Unrealized Potential

The other night Scott and I went to see the movie “Lucy.”
We did so, despite the fact that we object to the central premise of the movie, because it was from Luc Besson and featured Scarlett Johansson, and we thought that would make for an interesting combination.  Kind of like if you blended the action from “Taken” with the physics-bending visuals of “The Matrix,” but with Scarlett Johansson instead of Liam Neeson or Keanu Reeves.
Besides, the movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have firmly established that I greatly enjoy watching Scarlett Johansson kicking people’s asses.
Unfortunately, while there were some great scenes of batshit insane action, the movie proved disappointing.
As a friend on Facebook put it:

It's hard to think you could screw up "what if Scarlet Johansson became Dr. Manhattan?" but they managed it.

Yes.  Yes, they did.  And I don’t say that just because the movie didn’t feature Scarlett Johansson sharing Dr. Manhattan’s fashion sense, though that certainly would have helped.
(It couldn’t have hurt, anyway.)
But no, the issue was that central premise that Scott and I decided to grit our teeth and ignore.  The movie made that an impossible feat, however, as that premise was woven into virtually every scene.
That premise being that we humans only use 10% of our brain, that we all have lurking within us a vast, untapped potential.  After all, look at all we’ve accomplished with a mere 10%.  Just imagine what we could do, what sort of superhuman abilities we would have, if we could unleash even a few more percentage points of our potential?  What would happen if we used 100%?
That’s the question that the movie seeks to answer when Johansson, as the titular Lucy, is exposed to a drug that unlocks that potential.
The problem, however, is that the “10%” thing is just a myth, one that has been so thoroughly debunked that it’s almost inconceivable that anyone would still think that it’s a viable plot device.
Further, even if you don’t have much of an understanding of how the brain works, just stopping to think about it for a few minutes will lead you to conclude that it’s bullshit.
Let’s do that thinking right now, shall we?  All it takes is answering a simple question:  If you truly believe that humans only use 10% of their brain, would you mind if I shot you in the 90% you aren’t using?
Sure, a 10% chance of being permanently injured or even killed might not seem like great odds, but the fact remains that you probably aren’t willing to part with 90% of your brain.
In reality, we do use 100% of our brains, we just don’t use that much all the time.  We couldn’t; different areas of the brain perform different functions, some of which are in direct conflict with each other.
How could using your brain’s total capacity actually be a good thing anyway?  Think about how well your computer works when its CPU usage spikes up to 100%.  If you were using 100% of your brain, to continue with the computer metaphor, it would be even worse than that, because you would not only be using 100% of your processing power, you’d be using up 100% of your available storage and all of your RAM at the same time.  That doesn’t sound like a computer that’s performing better than a “normal” computer.
Of course, I don’t think that’s really the idea that the 10% believers are getting at anyway.  What they really seem to think is that there is either some greater efficiency that can be achieved within the brain, or that there is some as-yet unknown mechanism in the brain that can be accessed to unleash superhuman abilities.
However, there are still some underlying problems with that idea.  We may not have a complete understanding of the brain and how it works, but do know enough to know that there is no hidden mechanism.  And while there could be some improvements to efficiency, they’re not going to lead to being able to read minds or control gravity.  Mostly they’ll just improve your memory or your ability to maintain focus.  Which, you know, great.  I’m all for it.
But the idea that the brain is capable of so much more, that it has hidden godlike powers is just silly.
Let’s consider it from two perspectives.
If you’re a creationist of any stripe, this would indicate that whatever god or gods created humans completely overengineered the brain when making humans, then installed some sort of governor in it to throttle it back by 90%.  What for?  I mean, I could see building in some redundancy or whatever, but that approach just seems both bizarre and cruel.  And it’s also silly; the brain, as it’s used in its current state, is already capable of pretty amazing things.  Why not just build it as is, particularly if you’re not going to allow any of the other features to be turned on?  Of course, maybe I’d understand the designer’s thinking better if I used more of my brain’s potential.  Too bad the designer made sure that it’s impossible.
In evolutionary terms, this would indicate that at some point in its evolution, the brain overshot the mark, developed all of these amazing capabilities, and then turned off its access to them.  This does not align with any sort of evolutionary theory.
And sure, you can point to various people who have amazing mental abilities – though not quite so amazing as what Lucy displays – such as the guy who can draw a detailed picture of an entire city after flying over it in a helicopter once, or point to some of the experiments that have been done with stimulating different portions of the brain, or things like synesthesia.
But those abilities usually come at the cost of other abilities and functions of the brain.  They don’t really indicate that someone is using any more – or less – of his or her brain’s potential, just that the existing potential is being used differently.
Let’s get back to the movie itself for a moment.  At one point in her march towards 100% Lucy states that she no longer feels pain or fear.  That, to me, indicates that she’s actually using less of her brain’s potential.
Why, you may wonder, does this bother me so much?  After all, I’m perfectly capable of suspending my disbelief.  I regularly consume – and enjoy – stories about men, women, aliens, robots, and gods who can fly, control the weather, and perform all manner of impossible feats.  Why couldn’t I just let this particular trope slide, the way I do things like, “He was born on another planet and our yellow sun supercharges his cells,” or “He has a magic hammer,” or, to go back to the mention of Dr. Manhattan, “He was disintegrated in a nuclear reactor and then put himself back together, developing godlike abilities in the process,” or hell, even the “metagene” from the DCU or the “X gene” from Marvel?
I suppose it’s a combination of things.  For one, it’s just really overused.  It ranks up there with “all of humanity’s technological achievements are based on reverse-engineered alien technology.”  For another, it bleeds over into real-life in a way that some of those other things don’t.  I’m unlikely to meet someone who actually believes that someone being bitten by a radioactive spider will do anything other than lead to radiation poisoning, but there are plenty of people who honestly believe the 10% thing.
(The alien technology thing bothers me for similar reasons, though a real-world belief in that is somewhat less common, but the main reason it bothers me is because it’s insulting.  I’m not always humanity’s biggest fan, but I know better than to think that we’re incapable of coming up with brilliant ideas on our own.  People often suck, but they’re also pretty amazing.  Which is why I get so irritated when they suck.  But I digress.)
But that’s why it irritates me in general.  In the specific case of this movie, it was because of how thoroughly invested they were in this bogus idea.  If the 10% thing had just been a quick handwave explanation for her having these powers, I would have been able to just roll my eyes, and then go with it.  But they didn’t stop there.  At various points, we were informed of what percentage Lucy was at, and there were extended scenes featuring Morgan Freeman, as some sort of brain “expert,” giving a lecture about the 10% myth as though it were some sort of credible scientific theory.
While Freeman’s character does, when questioned, admit that it has no scientific basis – which, leads you to wonder why he’s being allowed to lecture on this in front of scientists and science students without being booed off the stage, and instead being greeted with rapt attention and fawning praise – he rattles off ideas about what powers a person might have upon achieving certain percentage points.  Which, of course, aligns exactly with the powers that Lucy develops.  Still, just using some weasel words about it being his hypothesis isn’t good enough, given that he has nothing on which to base this hypothesis.  As I said to Scott during one of the lecture scenes, “And if I reach 30% of the way up my ass, I can pull out this speculation about what kind of powers people would have if they used more of their brain's potential.”
Honestly, the lecture scenes – which would have been even more interminable if they weren’t intercut with action sequences in which Lucy displays the abilities Morgan Freeman pulls out of his ass – reminded me of something you might see in an anti-evolution Chick tract, minus the Bible-believing freshman who stands up and demolishes the misguided scientist’s theories.  Which is to say that it was a lecture that had only a superficial resemblance to reality and involved someone spotting off nonsense to a room full of credulous idiots.  It’s like setting up a strawman and then forgetting to knock him down.
With that said, there were elements of the movie that I enjoyed, with some really cool action sequences, and Johansson doing a great job of portraying the shift in Lucy’s personality as she continued developing her potential.
Honestly, unlike the human brain, the movie had a lot more potential that it could have tapped into.  Dropping the lecture scenes would have helped, though much of that was included for the purposes of including some sort of pseudo-intellectual ramblings about the meaning of life and the nature of humanity, which I’m sure seemed deep and meaningful to some people – particularly given that they were imbued with the gravitas that comes from being spoken by Morgan Freeman – but ultimately they had no substance.
And just coming up with a different explanation – anything* – for how Lucy developed her abilities would have made it the kind of movie that would let you say, “It was good for what it was.”  But you can’t really say that about it, because its attempt to be more than what it was proved to be an insurmountable obstacle.
Also, they really should have gone the Dr. Manhattan route when it came to Johansson’s wardrobe.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that Scott and I did a double feature that night, and “Lucy” ended up being the second movie of the night, following our viewing of “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Pretty much any movie was going to suffer in comparison to that one, so my perception of the quality of “Lucy” was probably a bit skewed.
”Guardians,” unlike “Lucy,” is definitely a movie that is “good for what it is,” with “awesomely entertaining” being what it is.
It’s already making all of the money, and it deserves to, but if “all of the money” does not yet include yours, you need to make some changes in your life.  Use more than 10% of your brain and go see it.

*For example, they could have used a variant of the alien technology trope that I dislike and said that the drug was made from alien DNA, and it wouldn’t have bothered me if they had just stuck with that as the launching point to kick off a bunch of mind-bending action and didn’t dwell on it overmuch.

New Business Model

Earlier today I got a phone call from my Web site hosting/domain name provider, as one of my domains is set to auto-renew.

Customer Service Rep:  Mr. Maki?
Me:  Yeah, what?
CSR:  This is blah blah from blah blah.  I’m calling to talk about your account.
Me:  Why?
CSR:  Well, one of your domains is set to renew and -
Me:  I know.  I got the e-mail.
CSR:  Well, I’d like to review your options for -
Me:  No.  I said I got the e-mail.  I’m at work.  I don’t want to talk to you.  Don’t bother me.

When I got home I had a postcard from Home Depot in the mail with some special offer, predicated on the fact that my birthday is coming up.
Basically, “Happy Birthday!  Come give us money!”
It occurred to me then that so many companies sell assorted “extended service plans” and various other extras – and also sell your information to anyone and everyone who’s willing to pay for it – but the one extra that I wish they would sell is what I call the “Leave Me The Hell Alone Service Plan.”
Basically, when you purchase your goods and services, you have the option to pay a little extra to never be bothered again.  No phone calls.  No e-mails unless they’re specifically providing necessary information (like the fact that one of your domains is expiring).  No “birthday greetings.”  Zip.  Nada.
Seriously, I bought your damn widget:  why are you punishing me by calling me and inundating me with junk mail?
It’s especially irritating when the communication is essentially just a reminder that the company exists.  I know you exist.  I bought something from you, remember?  That’s how you know that I exist.
I was perfectly capable of deciding to buy from you before, so what makes you think I need help doing it again?  Did you honestly think I forgot?  “Oh, right, there’s a place called Home Depot!  I would have never remembered that in a million years if I hadn’t gotten this phony birthday greeting!”
Similarly, you could pay to not have your address sold to other companies.
Sure, there might not be enough of an incentive, given that the one-time “Leave Me The Hell Alone” fee wouldn’t generate as much revenue as selling my information, but think about the savings.  You don’t have to pay people to call me and have to put up with me being rude and dismissive.  (And I totally am.  I know it’s not their fault and they’re just doing their jobs, but I have zero patience for unsolicited contact from random people, and my concern is not for their feelings, as my empathy is overpowered by my desire to put an end to this unwanted interaction as quickly – and decisively – as possible.)  You don’t have to pay for the cost of printing up phony birthday greetings or other junk mail.
I honestly have to wonder how much return on their investment they actually get even given that most people aren’t as antisocial and actively hostile as I am anyway  Is it really worth the bother of bothering people?
I suppose it must be, but I’m sure there’s money to be made from my idea as well, and it actually more or less amounts to extortion, which should be appealing to the black-hearted gangsters who run most corporations.

It’s Depressing

There have been a lot of times in my life in which, in an effort to encourage me to be a little more patient with other people, I’ve had someone* tell me something along the lines of, “Remember:  most people aren’t as smart as you are.”
…
While I suppose I should be flattered – and to some extent, I am – for the most part I don’t find that thought especially comforting.  In fact, I often find it downright depressing, because the fact of the matter is that most of the time I’m kind of an idiot.
If most people aren’t as smart as I am, well, there’s not a whole lot of hope for the species.
I mean, for fuck’s sake; at my core, I’m a goddamn bumpkin from The Middle of Fucking Nowhere, USA.
I might as well have just fallen off the back of a turnip truck.  My early education was like something out of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  How is it even possible for most people to not be at least as smart as I am?
*Sigh*
If anything, this particular attempt at encouraging me to cultivate patience ultimately has rather the opposite effect.

*Quite frequently it was the (former) boss lady**, but it happened before she came along, and has continued to happen since her departure.
**Which is funny, considering how often she also called me an idiot.

[Expletive Deleted]

While I have to admit that this litany of complaints falls into the category of First Word/White People Problems, it also falls into the category of Okay, But That’s Kind Of The Last Straw.  So make of it what you will.
The month of May is almost over.  That’s good, in that it means that, with the holiday on Monday, I get a long weekend.  I’m definitely a fan of long weekends.  The longer the better, in fact (that’s what…well, you know).
But it’s bad in that, “Oh shit, I wasn’t really paying attention and now May is almost over and I need to get the stupid Virginia Safety Inspection done on my car.”
Fortunately, I realized this yesterday, which meant that I had a couple of days – fewer days than remain in the month thanks to the long weekend – in which to get it done.
Since I was also due for an oil change, I called my car dealership to set up an appointment for today to kill the proverbial pair of birds with the single proverbial stone.
(“And that’s the end of that chapter,” thinks Jon, as he hangs up the phone and wipes the metaphorical* dust off his hands.)
As a bonus, since I knew that 1. Very few people would show up for work on Friday in the first place 2.  We were closing early in preparation for the holiday weekend 3.  Most of the people who did show up would leave even earlier than that and 4. Because of all of this there wouldn’t be much going on I could actually make my appointment in the early afternoon, say oneish, and start my weekend – or at least my time away from work – slightly sooner than normal.
So today rolled around and 12:30 found me on the way to my dealership – longtime readers may recall that I did the whole pre-paid maintenance plan when I bought my car – and the first major annoyance of the day popped up:  owing to the holiday weekend, Rush Hour had already started.
Still, it wasn’t much of annoyance, nor was it wholly unexpected, and I didn’t have to drive that far anyway.
I got to the dealership, handed over my key, and made my way to the waiting area.  I frowned a little when he said that it would be about an hour and a half, but still, nothing to get too worked up about.
Before I could even sit down, the guy from the service department came along and told me that the Inspector wasn’t there today, so all they could do was the oil change.
Okay, that was starting to get really annoying, but…well there are lots of places that do the Safety Inspection, so surely I could find one that wasn’t too busy on my way home.
Traffic had gotten even worse by the time I left the dealership, and when I finally got to Leesburg I had to do that thing I really hate doing:  not turning onto the street that leads me home.  It’s not so bad if I’m doing something in town after work and the route to wherever I’m headed doesn’t take me past my house, but when it does involve driving past my house, I get annoyed.
(If that strikes you as irrational, well, rationality isn’t really the point of this post.)
I had decided that I would try this gas station that does the Inspection.  Basically, you just show up and get into the Safety Inspection lane.  It took me forever to get to that station, as, despite the fact that 1.  It was only 2:30 in the afternoon and 2. The population of Leesburg is only about 40,000 there was enough traffic to make you think it was 5:30 on the Beltway (for people not familiar with the area, take my word for it:  5:30 on the Beltway is a hellish nightmare).
I looked over at the Safety Inspection lane and said, “Nope.  No fucking way.”  Seriously, there was no way.  Even if I’d been willing to subject myself to that, I wouldn’t have been able to do so.  There was no space available at the end of the line, as the ass end of the last car in the line was sticking out onto the street.
I considered just putting it off and trying again on Tuesday, but there was no way for me to get turned around to go home.  So I decided to try the Tire Shop.  I couldn’t actually get into the lane I needed to get into to go there, as a couple of jackasses had decided that it was a good idea to get into an accident in the midst of a traffic jam, so that lane was blocked off.  I turned off towards a shopping center in the hopes that, unlike most shopping centers in Northern Virginia, there would actually be something useful located there, like, oh, I don’t know, a place that does Virginia Safety Inspections, maybe?
Of course there wasn’t.  Why would there be one?  It’s not like Safety Inspections are mandatory and in high demand or any- oh, wait.
Still, this allowed me to turn around and head in the direction of the Tire Shop.  Naturally I had to sit through several cycles of the traffic lights because there were all sorts of people sitting there staring at the green light and thinking, “Gee, it’s almost like that light is supposed to indicate something to me.  I wonder what it means?”
Finally, I arrived at my destination, found a place to park, and made my way in, and was well on my way to getting my Safety Inspection done.  “It should be done around 5, 5:30,” the man behind the counter said, in an affable tone.  “I’ll let you know if it gets done sooner.”
Initially, I refused to believe what I’d just heard, but my refusal to accept it was meaningless as far as reality was concerned.  I looked at my watch.  2:45.  I looked at the irritatingly affable man behind the counter.  “Are you fu- are you serious?”
“Yep.  In fact, as soon as you walk away, I’m going to change the Inspection sign to ‘Full.’  You going to hang out around here?”
“It would seem I have no choice,” I said, given that I had no choice.
I walked over to a nearby McDonald’s to get something to eat, and spent what felt like an hour behind a woman who was outlining her very specific and complex instructions for her order to the hapless man behind the counter, but which somehow – because fucking time, how does it work? – only took about a minute.
I made my order, got my food, took my time eating it, used the restroom, then headed outside.  It was, by this time, just barely after 3, because, again, fucking time, how does it work?
I decided that I would just go for a walk at that point, though – somehow – I was managing to be uncharacteristically optimistic and thinking, “Maybe it won’t take that long,” so I didn’t want to walk too far away.
After a two hour walk that actually only lasted five minutes, I turned back towards the Tire Shop and, deciding that it was too hot to be wandering around out in the sun, I made my way across the street and over to the ghetto Walmart.  Sure, I know that you’re thinking “ghetto Walmart” is redundant, but that’s only because you’ve never been in this particular Walmart.
I didn’t especially want to go to the Walmart, but it wasn’t as though I had a lot of options.  Target, which would have been preferable, all things considered, was relatively nearby, but in attempting to walk there I would have run the risk of being run down by some distracted/angry driver.  Then again, that option might have been preferable, too.
One of the things that annoys me most about Northern Virginia is that nothing is convenient.  At all.  Shopping plazas contain nothing that could possibly be of interest or utility to anyone, and actually getting to them generally involves some circuitous route, if you assume that you can even find a way to get them at all.
Entrances are hidden, and if you manage to find them, you must first solve the Riddle of the Sphinx before you’re allowed to progress, and once you’ve gone through all of that you find that the “prize” you’ve been on a quest for is a discount vacuum store or a piano tuning shop.
I usually think that NoVA’s inconvenient nature is the result of very little, if any, planning.  If there is any planning, it’s really terrible planning.
Other times, like today, I think that there is, in fact, a lot of planning that goes into it.  Diabolical planning.  That is, the plan is to make everything as inconvenient as possible.
In any case, after slaying the dragon, answering the questions three, and stepping on the paving stones in the correct sequence to avoid falling into a bottomless pit, I found myself at Walmart
I wondered around aimlessly examining wares that wouldn’t seem at all out of place in a 99 cent store, walked past the anemic books/magazine section and found that there was nothing there worth browsing – though I was amused to see that there were two books placed side-by-side with the respective titles 99 Minutes in Heaven and 23 Minutes in Hell – and made my way back to the Tire Shop.
By the time I’d stopped at Sheetz to get something to drink, it was about 4:30, so I went inside the Tire Shop and sat in the waiting area.  The TV was tuned to Fox News, which was giving Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker the opportunity to flat-out lie and say that he’s totally not interested in crushing unions, while simultaneously bitching about the parasitic nature of unions and talking about how someone really ought to crush them.  Some other Republican got some free airtime to talk about how privatizing Medicare will fix everything.  Then, in the interest of being fair and balanced, they gave a Democrat the opportunity to talk, though there was no cause to be alarmed, as it was a retired Democrat – Ed Koch – who was there to bitch about the President.
And then it was time for Glenn Beck**.
…
I tried to tune him out, especially when he – and I’m not kidding or engaging in hyperbole – started crying while talking about how much he loves George Washington, but he was inescapable.
The focus of his show was on the “secret” history of the contributions of African-Americans and women in the founding of the US.  Which, you know, great.  There was some legitimately interesting information – though I have no doubt that there was a lot of embellishment involved – but the two points he seemed to be making were that because a couple of women and black people were treated reasonably well that totally invalidates things like slavery, the three-fifths compromise, and the fact that for much of our history women didn’t have the right to vote, and that there’s a conspiracy to keep people from knowing about how totally awesome life was for women and black people because liberals only want to focus on the negative.  That whole “paying attenion to reality” thing.
He was all, “You guys, it’s totes okay that the founding fathers owned slaves ‘cause they, like, had black friends!  George Washington – *sniffle* – and this one black guy were, like, total BFFs!  For reals, they were besties!  But liberals only want you to think about the yucky stuff.  Oh Em Gee, liberals!  It’s time that everyone learned the truth:  everything was awesome!”
There was just so, so much wrong with the whole thing, but I don’t’ really have the energy to rant about it any further.
Anyway, 5:30 came and went, and eventually I was the only person still waiting there. 
Strewn amidsts the copies of magazines like Ladies Home Journal and Redbook - Note:  WTF? - in the waiting area was a book titled Where Will You Be In Five Years?
Probably still here, waiting for them to finish my Inspection, I thought.
Finally, a bit after 6, someone called my name.
The on bright spot in all of this was the surprising discovery that I only owed $16.  That shouldn’t have been a surprise – that’s how much the Safety Inspection costs, after all – but hours (Centuries?) earlier when I’d done the paperwork for the Inspection, I had authorized them to fix anything costing under $30 that needed to be fixed in order to pass the Inspection, so I was certain that they would have found something that cost $29.99 that “needed" to be fixed.
And so, finally, I was on my way, ready to drive the two miles – a total of fifteen minutes – to get home.
I left work three hours earlier than usual, and got home two hours later than usual.  *Sigh*
Now, any one of these things that I’ve been bitching about would have just been a minor inconvenience.  Hell, even a few of them lumped together would have only amounted to a negligible increase in rage levels.  But all of them, piled one on top of the other…it was like if there were some sort of textbook on “Why Jon Is So Full Of Hate,” this afternoon would have been included in it as a case study.

*I blame all of the proverbial and metaphorical concepts I made use of for a portion of the day’s trouble, frankly.  Damned figurative language.
**Imagine me saying this the way Homer said, “And that’s when the C.H.U.D. came out.”

Hatred? Yeah, I've Got That In Bulk.

The one area in which I vastly differ from writer/producer/blogger/man of many metaphorical hats Mark Evanier involves my feelings about Costco.

Mark Evanier is for it. I'm agin it.

And yes,that is clearly the only way in which we differ. In all other respects we're virtually identical.

Or, you know, not.

Still, he's an interesting guy who's led an interesting life, and has had a variety of interesting jobs, but while I have a great deal of respect for him and what he's achieved, I have to very respectfully disagree with him when it comes to his appreciation for the popular chain of wholesale stores.

"But Jon, what do you have against Costco?"

I'm glad that I imagined that you asked, and will now proceed to list the reasons.

Membership Doesn't Have Its Privileges

You have to pay an annual fee in order to be able to shop at Costco. This annoys me. Why? It just does. It's not like you really get anything in exchange for your membership fee other than simply being allowed to walk into the place and buy stuff. Wow, I'm a member of the elite!

Credits And Debits

Like millions of people the world over I have a debit/credit card for my checking account. It's a tremendously convenient aspect of modern life. At most of the places that I shop I use the "credit" option. After all, my bank is rather ubiquitous, so it's not difficult to find an ATM if I need cash, and the only advantage I can see to using the debit option is if you want to get cash back at the register. Given that at most places you actually get charged a fee for using the debit option, it's credit all the way for me. Except at Costco, which does not accept most major credit cards and requires you to use the debit option for your check card.

Savings? Really?

I don't really see the major savings involved in shopping at Costco, though that may be because I'm just...(looks around and counts) one man. Apart from a few household items and some non-perishable (or at least things that have a long shelf life), there aren't a lot of things that I need in bulk. Bulk amounts of food would languish uneaten in my house. So there aren't a lot of things that I buy large enough quantities of in the course of my life to really make Costco's bulk pricing add up to any significant savings. In fact, with the added costs of membership and debit fees, I might not be saving at all, especially since the unit prices really aren't that much cheaper than I could find at other places. Occasionally I'll see a really good deal on something, but most of the time, meh. And I don't understand the people who claim that major electronics are so much cheaper there than they are elsewhere. That's just a bald-faced lie, and if you say it, your face is bald and you're a liar.

Your Papers Please

I hate to Godwin the place, but every time I go to Costco I find myself imagining some jackbooted officer of the SS asking me for my papers when I have to - inconsistently; the people lurking at the entrance don't always look for it - hold up my membership card as I push the over-sized novelty shopping cart in through the entrance. It's even more annoying when I'm finally getting the hell out and I'm stopped so that my receipt can be examined and marked before I'm allowed to walk out the door. There's a sign on the wall that explains why this is being done. The sign says that it's to ensure that I didn't pay for something that I don't have, that I didn't get overcharged, and to prevent the receipt's "reuse." First question: how the fuck am I going to "reuse" a receipt? I realize that this is a loss-prevention tactic - they don't want me sneaking back in, grabbing another package of cheap socks, then idly strolling out the door without paying while waving my receipt and saying, "Hey, I paid for these socks, see?" Even so, the phrasing is just stupid. Also, do you really give a rat's ass if I paid too much for something? I think not.

The worst part is that, much like many Walmart "greeters" who stand there in stony silence, a good percentage of the receipt-checkers don't check shit. They just put their mark on the receipt and send you on your way. If that was all you were going to do, why not just let me keep going in the first place?

The Spice Of Life? Oh, We Don't Carry That

Another thing that really annoys me is the lack of variety. You can get a lot of a few things, but not some of a lot of things. There are a lot of things that I would buy in bulk - Sugar Free Rockstar, for example - if I could, even if I weren't getting significant savings, but I can't do so because Costco doesn't sell them. And some of the things I do buy come in assorted varieties that tend to favor the varieties I like least. So I end up with a lot of something I like, and even more of something that I don't, and that's the only way I can get a lot of the thing that I do like.

Hey Now, Hey Now...

I actually went to Costco today - which prompted this rant - because I had a doctor's appointment this morning and was working from home and I usually take advantage of having some time away from the office on weekday mornings to go to places that are inaccessible on weekends and evenings.

While I was waiting for my appointment with the doctor, Don't Stop Believing came on the office radio, which, of course, made me think of Family Guy. ("Is that Journey? That is Journey!")

That song has a strange effect on people. Most everyone there waiting started singing and humming along, or nodding their heads to the rhythm. It was still playing when I was brought back to the exam room, and even my nurse was humming along as she entered my vitals into the computer.

I only mention this because it amuses me, though it does start, eventually, to lead me to my final point. As I was at the counter making my next appointment and taking care of my co-pay, the song Don't Dream It's Over came on the radio, a song performed by Crowded House, and, after I left the doctor's office and headed to Costco, a crowded house is exactly what I walked into.

It wasn't as bad as it would be during the evening or on a weekend, but seriously, the place doesn't even open until 10, and it was only 10:10 when I got there, yet it was already packed full of people.

"Well if you hate it so much, why do you go there at all?"

Listen you smarmy bastards, if I'm going to imagine you asking questions, you damn sure better imaginatively be respectful. No one appreciates wise asses who think they're being clever by snarkily asking obvious questions.

I go there because while it doesn't have as wide a variety of things as I would like in many cases, there are things that I can use that can be purchased in bulk, some of which actually do save me some amount of money. I don't go there often, I go there only when it's least likely to be insanely crowded, I only go there after having mentally prepared myself for the awfulness of it, and I get out as quickly as I possibly can.

Also, I can get huge packages of blueberries. (Which I have to try to avoid eating in one sitting as soon as I get home.)

*****

Speaking of my doctor's appointment, the doctor recommended that, starting tomorrow, I cut back from taking my medication twice a day to taking it only once a day. The drawback is that I have to test my blood a little more frequently for a while to ensure that my sugar levels don't get out of whack.

Ideally, the endgame is for me to be off medication entirely, and at this point, it looks like I'm well on my way towards that.

I also learned that the key to my frustration regarding my post-workout sugar levels is patience. (It's always patience. Fucking patience.) Apparently I'd be better served to wait a while longer after working out to check my sugar, as the increased activity causes things to spike, and if I waited a while longer before checking they would most likely drop back down.

Evidently, years back, they did a test on some people competing in the Boston Marathon. They checked their sugar levels before the marathon, then checked them again as soon as they crossed the finish line. The second test showed their levels being way up, especially considering that these were people who weren't diabetics. However, they checked them again a half hour later and found that they were actually low or normal.

So...patience. Dammit.

Don't You Hate Pants?

As anyone who knows my routine is aware, Sunday is laundry day.
I kind of hate doing the laundry. It's not a lot of work - despite the fact that I have to shuffle things up and down the stairs, and in and out of the house thanks to my sub-optimal laundry arrangement - but it's just a hassle, and it serves as a reminder of the fact that my hands just don't work.
And, really, I don't need to be reminded of that.
But the reminder comes in the form of dropped clothes - especially irritatting when it happens when I'm transferring wet clothes to the dryer and the filth that accumulates on the cement floor of the outdoor shed where my dryer is located (see the bit about "sub-optimal laundry arrangement") regardless of how often I sweep it, gets all over the freshly-cleaned piece of clothing and seems to fuse into the actual fibers.
And, of course, there is the obligatory banging into things, whether it's stubbing my fingers against the lid of the washing machine, or just generally stumbling around like a drunken Spider Monkey while trying to carry the load of wet clothes outside.
Further reminders of the fact that my hands don't work come into play once it's time to actually fold the clothes and put them away...
And to top it all off, I kind of hate clothes in the first place.


You and me both, sister.

Which isn't to say that I'm inclined towards nudism because, seriously, even with my newly-developed post-weight loss vanity, there are two words that come to mind when I think about myself casually wandering around without a stitch on: God forbid.
I suppose the fact that I need clothes adds to my hatred of them.
Really, my hatred of clothing is the result of these factors:

You have to spend money to buy clothes, money that could be used to buy comic books or electronics.
You have to maintain them ("do the laundry"), and it's not really acceptable to just wear the same things day after day. You can't just dispose of them and get new ones, either, since that would take even more money away from comic books and electronics.
Other people seem to actually care about your clothes and make judgments about you based on them, which, in part, leads back to the whole "maintenance" thing. "Look at how wrinkled his shirt is! He must be a bad person!" But beyond that, you end up having to give at least some amount of thought to ephemeral nonsense like "style" and "fashion."
And finally, and more personally, the whole buying clothes thing - beyond wishing that I could use that money for comic books and electronics - is just a hassle.
Beyond the fact that it entails going out into the world and venturing into places where people congregate - which goes against every natural instinct I have - my...unique body type makes finding clothes that fit reasonably well a challenge.
I'm short, but my shoulders are broad and, even after the weight loss, my neck is kind of thick, which makes buying shirts - especially dress shirts - problematic.
And even though I'm short, I'm not terribly fat, and the people who make pants seem to think that fat and short go together like peanut butter and chocolate...which they assume that short people are stuffing their faces with.
Even before I lost more than 40 pounds I wasn't quite fat enough as far as pants manufacturers were concerned. "Sure, you can buy these pants that will fit your waist...but they're going to be far too long for you. If you have legs that short, why not pack on some more weight? Add four inches to your waist, and then we'll talk."
It's as if they think that because you're already short you might as well just give up and let yourself go completely. You're not that tall; might as well be just as wide.
Losing weight has, of course, only served to exacerbate the problem.
So, yeah.
Laundry day. Pisses me off every time.

For Anyone Wondering...

If you've ever wondered why it is that I hate people, you've obviously never driven in Northern Virginia when there's even the threat of bad weather.
If you have done that and you still wonder, there's no way I can make you understand, because clearly you must be running for Jesus and are practicing your infinite grace and perfect forgiveness.
On another note, to all of the people living in Northern Virginia: You are out of your goddamn minds.

Really, Google News?

Recommendations are based on what you have searched for and clicked on in the past, and they will improve over time as you use Google News.

Really, Google News? They will improve over time? Are we talking in geological terms, or something on more of a human scale, because I'm really not seeing the improvement...
On my customized Google News page there's a section featuring links to stories recommended specifically for me.
These stories are based on my Google News activities, such as the stories I click on in the other sections (US, Sci/Tech, etc.) and on the searches I make within Google News.
This is why I find it so puzzling that since Thursday it has exclusively recommended stories related to the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, as I have never once clicked on a link about or done a search on those topics.
I think part of the problem is that the recommendation process is weighted to favor entertainment news, and, of course, the majority of stories in that category are going to be about those particular topics until something equally newsworthy (for some value of "worthy") occurs, as my recommended stories are almost always entertainment news, despite the fact that 90% of the time (at least) I'm clicking on Sci/Tech stories.
Even when I've managed to get the recommended stories more in line with my interests - which involves a lot of clicking on Sci/Tech stories - clicking on one entertainment story will reset the results to all entertainment recommendations.
What really bothers me about the whole thing, though, is that the problem with Google's recommendation engine is that there's no way to actively refine it in the way that you can with, for example, Amazon's recommendation engine. There's no way to tell Google News that I'm not interested in anything involving American Idol, or the Hills, or Paris Hilton, other than by steadfastly avoiding clicking on anything even remotely linked to those topics, and even that is no guarantee, and all of your efforts can be destroyed by an errant mis-click or by clicking on something that you actually are interested in that has even the slightest connection to those topics.
It seems like it would be fairly simple to implement some kind of "I'm not interested" check box, or, at the very least, a rating system for stories that would let you indicate how interested or uninterested you are in stories of that type.
Just a thought/rant.

Megan Fox and the Rose Kid update:
Looks like the kid didn't get his chance to meet up with Ms. Fox: Disaster

Here's That Rant You Ordered

I woke up a little later than usual this morning at around 9:45. I got up, did the usual sitting around for what felt like about a half an hour, then happened to look at the time on my computer.
11:15.
The hell? No way was that an hour and a half.
Then I remembered the stupid time change and I went from being puzzled to being annoyed, as I’d already lost an hour of the day. It’s not like I was going to do anything with that hour, but even so, I didn’t appreciate having it taken away from me.
In any case I suppose I should get around to my delayed ranting.
I was getting ready to leave work on Wednesday. The computer was in the process of shutting down, and Iwas preparing to remove the computer from its docking station and lock it in my cabinet for the night.
Naturally that’s when my phone rang.
It was only a minor delay, but at that point in the day a delay of five minutes at work can result in the addition of ten minutes to my drive home. There are very limited windows of opportunity to avoid some of the more hellacious traffic levels, so every second counts.
After getting off of the phone , I was prepared to just head out the door, but I figured I should talk to my boss about the call. It wasn’t anything terribly important, but it was something that I figured I should ask/tell her about.
Total delay? Ten minutes. Fortunately the time added to the drive doesn’t continue to double as the delay increases, but a ten minute delay in leaving at that point still means about an additional fifteen minutes on the road.
The first big annoyance was some jackass who didn’t have a Smart Tag/EZ Pass, yet decided to ignore the sign saying “Right Lane Smart Tag/EZ Pass Only,” and then got penned in right at the toll booths, unable to move over to one of the exact change/full service lanes, causing me to be at a dead stop behind six other cars, which is especially annoying given that the whole point of having a Smart Tag is to not have to stop at the damn toll booths.
Once I got past that point some woman was merging onto 28 without considering the possibility that there might be oncoming traffic to merge with, and, without looking and while right alongside me, she started moving into my lane.
I didn’t have time to do anything but speed up and swerve into the other lane – hoping that I wouldn’t hit anyone – and when I pulled back into the lane ahead of her the bitch had the nerve to honk her horn at me.
Five minutes later someone else pulled more or less the same maneuver, but this time I didn’t have another lane to swerve into, so I had to slam on my brakes. I didn’t honk my horn because a. it’s so wimpy sounding and b. if the jackass didn’t hear the sound of my tires screeching it’s unlikely he would have heard the horn.
Then I was stuck behind a line of cars on Sycolin. Sycolin is a narrow, winding, rutted, partially-unpaved road that’s really not suitable to be driven on by the faint of heart, especially since most people – like me – tend to drive like maniacs on it.
After all, the road inspires a kind of mania, and that’s what makes it so irritating when some timid people who are actually concerned about the safety of themselves and others – and who don’t want to get their precious SUVs, luxury cars, and minivans all dusty – get on the road. Stay the hell off, sane people! Let the lunatics run that particular asylum.
In any case, the big hold up there was a student driver.
I can appreciate the idea; take a student driver out onto a dangerous and poorly-maintained road as something of a trial by fire. Makes sense to me. But at or around rush hour? Screw the opportunity for a student to gain some experience; at that point, you’re just being a dick to everyone else.
I was set to meet Scott at Target so that I could pick up the Wonder Woman animated movie and then we could figure out where to eat. At the stoplight at the entrance to Target – at a red light – some idiot behind me honked his horn at me. The light is red, jackass. Admittedly, he might have been honking about something else, but at that point I was pretty well on edge and a hair’s breadth away from succumbing to road rage.
Once I got into Target things didn’t improve much, as they didn’t have the Wonder Woman movie on Blu-ray. WTF?
We decided to check out the Wal-Mart – the ghetto one that I generally avoid – across the street. They had a space for the Blu-ray, but it was empty, and when we finally tracked down an Associate we were informed that it was “in transit.”
Scott was going to wait to buy the DVD until the next week, so I decided that I’d just buy it on DVD so that we could watch it and then he could keep it and pay me back later.
(He ended up paying for my ticket to Watchmen in trade.)
After that we went to eat at IHOP, hoping that they wouldn’t have the soul-destroyingly bad bacon that they did last time. I actually played it safe and ordered something sans bacon (ham steak and eggs), but Scott took his chances. Luckily the bacon was much improved this time.
As an aside, our waitress was kind of cute, but her cuteness was ruined by her atrocious Southern accent. Gah, it was like nails on a chalkboard.
Anyway, that’s my big rant. In starting to relay my rant to Scott when I finally arrived at Target I had said, “The Universe has run out of ideas; it’s resorted to just throwing cars at me.”
I didn’t do much yesterday – or today, for that matter – beyond hitting the comic shop, where one of the employees informed me, angrily, that one reviewer had likened Watchmen to the Catwoman movie. Besides being an incredibly inaccurate claim, that just seems cruel. Even if Watchmen had been bad, there’s no reason to ever make that comparison.
I did pick up Wonder Woman on Blu-ray as well – it came with a little weirdly-articulared Wonder Woman action figure – and I also bought some fancy air purifier. It cleans the air three ways!
I figure I had to something, at least in my bedroom, as there’s always something floating around that irritates my allergies.
Anyway, that’ll do it for this entry.

Too Tired...Too Lazy...Take Your Pick

I've got a huge rant waiting inside of me about my post-work commute yesterday, but I just don't have the energy to write it up just now.
Not sure when I will write it; tomorrow night I'll be off to see Watchmen in IMAX. Depending on how that goes, I might just have another rant. Hopefully not.
On some positive notes, for Riff Trax night Scott and I watched no Riff Trax, but rather the Futurama movie Bender's Game, which was hilarious, and the new DC Animated movie Wonder Woman. The acquisition of said movie contains a rant in itself, but the movie was awesome. Astonishingly so, actually. I'd read that it was good, and based on other DC Animated projects, I expected that it would be, but I was unprepared for it to be so full of, well, wonder.
Very good stuff, and the preview for the next feature - a Green Lantern movie - while containing no footage, made it look very promising.
And finally, let me just say, "Money money money money....money!"
(Tax refunds + bonus = a happy Jon*)

*For a Jon-specific value of "happy."

Love/Hate Transmission*

I’ve got sort of a love/hate relationship with the Internet.
Shortly after I moved to Virginia I bought an appliance called a “Kitchen Kettle.” It’s a versatile product that can be used for boiling, steaming, slow cooking, and deep frying.
I’ve never actually used it for deep frying since I’ve had it, but lately, since I made that tortilla soup a while back and fried up some tortillas (in a frying pan), I’ve had something of a yen for homemade tortilla chips. The frying pan method limited the size of the batches I could fry up, so I decided to make use of my Kitchen Kettle.
Of course, the problem was that I’ve never used it for that purpose, so I didn’t know what temperature I was supposed to set it for, and I couldn’t find the manual.
At that point I thought, “Aha! The Internet!” So I did a search, and while the manual wasn’t among the first few results – that position was reserved, of course, for the people who paid to be in that position – but a quick scan of the results showed me what I was looking for, and soon I was well on my way to further clogging my arteries.
It’s at times like that I love the Internet.
Of course, shortly after the page loaded my antivirus software popped up to tell me that it had detected a Trojan.
Stupid Internet.
Sure, the Trojan was detected and removed, and the Internet itself isn’t responsible for the stupid, irritating things that people like Trojan and Virus writers do, but it’s all part of the complex tapestry that is my love/hate relationship with the Internet.
Hell, even the paid search results and the whole “monetize everything” mentality behind it are a big part of the hatred side of the relationship. Just show me what I’m looking for; your paid results can go screw. Seriously, what the hell does Intercourse, PA, have to do with “Kitchen Kettle Manual?” And why would you name your town – or keep the name after the naming – Intercourse? But I digress.
The best thing about the Internet is that you can find almost anything you’re looking for. The worst thing is that “almost” qualifier.
That’s certainly the source of most of my acrimony. More often than not – and increasingly, it seems – the things I’m looking for fall outside of the boundaries of “almost.”
There shouldn’t be any sort of qualifier: you should be able to find anything you’re looking for on the Internet. Period.
I’m perfectly willing to sift through the useless, irrelevant results brought to me by paid searches and Search Engine Optimization strategies just so long as I can find what I’m actually looking for eventually. But eventually doesn’t seem to come often enough.
The whole monetization aspect is responsible for a lot of this, as is, I suspect, laziness, and laziness tied to the monetization aspect. Too many people look at the Internet and see a get rich quick scheme in which they try to get the maximum return for the minimum investment.
As a result there are too many sites that are utterly lacking in original content that have simply copied and pasted content from another site, and often the site that it’s copied from is itself a copy of another site, which is a copy of yet another site, and on and on and on.
One area in which I especially notice this laziness and re-presenting of others’ content is in my picture searches.
Back in, say, 1996, I could be at my job at the grocery store and see a new issue of, for example, Cosmopolitan, with a great picture of Cindy Crawford on the cover, and know that when I got home I could hop on the Web and find a scan of that picture already posted at a fan site.
(Put aside the issue of the scanned picture not actually being “original” content; that’s not the point.)
Last year there was an issue of Fit, or something like that, with a great picture of Angie Harmon on the cover. For weeks the picture was nowhere to be found online. It finally got to the point that I realized that if I wanted that picture I would have to actually *gasp!* buy the magazine (which I did).
Again, intellectual property rights, not original content, blah blah blah. The point is, there once was a time when people could be relied on to engage in intellectual property theft in a timely manner.
That’s just not so anymore.
The other day I was in a pictures newsgroup and saw a bunch of posts that were labeled as “oldies.” I said, “That’s pretty much a given; I can guarantee you that not one of the pictures in this group, even among the ones not listed as oldies, is from after 2002.” I was right.
Most of the people in the pictures were models and actresses who haven’t been especially active since the 1990s. Forget about finding someone current, or a current picture of someone who is current. Even the pictures of Jessica Alba, for example, were from before Dark Angel.
I still occasionally find pictures that were originally culled from an old BBS.
Quit living in the past, Internet!
So yeah, the lack of new content/recycling of existing content is one of my major problems with the Internet.
And don’t me started on trying to find answers to a technical problem in any sort of user forum. Inevitably you’ll find that someone else has/had the exact same problem that you have and has asked for help, but either no one answered, or the answer was “Get a Mac,” or something equally useless.
Or the inanity (no offense Scott) and sheer soul-rending stupidity of most of the comments found in user forums, blog comments, YouTube video comments and so forth...
But when it does deliver on its potential, it’s a wondrous thing, and it’s why I love it, even though I hate it.
(And yes, my picture example is, of course, a trivial example, but it’s still a valid illustration of the problem.)
And of course the fact of the matter is that if it weren’t for the Internet I wouldn’t be where I am today, as I’ve been working in the Internet industry for going on seven years now, which, depending on what my day is like, can be tallied in either the love or the hate column.
Sometimes it’s in both.

The Oral Apocalypse Rages On Department:
Not content with simply breaking one of my teeth, The Universe had to take things a step further.
This morning after I ate something I noticed something sharp stuck under my bottom plate. I couldn’t pry it out with my tongue, so I took my plate out to clean it off. I discovered that the sharpness wasn’t from something stuck under my plate, but rather was the jagged edge where a piece of the plate had broken off.
I’m not sure when or how that happened, but I suspect it was the other night when I was trying to put my plates soaking overnight and my fingers – as they so often do – said, “Screw this,” and decided they weren’t going to maintain their grip and both plates went flying to the bathroom floor, skittering their way behind the toilet.
(So many of my problems in life stem from the fact that my fingers just don’t work properly.)
I’m sure that some morning an unsuspecting Jon will be on his way to take a shower and will find a piece of his “gum” embedded in the bottom of his bare foot.
So I imagine that I’ll have to get that plate replaced, as the missing piece of “gum” undermines the structural integrity of the “molar” above it, though I’m holding on to the vain hope that my dentist can just grind it down so that it’s not so jagged and call it good.
Speaking of which, I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning. It’s early enough in the morning that it would be foolish to drive in to work then turn around and drive to the dentist, so I get to sleep in a bit.
Of course, we’re apparently going to get some nasty** ice storm, so who knows if that will actually happen.

*Taken from the title of a Liz Phair song.
**For a Northern Virginia value of “nasty.”

I Got Yer "Merry Christmas" Right Here

If I recall correctly, today is Beethoven’s birthday.
That’s it; I don’t have anything more to say on the subject, just randomly remembering (or mis-remembering) some bit of trivia that I picked up from reading a Peanuts comic strip who knows how long ago.
On my way home from work today I stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few things. Naturally Christmas music was playing.
It comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me when I say that I don’t exactly have an excess of Christmas spirit.
Still, I’m not exactly the Grinch; I don’t begrudge all the holly jolly people their holly jolliness, and I’m no heartless miser in need of a visitation from spirits to show me the true meaning of whatsit.
Eat your Who Hash and your roast beast, and you Cratchits of the world can take off Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and, for all I care, Boxing Day.
Have it. Go (chest)nuts.
Just don’t expect me to join in your reindeer games.
In any case, as I was walking the aisles in search of green tea, I heard Frank Sinatra singing, “Oh, by gosh, by golly, it’s time for mistletoe and holly!”
My response to this, muttered under my breath, was, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
So, yeah. Not much in the way of Christmas spirit.
But speaking of Christmas, did you know there’s a war against it? It’s true; I heard it on Fox News.
Lots of salvos have been fired this time around, what with atheists putting up a sign in response to a Nativity scene set up in a courthouse, and Christians responding by stealing said sign (Thou shalt not what?), and blah blah blah fucking de blah.
Here’s what I have to say about the war on Christmas: fuck you.
Seriously, the bitching and whining just has to stop. It’s been a long-ass time since Christians were last persecuted, so quit trying to cast yourselves in the role of persecuted minority (while simultaneously boasting about being in the majority) and just suck it the hell up. Nobody is persecuting you. Nobody.
Having someone at Wal-Mart say “Happy Holidays!” is not equivalent to being fed to lions.
And honestly, we get it: you hate Jews and foreigners, what with their Jewish and foreign non-Christ-based holidays. Well, too fucking bad. Having to acknowledge diversity and plurality and not always being in the favored position is not the same as being oppressed.
No one is stopping you from saying “Merry Christmas.” No one is stopping you from making one of your twice-annual visits to church. No one is making you take down the flaming cross in your front yard.
So, I reiterate: fuck you.
As for the expression “Happy Holidays,” despite this reminding you of Jews and foreigners and how much you hate them and all that namby-pamby “tolerance” business, it should be pointed out that even within the boundaries of Christendom there is more than one holiday going on at this time of year.
I mean, what are you trying to say by limiting yourself to wishing people happiness on just one holiday?
“Hey, Merry Christmas!”
“And a Happy New Year?”
“No, just Christmas. Fuck your New Year.”
Okay, I suppose that’s more than enough ranting about that. I guess I just have kind of a short fuse today.
For one thing, my drive home was a thousand times more irritating than usual, as people sat at green lights with no apparent desire to go anywhere. It’s like, “Hey, the light turned green. Is that supposed to signify something? Oh well, let’s just hang out here! It’ll be fun! We’ll tell ghost stories and sing songs and make s’mores!”
Then when they did start moving they did so at a pace that would make Tim Conway’s slow-moving old man character yell, “Speed it the hell up!”
When I – finally – got home, I turned on the TV and after flipping through the channels and being pissed that there didn’t seem to be anything good on any of them, settled on The History Channel and started watching The Universe. This particular episode was about plans for a manned mission to Mars and all of the challenges associated with such a venture.
The upshot of it was the prediction that such a mission will finally come to fruition sometime around 2040.
Two-thousand fucking forty.
And that’s probably optimistic.
This revelation engendered feelings in me that can be summarized as “Fuck you, humanity. Fuck you for wasting time, money, and effort on killing each other because someone is the wrong color, or believes the wrong fairy tales, or says ‘Happy Holidays,’ instead of devoting those resources to doing something cool.”
So, yeah. Short fuse.
Apart from, apparently, being filled with impotent rage, I haven’t been up to much since I last posted. Work, sleep, etc. Nothing in particular of note.
So, even though I probably should have brought this entry to a close several paragraphs okay, I’ll stop with all the rantiness.

I Got Your Common Courtesy Right Here

The novel Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny is one of my all-time favorite books. In fact, if it weren’t for Watchmen, it would probably be my absolute favorite (though I can’t say that I would want to live in a world without Watchmen, so it’s rather a moot point).
For those who haven’t read it – which is pretty much all of you – the basic concept is as follows:

A group of humans travel across interstellar distances to colonize another world.
The world is a rather hostile place, with several nasty indigenous creatures that roughly correspond to demons and spirits from human mythology – in fact, many of the creatures deliberately take on these forms, which they have pulled from the minds of the intruding humans – so in order to properly settle the world, the colonists cultivate superhuman attributes and develop advanced technologies to aid them. After years of warfare, the world is soon properly subjugated and the real work of colonization – namely having kids and lots of them – gets underway.
Among the advanced technologies the colonists possess are the ability to artificially grow cloned bodies and a technique that allows them to transfer consciousness from one body to another. Barring any accidents that might prevent someone from being transferred into a healthy new body prior to the death of the old one, this “reincarnation” technology effectively allows for immortality.
As new generations are born and the original colonists further develop their superhuman attributes the question of who gets to take advantage of this technology becomes a divisive one. The majority of the colonists believe that it should not be shared with their descendants, the common rabble who are spreading out across the world and living at subsistence levels. A vocal minority hews to a more egalitarian ideal and feels that the technology should be shared with everyone equally.
This division leads one of the First, as the original colonists are known, to take his leave of his fellows and settle off in distant lands. This person is named Sam, and was one of the greatest heroes of the wars against the natives, his ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields serving as a perfect weapon against the disembodied sentient energy beings known as the Rakasha.
Eventually, after living to a ripe old age, Sam decides it’s time to pick out a new body, and makes his way back to the Celestial City, the home of the First.
Along the way, Sam learns that things have gotten even worse than they had been when he left. The First are no longer merely content to lord over their children as simple human masters, they have designated themselves as gods, patterning themselves after the Hindu pantheon. Further, they have devices that allow them to read human memories and they use these readings to judge anyone seeking to be reincarnated, evaluating their Karma to determine what sort of new body – if any – said supplicant will receive.
Like any commodity, Karma, Sam learns, can be bought, as is evidenced by the devices he refers to as “Pray-o-Mats” located at the front of the temples erected in honor of the “gods.” Supplicants are able to purchase tokens, which, when deposited into the Pray-o-Mats can help to ameliorate their Karmic burden.
Intrigued by this, Sam gets in line and begins asking one of the pilgrims questions about the workings of the Pray-o-Mat. Eventually, frustrated by the questions of this ignorant savage, the pilgrim turns to Sam and says, “Perhaps ‘twere better that you make prayer in the old way and give the donation directly into the hands of the priests.”

I apologize for the wordiness of my little recap, but I needed to give you the context before mentioning that this particular scene came to mind today when I was at the grocery store in line at the self-checkout behind someone who couldn’t figure out how to ring up the produce he was buying.
To be fair, I can’t really blame him for opting to use the self-checkout, given how packed the place was, but honestly, it probably would have been faster for him – and everyone behind him – if he’d just gotten into the regular line and did it the old-fashioned way.
Given that Thanksgiving is coming, I expected the store to be busier than usual, but I wasn’t prepared for how packed it was at noon on a Monday.
Of course, the question of “Don’t these people have jobs they should be at?” was answered by the fact that it appeared that there was an AARP convention going on in the store.
It was like someone had planted old people seeds in rows like corn, particularly given that they all seemed to be rooted to the spot, turning the place into some sort of septuagenarian obstacle course.
I just don’t understand why people who are actively shrinking feel the need to take up as much space as possible, with their carts turned sideways in the middle of an aisle while standing there unmoving, as if they were all Lot’s wife and had just turned to look back on the wicked city and been stricken by the wrath of God.
It really shouldn’t take that long to pick out which can of tomato soup you’re going to buy, and if you’d turn up your hearing aid you might hear the young whippersnapper saying, “Excuse me” as he tries to maneuver around your Geritol-laden cart.
(Do they even make Geritol anymore?)
I understand that you’re old (and American) and that this gives you a sense of entitlement, but I have to say that, now that medical science and modern hygienic practices have pretty effectively wiped out things like cholera and small pox, making it to an advanced age isn’t quite the accomplishment it once was.
Maybe you fought in a war and think that gives you special permission to be completely inconsiderate. Well, I appreciate your efforts to defend freedom, and make the world a better place for future generations, and I hope you had a nice Veterans Day, but you might consider doing something to protect the freedom of future generations to get access to the cheese in the dairy aisle.
At the very least, I would ask that you actually acknowledge the fact that you’re in the way. I mean, everyone is in someone’s way sometimes, but even if you’re not particularly nimble, you can try to keep that to a minimum and recognize that other people – particularly the ones who are politely saying “Excuse me” – have just as much right to buy eggs as you do, and there’s no need for you to willfully block their access to them.
And the fact is that I wouldn’t be quite so bothered by this lack of consideration if old people weren’t constantly complaining about how rude and impolite younger people are. During one of the dozen or so times in the course of a day that you ask, “Whatever happened to common courtesy?” I want you to remember what the answer to that question is: you did. You happened to it.
Consider the fact that the young man ahead of me who failed to master the art of buying produce turned to me and everyone else in line and apologized for causing a delay.
That’s considerably more courtesy than I got from the old lady who jammed her bony shoulder into my back as she pushed her way past me while I was loading my groceries onto the belt.

Your Most Burning Question Answered!

I’m sure the question that’s foremost on everyone’s mind is “How did the new sheets work out for Jon last night?”
They were okay. Not quite as soft as the old ones were, but also not quite so mysteriously ripped to shreds.
Of course, given that we’ve been having some cold weather of late and that in an effort to save money (and to avoid the hot curling iron smell that comes from the electric baseboard heaters), I’ve been dressing in layers to stay warm rather than turning the heat on, so, just as with the old ones, the coldness of the sheets as my skin first came into contact with them elicited the standard “Gah!” from me as I got into bed.
I was supposed to hear from the recruiter for the job I was really interested in by today.
That didn’t happen.
Serves me right, I suppose, for getting my hopes up (and for thinking that I could work out a deal with the Universe).
Of course, maybe something just came up and she’ll contact me next week, but given how things have been going I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m not quite so employable as I’d thought my experience and education made me.
Not much else I can do but keep applying for jobs, I guess.
Still, that was exactly the thing that made this particular prospect seem so promising: I didn’t actually apply for the job.
The recruiter just got a copy of my résumé (from the company representative who had been at the job fair last week) and contacted me because she thought I’d be a good fit (and seemed to be even more convinced of that after I’d talked to her).
Oh well.
The squirrel is still ranging around up in the attic. I went up and put some more tempting bait (pieces of bread with peanut butter on them) in and around the trap.
I really hate going up into the attic because as soon as I do I begin to itch from all of the insulation floating around and have to take a shower as soon as I come down.
This leads me to wonder why it is that spending just a couple of minutes up there forces me to have to recreate the decontamination scene from Silkwood, yet it doesn’t seem to bother the squirrel. I mean, I was up there for only a couple of minutes – albeit slightly longer than should have been necessary, as I ended up springing the trap while re-baiting it and had to set it again – and it’s not like I’m actually frolicking around in the insulation like the little rodent is. I know the stuff can be deadly because years ago we had a cat that chose a bunch of insulation as the place to give birth to her kittens, and the insulation killed all of them before we actually found them (one survived, briefly, but eventually died after being removed from the insulation).
Again, oh well.
Earlier today my computer started acting a little wacky (no sound on some video files, Media Center flat out refusing to play some videos, memory usage through the roof, etc.), so I decided to reboot it.
After the reboot I got a message telling me that I wasn’t connected to my network, and it wouldn’t even allow me to access the Network Control Panel.
So I went for reboot number two.
Same thing.
After a few frustrated attempts at getting into the Network Control Panel – and after confirming on my laptop that there was no problem with the network itself – I realized that all of the weirdness had started after I’d finally given in to the little nag screen that came up every time I launched it and updated to the latest version of AIM.
First you lay me off, then you hose my computer; thanks AOL!
So I did a system restore to a point before I made the update and everything was back to normal.
The thing that really annoyed me the most, though, wasn’t that the new AIM trashed my network settings, it was the damn screen nagging me to upgrade to the new version.
When I launch a program, I’m doing so because I want to actually use it. At that moment I’m not particularly interested in whether or not there’s an update available.
Fuck your update; I just want to use the program.
I hardly think I’m alone in this regard. Most people launch programs because they want to use them.
At least Firefox, which seems to have an update available every damn time you launch it, gives you the option to run the update the next time you launch – most other programs, like AIM, only give you the option to update now or be reminded again the next time you launch - but even that’s a pain in the ass.
The time to mention that updates are available is when I’m closing the program. The fact that I’m closing it means that I’m no longer using it, therefore your stupid update won’t be interfering with what I’m trying to do.
And when you do choose to run the update, you generally get a message at some point saying “Oh my god, you can’t update me while I’m running! What the hell were you thinking? Close me!”
I understand that it may not be possible to update some files while they’re in use, but why pop up an error message at me? As it is, I can’t actually use the damn program anyway because the stupid update is running, so just quit your bitching and close the program your damn self as part of the installation process.
I just can’t fathom the mentality behind this kind of shit. Most software developers (and their bosses) are, at some point, also software end-users for at least some programs, so how hard can it be to figure out that this kind of nonsense is a barrier to use and annoying as hell?
Whether you believe that the adhere to it or not, Google has as its motto “Don’t be evil.” I think that software companies should have a similar motto: “Don’t be an idiot.”
(Oh, and if you could write software that doesn’t hose people’s systems, that’d be super, too.)

Competing Hatreds Or Did I Step Through Time Warp?

Hmm, looks like I’ve been a little light on the posts this week, but really, not much has happened.
Sure, that’s never stopped me from posting before, obviously, but this week…well, I just didn’t feel up to it.
This morning I got up, watched a movie I’d downloaded, then watched a TV show I’d recorded, then sat around for a while.
No trip to the comic shop this week, as the new books won’t be out until tomorrow due to the holiday.
I did go near the comic shop, though, as I stopped to have lunch at the Thai place before heading in to work for a training session. I didn’t order anything comic book-y, though, going with the simple “Special Eggplant,” which was very tasty, and sweat-inducingly spicy.
I got an e-mail from my mortgage company with a bunch of paperwork attached that I supposedly had gotten back in July – which is a bunch of BS, as I had never previously received it – that I needed to sign and fax in, which was supplement to the other stack of paperwork I had to mail in. I apologize to the families of the trees that died so that I could fill it all out.
The amount of paperwork involved in buying a house is simply retarded.
I mean, last time I checked we were living in the 21st Century. Did that change somehow? Have I stepped back in time?
Seriously, that there is so much paperwork involved just says to me that a good percentage of the people involved in the loan business are short-sighted idiots who have no grasp of the kinds of capabalities that modern technology makes available to them.
I mean, they have these amazing newfangled contraptions called “computers” and I hear tell about some kind of “interwebs” or somesuch.
Seriously, a significant portion of the documents they needed from me I obtained by logging onto an Internet site, printing out its contents, and mailing it to them via the postal service.
Why don’t we use the Pony Express while we’re at it?
Seriously, all I should have to do is provide them with my Social Security Number, and then sign one form (it could even be an electronic form, but I’ll allow them this one piece of paper for the sake of nostalgia) which gives them permission to collect whatever financial data they need, and which indicates that I have been made aware of all of the pertinent disclosures.
Of course, I know that the worst is yet to come, as the closing will involve all manner of signing and initialing, and sacrificing goats to Ba’al, and who knows what all else.
I’m sure that someone in the know could provide me with all manner of justifications for why all of this paperwork is necessary, but I would submit that those reasons are specious and stupid and are designed to support a needlessly complex and antiquated top-heavy structure of tradition and willful ignorance.
So yeah, pretty damn sick of signing stuff.
Maybe in honor of the primitive and quaint nature of the process, at the closing, rather than signing my name, I’ll simply make my mark, like some pre-movable type illiterate serf.
In any case, my work week is nearly upon me, and as we move further into September we come that much closer to the day when I can say goodbye to this place that has been my home, and which I have come to hate so very, very much, and it’s the fact that my hatred of this place burns so much hotter than my hatred of pointlessly signing useless pieces of paper that keeps me moving to my goal of positioning my shoulders Atlas-like under a world of debt.
And on that thought, I’ll bring this entry to a close.

I Should Have Written This On My Cell Phone

Yesterday morning at around, oh, I don’t know, say, way the fuck before I was willing to get up, I thought I heard my cell phone ring. I started to get up, but it didn’t do it again, so I said, “Screw it,” and went back to sleep.
When I did get up sometime later I checked to see if I had any missed calls listed. I didn’t, so I sort of forgot about it.
Sometime late in the evening it occurred to me that it might have been the sound of me receiving a text message, so I checked that and sure enough I had a text message from Kathleen.
However, repeated attempts to actually open the text message have failed, so Kathleen, if you’re reading this, whatever it is you felt the need to tell me – but couldn’t take the time to call me to tell me – I don’t actually know what it was.
I know I’m probably showing my age here, but I think that text messages are kind of retarded.
Multimedia messages make sense. I mean, you’re out and about, you see something crazy, you snap a picture/video on your phone, you send it to your friends. Fine.
But straight up text messages? What for?
Okay, so you need to tell someone something, but you’re not physically in that person’s presence. What to do? Well, you’ve got a telephone in your hand, and the person you need to talk to also has a telephone on him, so the solution is obvious: type in a message on your telephone and send it to his telephone so that he can read it.
Because that makes perfect sense. It’s sort of like loading a document into a fax machine, then packing up the fax machine and mailing it to the person you wanted to send the fax to.
Even with QWERTY keyboards sending messages on a cell phone can be a huge pain. So you’re an accomplished thumb typer; it’s still easier to type on a proper keyboard.
Besides, the odds are that nothing you have to say via text message is vitally important because, let’s face it, you’re really kind of insignificant and most people can get by just fine without immediately hearing, or rather, reading, what you have to say. I’m sorry. I know your mommy told you that you’re special, but you’re just not (Though you will always be special to your mommy, okay?). So just wait until you’re at a computer and send a damn e-mail. The world will keep turning in the interval.
That’s the other thing: most cell phones with texting capability also have e-mail capabilities.
Also, text messages often cost money above and beyond what you’re already paying, both for you and the person receiving them.
There’s pretty much no way around it; text messages are retarded.
The other problem that I have with text messages is that they further encourage the dumbing down of language via stupid abbreviations, a process started by advent of instant messaging (and, to a lesser extent, the titles of Prince songs back in the 80s).
Okay, fine, you’re in a hurry and can’t type out “you,” so instead you resort to “U.” You also can’t be bothered to type out “you are,” so you go with “UR.”
That much at least makes sense, but you have to understand that there is no circumstance under which “UR” can reasonably fill in for the word “your.” Sure, it can fill in as “you’re,” the contraction of “you are,” even though, ironically, when read aloud it actually becomes two words instead of one.
Of course, most people are too retarded to know the difference between “your” and “you’re” anyway (to say nothing of “yore”), so I guess my point is moot.
*Sigh* It doesn’t really matter anyway. I mean, the world doesn’t really belong to me, it belongs to all of the illiterate text messaging monkeys out there.
And as far as I’m concerned, they can have it.
So thr u go: itz al urs.
On a slightly more serious note, back when I took that Web 2.0 class one of the things that was talked about was the emergence of mobile devices and how they are becoming the preferred method for accessing the Web.
I just don’t get that. Sure, in a pinch being able to access the Web with your cell phone is great. But the preferred method? Why? No matter how many gee-whiz features you build into a cell phone, accessing the Web on a mobile device will always be an inferior experience to doing so on a full-fledged computer.
What’s the point of having access to full-motion HD video if you’re only going to watch it on a 2 inch screen?
As I was listening to the guy talking about tiny mobile devices that allow you to see 1/10th of a Web page at a time and how great that is in comparison to having a 22 inch widescreen LCD monitor at home, I couldn’t help but think about how this is really just a repackaging of an idea that’s been around for a long time.
Specifically, the death of the home computer.
People have been predicting/calling for this for as long as I can remember. The focus for the future is always on eliminating the computer (and especially local storage, but that may very well be a topic for another day). Why? What do we gain by eliminating the home computer?
I can tell you that there’s never going to come a point at which there’s a mobile device that is not essentially a laptop computer of some sort, that will allow me to do everything that a home computer does.
Personally, I’ve always been a proponent of dockable devices, small, portable computers that can perform all essential functions on their own, but can then be plugged into some sort of cradles that extend their capabilities, giving them access to bigger screens, full-size keyboards, etc.
That makes more sense to me that trying to completely replace the computer with a cell phone.
But, again, I’m probably just showing my age, and maybe someday I will actually eschew my home computer in favor of a wristwatch that lets me listen to mp3s, watch HD video, send text messages, do my taxes, blog, take and edit pictures and video, write a novel, watch porn, share files, shop, and cook a turkey.
Of course, it probably won’t tell time…unless you pay extra.