punctuate me please
piece my fragment phrases add
meaning to my words

Please,
Open your heart to me,
Let me see who you really are.
Let me hold the you that
No one else sees inside
Your secret Zen garden;
That part of you makes me real.

Please,
Open your mouth and speak,
Tell me who you want to be.
Say the things you want to say
But couldn't because I was in the way.
Let out your gale force wind,
And blow me away with meaning.

Please,
Open your eyes and see
I am standing right here with you,
And I don't want to leave,
I need you to want me, too.
Open your ears and feel me say,
I love you.

What is the sum of life, but a memory?
A life to live, yes, and driven by a purpose.
But purpose may also be a memory,
Often motivated by the fickle heart,
Led hither and yon by the waning moon.
Where then, does one gain direction?
Is it fate, or perhaps providence?
Perhaps, but only arguably so;
I say it is vanity, simple vanity
That inflates in our memory
The image we greedily hold
Of what we were, are, and will become.

What depth has wisdom, beyond one experience?
As a tower that crumbles in decay
Under the pressure of weather and time,
No principle stands to the basilisk's gaze
Of the self-made agnostic cynic.
So we each build our soul a castle,
And choose to set a picture window
Framing the fairest of aspects to spy.
Within our high parapet we feel wise.

What is opinion but an expression
of the vanity of subjective self?
In folly we decide what is right
By our own observance and subjective thought,
In folly we decide what is not,
By exclusion of that which is distasteful.
There is no intellect in clever admission
Nor wisdom by prejudicial omission;
We worship that which appears beautiful
And in vanity assume it reflects our face,
And in vanity disdain all others
Whose beauty we do not comprehend.

Who has freedom yet refuses to choose?
The devote zealot is vanity,
The agnostic cynic is vanity,
The free unfettered mind is vanity,
A rational opposition to insanity is vanity,
All logical conclusion is vanity,
All theological posture is vanity,
All unitarian thought is vanity,
All righteousness is vanity,
All piety is vanity,
Science is vanity,
Eternity is vanity,
Choice is vanity,
Freedom is vanity,
All that is of man is but vanity,
Life is vanity.

My GTK 2.0 theme for Pidgin is still under review on freshmeat, so I have posted it here for downloading as well.

Windows zip: GTK2-TheMatrix.zip

gzip tarball: GTK2-TheMatrix.tar.gz

Unzip the contents into a new "TheMatrix" subfolder in your GTK themes path. On windows, this is C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\share\themes\

Next, if you are using the stock GTK+ that is included with the Pidgin installer, you will need to run the GTK themes selector. In the Windows Start menu: Start > All Programs > GTK+ > Theme Selector. Then select "TheMatrix" under either the current user or globally. (If you chose globally, make sure to also select it or '[always follow global settings]' under current user.)

If you are currently running Pidgin, close and reopen the application to apply the new theme.

In Pidgin go to the main menu Tools > Preferences, and the "Conversations" tab, make sure that under Font "Use font from theme" is checked.

Also, under Tools > Plugins you may want to at least initially disable the "Conversation Colors" and "Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control" plugins, as these can override the GTK settings for font, color and other settings for specific text elements within Pidgin.

If you are willing to play around with the plugins you can add some nice affects that go above and beyond the stock GTK skin, for example in the "Conversation Colors" plugin I set the "Sent Messages" text color to a slightly darker shade of green, such as #009600, so that in your convo log you can easily see a contrast between your sent and received messages.

I also highly recommend that in the "Conversation Colors" plugin you check the options "Ignore incoming format", "Apply in IMs", and "Apply in Chats" to taste, or you will be at the mercy of your friend's color settings in their IM client (hot pink text or font size 20, anyone?). If you don't want to override any of the GTK colors you can leave the "customize" options unchecked.

I knew that things might
change someday, but never thought
it would end this way.

There are certain inside jokes that are simply inexplicable unless you were there to share the moment. There are moments of shared pain that draw friends closer together. And some movies aren't meant to be loved, but you love them anyway. Stop judging me! *grin*


The Transporter
This movie got terrible reviews, but Jason Statham's propensity for granite-faced action stunts was cast perfectly into this sometimes wacky, occasionally sexy thriller.

Zoolander
Pop-culture references, high-fashion spoofs and bulimia jokes: Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson make this movie plain dumb stupid, and somehow a lot of fun.

The Replacements
Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman star in this yarn about a football team that is forced to recruit misfits to finish out the season in the NFL. The acting is atrocious, which somehow redeems this hilarious farce.

The Core
Aaron Eckhart is lame, Hillary Swank makes you want to gag, but for some reason you keep watching this trainwreck of a sci-fi thriller through each of the improbable, ridiculous and sometimes hilarious plot twists.

Stealth
Josh Lucas acting is subpar, Jessica Biel is useless and stereotypical eye-candy, but Jamie Foxx and a laughable plot add just enough (unintentional) humor to keep you hemming and hawing 'til the end of this awful excuse for a film.

Anaconda
Jenifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. This movie was painful! and you loved every minute of it.

Hobgoblins
An instant do-it-yourself-MST3K, thanks to this trashy horror B-classic.

Manos: The Hands of Fate
Beware, the dullness of this movie may be toxic if you dare to skip the MST3K rendition for the original. To call it a cult classic is an insult to cult classics. It truly doesn't get much worse than this.

There is occasionally the gem of a shoulda-been-a-B-movie that unintentionally inspires those MST3K moments that you and your friends will never forget.

From Rotten Tomatoes list of top 100 worst movies of the decade, here is my list of the worst movies I but haven't seen yet, but will probably enjoy hating:

(#100) Whiteout
Stars Kate Beckinsale. 'nuf said.

(#49) In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Stars Jason Statham. I enjoyed playing the game Dungeon Siege. *shrug*

(#48) Bloodrayne
Another video game flic. This movie likely sucks to the Nth degree.

(#44) Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Other than the game title, I have no idea why anyone would watch this movie. Ever.

(#27) Battlefield Earth
This might be enjoyable only to rip apart how awfully it mis-portrays the excellent sci-fi book.

The storm may rage and the winds may blow
In a hurricane of epic proportions
But all is still and calm under the ocean

The tightest of grip is ripped and tossed overboard
Where the water will guide you down, down
Far below the storm's violent sound

As peaceful as rocking in your mother's arms
The only sound is the singing of her lullaby
Until you yield to her gentle aquatic repose

The waves above toss and bounce about
With heavy arms grappling and hurling
But there is only one long embrace under the ocean

So put your hand in mine and let's dive
And escape the cares of this violent trifle
To find true rest under the ocean

And under the ocean we will swim about
Dancing to the beat of the eternally devout
In the most serene of water ballet

Perhaps once we are bored we will glide
From ship to ship upon the tide
And waving, mock the pitiful few still aboard

Or if you wish capsize the contents into the salty brew
Why be selfish? There is plenty of room
To let them play with us too

Where we shall live together, me and you

In peace under the ocean

I will add to this list and touch the post date as I feel inspired to.
Songs my (imaginary but) awesome band should learn to cover:

Eye in the Sky - Allan Parsons Project

determined he
struggles to get to her but
the waves keep coming.

---

She cries in his arms,
Then beats her fists on his chest.

He tries to argue, 'I have been trying',
And points out every obstacle along the way
That kept him from being there for her.

Every obstacle but himself.

It's been a crazy dozen weeks or so. Between work and class and family drama, it must be pure adrenaline and caffeine that is keeping me going.

So the site changes I meant to work on aren't ready for public consumption yet, but they are on the way. Look for more updates soon.

This site may not be around for much longer...

... in it's current form.

loneknight.org as a domain has been around since 2002, but was preceded in various forms on free-hosting sites since late nineties. It has been my testing ground, my artistic outlet, my baby. It has seen half a dozen redesigns, and countless code updates, bug fixes, and attempts to stop the spammers.

But as life goes, it moves on, and so must loneknight.org.

My plans over the next few months are to move this site into a much more reduced, subdued format. The blog will likely go away (although I may preserve some read-only functionality for past users who request it). Likely, the only thing left will be the poetry repository, since I committed myself as well as accepted the gracious permission of many friends and fellow poets to post their works here as well.

Why the change? I realized at the end of '08 that I really need to separate my professional business presence from the more personal, artistic expression, and loneknight.org is really only suited to meet the latter.

So as loneknight.org diminishes, you will hopefully see geekmode.com bloom and flourish. I have been planning for years to get my blog engine operational there; but likely it will only be a single-author site -- me. I will be porting over the technology and professional blog topics from here to there. Also, falsesecurity.net will eventually reach it's end-of-life, and the tech/security related content will be moving to geekmode.com as well.

Thank you to my readers for keeping me inspired and motivated, thank you to my haters for keeping me on my toes, and thank you for the spam bots for giving me a reason to read through literally hundreds of submissions of bad grammar, anatomy-changing promises and questions about "where do I find ?"

Peace,

clutch