Vacuuming the Corners of My Brain

We just bought a new television. I would’ve gotten a plasma set, but I don’t like needles.

I’ve finally convinced my wife that I don’t like Italian restaurants. The truth is, I don’t like Frank Sinatra’s music.

Ever notice how mathematical logic is opposite of grammatical logic? It’s drilled into us that you can’t divide by zero. Zero is another way of saying nothing. If you have an apple, and divide it by nothing, that apple hasn’t been divided; you still have one whole apple. If you divide it by one – that is, with one cut – you have two pieces. Two cuts can give you three or four pieces. I think I’ll apply for a grant to reconcile this. Beats working.

I heard a news broadcast the other day that announced that the Bald Eagle had been dropped from the Endangered Species list. The only reference they made to any of the efforts to protect the bird was linking the comeback to the banning of DDT use. Does it matter to the environMENTALists that there has never…never…been an established link between DDT use and the fate of eagles? (http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html#ref7) No it does not. They use the favorite tool of the Left – “A lie, repeated often enough, becomes truth.”

In a similar vein, Harry Reid stood on the steaming corpse of the Immigration bill, a bill that was rejected by over 80% of the American people, and whined that “Republican obstruction has gotten so bad that now they’re blocking bills that they actually support.” What a fucking idiot. No, Harry. It means that they listened to the people that pay them. You work for us, you serpent, not the other way around. Yes, it was obstructionism, but of a kind that exemplifies the way the system should work. The “GIVErnment” pissed us all off by ignoring our wishes, and we stopped you, both Republicans and Democrats. We don’t trust any of you. How else do you explain that the President’s approval number is around 32%, and Congress’s is 14%?

Is it too much to ask to have a work day devoid of drama? I have a coworker that has only two reactions: no problem, and apocalypse. It really isn’t a disaster of Biblical proportions if we’re out of envelopes. Take your Prozac, and go sit down.

My city recently called for suggestions on how to improve our infrastructure, and got replies from thousands of pissed-off motorists. My suggestion, to call a special Planning Council meeting, take them all out into the field, and shoot them, was apparently lost in the mail. Preliminary reports indicate that the Council is considering building roundabouts throughout the city. Oh yeah…that’ll be perfect. Instead of fixing the glaring problems we already have, let’s add a system of negotiation that no one is familiar with. I really shouldn’t be surprised. This is the same group that decided that putting stoplights on a bypass was a good idea, and thinks that if you have two lanes at an intersection, one of them should be a dedicated left-turn lane, while the other should do triple duty as a left turn, straight ahead, and right turn lane. The rules of the road that I learned state that you can turn right on red, while you have to wait for green to turn left or cross the intersection. Why in the hell wouldn’t you reserve the right lane for those that are turning right? Why make them wait behind someone going in the opposite direction? Morons.

I’ve heard a lot of talk lately about reviving the Fairness Doctrine. If you’re unfamiliar with this legislation, it required that broadcast licensees present issues of public importance in a balanced manner. The Left is all verklempt because they’re getting their asses handed to them over the internet and talk radio. They’re insisting that right-wing personalities are driving us mindless hordes to do their evil bidding, and that the only way to combat it is with government intervention. That’s standard operating procedure for these brain-damaged ideologues. They know in their heart-of-hearts that their mindset is rejected by anyone with a double-digit IQ, so they use the power of law to force people to tolerate them. Their doctrines and dogma wither away in the light of reasoned argument, so they hate the competition the Free Market engenders. Compare the numbers between Rush Limbaugh’s show and Air America, and it’s pretty evident which opinions the market favors. So the Liberals want to make sure that if a station carries Savage Nation, for example, they’ll have to balance it with three hours of Randi Rhodes. I don’t think the Left fully realizes what reviving this doctrine will do. For decades, Liberal ideology has been the primary mover in media, particularly in the area of newspapers and TV news. Conservative thought in those mediums is limited to FOX news, the Op-Ed columns in the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Pretty much everything else is Left-Wing. There are already web sites devoted exclusively to exposing the bias in news broadcasts and AP/Reuters stories. Under the Fairness Doctrine, Ann Coulter would be within her rights to co-host CBS News with Katie Couric. Not only would it improve the ratings dramatically, it would be a delicious schadenfreude moment.

No one likes pop-ups. Who, then, over at Dictionary.com decided that opening an entire other site under my word search was a good idea? Red Orbit will never get any of my business, solely because of that. If you think that forcing your site to open in my browser is a good business strategy, not only are you probably a Liberal, but you haven’t read any basic marketing books.

I’m turning into a font snob. I suppose it was inevitable, given that part of my job entails my evaluating fonts to use for different marketing efforts. When I first encountered the Papyrus font about two years ago, I immediately adopted it as my e-mail font of choice. Now I’m seeing it everywhere, and it’s starting to annoy me. I’ve seen it used for banks, churches, banner ads, delivery services, and on food packaging. That’s too much to ask of any one font. Part of my annoyance I know is based on the fact that I like to be individualistic, and I had to give it up when it exploded into the mainstream. But I also expect others to show some individuality, and not follow the crowd. Sheep-like behavior does not impress me at all. I use a nice Art Deco-inspired font now, which I’m almost sure won’t be turning up on the boxes for frozen beef and broccoli meals anytime soon.

Hi, Fred. :)

Half Man – Half Machine

I’m inadvertently becoming a cyborg, and it’s not as cool as I thought it would be. I have too many useful gadgets, and they have fundamentally altered how I function.

For the longest time, I resisted getting a cell phone. I even wrote a blog entry about how much I hated them. Then Dad let me use one of his on our trip to Disney, and it turned out to be so damned handy. I managed to dredge up some remaining resistance, but when I started traveling more for work, I broke down and got a pre-paid phone. Of course, you end up spending as much money on one of those as you would to just go ahead and get a real service plan, so we went ahead and got a real service plan. Well, once you have all those capabilities, you’re wasting your money if you don’t use them, right? So I download new ringtones and agonize over my wallpapers, set up groups and voicemail options, and browse the accessories selections. I’m not sure I would know what to do with a plain old wall phone anymore. I find myself having slight panic attacks if I go somewhere without the cell phone, which is annoying. This thing we bought “only for emergencies” has successfully redefined “emergency” to “Can you get some milk on the way home?”. I’m obviously happy to get the milk, but I fear my cell phone is adversely affecting my ability to do advance planning.

Similarly, the media player on my computer lets me instantly choose whatever I want to hear out of hundreds of options. Whatever mood I’m in, I can augment it or change it with a click of the mouse. And if I have to travel, I have a portable player that can jack into my car’s system. Radio? Why suffer commercials or take the chance that they may play a song I don’t absolutely love? I sometimes enjoy the random factor, but I fear my media players are adversely affecting my spontaneity.

My DVD player lets me watch any movie I want, when I want. If the phone rings, or my kids need something, I just pause it. I never miss anything, can skip over the boring parts, and get all those cool extra features. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t enjoy going out to the actual theatre anymore. What if I have to pee? I’ll miss something. Establishing the backstory is taking too long. Can we skip to the explosions, already? I like the control, but I fear that my DVD player is adversely affecting my patience with the suspension of disbelief.

The computer sits in the middle of the den. This is partly a parental oversight thing, for when our eldest is using it, and it’s partly the fact that that’s the best place for the computer desk. Now, I am a trivia freak. Music, movies, TV shows, and other pop culture minutia occupy about 90% of my brain. I use probably 3% for social interaction, 2% for work-related stuff, and I’m guessing the remaining 5% handles autonomic functions like breathing and heartbeat, and keeps me from walking into closed doors or trying to put food in my ear. Consequently, if I can’t quite remember an actor’s name, or a song lyric, I go straight to the magic box. Where I would take the time to thoroughly memorize something in the past, I find that I don’t put as much effort into it anymore, because I know that I’ll be able to find it whenever I want to. I love the instant gratification, but I fear that my internet connection is adversely affecting my self-reliance.

My digital camera. It’s a good, solid, mid-range camera. I got one of the bigger cards with it, so we can take tons of pictures. (It’s ironic, because we don’t. It sends the family into apoplexy, because they’re many hours away, and would occasionally like to see pictures of the kids in between the holiday visits. Sorry, again, y’all.) We don’t have to worry about focus, cropping, lighting, positioning, framing, or any of those things that matter when you’re, you know, using a camera. Anyway, when we do take a picture, we get the image right there on the screen, and if by some miracle the picture is good, we can choose to save it. Yes, we keep it confined to the electrons on the card, never printing it out or e-mailing it, but that’s beside the point. I like knowing that every picture we’re hoarding is a “keeper”, but I fear that my digital camera is adversely affecting my sense of composition.

Speaking of pictures, I do love Photoshop. I get to play with it in the course of my job, so I’m always trying to expand my knowledge of it. The precise control it gives you is incredible, and in the hands of an expert, it can create scenes that cannot be distinguished from reality. I like to use it to put my friends into compromising tableaus. Probably not the most illustrious use for it, but it’s good for some easy laughs. I didn’t realize how deep I was into it until recently. I had gone outside to get some fresh air while I was mulling over a project, and I decided I didn’t like the color of the sky. I actually got annoyed that I didn’t have a slider switch to adjust the hue and contrast. It kind of frightened me, if you want to know the truth. I like being able to put my friends’ faces onto farm animals (don’t ask), but I fear that Photoshop is adversely affecting my comfort with my surroundings.

Well, that’s all I have for this post. I’ll put it up here on the internet, and save a copy to my flash drive in case my computer melts down. Then I’ll send a TXT message to some fans to let them know a new post is up. After that, I’ll do a quick ‘shop on one of our pictures and Bluetooth it to the cell phone so I can send it to the Family group. I may put that off until after I watch the latest Netflix delivery. We’ve had it here for a while, and we need to get it back so we can get the next one in.

I tell you, with all of these labor-saving devices, I don’t have time to just relax anymore.

Well this is annoying.

I’ve spent the last half-hour or so just staring at a blank page. It’s not that I have nothing to say, it’s just that it all seems to come out in small chewable-sized bits. Nothing like the fire hydrant torrent of opinion and invective that I can usually summon up at will.

Oh god…am I mellowing out? Surely not. Be better for my blood pressure, but there’s something so inherently satisfying about cranking up the volume and ripping off the damn knob. It’s my safety valve.

I still have the same pet peeves: tuneless whistling, arrhythmic tapping, people backing in to parking spaces. That one really drives me nuts. You follow someone into a parking lot, and they pass an open space. But before you can swing into it, their brake lights come on, followed by the back-up lights. Oh crap. Come on! You planning on robbing the place, Sparky? Then why do you feel it necessary to have your car parked head-out? Just pull in like a normal person instead of making me wait behind you while you take your Beemer through a 17-point turn. I could be digging into the complimentary breadsticks before you get your seat belt off. Not to mention the chain of us that all have to back up to give you the room to maneuver. And you have the balls to look at us with impatience? Bite me.

Another one that’s gained recent prominence in my forebrain is the ongoing substitution of “said” with “was like.” And she was like, oh no you dint. And he was like, uh-huh I did.

And I was like, shut the fuck up, you morons; you make my head hurt. Specifically, that part of my head that’s devoted to processing rudimentary English sentence structure! Listening to you jabber is like a chalkboard being dragged across a wall of broken-off fingernails.

Interruptions for stupid stuff. I’ve admitted that I’m in Marketing, so the majority of my day consists of writing. Newsletters, sales letters, postcards, ad copy, and press releases pour forth from my desk in a never-ending flood of creativity, swamping my coworkers in the ebb and flow of precise verbiage and the inverted pyramid style. The majestic waves of language build into a veritable hurricane of eloquent locution, in the face of which no customer can resist faxing us their credit card numbers.

*snort*

Bullshit aside, I do put a lot of effort into my writing. If you write, then you know the mental effort it takes to build something up word by word. Rearranging half-formed ideas or entire paragraphs over and over, digging through the thesaurus to find just the perfect expression. You’ve got the headphones cranked to block out the rest of the world. But then there’s the breakthrough. You hit the zone. Your fingers blur over the keyboard as you hurry to get it all down before it flies away again. Misspellings and grammatical mistakes abound as you frantically pound away at the helpless characters. We’ll let the DJ fix it in the mix – this stuff’s golden. Oh yeah. This is the sweet spot. This is what it’s all about.

Invariably…

*tap on shoulder* “Hey. Sorry to interrupt, but I need this (file, disc, golf ball, left shoe, etc.) from you right away. I’m taking it home with me tonight.”

My fingers get tangled over a tricky sub-clause, nearly breaking my wrists, and my words pile into each other like patrons trying to escape a Great White pyrotechnics show. I look at the clock. It’s 1:30 in the afternoon. This bitch just killed an entire morning’s work for something she doesn’t even need for another 3 ½ hours? Ever hear of e-mail, chickie? Sure hope that file doesn’t corrupt your hard drive. Now go away. I’ve got some coding to do.

School sales. We spend more money on Education in this country than we do our military. Why, then, am I constantly assaulted by bake sales, magazine drives, tubs of cookie dough, car washes, candy bars, candles, and all of the other assorted crap that our local schools try to pawn off on us so the band can get bus tickets to some podunk competition somewhere, or the cheerleaders can get new uniforms, or they can pay the hospital bills of that one really clumsy chemistry teacher? You’ve already gotten as much money out of me as you’re getting, Sunshine. It comes out of my paycheck without my consent. How would these people react if I came to their door at night, interrupting their dinner to try and sell them a coupon book to raise money so I could take my homeschooled kids to the zoo for a biology lesson? They’d probably be a tad upset, wouldn’t they? The way I see it, I’m being forced to pay for services I’m not using. Where’s that money going? Maybe if you stopped pissing it away with your top-heavy administration financing every fucking “feel good” program that comes down the pike, the Glee Club wouldn’t have to resort to selling shitty homemade T-shirts outside the Wal-Mart to get a new microphone.





Ah. I feel better.

Go Here. Read This.

I'm not feeling particularly inspired, so I'll lift a recent post from Jales. Hey, she stole it herself. Karma's a bitch, eh?

http://barelydressed.blogspot.com/2007/06/death-of-common-sense.html

Just Wondering

I want a bumper sticker that identifies me as a Bjørn again Scandinavian.

Speaking of reincarnation, why is it that everyone who “remembers their past lives” was always someone important or powerful? It would be refreshing to hear someone cop to being the assistant dung-scraper for a forgotten tradesman in Feudal England, or being a leprous quadriplegic begging outside of Fort William in Calcutta during the mid-18th century.

Further proof that environmentalists should be burned for fuel: the Spanish region of Navarre currently gets 70% of its energy from renewable resources – mainly solar and wind. Even so, there are those environmentalists that complain about the windmills spoiling the landscape and killing birds. “What they are doing is absolutely unsustainable and completely illegal,” says Antonio Munilla, of Gurelur, an environmental group. “We have taken this matter before the Congress and European Union.” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1873123.ece
Hey, Antonio – shut your agujero. Your argument is complete and total bullshit. The wind and the sun are totally sustainable (until the sun dies in about 5 billion years, and even that event will be about 4 billion years after it starts to expand and destroys all life on Earth). As for the legality of the enterprise, it seems that your group is mostly upset because the number of avifauna deaths was underreported in accordance with some whiny law. Boo hoo. I went to your web site. Where do you get the electricity to run your computers? Shut the fuck up. You bitch about the power generation while simultaneously availing yourself of that power. Hypocrite.

Bush is now desperately trying to get the GOP to back his amnes - oops - I mean, his immigration bill. Apparently, he doesn’t understand why we’re all pissed off about it. According to a Washington Times article, “[t]he president pleaded with senators to ‘show courage and resolve’ to withstand outrage from voters in their districts.” Uh, Jorge? Do you remember who works for whom, here? We don’t want this, and if those senators would like to be reelected, they’ll listen to us, not you. We stopped you on that stupid Miers nomination, remember? I both like and respect Tony Snow, but I sure wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now. From the same article: “Tony Snow said the administration was trying to ‘lower the temperature and get people to talk about basic principles.’" Okay. Build the damn wall. Punish anyone that knowingly employs illegals. Deport the ones we catch. Basic, enough?

More whining from the Gay lobby, now they’re all a-twitter because e-Harmony doesn’t cater to them, and they’re bringing a lawsuit. Just stop it, okay? There are plenty of dating services and websites that you can go to in order to find a deeply meaningful relationship. Several a week, if that’s what you want. That’s what drives me up the damn wall about ideologues - on both sides. They won’t rest until everybody believes exactly as they do, and they’ll use every tool available to convert, sway, or force people to accept their views. If I own a business, and I think it’s worthwhile to court the “pink dollars”, or the pesos, or the Confederates, I will. Any market I deem to be a waste of time or have a negative ROI will not be pursued. Period.

My daughter came up to me and innocently asked: “Daddy? What are the strongest days of the week?” Huh? What an odd question. “I don’t know, Sweetheart.” “Saturday and Sunday,” she told me confidently. “The rest of them are weak days!” Groan. As a dedicated punster, I should’ve seen that one coming a mile away. I’m sure my friends are arranging an intervention for her as I type this. The scamp.

My littlest is enamored by the Teletubbies. The whole thing freaks me out, and I don’t even care if Tinky Winky is gay, or is just comfortable with his man-purse. The whole show smacks of social engineering, with dark Orwellian overtones. Every time the windmill starts up, the Tubbies are compelled to line up outside and see which of them will receive a transmission in their abdomen. And no matter where they go, one of those speaker trumpets pops up out of the ground and starts instructing them. It’s creepy. I much prefer the old Kroft shows, like H.R. Pufnstuf, which at least were powered by some really good LSD trips.

We went to the Disney store today, because our collective blood sugar was dropping. I was waiting for the girls to finish machete-ing their way through the princess stuff, hanging out by the Pirates display (because that’s the coolest place for a big manly tomcat), and was approached by one of the animatronic salespeople. She asked if there was anything she could help me find. I told her that I was a fan of older Disney efforts, and was it possible that they had any 20,000 Leagues or Song of the South merchandise? No on both counts, though she said that she thought there had been some talk about re-releasing Song of the South on DVD. This would absolutely thrill me, as I am a huge Br’er Rabbit fan. I am enough of a student of the modern, “feelings not facts” culture, though, that I am positive that some idiot like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton would oppose it on “racial” grounds. This would be truly unfortunate, as the Shakedown twins would be (once again) fomenting discontent and dissension where none exists. The Uncle Remus stories were faithfully collected by Joel Chandler Harris, and are accurate retellings of African trickster tales. (There is some overlap between Br’er Rabbit stories and Anansi the Spider stories.). His publishing them insured that those anecdotes took their place alongside Aesop’s fables and some of Chaucer’s animal tales. Instead of focusing on the positive aspects of the African contributions to the canon of the world’s great literature, the parasites that make their living off of racial strife would rather scream about perceived slights and reparations. Which is more of an honor? Making sure that a new generation is made aware of the history of these great narratives, or making sure they were never seen again? Would stories passed down by slaves prefer to be free…or kept chained up?

The new trailer for the Transformers is better than the whole of Spiderman 3. Behold, the power of editing.

The new Nessie footage from Scotland shows the new "slimline" model of the monster. Expect the Loch Ness Diet to hit the shelves soon. Of course, anyone that tries to live solely on Scottish food will lose weight anyway. It's called Involuntary Bulimia. (All right - That was a cheap shot against my ancestral clans. Sorry, guys. I actually like haggis, if it helps.)