Transcontinental Concerns

So, right now, on the other side of the continent, my grandmother is having brain surgery. It's weird. I talked to her last night and there's a chance that it was the last time I'll talk to her as her. Or maybe it's no big deal, and she'll be fine. They'll get the tumor out of her brain, it won't be malignant and she'll go right back to being the same grandmother I've always known, I don't know. I guess I'll find out later.

I hope she has a good doctor....


Anyway. Here's a random picture.


HA HA! It's not a RANDOM picture at all! That's what they're doing to my grandma right now! GOTCHA!!!

And no, I'm not putting the dog in that one.

Retrograde Curmudgeon

It's funny, isn't it, how when we look back on the past we only remember the highlights and the lowlights? I don't remember what I did on June 3rd, 2005 for example, that's for sure. OH WAIT, I DO!!! I was in Bolivia protesting against president Carlos Mesa. We forced a constitutional assembly that would ultimately reform the constitution in favor of the native majority, paving the way for Bolivia's first native president, and country's namesake, Manute Bol! It happened, you can look it up. And if you don't believe I was there, then prove it! Where was I on June 3, 2005? HMMMMMMM???? For that matter, where were YOU? You were probably the one that sent that suspicious package to Australian Foreign Minster Alexander Downer that day, weren't you? I'm sure you have a great alibi.

Anyway, this made me stop and think for a moment. We are quickly reaching a point in time when it WON'T be true that our lives are primarily undocumented and our self-histories will NOT be based primarily/only on the memories of ourselves and those around us. We WON'T disappear into the aether of the collective human past within 100 years (well, we still might) because our entire lives, cradle to eldarc will be digitized and documented! We're not at the end of history, we're barely at the beginning. We're in the transition from the dark ages to the age of historical enlightenment! Events will be parsed, causes tracked back through reams of data into the past! We will know everything about everyone! What will this look like? I don't know, but I want to find out!

So, I started reading back through the archives of this here blog and I realized that it's good that we don't remember many details about the past (in our current era at least) because most of the past is trite, cruel, blowhardesque, tweeishly self-conscious and maudlin with a large dollop of self-righteousness to bring out the flavor of the self-referential self-absorbedness. At least it's good to know and have a record of how self-serious and self-serving I was only a few short years ago. I'm super self-glad that I'm not self-like that any more! Just look at this post, for instance...

*reads back over the post*

OH SHIT!!!

Dispatch from the Metro: Orange Line Art Edition

What a privilege it is to ride the Orange Line everyday from the far reaches of Virginia (don't worry, it's not REAL Virginia, I'm not that far out)! Nearly every day I get to experience one of the greatest pieces of art ever created. Actually, I'd say that I get to hear it many times per trip as the train rolls from station to station. You might be thinking to yourself "Self, what art can exist in such a cramped and utilitarian place?" Or you might be thinking to yourself "Self, it's almost time to eat lunch, isn't it?" Or even perhaps "Self, I can't wait until summer when fresh corn on the cob sells for, like, $2 per dozen!"

All you need to do is listen.

It's beautiful.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Now Sugar Free! Edition

I was going to do some Photoetry, but I'm still learning GIMP 2.6, so I'll give it a couple weeks. So anyway, here is some (imo extremely) Bad Poetry for you!!! HOORAY!



An Anthem

A roll of tape
A roll of twine
Sixteen cases of fine red wine

Some rubber bands
Some handrail screws
I black eye and a rais-ed bruise

Don't buy the hook
Just by the sinker
Pull the line down into the drink(er)

Fire all of your guns at once
Because there is a lady who's sure
That ice is just as great firearms.
But she's wrong, you know.
It won't suffice.
You can say it twice
"It won't suffice,
It won't suffice."
(Unless, of course, it's pykrete ice)

A roll of tape
A bottle of wine
We hope we don't run out of time.

A Wicked Left Turn!!!!!!

So, I came across this on reddit the other day (by "the other" I mean "yester"). Now, if you've never lived in Michigan and experienced the "Michigan boomerang" for yourself, you'll probably think that I'm full of crap and that there is no way that this could possibly be real. I assure you, it's entirely accurate, all the way down to flooring it so you don't get hit by the semi as you complete the second half of the u-turn.

Now, according to the wikipedia article "Studies have shown a major reduction in left-turn collisions and a minor reduction in merging and diverging collisions, due to the shifting of left turns outside the main intersection. In addition it reduces the number of different traffic light phases, significantly increasing traffic flow. Since separate phases are no longer needed for left turns, this increases green time for through traffic. The effect on turning traffic is mixed."

I have some problems with this description, mainly because the effect on turning traffic is not "mixed." It's mainly bad. Normally, you might wait through a left turn light for one full cycle if you have bad timing. If you have bad timing at a Michigan left, you might have to wait through 3 red lights (this happens about 60% of the time in my experience.)

But anyway, the effect on traffic is not what I was trying to say. What I was trying to say was something along the lines of the excess miles drive to accommodate the Michigan Left.

Let's take some pulled-out-of-my-ass estimates here. Say there are 1000* such intersections in Michigan and that the average number of turns per day is 1500**. I have no idea if these are reasonable assumptions. But anyway, that means 1.5 million turns are tooken eachen day. Now, one time I measured how far I had to drive to make the right-turn-u-turn-to-make-a-left turn. It was about 0.25 miles. That means that every day, vehicles travel an additional 375,000 miles. Annually, that's 136,875,000 extra miles driven in Michigan. That also means that an additional 1.23*** billion tons of CO2 are emitted by these cars! That's more CO2 than is produced by all the sheep in New Zealand and all the caribou in Canada COMBINED***! So if you want to blame global warming on anything, blame it on Michigan. The world needs a good whipping boy, and Michigan is so down on its luck that it won't even notice the difference.


*Could be off by an order of magnitude.

**Might be nowhere close to reality since nobody has a job in Michigan anymore.

***Absolutely no basis for this claim whatsoever.

Theological Exploration

So, today, I'm riding the train home from work, as I am wont to do, when I looked behind me to see what people were reading, as I am also wont to do, and I saw a guy reading what looked like a bible, but was really the Book of Mormon IN DISGUISE! I figured this out when I looked, progressively less surreptitiously, over his shoulder trying to see what book of the bible he was reading. The more and more I stared, the more I realized he actually was reading the Book of Alvin.

When I got home, I did some research and found out that the Book of Alvin is part of the story of Joseph Smith. It occurs chronologically right after he finds his pair of magic spectacles that allow him to decipher his magical golden tablets that he found just laying around under a rock. He is visited by the Spirit of his old business partner Brigham Young and told to expect to be visited by three ghosts, in preparation for which he is given a pair of super-magical earmuffs (they were golden too!). That very night, he is visited by all three ghosts at once. You will immediately recognize their names from history: Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. With the help of the magical, golden, jewel-encrusted (sorry, I forgot that part before) earmuffs, he is able to decipher the ghosts' outrageous squeaking. They explained the whole history of religion (including stuff that wasn't covered in the golden tablets) from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to George Washington. Their final command, before they disappeared into the mists was this: Joseph Smith must henceforth change his name to David Seville.

And the rest, as they say, is history. More specifically: THE BOOK OF MORMON PART II: THE SQUEAKUEL.

Raindom Paicture Fraiday: Back of the Boat

So, here we go again, right? Do you remember the drill? First I go to Drew's Livejournal Random Picture Generator, then I choose a tasteful picture from among the many taste-free pictures (It's like finding a diamond in the rough, and by that I mean it's a total waste of time), then I put it on this blarg.

VOILA!!!! (or is it "VIOLA?" I'm not all that good at orchestrating clever puns.)

This appears to be the result of some kind of torpedo attack or something. Probably those danged Somali pirates.

Step 3: Put a picture of that darn dog in the random picture

Step 4: ???????

Step 5: PROFIT!

Step 6: Lose all the profit in an acrimonious dispute over arcane accounting rules in an assiduously planned pyramid scheme. (That was for all of you out there that are studying for the SAT!)

Step 7: File a complaint with the SEC about the refereeing at last year's Alabama-Florida game

Step 8: File a complaint with another SEC about the pyramid scheme.

Step 9: ?????

Step 10: PROFIT!

And there you have my foolproof ten-step method for making money.

You're welcome.