a guy who looked a lot like seymour cassel yelled at me today when i cut him off in traffic. he blew his horn and sped up his ’74 gold mercury cougar XR-7 until he was right next to me, and put his his cell phone down long enough to scream out the window “assholemotherfucker!!” and then sped up and almost got hit by another car when he cut someone else off at the intersection of lincoln and ocean park.

i thought it was funny that he yelled that at me, because when i saw him i almost shouted “seymour!” with a big smile on my face. i had just seen him giving a talk at a cassavetes retrospective at the laemmle a few weeks ago.

los angeles is weird.

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. –Charles Bukowski

as a programmer, it’s almost a rite of passage to write your own “web publishing system”. it’s taken me almost five years to give up that ghost, and to suffer the script kiddie language that is PHP instead of my beloved Perl, but i’ve frankly got so many things better to do that i can finally write the obligatory “woulda, coulda, shoulda” post, and get on to writing instead. so enjoy, both of you. not all my old posts will be making it back, but keep an eye out for vague mumblings about the intersection of development and operations in technology, and perhaps a philosophical rambling or two taken from my recent studies in yoga, martial arts, and and assortment of alternative healing modalities.

Update – 02 Aug 2006: Yes, I am aware that “PHP” the language does not equal “WordPress” the application, but I do have to use the language to customize the templates. And, every time I do so, it feels like i’d rather be poking myself in the eye with a razor. I constantly wonder how this jalopy can run, but the truth is, it runs quite nicely, and its developers are motivated. So, kudos to the WordPress people, especially at the 2.0 release! Thanks for all the fish. Now, back to getting real work done, with Perl and Catalyst ;)