Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

Well, I did something right, apparently. I’ve finally managed to get iStockPhoto to accept something I photographed – instead of a vector illustration. Actually, they took three somethings. Check out my portfolio for the new pictures – “The Freakiest Show”, “Ripples and Coins”, and “Good-Night Scylla – Good-Night Charybdis”.

Huzzah!

Yes, it appears that Deep Blue Funk’s latest CD, The Illegal Rebirth of Deep Blue The Kid is well on its way to meeting its release date of September 1, 2003!

But that’s no reason why you can’t take advantage of our Digital Goods Store special offer and buy all the music from this $10.99 CD in mp3 format for only $2.50!

Supplies are limited, yadda yadda yadda. Just check it out, already. The deal ends September 7. Unless I forget to reset the price. But don’t take that chance…

I’ve made a temporary change of scenery. While Stacy’s holding down the fort at Thudfactor, I’m taking care of John and Sarah’s apartment.

And, of course, their cats.

Cernunos decides my camera strap is much more interesting than his toy

Cernunos and Sekhmet decide the camera is boring.

Neil Gaiman links to The Gender Genie – a program that is designed to look at the structure of a piece of writing and determine the gender of the author. So, I thought I’d feed it a few pieces and see how it turned out.

I fed it six selections.

It is an unspoken sin of my birthplace, isn’t it? An… unhappy conspiracy of geography and politics. That’s what it is. It is that and nothing else. You and I, we are the same, you know. We even look the same. You have blonde hair. I have blonde hair. You have blue eyes. I have blue eyes. You have a gun. I have no gun. But you and I, we are the same in all that counts. Would you like me to speak German to you? I speak it well, I am told. If I speak German to you, will you let me live another week? Bitte. Ich bin kein Jude. Ich bin kein Polska. Wenn Sie mich leben lassen, liebe ich Sie für ihn. I know that you are human. I am human, too. I am human. I will shine your shoes for you. I can do many things for you. I was not made for the fields. I was not. If you give me a shovel and send me out there with the rest of the women, I will not live. Could you do that to such a one as I? I know what you think when you see me. Ich erinnere Sie an Ihre Frau, nicht? Eine glückliche Frau, die Sie in Berlin ließen? There is nothing that separates you from me. Just lines on a map, and those don’t even exist anymore. I was Polish, now I am German. Just like you. Bitte, mein herr, I want to stay alive. Look me in the eye and tell me that I will. Say that to me, please. Ich möchte leben. Erklären Sie mir, den ich lebe.

The Gender Genie believes the above passage was written by a female.

What were you doing when life passed you by? I’ll bet you were sleeping. I’ll bet you stretched yourself out all long and loose and closed your eyes, and you said, “I’ll just rest here for a little bit.” You thought you’d take a minute or two, and by the time you opened your eyes everything around you had changed. That’s what happened to you. You said, “I’m not sleeping, I’m just resting my eyes.” Then you turned off the alarm and fell back in bed. And all the while, life was just going by. Before you knew it, that minute or two turned into an hour, that hour turned into a day, the day turned into a week. Weeks turn into months, months turn into years, and years stretch into decades. Probably sometime before those decades became a century, you finally realized how late it had gotten. But by then, it was a little too late. Life had passed you by.

The Gender Genie believes the above passage was written by a female.

It’s amazing. It all just came streaming into my mind. I can do it. I’m the only one who can. I can lift the burden of guilt on every Mormon son and turn loose the libido of every repressed Catholic schoolgirl. I can send ecstatic shocks ringing straight down the spines of Evangelistic ministers and back out the soles of their feet into the earth. I’m the man who’ll make it safe to masturbate in the streets again. I’m going to set my soul to fly out over the airspace of Nevada and liberate the streetwalkers with my message of carnal freedom. I’ll activate their erotic frontal lobes and set them loose. They’ll be my leopard-print nuns and they’ll cease selling it on the streetcorners only to give their hard-earned money to the Man. Instead, they’ll give it away for free in the chapels and the synagogues and win souls to our side. Don’t you see, Xander?

The Gender Genie believes the above passage was written by a male.

And let that be a lesson to all of you. Yes, I am the Doctor. But I am not a doctor. If you have a medical problem, call the hospital. Call your doctor. Hell, call your acupuncturist. Don’t call Doctor Love. If you call me, I’ll tell you to do what you should have done in the first place, and call a real doctor. No. Check that. I’ll ridicule you first, and then I’ll tell you to call a doctor. This is Pillow Talk. You’re on the air. You better not have a medical problem.

The Gender Genie believes the above passage was written by a female.

The Old Man, however, is not of Hell himself. Nor is he a Heavenly construct. The Old Man is of Crete, one of the homelands of the Trojans. He is a part of the mortal world that deals with the immortal. In all the Inferno, there are only three figures who travel in some fashion through Hell and maintain their ties with the mortal world. One is Dante, the cartographer of hell who tours to discover what lies upon this plane of the afterlife. Another is the Old Man of Crete, who bleeds “tears” that form the landscape of Hell and that are used to punish the wicked. The third is one Jesus Christ, who at the death of his mortal body entered Hell, released the souls of those who had attained a state of grace prior to his birth, and then returned to that mortal world that he had left. All three form foundations and serve their purpose in this world to lead to the next. As Christ who entered Hell, the Old Man of Crete illustrates the relationship between sin and redemption, shows the importance of forward motion through life, and marks the path to redemption that Dante seeks

The Gender Genie believes the above passage was written by a male.

The circle of hate is simple to outline. It begins with a blanket statement of aggression. Some segment of the population stands for the destruction of a way of life that the citizenry is used to. The segment charged is always one that could conceivably include your neighbors, and the accusation is something that is usually impossible to detect readily, but that can be simply summarized in an easy-to-understand and sometimes physical fashion. Once the segment is defined and summarized, charges can be laid. Due to the broad nature of the defined segment, the charges are irrefutable by any argument. Reputation will be ruined, at the very least. If not life, then livelihood will be at an end. As the exposure of the hunt increases, the number of accusations rises. Accusation becomes an easy way of settling disputes. Soon political opponents, personal enemies, and mild nuisances find themselves utterly destroyed in the public eye. People are crucified in the popular conception. The process rolls on indefinitely, claiming more and more victims, until it reaches a point that somebody can turn the tide of public opinion against it – or nobody is left alive with reputation intact who wants to accuse anybody else.

The Gender Genie believes the above passage was written by a male.

All right. Here’s the breakdown.

• Passage 1 – Wrong
• Passage 2 – Wrong
• Passage 3 – Right
• Passage 4 – Wrong
• Passage 5 – Right
• Passage 6 – Right

See, I wrote each of these passages myself.

Passage 1 – Anja from Alive From Birkenau. A female concentration camp prisoner.

Passage 2 – Cassandra from Cassandra’s Lines, a work in progress.

Passage 3 – Genetically Danny from Deciphering Sydney.

Passage 4 – The one actual anamoly, here. This is Wendell from The Taste of Wormwood – a male character whose dialogue appears to be written by a female… Hmmmm.

Passages 5 & 6 – Passages from essays written for literature classes – just to throw something without an intended gender identity into the mix. It identified both of these correctly.

So, I was feeling very good about the realism of my dialogue. After all, my female characters fooled the Genie.

Of course, the male character seems to have been written by a woman, as well, so…

You belong in the Cat Who Walks Through Walls. You
are creative and cunning. Your works often
feel empty to you, though others love them.
You suspect that the universe and everyone in
it are just characters in someone else’s story.


Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been A Character In?
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Aaaaand some quizzes on the anime I love to be confused by. I actually took four quizzes (what? I never said I wasn’t a geek). Three of them returned the same result, and the fourth one returned something more reasonable. So,

Best questions:

Haruko


Which FLCL character are you?
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Different result:

you are [samejima mamimi]. usually quiet, but at
times flirtatious. you live in a private world,
a dream world.


Which FLCL Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

In Jerusalem, a suicide bomber comes close to completely derailing the peace process.

In Iraq, bombers attack the UN offices and kill 22 people.

In Texas, Bush golfs.

Israel issues harsh statements suggesting that the peace process might be not only stalled – but forever dead in the water.

Kofi Annan – a true statesman – issues heartfelt condolences and promises that the UN will continue its mission overseas.

Bush can’t be bothered – he’s on vacation.

Time and again, Bush has demonstrated to us that the American people and the international community take a backseat to his various leisure activities – golf, fundraising, and watching elephants hump. Bush has held fewer question-and-answer sessions than any President in U.S. history. In addition, he has spent more time on vacation than any President in U.S. history. And he has lost us quite a bit of international good will. In essence, he has conned the people of the United States into footing the bill for the biggest Spring Break bash a frat boy could ever dream of.

Not bad for a man who was never actually elected.

I forgot to mention on Monday that it was a one-year anniversary for me.

No, not blogging, silly – it was exactly one year since I sent two of my plays to Playscripts Inc.

I still haven’t heard back since they confirmed they got the manuscripts.

So I celebrated by sending them two new plays.

I’ve been plugging away on the site. I’ve been honing the Digital Goods Store, posting new designs in the Dry Goods Floor, clearing up my cluttered banner area, standardizing my look, and trying to find a banner exchange that actually seems worthwhile.

Have I succeeded on the last part? Well, I feel like my new mainpage exchange is a good deal – a banner exchange aimed at blogs seems like a good way to advertise a blog.

As for my exchange for the Digital Goods Store? Well, I’ll wait and see. The last banner exchange (which shall remain nameless) promised to filter specific industries and animation out of banners appearing on my site – and then didn’t deliver.

I’ve also been combing through my blogroll and doing some paring down. If you were listed there, aren’t listed now, and would like to be listed again, please point out this fact to me.

You’re the
Falkland Islands!
You’re pretty insignificant in the big picture, but when you have influence, it affects the most important people in your world. Sadly, you don’t have much of a will or voice of your own, and it’s hard to develop it when your big aspirations are to live on a farm. Your emotional life is stormy and windswept, but you have a few close friends that follow you like, well, sheep.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

So, I’ve got a photo submitted to Jones Soda. Check it out, give it a high rating, and maybe someday soon they’ll pick it for one of their sugary-sweet flavors.