alex chiang: web 6.0

Fort Collins currently has a law (created in 1964) that prohibits more than three unrelated adults from living in the same household. Ostensibly, the idea behind the law was to prevent large numbers of college students from living in the same place and disturbing the neighbors with raucous parties, etc.

Currently, the City Council has endorsed a study session to tweak the law and make it more enforceable. The proposed tweaks are to change the law to a civil rather than a criminal offense, and raise the limit to four unrelated adults.

While this is a step in the right direction, the proper solution is to eliminate this useless law altogether. It’s not the pure number of people living in a house that makes them bad neighbors, it’s their personalities. This law does nothing to help the situation of a single musician living alone who regularly invites his band members over to practice til all hours of the night. Similarly, it punishes a group of 6 studious grad students who have formed a cooperative and live quietly next door. When I was an undergrad, I lived in a house with 7 other people, and our neighbors never seemed to mind. In fact, one little old granny seemed to appreciate the fact that we would shovel her walkway every time it snowed.

People will be assholes, and we already have laws regulating that, such as noise ordinances, unkempt lawn ordinances, no parking on the lawn, etc. As long as those ordinances are enforced, neighborhoods should retain their property values. The three (or four) unrelated law is both unnecessary and unfair.

Another fine flick by Stephen Chow. If you liked Shaolin Soccer, you’ll love Kung Fu Hustle. It’s another highly stylized kung fu movie from Hong Kong, which is a fancy way of saying that there are tons of over the top fx and overacting for the sake of mass (Chinese) appeal.

Although it moved a bit slow in some parts, the sheer enjoyment factor was way high due to the number of one-liners and visual gags, not to mention the variety of creative concepts about kung fu genius.

Much recommended and definitely worth the $6.50.

This was an excellent book written by Nick Hornby (who also wrote High Fidelity) revolving around two main characters: Marcus, a weirdo 12 year old who doesn’t fit in anywhere; and Will, who is basically a dilettante.

The story flips back and forth between Marcus and Will, and eventually the two plot lines wend their ways toward each other. The story is decent, but as with any good book, the real reason it’s a good read is because of the richness of Marcus’ and Will’s characters. We get to see the world (or perhaps just London) through their eyes, and boy howdy, their respective perspectives sure are amusing.

Will’s character amused me more, mostly because of his perpetually bemused and cynical attitude on life and his personal philosophy of the path of least resistance. A characteristic passage in the book comes early, when Will is dating a single mom (only because she looks vaguely like the model Julie Christie) and she’s trying to break up with him:

This, he couldn’t help feeling, was kind of ironic. If she but knew it, he was exactly right; if there was a man better equipped for the meaningless fling, he wouldn’t like to meet him. I’ve been putting this on! he wanted to tell her. I’m horrible! I’m much shallower than this, honest! But it was too late.

[...]

She was starting to get a little tearful, and he loved her for it. He had never before watched a woman cry without feeling responsible, and he was rather enjoying the experience.

And so forth. Marcus gets some priceless scenes as well, but it was really Will who made me crack up with laughter.

About a Boy — highly recommended.

The town of Atwood, Kansas recently voted to eliminate all rights for gay partners (ie, no hospital vistation rights, no estate rights, etc.). Too bad for them, the owner of the town website is gay and decided to speak out against the town’s actions. It’s a good page, and interesting for internet readers, but unfortunately, I predict it will get him just about bupkiss with the citizens of Atwood. The problem is, it uses logic and reasoning, and is just too intellectual to appeal to the common small town midwesterner.

In other news, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked if he sodomizes his wife.

update: had to change the link to Atwood, Kansas, as the original open letter got taken down. The updated link goes to a copy stored on a Geocities page.

Fantastic movie. I’ve heard others complain a bit about the stilted dialogue, but I didn’t mind it. The story is a series of small morality plays in a gritty dirty setting, between archetypeal good and bad characters. With that sort of simple backdrop, you expect the characters to speak in terse sentences and menacing undertones. The visuals and fx were fantastic — some really interesting camera work — and I’m a sucker for b&w.

All the artsy stuff aside, it’s just plain entertaining from an over-the-top violence point of view (a la Kill Bill), along with plenty of flesh-flavoured eye-candy.

Go see it.

This would be funny if it wasn’t such a waste of taxpayer dollars. The Idaho state legislature has passed a Napoleon Dynamite bill commending Jared and Jerusha Hess on their movie.

The text of the bill is actually pretty funny, and kudos to the Idahoans for having a good sense of humor, but damn, I would be annoyed if those were my tax dollars.

I’ve seen numerous posts in news.software.readers asking how to change your From: line (in slrn), or your signature (or whatever) depending on what newsgroup you’re reading. The answer is usually a bit of s-lang macro that is an article hook or group hook. To this, I say “feh”.

Do yourself a favor and go get identity.sl. It will let you change almost anything you want based on the newsgroup, and it’s much easier to understand and use.

The last lines of my slrn rc file now read:

interpret ".identity.sl"
interpret ".achiang-identity.sl"

Inside .achiang-identity.sl is the following:

identity->add_new("hp", "^hp\.");
identity->set_from("hp", "alex", "hp.com");
identity->set_real("hp", "Alex Chiang");

identity->add_new("rc", "^rec\.");
identity->set_from("rc", "alex", "none.invalid");
identity->set_real("rc", "Alex Chiang");
identity->set_replyto("rc", "alex@chizang.net");

So for the hp.* hierarchy, I use my naked email address. In rec.*, I set my From: line to an invalid domain (note the .invalid, which is how you are supposed to indicate a junk domain), and set my reply-to correctly.

This solves the problem perfectly, and I don’t have to muck around with s-lang.

What a great day it is today. Beautiful mild temps and sunny. It helps that I rode the road bike to work rather than my commuter which is several pounds heavier. I have to admit, that even though Dashboard Confessional is pure teeny-bopper emo crap, it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. I’m not ashamed to listen to teeny-bopper music.

In other news, I am pleased to see that my fellow citizens of Ft. Collins were not swayed by FUD and voted resoundingly to keep fluoride in our water. I suppose for them, we’ll just have to drink the government’s mind control juice for a bit longer.

Thank God that Terri Schiavo is finally dead. I’m thankful that we no longer have to hear about this disgusting farce.

I was reading the NYT article on her death, and on a whim, decided to look at some pictures. I was stricken by a picture of two people praying for Terri and had the following thought.

Look at all the self-righteous people who felt the overwhelming urge to stick themselves in the middle of a very private family struggle. Their beliefs made them feel that their intervention was necessary, and that one of the ways they could “help out” was by praying. To me, the fact that they didn’t win (ie, Terri still died regardless) shows that their beliefs are wrong and that praying is useless, so why bother? Stop believing stupid stuff and don’t get bent out of shape over something that’s none of your business anyway.

By implication, the god that the holier-than-thous believe in sucks, quite frankly. Why would anyone want to believe in a god who created such a shitty world?

I’m going straight to hell for this post, but whatever.