Reason #253 Why I Need to Live in Antarctica

I swear I seriously need to stop dealing with people on the internet. Online games are often bad enough, but witnessing how people behave and think from inside the relative anonymity of online forums is starting to get me down. Something Awful isn't kidding: The internet makes you stupid. It also makes you petty and a bad spellar, and it's personally making me depressed. Even in an everyday "Wow, the administration really screwed this up" thread where the majority of people Repubs and Dems alike can use the heat from two brain cells rubbing together to form the volatile thought that, yeah, "that" was pretty dumb, there will immediately spawn a troll for every thoughtful poster, and a squad of idiots with no thought of their own parroting the exact same straw man argument from that morning's Rush L. show. And the one thing that is abundantly clear is that it's the latter idiots who control the country.

But let's be non-partisan here. Let's talk about the assholes (mainly) to The Left of us, something that they can attack and agree with with a righteous fury. To wit:

" U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona today issued a comprehensive scientific report which concludes that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke."

This news was greeted on at least one message board with a resounding, "I knew it! You fucking smokers are trying to kill us all, you fucking animals. You should all be put in zoos, prisons, and desert islands where you can no longer kill our babies!" Just tons of posters gleefully exclamation-pointing out that smokers are thoughtless idiots (guilty on the latter, at least) with no idea of the sheer malice attached to their addiction. This is, honestly, a mild exagerration.

But, Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? "No risk-free level"? No shit there's no "risk-free level"! There's no "risk-free" level to anything, you friggin' idiots, and I'm not even talking about stray meteors to the head! You're as likely to get cancer from walking next to passing cars, getting your oil changed, drinking anything other than 100% perfectly filtered water, doing any kind of home repair, cleaning, cooking, or a 1,000 other things than getting assaulted by my 1-part-in-a-billion secondhand smoke from 20 yards away. If you work in the cigar testing room of Cigar Corp., then yeah, you're probably going to get fucked in some way, but, you know, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who are pissed that people might smoke a cigarette anywhere in line-of-sight of them, literally equating them with murderers (sounds less goofy than manslaughterers, which is what most of them really mean).

People still have this idiotic concept that cancer is this new thing, a punishment for an industrialized society and apparently and especially smokers, never wondering, I guess, why we have a constellation named after it, from the same root, because when some Greek guy pulled out a cancerous mass out of some guy a few thousand years ago he thought it looked like a crab.

You goddamn pussies. Stop it with this crap and just outlaw smoking. Call a war on second-hand smoke, start handing out fines and prison sentences for repeat offenders, and give yourselves something with a more permanent feel to it to be righteous about. You probably have enough support to do it, so just do it.

I want to quit smoking, most hours of the day, but I'll be damned if society is helping me do it.

(Woke up on the wrong side of my head today. Sorry.)

Why I Still Like the City, by Misreall, aged in wood

Last Sunday I decided to go downtown. I needed something from a store on Michigan Ave. Normally I avoid Boul Mich on weekends because of the gawking crowds of people who are, apparently, all, every single freaking one, from some town that has no buildings of more than two stories. As I think even some of the buildings on Deadwood are more than two stories I have no idea where this might be, but there they mill, blocking the thouroughfare, stopping so suddenly that you and the twenty-nine people behind you all pile into a lump that they don't even seem to notice.
And that doesn't even take into account the homeless people (you can always tell a local from a tourist. The locals don't see them and the tourists all, also, come from somewhere with no homeless population at all because they are either shocked, horrified, frightened or disgusted.), the street performers (or whatever you call people who paint themselves silver for money), the musicians, and the guys who paint characatures (I loathe them in particular, but at least they stay to the side).
Inspite of these many and varied horrors I had to go. I got off of the el at State and Lake, which is always deserted on Sunday, and it is a last moment of perfect peace before I push through the rough mob of yahoos and youkels. If you are a youkel, by the way, I don't apologize for spelling it wrong. It is as much as you deserve.
And then, I heard someone call my name.
Now I have lived in the same town for fifteen years, and I grew up right near there, and yet I can walk around for weeks sometimes without ever running into anyone I know, so it was pretty strange to run into my friend Bob and his friend Paulo downtown on a Sunday afternoon.
We stood on this pretty deserted corner talking for a few minutes when this very pretty girl with a tray filled with coffee drinks came up to us and offered us a, well, coffee. And then she checked to see if we wanted seconds, and disapeared back to wherever pretty girls who appear with coffee come from. I have been to plenty of parties with worse company and far worse refreshments.
So I salute you city life. Michigan Avenue was just as bad as I thought it would be, but the drinks were good.

It's Sightastic!

So I have a ton of work to do the next few days. I teach today and tomorrow (which is okay, except it would have been better not to have to teach tomorrow), have to move a bunch of equipment to our new "media lab," and--ha ha!--found out this morning that I have to attend several meetings/interviews the next few days because we're interviewing for an assistant assmuncher-manager. And thus a little over an hour ago we had a severe storm pass over that knocked out half our power. Our building's wiring is such that it seems that either the lights work but the computers are down, or vice versa. Except my office. No lights, no computers. I'm currently writing this on the little iMac at the front counter.

And let me just say that I fucking hate battery backups. Any time the power goes out or fluctuates for .001 seconds, I'm suddenly surrounded by what sounds like the most pathetic robot invasion since Signs (that's my new theory: they were robots and rusted very very easily). The many *beep-beep-beep*s of the APCs around the lab seems to be technology's way of saying, "I'm not touching you, is this bothering you? I'm not touching you, is this bothering you?" So my crisis management largely involves crouching under tables and trying to find all the backups that are going off, mumbling curses that would make a gypsy blush. This is because battery backups, unless you buy new ones every 9 months, never seem to work very well. Damn things.

Still tired. My persistant "blah" cold/condition/allergies of the last few weeks is better, though I am still contemplating swapping out my insides with things found in the back of my refrigerator.

On a happier note... I'll get back to you on that, okay?

Why I Haven't Been Posting Lately

Fine: Take This

How many Marxists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None. The lightbulb contains within itself the seeds of its own revolution.



In your face!

A Conversation With My Boss

Boss: I'd like you to take out that trash.

Me: Okay, where does it go?

Boss: The University has been moving into an exciting area, called Tactical Urban Learning. Now the idea is that when students begin to move in for the semester, teams, or "squads," of educators will try to pick off the leaders with high-powered learning tools and Rocket Propelled Distance Education from elevated vantage points, which we'll already control. This will cause the rest to "scatter," or disperse quickly, while "dumbing" randomly in the air. That's where our Mobile Education Fattening Pens will come into play, and trash will be placed into dumpsters behind the building.

Me [perking up]: Hey, what was that?

Boss [cutting me off]: Listen to what I'm saying, please. We have to work together to lower our coefficient and reduce lagtime, not to mention thermal breakdown. Once GBAST and JNUMNCT settle the students down, whatever guerrilla actions take place should be able to be controlled with the systematic use of catchy mnemonic devices piped across the quad and stunning Power Point presentations. Then we release the Edu-bots. And I'd like you to take care of the trash, please.

Me: Okay. Whatever.

Boss: Thanks, it was a great talk.

Today Is The First Day of the Rest of My Day

I've explained on many occaisions that while technically I start work at 8am, I don't really do anything until 9am, the first hour being reserved for dreaming dreamy little dreams and mentally fist-fucking my enemies. These two activities, it should be noted, are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Okay, you caught me: I'm just not that edgy. The first hour is for letting the caffeine and glucose settle into my brain and randomly trolling the internet.

But today the first thing that happened was a woman (who I genuinely like) asked me to write a few lines on how to use WebBoard, a bulletin board software... thing I administrate. Now, to me these instructions on the user end boil down to: (1) log in, (2) click on a conference, (3) post a fucking message. Which is pretty much what I sent back, minus that exact language, as like I said: I like the woman.

But I'm really looking at this incident in one of two ways:

1) I've trained them. They now know that if they must give me a task within the first hour of my being here, that it be simple, easy, and consume no more than 3 brain cells worth of effort. Victory is mine!

2) They're pushing the envelope. Oh, sure, today it was a 2-minute task... but tomorrow they'll be asking me to do some light vacuuming! Then installing MSOffice on a few computers the day after that! Soon, I'll be getting to work at 6am to rebuild server farms and harvest the potatoes. Victory is theirs!

I'll have to keep an eye on this situation.

Why I Don't Write More

Every day (or, at least every day I work) I look at Worryville and a.) am mad because no one writes here, b.) think to myself that this makes me an enormous hypocrite, c.) vow to self that I will write something.
Damn it.
As soon as I can think of anything worth writing about.
Or as soon as I have an amusing anecdote to share. Something involving a missing heiress and a fortune in stolen fois gras, or Russians and drinking vodka, throwing our glasses in to the fireplace and vowing undying friendship, or llamas and their gods.
Or the next time that something makes me angry enough to rant on and on about our government and their government and us and them and the Army Corps of Engineers and the price of just about everything that I want (Like the Deadwood season two box set. Fuck you again HBO.), and health care and everything else. But mostly my anger these last few weeks is of the heavy, strength killing type.
Or the next time I see or read or hear something that I feel must be seen or read or heard by others.
Or when I have a food related experience worth sharing.
Actually I did have a fantastic meal at New Rebozo on Madison last week and I still didn't care enough to tell you how great it was and make you envious of my good fortune in having it.
So I must be dead.
Poor me.
Please send flowers.

Snippets From The Subconscious

So I woke up last night from dreaming and actually remembered a few things:

1. Wilt Chamberlain hates Michael Jordan. Yes, it's true, "The Stilt" (who I see died in 1999) is actually still alive and signing autographs. Perhaps for the government! I'm standing in line to get one, and there he is, sitting behind a wall of pretty random photos, not particularly imposing. The odd thing is that there seem to be as many pictures of Jordan on that wall as him, and as I reach the front of the line he sees me noticing this. "I suppose you want me to sign one of those, huh?" he says, pretty belligerantly. Now dream sense tells me that this is a complicated situation: Wilt has been signing pictures of MJ for people as a joke and (somehow) an insult to Jordan, but it's a private joke, apparently, because he doesn't like when people ask him to sign one. So I say, "Aw no, Mr. Chamberlain, you pick what to sign. I was just thinking it might be funny, but no offense intended." So he smiles and grabs something, writes on it, and hands it to me folded in a square.

I'm on my way home and I open it up. The picture is from a newspaper, maybe magazine, and had been torn, rather than cut, out. It is of a random woman in a bikini, a C-list model, nothing particularly sexy. Wilt, whose handwriting is blocky and totally sucks, has written, "Despite all the women I've slept with, I still think they have funny bodies. Wilt Chamberlain."

When I get home--which is not my home--there's a big bulletin board inside, completely bare. I pushpin the picture/autograph up on the side and think maybe it's time to start a collection.

2. I'm in my home, which isn't my home. It's a very bright place, filled with knick-knacks and crap that seems a little incongruous even to my dream self (who, let's face it, is kind of clueless 95% of the time). It's a place with a basement, with a storage area blocked off with an open wooden slat wall in the back of the place. I seem pretty happy, just looking at all my fabulous and cheerful arts and crafts, and I hear a noise. I walk back to the storage area. There's nothing there. The storage area is empty, but I do notice that the swinging door to it is rocking the slightest amount. I look inside the room and see the perfectly normal 3 x 3 square hole in the floor. I get down on all fours to look into the brightly-lit basement, and see that there's a kid there, maybe 6 or 7, just kind of looking around blank-faced. I think this is a neighbor's kid that wandered into my place, and that I should grab him and take him back to his parents. I call out to him, he ignores me, he moves to an identical storage area in the basement, and I'm down there now making a grab for him and then he's gone. I look inside the storage area and there's a not-quite-as-normal 18" x 18" square hole in the floor that, apparently, the kid went down. I look in the hole and it goes down maybe 30 feet, all bright flourescent, and then angles off and, hey, I know that this isn't right at all. So I'm all suddenly, "Screw that, I've seen horror movies," and I start shoveling junk down the hole, mostly pieces of wood. I'm thinking, "I can seal this up later, maybe just pour cement down there, 'cause that ain't no neighbor's kid." Then I see that, down this industrial rabbit hole, a thin arm is clearing away the junk as fast as I can shovel it in. Then the kid appears at the bottom of the hole, his face now mottled with gray patches and totally expressionless, like a snake, and he's effortlessly and quickly climbing, eyes wide and staring at me...

That's what woke me up. Questions:

1) Would you like to have drinks with (not dead) Wilt Chamberlain?
2) Do you think that I need more hobbies, possibly involving felt?
3) Should I bury any neighborhood children in cement as a preventative measure? (And should I seek parental permission first?)
4) Should I bury my subconscious in cement as a preventative measure? Conversely, would you like to have drinks with it?