#Hashbrowns

Recently, I have moved to a new apartment, which explains but does not excuse my absence from my blog. Whist unpacking, I found a decrepit 80 gig external hard drive, purchased when I was a sophomore in college. Due to it’s bulk and requiring a separate power source, it established itself as a pain in the ass, and has been, packed up, quietly waiting, entirely untouched 2005.

This digital time capsule has reminded me what a horrible, horrible place the world of old was. Newsradio, currently cherished on DVD, saved at what appears to be a less-than 128 bitrate. A .SWF file of All Your Base Are Belong To Us. The Internet Archive version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  A picture of a bronze guinea pig titled “ranjyu.”

Who were you, me-of-2005? And why was this significant?

Knowing what I know now, I recognize some of this as simply having shitty taste of being a barely-past-teenager. And some of this is a charming discovery. L5R fiction of an unpolished quality, but carrying a nostalgic value. Music I’d long thought lost due to crashed computers I can listen to again, and cringe at my awful taste. But the most cryptic thing is a document simply titled “projects;” a fragmentary arrangement of indeterminate origin and significance. There are flashes of familiarity in some of them, but the overall meaning of why this was saved in such a format remains a mystery. Like Ranjyu, but with far less clarity.

Below, copy and pasted directly, without editing, I present to you: Projects

immortal warrior

365 greatest people you’ve never heard of:
Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf
Norman Borlaug
Hypatia of Alexandria
Stanislav Petrov

reng – spider
forðfor – death
gast – angel
hreosan – fallen

In the last 24 hours, I have been shot, stabbed, hit with a shovel, poisoned, blown up, thrown out of a building, and run over with a truck. If I survive this crap, I’m gonna write a book called “Stuff That Hurts.”

While not included inside the "projects" document, this image, intitled "mindora-learn2" was in the same folder. Perhaps this means something?

Rin
Pyou
Tou
Sha
Kai
Jin
Retsu
Zai
Zen
Alen Trivette

Split 1/4 bottle .187 liters
Half 1/2 bottle
Bottle 750 milliliters
Magnum 2 bottles 1.5 liters
Jeroboam 4 bottles
Rehoboam 6 bottles Not available in the US
Methuselah 8 bottles
Salmanazar 12 bottles
Balthazar 16 bottles
Nebuchadnezzar 20 bottles 15 liters
Sovereign 34 bottles 26 liters

The Sovereign is a new bottle, made for the launching of the
largest cruise ship in the world. The bottle alone cost 8,000 dollars
to produce and they only made 8 of them.
Most of the funny names come from Biblical people.
There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead
armadillos.
– Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner

黒白

When I first encountered him, he was wearing a hawaiian shirt and bathtowel, chasing an empty black sedan down the street. Had I known the circumstances, I would have been more impressed

aoenhime

I do not know what conclusions to draw from all this.