E tenebras, lux dormiens

Linux here and forever!

listening to Magic Flute: Overture K. 620 -- Mozard

After installing RedHat Linux 7.2, my primary goal has been to get my PCI card for accessing the internet using the Wireless LAN and DSL to work . . . let me repeat . . . to work.

Since it's licensed under the Gnu Public License (GPL), I felt safer installing this operating system than Microsoft Windows 98. My step-dad installed Microsoft Windows 98, whose license says it's for one computer ONLY, on two computers. By itself, it isn't that much of a crime . . . Then again, I'm expecting, because I posted this, some representatives from Microsoft will come and audit us.

Links for those interested:
A walk on the wireless side (LinuxWorld)
Tools for Linux
HowTo for Linux

OF course, I know that you don't care, since you're 97% likely to be running some form of Windows 9x and XP. (statistics retrieved from memory of yours truly, may not be based on polls)

the Fifth Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

So I am someone violent, wrathful and gloomy, and a virtuous non-believer. I'll have to take the test again, but so far, it's one out of 3. :-)

Well, I've installed GNU Red Hat Linux on Saturday night, have tried fiddling with it for two days. It's pretty fun, kind of like DOS except more advance. I think it's a perfect blend between a graphical interface and a shell prompt. Each is capable of the same function as the other, and each has an advantage of its own.

Unfortunately, I'm not have to get online. If there's anyone who's willing to help by giving me an idea of making Siemens PCI Wireless LAN connect to the access point that uses DSL, please help, write or leave a comment here.

Since I'm a newbie at Linux, I'm devouring through all the Linux literature that has be posted online, but I either have trouble understanding or am scared by the word "compiling software." I'll see how to compile things, but until then, if there's a good tutorial I can follow, it'll be great.

Now in the fourth act of five in this ridiculous political melodramatic opera (the entrance of Arnold Schwarzenneger into the political fray), we must now reconsider the form of government and constitution that California has to avoid the damned appearance of the recall effort as something akin to "an act of partisan spite" (Economist "Democracy as Chaos" 9/8/03).

The first act occurs after the election of Governor Gray Davis, it was nine months of struggle with the budget where nothing was happening.

The second act is the recall effort, now being funded a car-alarm businessman, that has reached enough signatures to remove the democratically-elected Governor Gray Davis from office. Between this and the violation of stupid constitutionally-set deadline for agreeing to a budget solution to the $38 billion deficit, all hell breaks lose.

In the third act, the space of weeks before the deadline for registering to become a candidate has seen a disgusting flurry of people interested in governing over 38 million Californian residents. Porn stars, gamblers, 18-year-olds, 98-year-olds, and 238 others declared their unofficial candidacy. Then, Senator Diane Feinstein declined running for presidency and Arnold Schwarzenneger, who had been tantalizing people with question of "is he? isn't he?", declares that he is in the running. Thus ends the third act.

The fourth act will be the half-baked campaigning. But the shocker is that the Lieutenant Governor of California, whom only 60 percents of all Californians really know, Cruz M. Bustamante promptly became the last best hope for the Democrats if the votes for the recall should succeed because he has a 3 points higher rating in the poll against Gubernatorial Candidate Arnold Schwarzenneger. The fourth act will end with the election, whether set in October or in March.

The fifth act is not yet known.

Session of sweet silent thought

I have a memory, have while it is mine, if some functions of my brain do not make me forget or someone does not steal or point out that they experience the same thing, of a trip to Ontario and Québec of Canada. In Québec City, my parents and I ventured into old Québec, a city of fortress within a large suburban area. The change was startling. Outside is the image of industrialization. Inside, an entrance into anachronicity. Of course, there were many babbling tourists that crowded up the pebbled street and houses, stores, and structures of stones.

It was, in the best possible word I can muster now, bland.

The street performers in Québec City were talentless, compared to San Francisco's street performers on Pier 39. Where San Francisco's performers were completely painted in silver or gold, and could remain frozen in place for long period of time. This Québec's performers were laughably touched with the ugliest of whitening make-ups and shorn mustache to look sharp like some ridiculous villain of a melodramatic play. And a terrible, terrible music player to boot. Not only that, while San Francisco's performers were willing to perform without request for financial sustainability. This appalling performers of Québec used a disgusting sign, as if to substitute for the usage of his voice, and pointed to it, robot like, that said as followed paraphrased:

You can't look at me without paying. It's good to pay for what I show you.

I do not remember the exact word, but I knew full well the meaning being exuded from this talentless and most abominable performers of French Québec.

If only that he could be damned! Unforunately, there is no Association for the Integrity of Street Performance Arts (AISPA) to regulate such idiotic displays of untalent.

Of course, I cannot blame that performer, who might have been good before, when he was younger. And I cannot claim whole-heartedly that all the performers in San Francisco are the talented leaders of the cultural world. Still, it feels good for me to criticize the francophiles.

So, in Québec City, I walked along the far outline of the fortress and have been intrigued by the history held within. That the French within the deepest interior of Québec should still be unwilling to be Anglicized by the government of Canada only show that this desire is reflected in all parts of the world. In the South of the United States, those that fought for states' rights in the Civil War will not forget the humiliation they suffered from the Yankees in the liberalization of the slaves and the stagnation of the economy as well as the Reconstructionist carpetbaggers.

What can we do to make those deep in Iraq, humiliated by the invasion and occupation of the American force, forget the history? What can we do to help those who remembered the glory of the Ottoman Empire to forget the actions that the Western World had taken to dismantle it?

The answer, I'm afraid, is that there is none. It should be counted as natural, that perhaps the more moderate of the populace will regard the United States as a good-intentioned and helpful friends, but there are many who would prefer that the United States, a Christian (or perhaps Godless) nation, get off the soil that have been consecrated by the Muslim world.

If we can understand the fact that France, having been invaded twice in two world wars, are still feeling the effect of the humiliation they suffered, we can accept that nothing is black and white.

Commentary II

to continue with previous post

The important thing to remember is that the best way to remove stereotype is not to use television, because people will change channels on the dime if they ever get the sense that they are receiving a lecture rather than watching a show of couch potato value.

Commentary

Excerpted from the journal and edited for clarity

Having finally catch parts of an epsiode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" on NBC (I don't have cable), I can now comment. I thought it was very funny, too fast in changing scene, and I was light-hearted.

It may stereotype gay guys, but you have to consider three things: #1 As an unstereotypical gay guy/male/man/boy, I don't mind/don't care about the stereotype and thought it was full of hilarity that made me want to giggle a lot. Hee, hee, hee.

#2 Television is not supposed to provide you with an impartial view of culture in one show, it can't by any theoretical or practical philosophy.

#3 Television, in all practicalilty, is essentially a static content. It cannot change, and you cannot interact with it. Therefore, there is no way you could ever give the full depth of the gay culture and community in a manner feasible, unqueasy, and equal to the mainstreamed society. This probably reiterated and elaborated on the statement of #2, but I thought it was emphasizable.

[will update in future time, Mom is calling.]

On the Attempt to Officiate Same-Sex Couples in Meaning and Word

I feel embarrassed to talk about this issue, and I probably shouldn't publish this because I think it's a waste of time.

[content deleted by author on account of thinking that they are stupid and oft-repeated]

I myself am queasy about the prospect of gay marriage because there is something in the institution of marriage that sets itself up for abuse by many stupid people. I do consider that there may be a legitimate can of worms being released in opening up the definition of marriage from being simply a union of a man and a woman. Then I think, of course, there is always a can of worms with every change you try to take. That cannot be doubted, but to forbid marriage to slight a permanent minority to make them something less than humans is wrong. This may be the last battle we will ever fight, or may not be, as we can forsee new science that will be a period of another great upheaval to the ones we have had every decade last century.

I can understand that when straight people, who never had any feelings for the same sex, or simply suppress those feelings, could not hope to understand what LGBT feel, and because of that gap in thinking, they may refuse to consider anything out of the realm of their existence.

Despite the prevalent talk of how many straight men have lesbian fantasies, in reality, I doubt that marriage would be considered in their minds as something that lesbians or gays should have.

I am ambivalent. Each time I try to elaborate, I stop myself short of saying it. I believe that the LGBT would treat the right to marry with more respect that straight people do nowadays, at least until a new generation of young men and women, who didn't grow up in the struggle, treats that right as something taken for granted.

That said, I believe that gay marriage will undoubtedly happen. There is no question about it. As long as old conservative men and women die, which I hope will happen before medicine make them live long enough to stagnate progress, young people, who have already shown their support for gay rights will vote gay marriage into law. Unfortunately, the problem is that young straight men may not support this right, and so we must make every effort to change their minds, not open them, change them.

A trifle

I now recant my previous statement that I would publish a "fury of blogs" and just say that I am not going to blog that much for the next couple of days. Strange, I thought, how I adopt the vernacular so quickly.

Let is be made known that my support for the Democratic Party shall never wane!

Platinum is my favorite metal

I love the formation of new words, though I'm not sure what exactly to call that. I love both the English and the Romantic way of forming words.

English has words that could derive new words: boylove, boyorgasm (i'm aware of removing the "or" to produce another word with the same meaning), boycrush. Ah, I know it was not eclectic, but just to let you know.

Then the Romance, one word that I made up just recently was homopornucopia, which I hope can mean "gay porn of plenty."

Well, I'm publishing a fury of posts today.

Is never shaken

You know, I have this high school ring that my mom, in her powerful peripheral influence, had me buy. It was something I wanted, but not something I felt I need, deserve, or would proudly wear.

How it does mock me. For so long, more than a year, I have only scantily put this ring on, and only in front of the computer. I would never knowingly wear this ring outside of my room, or outside of my house.

If you readers want to see a picture of it, I will see what I can do. Please let me know through the three tools of communication that are available: commenting, emailing, and instant messaging (AIM: JanusRat).

Keep in mind that yours truly, Avati Luminus, is not good-looking, nor is he a busybody whose nose extends into everyone's business. No, he is just an introverted, whining, attention-wanting little pseudo-semi-quasi-bumpkin.

Lord, how heavy this ring is. What a mockery it is making of me. My right hand, on which the ring wraps around the fourth finger, is now tired, weary with the burden of the metal and the fake, though deep sapphire blue, gem.

I'm taking it off now. [struggles to remove the ring, succeeds, and puts it back into the black ring box.]

It was cheaply bought, just less than 200 dollars. Mom wanted to buy the cheapest, so it was uncustomizable. I just have the high school's name, the mascot, and a crest consisting of a harp, two criss-crossing thunders, a flying foot (it has wings on them), and a fiery torch. I have much to learn.

Do I like this ring? Of course, I would love to show it off if I didn't realize how much I thought it was so corny, or in my state, pathetic. Here he is, the little boy, wimpingly attempting to mimic jocks and cheerleaders, or even the "normal/average" people.

I don't know who's reading this page, and whether they are culling from it, some words of wisdom. But I suspect that something in the way I write, almost too intellectual, may be turning off my potential readers . . . I'll try to be loyal to the word, and keep writing.

Oh, sapphire, emerald, ruby rose! I must say I could prefer an opal or turquoise, amethyst or jade, or even the lovely onyx!

Back to the point: The ring holds a period of contention for me, but I want everyone to know that I have them.

From the journal

Whoever threw that pie at Green Party Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader, he has my thanks.

Although I would offer my support for the Green Party California Gubernatorial Candidate Peter Camejo (what a mouthful!), I could never support Ralph Nader for the way he gave President Bush his presidency. He actually went to Florida to get some 10,000 votes from the Democrats to cause such periods of contention ultimately resulting in the most wise Supreme Court, in which Chief Justice William Rehnquist belabored upon himself to overstep the boundary of the Constitution, as well as his own supposed quest to give more rights to the states to legislate and decide among themselves, to give said President his unelected power.

Oh, if there was ever a time, a place, a word for which a good, righteous, wise, and all-knowing person (whether a man or a woman) can calm and restore the dignity that the federal government should have, even if it never was, that time/place/word should be NOW!

This Above All

After some extraordinary difficulty, as well as putting off this post, I have decided that whenever several days go by without a post, you can definitely be sure that there will be a day when several posts are made at once, which is today.

I don't know why I can't come out, why I continue to closet myself, denying myself a life that I reveal only online. I have half a mind to delete this entire post because of one thing, that I am just unum e pluribus (one out of the many) that are also posting their "angst!", their "trepidation!", their "trials! and tribulation!", their "woe! sadness! loneliness! depression! suicidal despair! longing for recognition! longing for fame! longing to find a significant other! (or at least, a joining into the seamy, seedy, underground, heated, discovering, of the most twice reviled and most praised of all things, sexual orgasm with someone for whom you feel attraction.

Angst! Angst! Angst! The many stories of "When I grew up, I knew I was different." The story, at once, is both heartening and depressing. Will I never be original!? My, six billion people on this planet, a large percentage speaks English, and in that percentage, I must be confined to a statistics.

Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy!

Perhaps the most insipid thing is that as long as I remain in innocence, my post will just be the pathetic whining of a post-pubescent not-really-teen young man that still can't find a way to be happy beyond the facets of life that he finds reasons to stay so pessimistic.

Damnaaayyyyshuuuuuun!!!!!!!!!!!

It is high time, high time. It is nigh time, nigh time. Yet this prolonged bemoaning of hope against despair and hopeful despair against despairing hope just proves to me that I am more in words than in deeds, more inclined to "like a whore, unpack my hearts with words." The only alternative is this, is this that I must venture, apparently alone, into a cowardly old world, with my broken ears to catch snippets of sonal dangers, wailing and wawling that we fly the nests to end up in this horridly, unfulfilling world of which not only everyone is made of such the same mold of fools, but also me!

Yes, I am megalomaniac. Yes, I think myself special! Yes, I want to be so original, so different, that I refuse to submit to the mainstream. And yet, I find myself in another group entirely, that purports to be so non-mainstreamed that everyone joins them, so the only hawks are those conservatives trying to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment Act. I doubt that I should ever get married, because I could do so only for the right reason, and only with those that love me so much he would forswear any sex with any other guys but me. To be removed of that right is to do a great disservice and will release from me an ambivalent rage.

In the end, everyone will discuss exactly the same thing and likes exactly the same books, or if they do not, they will have within themselves such a mold from which other fools could be made, and one in ten of those fools will unfortunately be me.

Perhaps there is nothing wrong with that, and that I overreact at this swarming mass of the Net generation, younger and older than I am. After all, a sense of belonging is what I need, and without that, without true reality of looking into another's eyes and knowing that they know, I cannot count myself among the priveleged and all my words I've wasted in bits and bytes are merely spurious, ranting, and empty.

Sum Avitus Lumini.
(Latin: I am the bird of light.)

Yo soy un p?jaro de luz, el luz de todos los p?jaros.
(Spanish: I am one little bird of light, the light of all the little birds.)

America the Beautiful

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above thy fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O Canada

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

The Pride Anthem

As we march upon this street today,
We will stand against all fear,
And begin to claim our promised rights,
That were paid for with our tears.

For this land of freedom we have fought,
In its struggles we have died,
In the hopes that truth would someday reign,
For our rights so long denied.

As proof to the ridiculous incompatibility between Netscape 7.02/7.1 and Windows, I offer this example: I decided to gamble on an upgrade to the newer version of Netscape, which was being advertised by the droves.

What should happen but an invariable, uncomprehending, faults that show the irreconciliability of AOL Netscape and Windows?

Faltered, I proceeded to uninstall Netscape in its entirety and tried to download the older version, only to be hamped by the inability to download one file, mail.x??? † because there was such great demand for the file and I would have to try again later. Tried, I did, days after days, until I finally succeeded.

Then, I hit a damning snag: Netscape 7.02, the older version, would not run. What came up was not any faults but a yellow screen with red text, indicating some kind of codeshit that the programmer had forgotten to hide. I don't know what's the name for that, but that was what it was. Just lines of "text windows# blah, blah, blah."

This is just one step toward the loss of faith in one of my great hope that would continue to rival Internet Explorer. Alas, the demise was already foreseen by so many commentaries that I was too blind to its faults.

Of course, the success of Netscape 7.02 before I installed Netscape 7.1 had enlivened me to the point of praising them for such a good program, but now, I realize that it must fail. And other programs will take its place, like Mozilla.

So for this, am I d_____

I yet still feel some sort of prudence washing upon me that puts such fire in an effect to cancel out my passion. It, my passion, shall not succeed, though I fear that I will lose all its, of my prudence, manners by the end of my days. O, come what would, but Shame has such unpleasant face!

What personalities shall I have, that I seek to find, only to learn the sluttish manners in that they may proceed. This calm of reasoning above passion shall reign dominant and supreme until that day comes. What will happen? I do not know, and I will not proceed to find out more. O, such a ringing in my ear, like some contorted ballet, endless, repetitive, but that demon Shame and its constituents in all their ugly pomps!

I yearn to prove that my supplication is not in vain, but request made of God is duly answered in His own time. If so, when might I receive it and prove unto the populace that I am not dodgy. O, that acceptance may come soon, to battle back that Shame, with wicked, smiling face, who is such a villain in the plot!

O, Shame! I banish thee! Thou art banished! From my mind, from the room, from the house, from the world! If only such thing was possible, that we would not feel Shame's effect upon the most gratuitous, that coupled with envy, says pretty much nothing at all. And that is what Shame wants, total silence, total paralysis, such panic that we all must freeze, or find ways to deny, avert, or flee, flee, flee far from home to a place where no one knows your name, cares about you, so that you may live life in peace. O, Shame, if I keep silence, then you have won! But I will bless the light and scorn the darkness, when I can finally declare bitter victory against you, after so many long years! O, Shame! You do not deserve the worthiness to be put upon the page, to waste bits and bytes, and yet, to do not so would in effect give Shame his/her/its greatest moment of power, whose arts have been mastered!

O, Shame, Indecence, Obscenity, you find your last days among us! After you have ravaged all the sins presented in Christian Book, you come to hide behind us in the coming days of . . .

I enjoy upheavals; and it's high time that the nation, and the world, is due for them.

I feel that I must take this time to warn the constituents that they must be united as Americans now. They must quiet themselves because there are too many things happening in conjunction, and perhaps by coincidence, that is producing a grave backlash.

Tread carefully. Or else, reckless wading will move to make this country enter the same era as the Prohibition.

We must wait longer.

We could not have done all that now, as we look toward the past at the choices that we made and how far we have come, that we could have done. Ex post facto. But only at that moment of true choice can we ask, without knowledge of what future may entails, whether we did what we could.

I know that patience is a virtue most people do not have, but we must as well recognize that incremental steps with some giant leap is a necessary movement toward greater reform and greater progress.

Whether or not the Supreme Court's ruling may constitute as that giant leap, when we must take notice that as the most powerful institution in the world, the five justices with one in concurring voted with far-reaching precepts that in the conglomeration of the greatest burst of themed television shows as well as coverage of our nearest neighbor's move toward a grand legislation may count in the mass medium as the most insidious form known to the world.

What, by the mass, was I trying to say?