mircea_popescu: it is the curse of the contemporary postmodern world that most jobs are done by amateurs.
mircea_popescu: this is like asking "how long will a chess player tolerate the other's crafty artfulness"
mircea_popescu: dude, seriously. the propaganda war is a propaganda war.
mircea_popescu: "At what point will the Russian government decide that Washingtons mendacity, and that of its European puppets and corrupt Western media, render hopeless Russias efforts to resolve the situation with diplomacy and unprovocative behavior? "
decimation: certainly no one is selling allodial rights to anything these days
asciilifeform: for two decades, the ru and ua mafias had an understanding.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform the problem with "real" conquest is that it sounds a lot like "let me just put the tip in". what do you mean "real".
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: there's correcting khruschev's wandering pencil, and then real conquest
mircea_popescu: the seaside resorts ?
mircea_popescu: the fact that they were historically more accomplished russians than the muscovy, and earlier so ?
mircea_popescu: well... maybe the girl sucks.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform this is somewhat like saying billy jean does not have the strength or will to form famblies - he merely fucks.
Azelphur: indeed, seems much more my speed, thanks for the recommendation :)
asciilifeform: usg does not have the strength or will to conquer - it merely destroys
mircea_popescu: jurov supposedly russia refused them union or somesuch.
mircea_popescu: which... whatever, just how well they actually exist is reasonably unclear to me. how does slovakia exist or so forth
mircea_popescu: whether they're well organised or not presently has no bearing on whether they at all exist.
mircea_popescu: but this is not the argument you bring.
asciilifeform: except that the modern ukrs aren't a resurrected 'Res Publica Polonia' - they're a cheap muppet of usg.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform so what's the beef with the polish-ukrainian confederacy ? just as actual.
asciilifeform: the entire 'great ukrs' national concept. created by brits, then picked up by germany, then - usa, into present time.
mircea_popescu: same exact play as they're currently trying and failing re bitcoin.
mircea_popescu: decimation the idea is for russian oil to be sold in the manner of oil owned by the us. it doesn't matter who gets paid, as long as the "pay" is in accounts run by thiel, and it all follows kyc etc.
jurov: ascii says it's "factual"... so i'm asking about the facts
asciilifeform: jurov: if you ask kiev, the east 'started it' by refusing to fellate nazi cock and speak the west's made-up language
decimation: under this petro-war theory, is the us trying to keep russian oil out of the world market? to the detriment of the us?
mircea_popescu: ie, you both mean the same thing. if you allow oil to stand for the "root" account of the world, then yes it's petro-war.
mircea_popescu: these people who use that terminology SAY petro war, but ONLY because in their cluelessness the petro- stands for the symbol you correctly use.
asciilifeform: everybody focuses on, e.g., petro-war, when looking for reason for usg bleeding to the bone in effort to undermine russia
mircea_popescu: decimation nope. in general, sane people would prefer the alternative. perpetually.
decimation: mircea_popescu: and that's my point, for purely practical reasons alone, one would think that the 'married men' who have to deal with reality would prefer a power that has a track record of at least keeping a lid on the crazies at home and showing up to the diplomacy table with things in order
mircea_popescu: kinda how the holy roman emperor got ground into dust.
mircea_popescu: much in the way mpex has no home unless some territory with pretentions of statality makes an excellent offrt
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform for the reason that then the coke and the pepsi must bid for my allegiance
asciilifeform: the worst thing for a totalitarian reich (like usg and its 'international kommunity' muppet theatre) is - the existence of a 'pepsi' alternative.
mircea_popescu: it really makes no difference. no matter his hair color, a married man is a married man. and so no matter the "ideology", whoever is stuck administering two billion people over ten million acres is similarly caught.
asciilifeform: decimation: it is necessary to understand why usg must do what it does. as in a 'wild west' film, 'ain't room enough in this town for the both of us'
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform not so. they like to pretend like they are, much like the 11 yo child of a man who keeps fighting dogs pretends to be the master of said dogs for the benefit of any visiting classmates.
mircea_popescu: decimation the russians are unable to do anything in the middle east, as proven by their fabulous failures in afghanistan and cecenia. what's worse, they know this, and won't bargain for it.
decimation: To me, mature adults could sit down and hash this stuff out "yes, you can have east Ukraine in exchange for helping us keep a lid on the crazy islams down in the middle east"
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i don't have any issue with anything in that piece either, but this isn't the criteria. the form specifically is what one uses to identify these things.
mircea_popescu: isn't it funny how global-warming this sounds ? "we know there is anthropogenic bla bla"
mircea_popescu: He was a prime minister of Denmark who saw he could rise beyond Denmark by serving as Washingtons puppet. As prime minister he strongly supported Washingtons illegal invasion of Iraq, declaring that we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the fool didnt know any such thing, and why would it matter if Iraq did have such weapons. Many countries have weapons of mass destructi
mircea_popescu: it's not, but before we get there,
mircea_popescu: lol check it out, the russian foreign service is quite active in the fringe of the us discourse. orlov, roberts, there's a list with these talking points.
decimation: asciilifeform: one can see a copy hanging in the nsa museum as I recall
mircea_popescu: "The American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army collapsed under Russian counterattack in 5 hours."
decimation: Imagine if the us were at war with mexico, and russia was openly contemplating sending troops/planes/whatever to the mexican border. people in the us would go apeshit
mircea_popescu: oh, no, it's just that putin i mean roberts "does not understand how the world works"
assbot: Warning to the World: Washington and its NATO & EU Vassals are Insane -- Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org
assbot: German federal election, November 1932 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
decimation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_November_1932 They were all worried about the communists too
decimation: re: hitler < the "old right" nobility and "old republican-style" conservatives in germany gave Hitler control after his party won a minority share because they thought they could 'control him'
mircea_popescu: fdr had scarcely the secessionist excuses of lincoln to fuck the country up. without his lame contribution, it'd have stayed in one piece, but perhaps may have survived the 21st century.
mircea_popescu: one can only wonder how the us would have fared had it not turned socialist in 1930.
mircea_popescu: especially in the army.
asciilifeform recommends the 'manna' story except for final chapters. just like mircea_popescu's snip of the 'dulap' tale.
mircea_popescu: obviously since we're speaking of germany, an east european power par excellence, these were often the same people.
mircea_popescu: but as far as i recall, it was a serious source of friction between the third reich gauleiters and eastern european nobility, that the latter despised the former on the grounds of... well... this, exactly.
asciilifeform: thiel, like his fellows, is less of a baron (with the attendant inviolable privileges) than a... reichsführer. whose lands, posts - are contingent on playing ball and being good boy.
mircea_popescu: it is the law.
decimation: Re: Thiel working with usg << I can't imagine anyone running a 'bank' or 'bank-like' service and not being a spy for usg, it's the law yo
asciilifeform: great story. how nostalgic! like robert sheckley's 'the academy.' usa was once a rich country, people imagined that they would get to retire into comfortable prisons when an 'age of the robot' comes
asciilifeform: om 140352 in building 16, resident quant C. This assignment provides you with suitable housing and nourishment to sustain your life. Please board the bus."'
asciilifeform: '"Do you have guest status with any resident?" The robot asked. "No." "Do you have means of support unknown to me?" I suppose I could have stashed a cache of gold under my mattress, and this question allowed me to declare it. Such a cache would, of course, be grounds for arrest, so I was screwed either way. "No." I was without any means of support. "In accordance with ordinance 605.12b, you have been assigned ro
mircea_popescu: several in the sense of .8
decimation: not that it really matters anyway, because their production is subsidized by the prc, and the purchaser is subsidized by usg
decimation: asciilifeform: but the chinese factory saved several cents!
decimation: re: lithium batteries << yes the conventional solution is a spring-clip style battery holder if one can't spot-weld lead to device
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: thanks for the advice!
asciilifeform: this kind of tale will read as utopian hogwash when the -proper- (e.g., with electroshock and mine) collars are issued.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: lost the link also long ago. thank you for digging it out
kakobrekla: dunno, just another end game.
asciilifeform: use lithium 'aa' cells rather than alkalines, or you won't have >3v when cells are not quite new any more.
asciilifeform: it doesn't have to be a coin cell, either. can attach one of, say, these - http://www.ictradenet.com/models_pic/BH2AA-W.jpg - to outside of cartridge. drill a hole, attach terminals to correct spots. won't win any beauty contests, but will work.
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: alternatively, solder in a battery holder of appropriate shape, and insert battery after it cools.
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: soldering lithium 'clock' batteries will dramatically shorten their life - and possibly explode
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: how difficult does this procedure look: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/pictures-how-to-replace-an-snes-cartridge-save-game-battery
mircea_popescu: "encrypt" your emails to everyone. it's good for the emails and ok for you!
assbot: The Open Source Tool That Lets You Send Encrypted Emails to Anyone | Enterprise | WIRED
mircea_popescu: im sure thiel will give 100k prizes to whoever came up with the brilliant idea of a wait, no. they don't need it.
asciilifeform: notice when diddled cpus are commonly thought to have appeared. not only when vlsi went far enough to create a comfortable padded hiding place, but when spread of linux, etc. exposed the limits of the diddled-os approach.
asciilifeform: then somebody finds it. or miscreants start using illegal111 os without said feature.
mircea_popescu: if he can get paid to listen to rsa keys buyt then for "technical reasons" can make that baloon 10x,
mircea_popescu: afaik that's exactly what he wants : to inflate the categories.
asciilifeform: instead - why not fool you - victim - to let the cpu know precisely when it is handling private key.
asciilifeform: but this would take up a good deal of real estate on the chip die, and someone might notice.
asciilifeform: it is, in principle, possible for dr. evil's cpu to recognize when, e.g, given version of gpg is in the process of taking the modular exponentiation.
asciilifeform: consider the problems dr. evil faces when he designs a diddled cpu.
asciilifeform: to see this as issue with aes in particular is a grave mistake. it's an issue with using a 'food chain' that you aren't intimately aware of to the bottom.
mircea_popescu: i guess the author doesn't realise it or something, but this lays bare a much used, fundamental, very valuable exploit of aes.
asciilifeform: likewise compiler has the option of pissing out 'xor reg, reg' etc - clean up after yourself
mircea_popescu: -192 and AES-256 revealing the final round key provides 128 bits of key entropy.)
mircea_popescu: It gets worse. Nearly every AES implementation using AESNI will leave two values in registers: The final block of output, and the final round key. The final block of output isn't a problem for encryption operations it is ciphertext, which we can assume has leaked anyway but for encryption an AES-128 key can be computed from the final round key, and for decryption the final round key is the AES-128 key. (For AES
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i think you're thinking of the case where you compile your thing and install it as bytecode. i was thinking of the case where you compile locally.
asciilifeform: but the cpu manual offers compiler writers the option of using 'our new exciting accelerator for 4096-bit chinese remainder theorem'
jurov: xmm registers aren't anything exceptional. os saves them into memory on context switch like everything else
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform "no one" ? yes, one. the machine may force you to whether you want to or not.
asciilifeform: next year, suppose, they include a gigantic multiplier and special instructions for rsa. want to use these ?
mircea_popescu: jurov im pretty sure it all does, but they don';t all have to be xmm via aesni
asciilifeform: you're just as fucked if you use another cipher via, e.g, microshit's vendor lib
mircea_popescu: one of the best reasons to not use aes seriously.
mircea_popescu: Consider the "XMM" registers on the x86 architecture: They will only be used by the SSE family of instructions, which is not widely used in most applications so once a value is stored in one of those registers, it may remain there for a long time. One of the rare instances those registers are used by cryptographic code, however, is for AES computations, using the "AESNI" instruction set.
mircea_popescu: the no-raw-machine/
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yes. ie, that you can cryptographically verify that no other user can read your space, ever, at all.
jurov: he's writing about registers, not memory.. but then, on one side they get wiped on context switch
mircea_popescu: the problem is unresolvable : without cryptographically verified multi-user ability, there is no way to run crypto on shared system.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform the os may not respect volatile.
asciilifeform: even then - can simply declare 'volatile'
asciilifeform: let's suppose that you cannot escape the sin of running crypto on a multiuser os with von neumann cpu (for sake of argument.) let's also suppose that you are stuck with a traditional 'C' compiler, and your work must remain portable (no inline asm)
mircea_popescu: i came back to say "wait, that's only part of the story"
cazalla: chainsaw wakes me but baby never does, just the wife, she is still sleeping, didn't hear chainsaw
cazalla: asciilifeform, would be nice but they're cutting down trees
mircea_popescu: in romanian comedienne is formed as the diminutive. comediette.
asciilifeform: 'she plowed all the fields... for wheat, but not also for scalars, vectors, and even galois fields...'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: sex anal cu tractoare, motocositoare si combine agricole >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mVOd8zY3D8 << 'in Flyshitte, in the Red Corpse Kolhoz... there lived Tractoresse!'
mircea_popescu: no, dope doesn't enter into it. all that's required is the proposition that surviving today is more important than living well.
asciilifeform: i suppose a handful of natural schizoids, and slavish imitation thereof, can substitute for dope.
mircea_popescu: and of course, the definitive words on that topic, http://trilema.com/2010/vina-batranilor/
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform you will notice that he could have just resisted the glass jar through culture.
mircea_popescu: the last set being in egypt for crying out loud.
asciilifeform: and yes, animals will fight to the death, to exhaustion - what else might one expect them to do? negotiate a conditional surrender with the mousetrap? a ceasefire with the glass jar ?
mircea_popescu: you know, this was the first mice i've seen in a decade.
asciilifeform: as for mice, if they have organizational abilities, this was not apparent in my kitchen.
asciilifeform: the poor beast promptly got run over by a bus.
asciilifeform: usg caught an alley cat, tamed, and implanted a listening device, then released (in moscow, i think)
mircea_popescu: lol this here is the premise of a decent speculative spy fiction story
mircea_popescu: i thought it's just the young/shitty ones
BingoBoingo: Maybe asciilifeform has the actual NIMH rats
asciilifeform: after finally killed one in an electrical trap, the entire force retreated to a neighbour's.
asciilifeform: i actually 'liked' the rats in that flat quite a bit more than the mice. the latter - shat every quarter metre they walked, or so it seemed. the rats - more disciplined, organized, had battalions, detachments - respectable.
mircea_popescu: well sure, but this was as to the general
asciilifeform: most people, esp. in infested dwellings, are quite particular about which animals they like
mircea_popescu: when they start with the "we're not animals" bits, i tend to glaze over and think "no, you're not, are you".
mircea_popescu: it's also why i tend to be suspicious of people that despise animals. generally it's the sign they're not as intellectually respectable as the average field mouse.
mircea_popescu: die on the road, it's a noble death.
mircea_popescu: so : let them fucking die trying. you can't live where you are ? walk to where you can live.
mircea_popescu: now - the point here being that a correct set of priorities will in fact move mountains, and my work at my computer as compared in any perspective to a mouse's activities is mountaineous.
mircea_popescu: which is why i eventually stood up from my fucking work, took it to a vacant field further down and let it be.
mircea_popescu: the animal's desire of freedom properly surpassed any consideration of self preservation.
mircea_popescu: eventually i was oh enough of this shit, and so put the vessel on its side.
mircea_popescu: notwithstanding that the lid was you know, on a thread for crying out loud. and since i punched the holes from outside, notwithstanding that there were jagged shards of metal pointing his way, which he could i guess sorta- avoid. tho he mostly looked to be jumping blindly.
mircea_popescu: what did he do ? he kept jumping. trying to push the lid off with his tiny nose. ding-ding-ding-ding
mircea_popescu: and i get a good look at the guy, you know ? after all, this had been his land for a long long time, generations of his forefathers had hunted for hayseeds and whatnot on complicated , traditional walk patters all over the field of my garden
mircea_popescu: a little later, the guy is caught, of course. so i put him in a large glass jar with a metal lid, after punching some holes with a screwdriverr in that lid.
mircea_popescu: so i know it's a mouse, right ? and so i get a large bowl, and tape some floss to a pack of ciggs. put some cheese under the propper bowl and get back to chatting.
mircea_popescu: something like that. so one night while in here, i see movement in the corner of my eye
mircea_popescu: so last autumn i was living in a recently developped residential area - i guess what would be a gated community in the us, except romanians don't gate.
asciilifeform killed the last two in old flat with own hands
mircea_popescu: want me to tell you the story of my recent adventure with a cute little fuzzball ?
asciilifeform: more like the olympic drugs.
mircea_popescu: nobody forces you to sleep in the fucking basement
mircea_popescu: much like cellars create the possibility of very uncomfortable sleep in the dank darkness.
asciilifeform: goes on for so long as you have infinite joules to throw at the problem.
mircea_popescu: it creates the POSSIBILITY of it asciilifeform. not the actuiality and not really the obligaiton.
asciilifeform: at the risk of sounding like orlov - modern 'machine civilization' tends to create wildly thermodynamically-unfavourable situations like this one.
mircea_popescu: just because it's practically inconvenient doesn't make it less the correct solution.
mircea_popescu: ok, so let them just die.
thestringpuller: better off to tell them to just die
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: as discussed in the past - the various u.s. castes have, for reasons of their own (ask them!) decided never to live in walking distance of one another, if it can be helped
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: which part is stupid? most of these people couldn't hope to buy so much as a plastic&cardboard 'trabant' without massive credit
mircea_popescu: jurov look, if you let poor people drive, there's no way to not have mandatory insurance.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform the credit part is stupid.
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: oh yes in that sense! i was thinking of how there is an increasing cost to keep the car moving
mircea_popescu: well don't buy anymore then lol
artifexd: The reason is simple: I bought some.
asciilifeform: neither is strongly connected to how often it moves.
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: it's approximately true - most folks pay insurance (mandatory) and usually bought the machine on credit (so, they pay and pay)
thestringpuller: the cost is always depreciating especially if it doesn't move
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: is a fixed cost, whether or not it moves << this isn't true
asciilifeform: $posint is expensive to the man who is flat broke
asciilifeform: fact is - much of the cost of owning vehicle in usa - is a fixed cost, whether or not it moves
asciilifeform: 'Recently I heard a story on NPR about a poor family that went around looking for discounted food items at various groceries and stopping at the food pantryin their own private minivan! And so here is a poor family that owns what in many parts of the world would amount to a bus company!' (orlov)
mircea_popescu: but they had a towncar service that would basically go anywhere.
thestringpuller: I have to bike 7 miles to the nearest bus stop
thestringpuller: not so much in the big cities tho (NYC, Boston, etc.)
mircea_popescu: you know i lived there just fine w/o driving or owning a car.
thestringpuller: ah. the dilemma of "We're murica, you must own car"
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: 'tis one thing if you like oil, dirt, metal (matter of fact - i do) but another if you're stuck with them whether or not you do
thestringpuller: i just saw an turbo charged e30 that puts ~450hp to the wheels
mircea_popescu: they're not neatly that bad drivers.
asciilifeform: then again i'm not certain any country will recognize american driver's licenses when the hour comes.
asciilifeform: which is why we're more or less doomed to drive cabs (the lucky ones, that is) around the world, far more certainly than soviet emigres were
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: cars << another thing in usa. more or less everybody is condemned to be his own cabbie, and to some extent, mechanic
mircea_popescu: i don't see much in that. so some asshole kid thinks himself special, got roughed up in the slightest.
mircea_popescu: ias, Vittorio Emanuele punched Amedeo twice in the face."
mircea_popescu: "Currently the leadership of the House of Savoy is contested by two cousins: Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, who used to claim the title of King of Italy, and Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, who still claims the title of the Duke of Savoy. Their rivalry has not always been peaceful on May 21, 2004, following a dinner held by King Juan Carlos I of Spain on the eve of the wedding of his son Felipe, Prince of Astur
assbot: This is How a 10-Year-Old Boy With Autism is Treated in a Police State | The Free Thought Project
mircea_popescu: i thought you had a theory
mircea_popescu: it works splendidly here. i guess depends on the cab quality
ThickAsThieves: my wife is the one that gets new cars, i get the hand-me-downs. yesterday i was positing that i should just sell mine and take cabs or uber or whatever everywhere
mircea_popescu: i can't stand sucking cock either doesn't mean i hate blowjobs. what's driving to do with it.
ThickAsThieves: <+thestringpuller> you know how I know you're not american mircea_popescu : you hate cars /// i cant stand driving and all the stuff about cars other than that they get me places
mircea_popescu: anyway, re the original copy-paste point : i feel like i could practically translate my romanian articles mocking the romanian "press" and its associated "blogosphere" word for word, just substitute names.
mircea_popescu: thestringpuller i dun hate cars ?
mircea_popescu: actually maybe you should write the book, except in russian. larger market.
mircea_popescu: i could prolly write a book of psychoantropology on the topic, but sadly it'd be rather incomprehensible in english without a ton of notes which kinda ruin the whole thing, and for 5 romanians able to read and write it's scarcely worth the year o' work.
mircea_popescu: incidentally, it is shocking, outrageous but also very amusing to see just how copy-pasted the final days us is from the peak of romania. it's almost as if instead of the romanian idiots copying teh superior us businessmen, the reverse happened.
mircea_popescu: give them a little now and a little later they'll be sucking the c0k and doing a good job of it for years.
asciilifeform: 100k buys what - a year or two of food and roof in usa somewhere on the cheaper side.
ThickAsThieves: well he leaks money all over the place
ThickAsThieves: cuz its assets are the btc
ThickAsThieves: it assumes the btc worth
ThickAsThieves: they are pegging
ThickAsThieves: basically the bot is pegged to a certain conversion value for a specific amount of btc
mircea_popescu: check out the preciseness of bitbet. 150bn ?
mircea_popescu: until their regime starts fucking conforming to international law.
ThickAsThieves: "Whenever I see that Thiel is giving away money, I get the goosebumps. How comes that he is always mentioned in connection with PayPal, but almost never in connection with Palantir, Prism, NSA and CIA?"
mircea_popescu: anyway, once ethereum cracks open thiel being interviewed for his complicity in propping the scam will become a prerequsite for any further discussions re collaboration of bitcoin authorities with us authorities.
mircea_popescu: not that they're not poor or anything.
mircea_popescu: but yeah, i'd have listened to it. the shit we talk about with the slavegirls alone would make an hour of excellent show pretty much daily.
mircea_popescu: romanians are neither very litigious nor is the local fcc very tough, but to make up for it ro publishers are very very poor.
mircea_popescu: in very winchell fashion i insisted the contract include an indemnity clause tho, and well... fell through.
mircea_popescu: "Thiel stressed the need for his programme while expressing optimism about what this years class could achieve"
assbot: $100k Peter Thiel Fellowship Awarded to Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin
atcbot: [PityThePool Hashrate]: 702.47 GH/s [iSpace Pool Hashrate]: 0 TH/s
mircea_popescu: <asciilifeform> http://www.mekanizmalar.com/desmodromics.html << i read desdemona in there for some reason, which reminds me of a story. picture youthful mp at maly, for a staging of othello, in russian. now, bearin in mind that in romanian "zdreanta" means rag or figuratively whore, picture youthful mp hearing a very decided othello burst out "davai zdreanta, desdiemona!!1" and go into incontrollable peels of laughter
mircea_popescu: this is not the case in any natural language, poetry exists anywhere.
mircea_popescu: so you have to specify the gender of the teacup in some contexts. does not equate to "speaker can not make ambiguous statements"
mircea_popescu: * asciilifeform has seen this said about more than one obscure natural language, it always seems to be a reflection of the linguist's ineptitude, in practice. << quite. it's not true of inuit languages any more it's true of russian.
ThickAsThieves: At this point I don't care, as it wouldn't really affect the market price to find out
ThickAsThieves: <+TheNewDeal> ThickAsThieves any foia response? // None reported.
asciilifeform: anyone here not familiar with vonnegut's 'mother night' -or- semyonov's 'seventeen moments of spring' ? book or film, either.
asciilifeform: at this point it seems clear - the man is working hard to make us laugh