March 23, 2021

C is the best available language for beginners. My reasoning is that C is compact, and a good "mid-level" trade-off between how most computers work and how human beings think. C has so little in the language itself that the basics can be learned quickly, though it takes a lifetime of daily dedication to master. The entire language can be memorized. The hardest part of C is probably that the programmer has to manage the memory themself. That's a good thing in the long run if they care about how the underlying machine works. C has a reputation of requiring the programmer to do more to get anything done. I am not considering libraries part of the language itself, however. With properly designed libraries it can even be relatively easy to do a lot of things in C.

March 02, 2021

Annie is a Person

Annie had a hard line of work.  She had never wanted to be a
prostitute.  When she was a child, people had remarked on how smart
and capable she was.  People were always wondering where she would go
in life.  They always said they were sure she would go on to do
something great.  When they asked her what she wanted to be when she
grew up, she never replied, "a fucking hooker." She hadn't even known
about stuff like that.  She had lived a pretty sheltered life as a
kid.  It was true she was always smart, but she was raised like a
portabello, just kept in the dark and fed shit.  She didn't know much
about anything in the world growing up, but her mind was always going,
on something or another.

She had met with the gentleman tonight at the appointed hour, and
hadn't even told her it was a special day for her.  One thing had led
to another, as it always did.  They had sat under the overpass in the
dark, he had seemed so nice at first.  Nothing seemed off about him at
all, certainly from the standpoint of someone like Annie.  His smooth
compliments didn't seem forced, he didn't seem to be hiding anything.
Annie wasn't usually quite such a bad judge of character.  She wasn't
a top-dollar lady, but she had a lot of class.  She had stuff she
actually cared about in life, and things which she felt were right and
wrong.  She had standards, however deviant they were.  The man had
finished for himself, and she brought up the topic of payment.  That's
when he pulled a knife on her, and not as a threat.  He really tried
to kill her.

---

That day she had woken up early.  In her small room she had to
herself, on a day that was all hers, she played some music by herself
and had coffee.  Annie played violin, not badly at all.  She could
never have made ends meet playing violin, not to live a life even
close to how she did as a whore.  The men who were her clients were
all despicable to her in one way or another.  The ones who tried to
save her were the worst, probably.  Save her to a life as their pet.
No one had ever viewed Annie as simply an equal.  She had been a quiet
girl most of her life.  When she finally said something it usually
impressed upon whomever she was talking to that she was smart.  They
usually still looked down on her for everything else, and to Annie it
seemed that in their minds after that they were very put off.  Who
knew what other people ever thought, anyway, but sometimes they seemed
scared after she spoke, sometimes they seemed angry.  Only one other
girl had ever immediately come forth with a compliment.  She hadn't
realized Annie was so smart!  She had been friends with that girl for
years.  Annie still thought about her a lot, but they had lost touch
long ago.  Annie hadn't realized something herself, until fairly
recently.  That friend of hers was also incredibly smart.

Annie's life hadn't gone wrong all at once.  There was no single
defining moment leading to this, to sitting here on her birthday
having to work later, such a shitty job.  Losing touch with that
friend had been one turning point.  She remembered that night.  They
had gone to some party, not even old enough to drink.  It had been
Annie's idea.  They would go to the party, basically sneak in, hook up
with some hot older guys.  Annie's friend had been very nervous about
such a thing, and had told her.  She just didn't think it was a good
idea at all.  She had gone along, saying she was just going to look
out for Annie.  Annie didn't believe her about that at all until they
had gotten to the party.  Annie had gotten drunk and her friend
hadn't, the moment had come they were alone with two older guys, and
Annie lost that friend forever.

---

People barely even looked at her as a human being anymore.  She was
little more than a sex doll, porn.  She was just interactive porn.
The man tonight, on her birthday, cared that she died.  It wasn't even
a matter of not wanting to pay.  He had wanted to kill her.  She had
escaped, with what would be a nasty scar on her left cheek.  She
wouldn't be able to make as much money as a hooker now, but that was
the least of her worries at the moment.  She had managed to escape,
but had very few options as to what to do next.

She had run from the car into the night.  She had hopped a fence to be
sure he couldn't follow her in his car, and she had just kept running
for a while.  Who cared if someone even saw her running?  She was
bleeding from a knife wound on her face.  She slowed eventually, still
terrified.  She looked around and couldn't get her bearings.  It was
the middle of the night, so no one was really around, but she could
tell she was in a classy, mostly commercial area of the city.  Some
neighborhood within easy walking distance of where she usually spent
her time, in which she had never been.  She wouldn't have ever been
here in any other situation.

She backtracked carefully, avoiding everyone she saw.  She mostly
stayed on the left side of the road to keep her wounded cheek pointed
into the darkness.  She crossed the street only to avoid people.  She
passed a laundromat and stole someone's half-dried clothing so the man
wouldn't recognize her if he saw her.  She had reading glasses with
her always, and she tried wearing those but could barely see with them
on.  In the laundromat she had rummaged through everything looking for
a scarf, but had found only a towel.  In the dark, she wore it as a
scarf anyway, and headed back to the area of town in which she lived
and worked.  She hardly ever went far from there.

Annie eventually found her way back to the apartment building where
she lived, but didn't go straight home.  She went to the apartment of
the man who at least said he looked after the girls.  He was probably
the only person Annie could even begin to trust about this.  Something
was wrong though, she could tell as soon as she was at his door.  It
was slightly open.  She didn't knock.  She pushed it slightly, quietly
opening it to look inside.  The man who had tried to kill her had the
other at gunpoint.  He was trying to get some information the pimp
kept saying he didn't have.  Annie's heart was racing.  What could she
do?  She stood frozen, watching.  Neither of them noticed her.

The man who had tried to kill her laughed.  He said he believed it,
finally.  The pimp just didn't know.  The guy put the gun into the
pimp's mouth, who pissed himself in fear right there onto the carpet.
The man who had tried to kill Annie said to the pimp not to worry, it
was just a blank.  Then he pulled the trigger, blowing the pimp's head
right off.  Even Annie knew a thing like that.  The man just stood
there in shock.  He looked down the barrel of the bloody gun in
confusion.  Annie slowly, silently backed away out the door.  People
had heard that, certainly.  No one was looking out of their apartment,
but she could practically feel them in every apartment she passed as
she hurried out of the building.  She had no choice.  She would have
to go to the police.

---

It took very little time to find an officer.  Normally she would have
avoided them, of course.  She had never been in a situation anything
like this.  She waved him down in his car, and started telling the
whole story from the top.  The man listened to everything, and kept
looking at the towel on her head.  He didn't get on the radio.  She
felt awkward standing there talking to him, and said that she did.
She was black, she didn't have a nice life, she didn't have anyone to
trust, and she had nowhere else to go.  She was done telling the cop
what had happened, and waited to see what he would do.  He stood there
for a moment thinking about it, then pulled out his gun and pointed it
at her.  "Why don't you blow me?" he said.  Annie didn't freeze in
fear.  She just started cussing, angry as hell.  The cop shot her,
right in her heart, on her 19th birthday.

blog.echoline.org echoline's blog for march of 2021

March 23, 2021

Do I Even Know Anything?

March 18, 2021

>:3

March 16, 2021

More on the Topic

March 15, 2021

Nietzsche

March 07, 2021

The Great Server Migration of 2021

March 04, 2021

C for Beginners

March 02, 2021

Annie is a Person