me
Be independent, not clingy.
Speak in a straightforward and brief manner.
I need time alone to process my feelings and thoughts.
Remember that If I seem aloof, distant, or arrogant, it may be that I am feeling uncomfortable.
Make me feel welcome, but not too intensely, or I might doubt your sincerity.
If I become irritated when I have to repeat things, it may be because it was such an effort to get my thoughts out in the first place.
don't come on like a bulldozer.
Help me to avoid my pet peeves: big parties, other people's loud music, overdone emotions, and intrusions on my privacy.

What I Like About Being a Five
standing back and viewing life objectively
coming to a thorough understanding; perceiving causes and effects
my sense of integrity: doing what I think is right and not being influenced by social pressure
not being caught up in material possessions and status
being calm in a crisis

What's Hard About Being a Five
being slow to put my knowledge and insights out in the world
feeling bad when I act defensive or like a know-it-all
being pressured to be with people when I don't want to be
watching others with better social skills, but less intelligence or technical skill, do better professionally

The Asserter (the Eight)
Asserters are direct, self-reliant, self-confident, and protective.

How to Get Along with Me
Stand up for yourself... and me.
Be confident, strong, and direct.
Don't gossip about me or betray my trust.
Be vulnerable and share your feelings. See and acknowledge my tender, vulnerable side.
Give me space to be alone.
Acknowledge the contributions I make, but don't flatter me.
I often speak in an assertive way. Don't automatically assume it's a personal attack.
When I scream, curse, and stomp around, try to remember that's just the way I am.

What I Like About Being a Eight
being independent and self-reliant
being able to take charge and meet challenges head on
being courageous, straightforward, and honest
getting all the enjoyment I can out of life
supporting, empowering, and protecting those close to me
upholding just causes

What's Hard About Being a Eight
overwhelming people with my bluntness; scaring them away when I don't intend to
being restless and impatient with others' incompetence
sticking my neck out for people and receiving no appreciation for it
never forgetting injuries or injustices
putting too much pressure on myself
getting high blood pressure when people don't obey the rules or when things don't go right

anyway, i've got more stuff to say, but i also have domestic issues to tend to, so it'll have to wait until later. and i'm starving, so i must go hunt some biomass.

Date: 2002-06-19 19:54
Subject: ravyn's rant o' the day...litigate, whine, piss and moan...
taken from the arizona republic's website... the fully story can be found here:

clicky clicky

"Beginning next Wednesday, Southwest Airlines will require passengers whose size takes up more than one seat to pay double the normal fare. Passengers who have to pay for the two seats can be reimbursed if the flight isn't full....Now, with Southwest beginning to enforce the rule, the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance - a Sacramento, Calif.-advocacy group that argues that overweight people are often the object of discrimination - is discussing whether to sue Southwest."

sue the airline? come on, you fucking beached whales, sit down if you can find a chair that will hold you and shut your pieholes, because god knows y'all need to stop shoving pie (and everything else) into them. if your ass is so bloody huge that you overflow your seat, then you should either a: go on a bloody diet, b: fly first class, where the seats are bigger, c: buy two seats, or d: stay off the goddamn plane. let's think about this for a minute, shall we? i do quite a bit of traveling, so i know exactly how big those airline seats are, and i also know that you'd have to be pretty fucking fat to not be able to fit in one of those seats due to overflowing abdominal blubber. get some fucking exercise that amounts to more than just walking to the fridge every five minutes, take some diet pills, stop eating twinkies like you think they're carrots, but please, for the love of pizza, stop blaming your excess gravitational pull on the vagaries of fate while you expect the world to pat you on your voluminous backside and say, "it's ok, fatso, we'll take care of you."

airlines don't charge for kids under 2 years old who can sit on a parent's lap - why? because the kid doesn't take up a freakin' seat, and isn't heavy enough to make more than a negligible impact on the amount of fuel required to get the airplane from point A to point B. if you're a fatass, and you take up two seats, but you're only paying for one, then that means that the airline, and ultimately, the other passengers who have a little more self-control at the all-you-can-eat chinese buffet, are being forced to swallow the cost of your extra cheek. one man, one vote. one ticket, one seat. deal with it.

oh yeah... CNN.com has a mention of this issue, too, and they use the oh-so-PC-term: "people of size" -- does that mean that those of us who don't have to shop in the fat-ass section of the clothing store are "people of unsize"? "unpeople of size"? fuckin' christ! fat people are fat people. stop trying to sugarcoat it, because that'll only just make your ass bigger in the end anyway. for the record, i'm about 30 pounds heavier than i'd like to be. and you know what, i call it fat. overweight. added mass that doesn't need to be there. whatever. no stupid euphemisms that are meant to somehow diminish the fact that i should probably drink less soda, and spend a little more time on the treadmill.

and from the "i can't believe what this world is coming to" department...(story also taken from the AZ republic)

clicky clicky

i've been meaning to comment on this one for awhile now, but haven't had the time. for those of you who either don't read the news or are coming to my happy home from outside the state of arizona, the gist of the story is that a sunrise mountain HS senior was failing an english class, and had her family hire a lawyer to write a letter to the teacher threatening a lawsuit if the girl didn't graduate. the teacher originally told the lawyer to stuff it, that the girl had been given plenty of opportunities to pass the class, but then found herself overridden by someone in the peoria district administration. the girl then was allowed to retake a test and she graduated.

fuckin' christ! what the hell kind of bullshit is this? you can't measure up, you're too damn stupid or too fucking lazy to study your shit and pass the goddamn test in your final semester of high school so you can get your degree, and then instead of dealing with it like a responsible human being or even just taking the class over in summer school, you get mommy and daddy to hire a lawyer? what about the rest of the kids who didn't pass, but who didn't piss and moan to the local barristers' firm of dewey, cheatham, and howe? what about the kids who actually did their bloody homework and got their degrees fairly and honorably? if i were a graduate of this high school during this year, i'd be incensed - all of a sudden the four years i spent doing my work would now yield a piece of paper saying that i graduated from a school that had no objective standards, no sense of achievement, and in the end, it'd be worthless. a pile of dogshit.

i've heard of plenty of lawsuits filed over frivolous and asinine matters, but this one is so outlandishly incredible that i'm speechless. words cannot describe how perverse this situation is. and not in a good-kinky-sex sort of way, either.

stupid and irresponsible people need to be systematically annihilated.
viva la revolucion!
Music: Kosheen - Empty Skies
Mood: pissed off

Date: 2002-06-21 11:05
Subject: bring on the apocalypse!
clicky clicky

A Santa Monica elementary school has banned the game of tag, once synonymous with youth and innocence, because they say it creates self-esteem issues among weaker and slower children.

it's things like this which defy all explanation and leave me with only two words to say in response, which i think probably sum up my feelings in the most eloquent manner possible.

fuckin' christ!
Mood: indescribable

Date: 2002-06-23 21:54
Subject: blah blah blah
i've been thinking some rather un-ravyn-like thoughts lately. i don't know if this is coming out of my contintually-fruitless search for meaning, or if i'm just getting soft in my old age. snicker anyway... i don't believe in karma, so in a way this little discussion is rather pointless, but i've been entertaining some what-ifs. if i believed in karma, and i take a moment to examine my current life, then i must've been a pretty good boy in my previous life. to quote a song by juno reactor, "everything is going extremely well." ok, well, not everything - life isn't perfect - but i'm beyond fortunate in some ways that a lot of people i know just aren't. anyway, i started wondering if perhaps what i'm supposed to be doing with this ridiculous pile of resources available to me is helping others (see, i told you that these thoughts were very un-ravyn-like). now, before you start thinking that i'm going to go out there and give 100 bucks to every "will work for food" beggar hanging out on the off-ramp of the 101, let me assure you that i have not, in fact, lost my mind. the basic operating model that i employ to classify people into circles (cory, you'll know what i'm talking about) hasn't changed - and i still hate it when people bug me for stuff or somehow expect that i owe them something - but i'm wondering if maybe i should offer more - do more stuff for the people that i actually do care about. or even possibly just randomly do stuff for people that i don't actually know, but perhaps know of through one source or another. why would i start doing these things? i have no idea.

i don't know where this line of thought is coming from. i've never been the one to feel "warm and fuzzy" from helping others, regardless of who they might be. i don't feel good from making someone else happy - i don't feel bad, either - i just don't really feel much of anything. so i can't see myself deriving any sort of benefit from this course of action. granted, there's nothing wrong with doing things without getting anything in return, but i at least like to have some reason behind my actions (or proposed actions). doing something for no discernible reason at all (even "just for the fuck of it" counts as a reason) doesn't strike me as terribly efficient.

maybe i'm just tired of seeing all the pain and bullshit and such that people seem to continually go through, despite their best efforts to dig out from under the piles of dung. eh.

in other news... the plumbers came and replaced all the pipes in my house, so there's no more nasty gray shit that could cave my roof in at any moment. i still have a long list of things to do in the coming week... new water heater, change the locks on the doors (since the very same plumbers managed to "lose" one of my house keys, and between ben and i, we've got too much crap in this place to not be a little paranoid) and have some tree people come remove a palm tree that is just in a sick and wrong location. i don't know why people think that owning a house is such a great thing. sure, you can make as much noise as you want and stomp up and down and paint and decorate however the hell you want to, but in the long run, i think it's more of a pain in the ass than it's worth.

speaking of... it's fucking HOT in this room. the rest of the house is fine, but this one room where i spend most of my time (aka my office / computer room / whatever) is a goddamn oven. even with three fans on full speed, it doesn't seem to offset the five computers. blah.
Music: CODEX - micro.com
Mood: hot

Date: 2002-06-24 13:34
Subject: note to self.
after allowing a strawberry protein shake to sit in the refrigerator for two weeks, one should not expect that it will taste much like strawberry any more, regardless of how much one shakes it and attempts to mix it back up. a slightly strawberry-flavored bandage would probably be a more accurate assessment of the flavor. yuck!
Music: DJ Doboy - Trancequility Volume 19 (autumn chills)
Mood: nauseated

Date: 2002-06-26 14:20
Subject: i pledge allegiance to no one.
first reported on dc-stuff:
clicky clicky
SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag cannot be recited in public schools because the phrase "under God" endorses religion. In a 2-1 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that reciting the phrase was a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state and amounted to government endorsing religion.

hahahahahahaha!!! this is just fuckin' hilarious.
Music: karel - transit1
Mood: amused

Date: 2002-06-28 10:35
Subject: haha
clicky clicky
i don't know, i think the kid in the picture looks more terrified than he does terrifying.

one more...
clicky clicky

in light of the comments i've made over the past week or so about southwest airlines and the two-seats-for-fat-asses controversy, plus the banning of tag, i thought this one was rather appropriate. =)
Unfortunately I have no idea what these articles are actually about. -Ed.

Date: 2002-06-30 04:13
Subject: posting for the sake of posting
not much is new at ravyn's house of whoop-ass.

-went to the az science center on saturday afternoon with cory - had a good time but had to leave before we had a chance to explore everything because they were closing. bastards! we're off to vegas on wednesday afternoon for a couple days - going to check out the fireworks at the venetian and see what other sorts of vegas mayhem we can get into. hopefully bin laden and his boys will pick somewhere else to blow up if they're planning to do anything for the 4th of july. i'm not too keen on becoming a crispy critter at this point in my life.

-shiznit has finally proven that he's not a completely useless cat - he's found, killed, and eaten a couple of bugs in the last two days. granted, it'd be nice if the pest control fools would do a better job, but at least i've got kitty power for backup. =/

-ben rented monster's ball and he and mike and i watched that tonight - i guess i was expecting the story to center more around the guy in prison, but after they killed him off in the first 20 minutes it was rather obvious that billy bob thornton's character was going to hook up with halle berry and the movie would be about that. puffy sean p. diddy whatever the fuck he calls himself now can't act, and the movie itself was, as usual, a waste of time, effort, and the small piece of plastic that found itself cursed enough to be made into a monster's ball DVD.

-the gods have decided to schedule everything that i want to do in july all on the same weekend, so i'm forced to choose. during the weekend of the 12th-14th i might be trekking to canada to visit chantal while her family is out of town and we'd have the whole weekend to ourselves. however, the shaolin grandmaster is going to be in denver that very same weekend teaching another mantis form as well as a dual-weapon form (broadsword and chain whip - watch out!)... and, on top of all that, it's also the weekend of h2k2 in new york - which i'd thought about going to, but then didn't really consider again until i had a chance to read the list of speakers and the topics for the various presentations. fuckity-fuck-fuck. i thought about possibly trying to fit in both denver and canada, since i have to stop in denver to catch my flight to calgary anyway - but i don't think i want to have to explain to canadian customs why i have a fucking broadsword in my luggage. they already don't like me as it is. i'll know more later this week.

-got a calendar set up for the next four months which will hopefully get me to follow at least a somewhat regular training routine. the senior masters are visiting phoenix in october, at which time my happy ass has to test. the last time i had to test in front of a panel was when i went from white belt to yellow belt, and there wasn't much material to cover. this time it's going to be a little more unnerving, and since i don't want to fuck up or make an ass of myself, i figure that i should start reviewing and polishing my stuff now.

will the excitement never cease?
Mood: bored

Not as much content this month, but still some classics....