Terminal.app psychosis

I am still vaguely haunted by our student's remark about how s/he'd "never rode in a Chom-ski before." Here's this poor geek living in a world of Minimalists zipping past himer in the halls all the time, and s/he's never even ridden on one. It made me feel like Bar-Hillel. I was tempted to have my advisor log onto the next wifi point and arrange some kind of UT department-to-department contract whereby we could just give the theory to this unfortunate bastard. Just say: "Here, sign this and the theory's yours." Give himer the trees and then use the faculty MOU to zap off on a jet to some place like TACC and rent another huge fireapple-red computer for a sleep-deprived, top-speed run across the campus all the way out to the last stop in Calhoun . . . and then trade the computer off for a BSD machine. Keep publishing.

But this manic notion passed quickly. There was no point in getting this harmless kid locked up -- and besides, I had plans for the computer. I was looking forward to flashing around the 'Net on the bugger. Maybe do a bit of serious algorithm development then head down to the Drag: Walk out to that big stoplight in front of the Church of Scientology and start screaming at traffic:

"Alright, you chickenship wimps! You pansies! When this goddamn code compiles, I'm gonna stomp down on this thing and blow every one of you gutter punks off the Drag!"

Right. Challenge the bastards on their own turf. Come screeching up to a conference, ranting and raving with Lem's Cyberiad in one hand and jamming the horn to drown out the music . . . glazed eyes insanely dilated behind tiny black, gold-rimmed titanium spectacles, screaming gibberish . . . and a genuinely dangerous research assistant, reeking of T.S. Eliot and Terminal.app psychosis. Revving the CPUs up to a terrible high-pitched whirring whine, waiting for the results to change . . .

How often does a chance like that come around? To jangle the bastards right down to the core of their spleens. Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old linguists lock themselves in the ivory tower and drive their students away with obtuse theories.