A plan? Well, I'm full of ideas; too many, in fact. Once I put them all together into some semblance of order, I should then be able to form a plan. This is unlikely to happen any time soon. Gary D. Duzan Humble Practitioner of the Computer Arts -- Update: As of 5/20/1991, I have less of a plan than ever. However, my .plan seems to be growing all the time. Go figure. -- Update: As of 12/21/1991, some of my plans haven't worked out, so I am trying to put together new plans. At least my .plan isn't growing as much as it was. I'm not quite sure if this is a good thing or not. -- Update: As of 6/15/1992, I have pretty much given up trying to put together a plan; they never work out anyway. I figure things will happen whether I plan for them to happen or not, so why bother? I just added the largest entry yet to my .plan, but I am at a loss to come up with a deep meaning behind this fact. -- Update: As of 4/17/1994, it seems that I haven't made any major plans that have worked out, which rather confirms my previous observation. -- Update: As of 7/27/1994, I have made some major changes in my life, including a new job in a new state. None of it was really planned, though. It just sort of happened. Still, it is better than nothing. -- Update: As of 9/26/1994, I had sort of been planning to stick with the new job, but I decided to quit. So now my life is open again, and some real planning can begin. Somehow it feels right this time. I hope I'm right. -- Update: As of 3/1/1995, I think a plan has finally worked out. Of course, now the follow-through is going to take a lot more planning and work, but it is still better than nothing. I just hope that once I get through it that I can come up with a follow-up plan. -- Update: As of 11/15/1996, I'm trying to wrap up the last plan, and the last part is the hardest, of course, but hopefully I can still pull it off. I'm no closer to a proper follow-up plan, though. Ah, well. -- Update: As of 4/18/1997, the last plan is wrapped, all except for the little bow on top. It actually turned out rather well, surprisingly enough. As for the follow-up plan, I sort of have an interim one. It may not be the best, but it will keep me busy while I work on the next plan after that. -- Update: As of 7/21/2001, well, the interim plan actually lasted me quite a while, and left me comfortable enough to not have to make any real plans. I had made another plan about a year ago, but that didn't work out. Now I'm getting ready to start on a new plan, and I think this could be a good one, with some of the better elements of the interim plan and the one that didn't work out mixed together. We shall see. -- Update: As of 11/13/2002, the last plan hasn't worked out, really. It might have been better than it was, but it wasn't. It might still get better than it was, but then it might not. A new direction for this plan has some appeal, but I don't think it is going to be enough. I have a somewhat radical new plan in mind (to the extent that I ever really have any plan clear in my mind) and I'm leaning towards giving that a try. -- Never speak more clearly than you think. -- Corollary: I should probably never say anything. -- Great Jumping Gobstoppers!!! What was that?!?? -- The Doctor (2), The Krotons -- The Procrastinator's Philosophy: When there is far too much that you have to do, do something else. -- Though Isengard be strong and hard, As cold as stone and bare as bone, We go, we go, we go to war To hew the stone and break the door. -- The March of the Ents, J.R.R. Tolkien -- (from a fortune(6)) Hier liegt ein Mann ganz obnegleich; Im Leibe dick, an Suden reich. Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws Weil es uns dunkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head; We buried him today because As far as we can tell, he's dead. -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher; "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele -- I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. -- A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Jonathan Swift -- I seem to be an INXP, between INTP and INFP. ( http://typelogic.com/ ) No wonder I'm such a mess. -- Having trouble getting words out? Sentences getting painfully stuck halfway? Try delicious chocolate flavored Textlax for relief from mental constipation. -- The USENET Oracle -- mediacracy (n.): A government controlled by the media. -- mediocracy (n.): A government that excludes the well- and under-qualified -- Do not meddle in the affairs of Vorlons, for they are angry and too quickly subtle. -- mbr2@kimbark.uchicago.edu -- Gary Duzan: A nice guy. Too bad he's so stupid. -- You are Here \~ V |~ . o o . :;: () -O- 0 . O |~ Wouldn't you rather be out there-----> /~ -- Stolen from the .signature of moonman@buhub.bradley.edu -- Non-determinism is what life is all about. -- Culpability factor zero, master. -- K9 Mark II, State of Decay -- In our warp, where time and space are one, We can no longer see the sun. In fact, there's nothing there for us to see, For light is nowhere near as fast as we. -- Klaatu, "Around the Universe in 80 Days" from their album "Hope" -- There was a young man from Berlin Who stuck himself with a pin. He started to bleed, And he said, "I do need A band-aid to keep blood within." -- A poem I wrote in 8th grade (Ok, so it is really a limerick. It rhymes, doesn't it?) -- When you wish upon a cow, It makes no difference anyhow. When you wish upon a cow, your dreams go "moo". -- Song for the Last Day of a Ren Faire as sung by "griswold@adoc.xerox.com (Eric Griswold)" -- In the beginning, the world was void and without form. And Gary Duzan said, ``Let there be alt.tv.simpsons.'' And the rest, as they say, is history. -- "The Evolution of alt.tv.simpsons", Raymond Chen -- Not long ago --- incredible though it may seem --- I heard a clerk of Oxenford declare that he "welcomed" the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive mechanical traffic, because it brought his university into "contact with real life." He may have meant that the way men were living and working in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. In any case the expression "real life" in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more "alive" than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more "real" than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm-tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist! -- From "On Fairy-Stories", J.R.R. Tolkien -- If caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of my existence. -- There's a kind of freedom in being completely screwed, because you know things can't get any worse. -- "The Freshman" -- September, October, November, and December: So named because they were months number 7 (_septem_), 8 (_octo_), 9 (_novem_), and 10 (_decem_), respectively, in the old Roman calendar. This often causes confusion, since they are the 9th through 12th months of our calendar; however, the Romans used to number the months as follows: January -- 1 February -- 2 March -- 5 April -- 6 May -- 4 June -- 3 1/2 July -- 5 (again) August -- pi September -- 7 October -- 8 November -- 9 December -- 10 This was changed to our modern system by Marcus Aurelius, who declared the old system to be _stultissimus verbis_ ("too stupid for words"). -- The Internet Oracle (The artist formerly known as The USENET Oracle) -- Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on the last day. -- The Aiel Warriors, "The Great Hunt", Robert Jordan -- A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.) The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. "Is there anyone here," he says to them, "who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?" They murmur and say, "We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it. The rabbi says, "Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong." He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, "Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistriss. Then he'll know I am his loyal servant." So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder. Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, "Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone." The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated. As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones. "Nor am I without sin," he says to the people. "But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it." So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance. The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him. -- San Angelo, _Letters to an Incipient Heretic_, trans. Amai a Tudomundo Para Que Deus Vos Ame Cristao, 103:72:54:2 -- _Speaker for the Dead_, Orson Scott Card -- We are MicroSoft... OS/2 is irrelevant. UNIX is irrelevant. Openness is futile. Prepare to be assimilated... -- Stolen from the .signature of prs@turing.org -- All of life can be broken down into moments of transition and moments of revelation. This had the feeling of both. G'Quan wrote: "There is a darkness greater than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities: it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender." The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain. -- G'Kar, "Z'ha'dum" -- Hello everyone. I suppose you think that nothing much is happening at the moment. Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, that's what I want to talk to you all about: endings. Now, endings normally happen at the end. But as we all know, endings are just beginnings. You know, once these things really get started, it's jolly hard to stop them again. However, as we have all come this far, I think, under the circumstances the best solution is that we all just keep going. -- From Mike Oldfield's album, "Amarok" -- Reblessive (adj): having self-referential holiness. -- The many facets of my being: gary@duzan.org gdtltr@limbo.org (mental facet) baffled@castrovalva.escher.nl (alt. mental facet) Gary_Duzan@"3806 Jewell Ave \ Downingtown, PA 19335-2090" (physical facet) http://www.duzan.org/gary/ (web facet) -- Isn't that charming? Do you know, I really feel I could dance. Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha... (dancing) Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... charming... ha, ha, ha... (CRASH!) -- Later in Mike Oldfield's album, "Amarok"