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March 26, 2005
World of Warcraft
This game is introducing some amazing new concepts to life. Some of them have been suggested before, but this is the first time it's being put into practice at this scale.
So the new version of warcraft, is an online game. You buy a copy for 50$ and install it and you will be connected to a server to play with others. The game is a HUGE world and every individual will try to improve their skills, gather money, etc (as in real life) and try to kick others' asses. It will take you 8 hours to go from one side of this world to the other side.
It has broken the record of the most number of people playing online at the same time: around 400,000 people !! This is crazy.
Now remember the concept of not buying the games and hacking them or finding the serial number instead ? Well, good old times. You can't do it anymore. After the first month, you will have to pay a monthly fee to be able to continue playing and since it's online and needs registration, you can't hack it. It's a massive amount of monthly subscription fees that is not comparable to any other game ever made. As for the hacking, a while ago, two people were trying to hack it, and they stopped the game for a few hours and banned those people and anounced it to everyone.
Now in this world, you can gather money, skills, etc and improve. This has brought a new weird thing: people sell their characters, money, etc on Ebay !! So for example you can buy 100 gold of this game for 10$ on Ebay. Or some people offer money to take your character and play with it and improve it to a certain level ! By this, it has basically introduced new jobs: some people will just stay at home and play and sell their characters/money/etc or will play to improve your game character and get paid !! A new virtual world is interacting with the old real world !! Someone might be some pathetic dude in our real world and be a hero in this virtual world and can make a lot of money in the real world by being that hero in that virtual world.
As time goes by, the makers of this game, will be introducing different worlds too. So a new world that is completely different from the current world being played, will be introduced and people will play in other environments. This is very close to what you read in science-fiction stories like Asimov's or Arthur C Clark's in which there are different gallaxies and planets, etc and they interact.
Posted by masoud at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2005
Conversation Randomation
-I think I'm going in the right direction to figure out what my problems in life are.
-So you know what your problems are ?
-No, I just have this intuition that I'm in the "right" direction to figure them out. Once I figure them out, I will change my direction in life to the "right" direction that I've figured out after going in the "right" direction for finding my problems.
-So the two "right"s are not the same.
-No, one is a right in the left direction, the other is a right in the right direction. You see my point ?
-Where's your point ? I have to get new glasses.
-I like big glasses. You can't have tea in a small glass.
-I used to have a big sheet of glass, but one day I went home and saw I had another one. So I figured I needed a break from life.
-I know what you're talking about. My car needed a break too. I was about to crash once.
-Couldn't you use a brick instead ? They sound the same.
-Your sister and a whore sound the same too. But the former doesn't quite do the job.
-Oh now I see your point. It was right there. A bit to the left though.
-Yeah sometimes you need another point to see some point. Like this time that I was at a red light and the light wouldn't turn green. I saw other cars moving and the cars behind me started honking. That's how I realized I was color-blinded.
-So can you still drive ?
-Only with glasses. Green ones. In the right direction. With your sister on my side ready for a break and pointing out my problems.
Posted by masoud at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2005
Infinite Loop
I'm stuck in an infinite loop. Everything I think of becomes infinite. I was thinking of the concept of "being nice" and then I thought being nice is nice. Then I thought even thinking that being nice is nice, is nice. Just one step further and thinking that thinking that being nice is nice, is nice, is nice. Now the question that how many steps you can go and still make sense of it, is left as an excercise to the motivated (1) reader.
Now the sentence "being nice is nice" brings us to the following point: If someone asks you "what things are nice ?", besides many things that you can come up with, you can say "being nice, itself, is nice". If you call the set of things that are nice, set A, then this means that something being equal to A is in A.This means that A includes itself.
This reminds me of a riddle that says "what is it that includes everything, even itself". And the answer to this riddle was "Alphabet", something a child understands. Now we have another more complicated answer to it, more suitable for screwed up minds.
(1) This is when "motivated" is a synonym of "screwed up". So if some day when you ask for the synonym of motivated in microsoft word, and you see "screwed up", you know where it's comming from.
Posted by masoud at 08:02 PM | Comments (2)
March 08, 2005
No More
So, I was at this seminar about copyright, etc. and I've decided to not write about any practical cool ideas anymore :) But instead, I will write about other "impractical" or impossible cool ideas. And who knows, maybe one day they actually WILL be practical, like a bicycle that you can warm up your coffee with as well. Or a frying pan that plays music too. Or a book that does grocery for you when you're not reading it (or even when you ARE reading it. huh ?).
Anyways, this whole idea of writing about impractical ideas, is itself a practical idea. All of these things can be in an episode of the Simpsons for example. So if one day I see these in an episode of the Simpsons (or maybe this idea has already been done in the Simpsons (1)), I will go and sue them.
(1) Like that episode of South Park named "Simpsons did it" in which any weird "new" idea that this guy wants to do, the Simpsons have done it before. Well except for the whole idea of Simpsons-having-done-the-ideas-before. But then doing Simpsons-having-done-the-ideas-before in the Simpsons would've been very hard (or maybe impossible) to do, it's more or less like "can God make a stone that he can't lift himself" kind of thing. I hope you see the connection. You know I can go on forever with this....
Posted by masoud at 11:01 AM | Comments (3)
March 07, 2005
Baraka
....And I watched Baraka again. To describe its beauty, here's what can be said about it: One of the best wishes you can have is to wish that you see a day (or a night or something in between) when you sit down and watch Baraka and every scene that comes you say "yeah I've seen that place"....
Posted by masoud at 07:47 AM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2005
Diaries of Mr KK 3: Driving High
Diaries of Mr KK are true stories happened to a friend of mine. Viewer discretion is advised.
So I was completely high and crusin' at 100 kilometer in a 50 km zone in west vancouver with my friend when this police car stopped me. A police woman came and as soon as she smelled the car, she knew what was goin' on. We were having fun with her though and everything she said, we would kind of grin at her and say something nice back to her. I kind of hit on her and tried to get her phone number too, but I can't quite remember if she gave it to me or not.
So she told me whether I had more pot in the car. Before I said anything, she said if I gave her what I had, she would let me go, otherwise she would screw me over. So I figured I had no choice so I gave her the rest of the one pound of pot I had in the car (I could go to jail for that). Her partner came and asked if everything was ok and she said yeah. Then she let us go but said something about not doing this anymore and stuff. It's good to know that there are still some good policewomen/men around....
Posted by masoud at 06:53 AM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2005
An Introduction to "I"
I is the only letter that is also a word. I is the only word that can be used both with the verbs "is" and "am".
To avoid any confusion, when you see "I" in the Diaries of Mr KK, it refers to Mr KK; in the Diaries of Nobody, it refers to nobody (or anybody or somebody) and in the rest of the postings, it refers to me.
So not all I's are the same, you gotta have good eyes (and IQ more than 29) to see the difference between I's.
Posted by masoud at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2005
Diaries of Mr KK 2: Trip to Edmonton
Diaries of Mr KK are true stories happened to a friend of mine. Viewer discretion is advised.
So one day in summer we were chilling out with a friend and we thought it would be nice to go on a trip. So we got in the car and started heading towards Edmonton right away. All the way, we were drinking in the car and were high too. When we got there, we got a room in a hotel and stayed there for one night. We didn't sleep at night cause we were busy smoking up. The beds were untouched and when the clean-up guy came in the morning and saw what was going on, he thought we were some weird gay couple. The smell of the smoke was so much that when the guy came in, he started grinning right away and said "so you guys had a good night, huh ?".
When we were trying to get rid of the ash in the toilet, we had to flush the toilet twice to get rid of all of it. We went downstairs to check out and the counter guy looked at us and said "we have one big event in Edmonton each year (I think he was refering to a carnaval or something) and you guys just made up the second one".
A quarter pound of dubies and a few pack of cigarrettes was all we smoked that night. well, we're not proud of it, but we'll try to improve it next time.
Posted by masoud at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2005
Diaries of Nobody 4: Alireza's Mom
As my last hope, I read the biography of Arash Diesel to the sharks. They seemed to connect and empathize with the character and have postponed eating me. In order to become closer to the sharks, I have decided to write more biographies. This will help me remember my past and remain sane as well.
Alireza was born in a dark corner of a tent beside the Nile river. His father (we will call him Khosro Khan (4) from now on) was quite poor at the time, since his cattle was all wasted by a new-commer wolf, and Alireza went on to grow without enough milk which caused him some mental damage later in his life.
When he was two, Khosro Khan stumbled upon a hidden treasure from the second pharaoh and sold it illegally to an English art-lover farmer for 200 pounds. Later on he found out that the treasure was worth 2 billion pounds and this drove him insane (literally).
As a former shepperd, Khosro Khan had some musical talent, so he sent Alireza to learn an instrument called Tar. After a few years, one day Khosro Khan broke the Tar on Alireza's ass to show him his objection of him watching too much TV and drinking bad beer. I think there was no point doing that and a regular piece of wood would perfectly do the trick (3). This taught Alireza a lesson and he chose electric guitar as his next instrument, since he thought it would be hard to break it even by shoving it up someone's ass. Obviously he didn't have much respect for his ass which brought him bad names and reputation later on. In any case, his father proved him wrong in this case. Khosro Khan was quite a genius among mad people. And the bad fame we talked about, caused him (1) to move to Canada. Canada was famous for that.
Canada proved to be a country of opportunities for developing talents, so he started working in MacDonalds. The mental damage caused by milklessness in his infancy, caused him to spit in McChickens and Double Burgers (2). As soon as his boss found out, his lack of respect for his ass became apparent, and they kicked his ass out of that place. He kept on working there without his ass, but it didn't last for long since he had to constantly have an eye on his ass. His ass was quite arrogant and selfish and wasted.
As his last option he turned to photography. He was greatly influenced by a talented photographer friend and took photos of all the trees around him. Gradually he developed a close and intimate relationship with the trees and his contact with human soul faded. This caused him more insanity and he turned to literature. He was greatly mesmerized by the French culture, so he moved from BC to Quebec since cocaine was cheaper there. He was one of the few people in his time that said NO to BC weed in favor of another drug. That's just dumb.
Photogrpahy and literature were dead ends, but coke made him a philosopher. He used to think that one can think that one is always one even when someone multiplies it by some ones, but later on he changed his mind and would say that one can be less than one without affecting other ones (5). He was quite messed up anyways.
If at this point you ask yourself about his mom, well, let's just say Alireza's mom was/is a concept.
To make the story short, he thought "maybe life is all about following your dreams and ideas", but he didn't have any. Instead he learned to fart and made others miserable.
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(1) This can refer both to Alireza and Khosro Khan, but it's not obvious from what I've written. well....
(2) Some say this made the hamburgers more bearable. I'm sure those people were high at the time.
(3) There is a famous question that asks "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?"
(4) He prefered the name Ghasembeyk Maashaallaa, but it was hard for the Egyptians to pronounce it the way he liked it.
(5) He wrote a book called "One" in 240 pages. All the sentences in the book are made of the word "one", question marks and periods. I think publishing this book will be his masterpiece.
Posted by masoud at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2005
Shajarian in Concert
So the master had another concert....BUT....
This time it was on Feb 20th, in Orpheum Theatre with about 2300 people (I guess), unlike any other time that I've heard of, it wasn't sold out, and it wasn't as good as last years and I didn't take pictures with him either (thanx to my camera that was out of battery and thanx to others who had cameras and sold me out). Maybe it's about time he changed who he works with and gave more vocal to Homayoon....
[Fortunately] (1) A good friend took some pictures and here they are:
Keyhan Kalhor, Mohammadreza Shajarian, Homayoon Shajarian, Hossein Alizadeh
Keyhan Kalhor, Mohammadreza Shajarian, Homayoon Shajarian, Hossein Alizadeh
Like Father, Like Son
(1) The question is whether "Fortunately should start with a capital letter or a small letter...."
Posted by masoud at 04:29 PM | Comments (9)
March 01, 2005
Trip Themes
Here's what a good friend of mine suggests for trips to make them more memorable:
Decide about a particular band/singer (or two) and everyone makes cds of that band and the major thing you listen to in the trip is the ones you've agreed on. This way, when you talk about a trip a few years after, you can refer to it as "The Metallica Trip" or "The Guns Trip", etc....
Posted by masoud at 01:14 AM | Comments (2)