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.

A Tale of Two CDs

So I've now listened to the latest Avett Bros. album approximately a baker's dozen times while driving to and from work and/or stores and I've come to the conclusion that I have to call it a total sell-out. It is basically a mainstream wannabe that lacks the pure poppiness of actual mainstream music without the vibrancy and banjo that made their past efforts (see Gleam and Emotionalism for example) so awesome.

Now this is hard for me to say, and I come by this after many hours of deliberation. You see, I've never heard any other Avett Brothers albums before in my life. However, I am aware that many of their "true" fans do not like the latest offering. I definitely don't want to be one of those Ralph-come-latelys because then I totally lose all my credibility (sort of like how I feel about people who have only heard the Kings of Leon's newest album, which sucks and is a total sell-out). So I am forced to pretend that I don't think this newest album is very good so as to look like someone hip and in the know. You wouldn't think being hip should be so difficult, but you are wrong. It's a lot of work.

The great thing about this decision is that even though I claim to think "I and Love and You" is a total cop-out, major-label, Rick-rubin suckfest and how they were WAAAAAAY better back when, I can still listen to it in secret. If I listened to it in public without shame, I would be opening myself up to all kinds of mockery by the real deal fans.

Basically, I just want to make sure I'm hipper than anybody else at work, which is, let's be honest, in the northern Detroit suburbs, like shooting a barrel with a gun specifically designed to shoot barrels with barrel-seeking missiles.

I Guess Maybe I'm Not Ready

So the other day I was reading something on the internet and I heard about this book called "Rapture Ready." I thought it sounded interesting so I went to my library's website (sorry, but I'll pay that $18 fine as soon as I can! Honest!) and put a hold on it. Then, the next day I went to pick it up. I was pretty excited because I always like to read an outsider's account of weird and popular subcultures (THEM by Jon Ronson is a great example) and I figured I was far enough removed from church and religiousness in general to find it funny yet non-condescending.

But then we got in the car and my wife read me the blurbs on the back. Two of them were good, but the third was written by.......wait for it........Brian Maclaren.

Just when I thought I'd finally escaped, there's that shiny bald head again. It's like you can't even throw a book without hitting a book either written or blurb by that dude. I know. I tried it when I got home. I hit a book blurbed and written by him.

Anyway, if I get around to reading the book, I'll let you know how it was, so you've got that going for you, which is nice.

Adventure on the Hi(biscu)seas

I bought a tree the other day. Or maybe it's a bush, I can't really tell. I bought it at Costco so that I could have a tree and some flowers in my pine-paneled office in my trailer at work. Anyway, I started to think about how come I always want to buy new things and...well, we all know that no one wants to read about that tired topic.

Then, I read this interesting article and learned that my desire to buy new things ad infinitum was all just a deliberate corporate plot initiated about 90 years ago to make sure people didn't stop working and producing things because then they might actually get involved in civic life and the TPTB can't have that now.

It sure feels good knowing that my consumerism isn't at all my fault. Abdicating responsibility tastes like sweet juice squeezed from fresh endangered snozzberries.

Paint Your Body Red and Brown

So, the other day I was just sitting around watching one of the strangest, best, and most non-sequiturishly-titled movies of all time. Okay, no. I wasn't just sitting around watching one of the strangest, best and most non-sequiturishly-titled movies of all time, I was also reading the news on the internet. All of a sudden, out of the blue, out of left field comes this article about a national security higher-up guy talking about how we need to redefine privacy. It should no longer mean [REDACTED]. Instead it should mean that the government will keep your information private from other organizations. Those [REDACTED], crazy [REDACTED] think that we don't [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] them!

If they successfully change the societal meaning of privacy my family and I are [REDACTED].

Seriously.

I've Always Told Lies For Love

The other day, actually yesterday I think, my son told his first ever approximately correct joke. It went like this...

Person Telling The Joke (PTtJ): Knock Knock
Person Not Telling the Joke (PNTtJ): Who's there?
PTtJ: Popcorn!
PNTtJ: Popcorn who?
PTtJ: Popcorn Chicken!

Granted, it's not very funny but it's way better than what he usually does, which goes something like this...

PTtJ: Knock knock!
PNTtJ: Who's There?
PTtJ: Jiffy Pop Train to pick up a dog at the station!
PNTtJ: Jiffy Pop Train to pick up a dog at the station, who?
PTtJ: I screwed it up!!!

And now that that's out of the way, how was your weekend? Uh huh, uh huh. You're kidding! No, he couldn't have! OMG. Yeah, the weather was nice around here, a little cold at night, but I think my tomato plants survived. Yep, still going good, I've got more basil than I can shake a stick at. Well, half a stick anyway. They are doing fine. The little one is a little sick today, so he stayed home from school. Yeah, well say hi to them for me. Okay. See you later!

I'd say 75% of my interactions with other people are like that. The rest can be tabulated below:

5%: Conversations with my office-mate (an actual person, not inanimate office supplies that I talk to. Don't worry) about how screwed the world is that rapidly veer off course to conspiracy theories that he want to convince me of, many of which are proponentated by David Icke (follow the link, I dare you).

3%: Sports-related conversations in which I try to feign non-ignorance. I typically try to check some scores before coming to work on Monday during football season so I can sound normal. "Whoa, lot of overtime games yesterday huh?" See? It works.

7%: Discussions with my son about what he did at school, whether or not something is cool, what he wants for his birthday, what he did 2 years ago that he appears to actually remember somehow, and jokes (see above).

10%: Discussion with my wife about, literally, any subject imaginable. Once we discussed our mutual interest in a scientific paper on how many bullets it would take to kill a cow based on caliber, shot location, muzzle velocity and firing distance. That's probably one of the more straight forward conversations that we've had. ***Update: I'd just like to confirm that this conversation was purely hypothetical.***

ca. 0%: TV, because I've finally been able to become, as has been a lifelong dream, one of those annoying people that everybody hates who, whenever somebody starts to talk about some TV show or other, says "Oh, I don't even own a TV." Well, that's a slight lie. I do own a TV, but we can't afford cable and we only get one fuzzy channel (ABC, I think) so I'm kind of one of those people by default. But still, I can check that one off my lifetime "To Do" list.

You Were Right About the Stars, Each One is a Setting Sun

You know that line from that Social Distortion song? "With friends like you, who needs enemies?"

Aside from nation-states looking to present a united front against the world, who needs enemies?????

A Little Bird Never Tells Me Anything I Want To Know

Like any good citizen, I went to the Detroit Cityfest today. Yeah, it's at New Center. I gave a "veteran" $5 for three little American flag pins and I wore mine upside down. It was pretty rad. I also got to see, live in concert, Denice Wilson (or something like that). You know, the "Let's Hear it For the Boy!" woman? Plus I ate some vegan Ethiopian food. I'm sure you're all very jealous already, but wait until you hear this. We also got 6 free tickets to tomorrow night's Detroit Shock game. That's a WNBA team as you probably don't know. Apparently their games are so full that they wander around a big old festival handing out tickets all willy nilly and never worry about having more people than seats. Then, as we were leaving and driving through the depressed and dilapidated ruins of a formerly great American city, I realized that I don't care at all any more. There's nothing anybody can do to fix the problems and the whole country is going to be in that kind of shape in a few years anyway. Man, not caring is wonderful.

There aren't your lives all sooooo much fuller now that you know that about my day? Aren't they?????

More Coffee For Me Boss, Cuz I'm Not As Messed Up As I Want to Be

Thank you for all joining me here today. I know that I am usually only active clandestinely and that my audience with His Majesty has now fallen on hard times, but I have a very important topic with which to discuss with you at some point in time should you ever read this missive: Truth.

Many people are under the impression that Truth is a universal absolute, that there is one true way that events happen that can be firmly documented and agreed upon by those willing to embrace it. By embracing this vision of Truth, one has the advantage that one gets to feel smugly superior and/or (usually and) pontificatory about it. Making Truth an absolute, unarguable standard means that one must also go to absolute, unarguable lengths to defend it. Some have even gone as far as to argue (often on the internet) over it, which is odd if they believe the Truth to be unarguable. Those extreme lengths are horrifying in their breadth and depth.

Other people, on the other hand, believe that truth is nothing more than a story that someone tells to make themselves feel better about the absolute disaster that this universe unarguably is. This belief would imply that any given person's truth is just as true as Ignatius Riley's truth is true. For some this is hard to accept.

However, a deeper investigation of "Truth" reveals that both camps are not only a little bit wrong, but a lot of bit wrong.

You see, Truth is an anagram for thurt. Wait. No, that's not what I meant. What is important is that "Truth" is an anagram of "Ruth T." This is an unarguably obvious reference to Ruth T. McGrorey, former professor in and Dean of the State University of New York at Buffalo's School of Nursing. Some of McGrorey's most notable work was while working as a Consultant in Nursing for the Paraguay Project (University Archives collection 19/1/708). This project was initiated by the US State Department Project to provide the National University at Asuncion with UB's health sciences expertise. A three-year contract was signed between the Health Servicio of Paraguay and UB in 1956 and renewed continuously until 1971. The contract set up an exchange whereby Paraguayan doctors were sent to study at UB and two Buffalo faculty members, in addition to short-term consultants were sent Paraguay. While in Paraguay McGrorey helped to develop a Nursing School at Asuncion. McGrorey also implemented many changes nationally, helping to bring Paraguayan nursing and medical standards on par with North American standards. In 1962, Asuncion honored McGrorey with the Distinguished Visiting Professor title and in 1969 an honorary doctorate.

So the truth of the matter, or should I say that the Ruth T. of the matter is that everything we think of as truth, whether you are of the arguably unarguable school of truthspeak the unarguably unarticulated vague school of thinking, is actually just a reflection of the efforts of one mid-twentieth century nurse who went to Paraguay and probably started several underground socialist movements that are still in existence today known as the Paraguayan Socialist Nursing Liberation Faction of the International Sisterhood of Paraguayan Nurses. They have been known, from time to time, to carry out shadowy terrorist actions at the behest of the overlord of the underworld, Eudora Welty.

We're Just Trying to Bug You

Hey, did you hear the one about peak oil?

No?

Okay!

So, this guy walks into a bar and he sits down at the bar and the bartender says to him, "Hey Bar, what can I getcha?"

The guy looks up and he says "Give me a long, tall, cold glass of Light Sweet Crude, Black Gold, Texas Tea."

And then the bartender says, "Dude, we ain't had that here since 2009."

So the guy is all, "What???? Why the hell not?"

And the bartender (his name is Jake, by the way) says "Well, due to the rapid growth of several third world economies, the demand for Light Sweet Crude is rapidly out pacing the dwindling production of the same. This leads to obvious macroeconomic consequences worldwide from rising transportation costs to widespread social and political turmoil. Millions have died so far and the worst is probably yet to come as we reach the section of the global Hubbert's Peak curve of oil production with the steepest negative slope. We won't see any improvement until the second derivative of the curve hits a zero."

"Okay, fine," says the guy that walked into the bar at the beginning of the joke. "I can has cheezburger?"

The bartender pulls out a gun and shoots the guy in the left ass and says "There's some social turmoil for you!"

LOL!!!!11!!!


Please forward this joke to 10 of your best friends. Otherwise you will suffer economic, social and political turmoil

List Tuesday: Prosthetic Foreheads on Their Heads

Motion Pictures That I Watched in the Last Week Reviewed and Rated on A Scale of 1 to Pants.

1. What the (Bleep) Do We Know: See Here.
   Rating: -Pants


2. Dune: As solipsistic, blowhardian and inelegant as the book but way worse. It does have the bonus that its star, Kyle Maclachlan is from my hometown or something. Also, he was in Showgirls, a marginally more bad movie.
   Rating: e-1.


3. Bonnie and Clyde: This one was really good. I’d seen it before, but it’s still fun to watch. It stars Warren Beatty (aka Dick Tracy) and Faye Dunaway as the titular characters. (Also named after the characters? A muffler shop in my hometown. The shop’s logo is a gun.) The best thing about this film is its schizophrenic jumps in mood from slapstick car chases set to “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” to the “heroes” contemplating the murder they just committed. Or, like at the end, when it’s all lovey-dovey and then they die in a “hail of gunfire*” (spoiler alert: Bonnie and Clyde die). Historically, this movie is notable for the introduction of squibs and realistic violence into modern cinema. Before this movie, all the violence was obviously non-realistic because LOOK! PAUSE IT! Now rewind. That guy is so totally still breathing! There are also two Genes in this movie, Gene Hackman and Gene Wilder (in his debut performance), so it has that going for it.
   Rating: Assless Chaps.


4. Chinatown: Depressing as a…..something or other that’s real depressing. Maybe like a raccoon caught in a bear trap and it’s still alive and struggling to reach the rifle that the hunter just dropped because he got mauled by a bear and now the bear is trying to maul the raccoon before he gets the rifle and you know that the raccoon is doomed but keeps on reaching for that gun. Sorta like that. I think the main point of it is that the harder you try to prevent something horrible from happening the more likely it is to happen. Especially if you end up in Chinatown because we all know what goes on there. Also, it has realistic violence (and incest)! Thank you Bonnie and Clyde director Sam Peckinpah! It stars Jack Nicholson and, huh, that’s weird, Faye Dunaway. It won Oscars for Art Direction, Car Direction, Water, and Bandages.
   Rating: More Fedoras then you can shake a stick at.


5. Network: The best movie ever made about a fourth-place network news broadcast and its descent into banality and journaltainment. Actually, I’m not kidding. This one is a recent addition to my top 10 movies ever list (again, I’d seen it before but that was when I didn’t understand that the entire universe was utterly meaningless and doomed and there’s no point to anything, so I didn’t get it as much.) Basically it’s all about how everyone has their price and it all doesn’t matter anyway because somebody else is controlling everything so they can make some more money. It’s also probably the funniest movie ever written by a guy named Paddy. And it was spoofed in UHF, so you just KNOW it has to be good. It stars William Holden and, WTF??? Faye Dunaway again??? I must look like some kind of Faye Dunaway obsessed uh….person. Great. Except, wait a minute, now I’ve got a good excuse when the FBI/NSA/CIA/DIA or whoever looks at my library records (oh don’t worry, they’re looking at yours too) and see that I checked out a movie that glorifies bank robbing and death I can just say, “well look at the other movies I checked out! They all have a young Faye Dunaway, so obviously I’m just in love with her. Thirty years ago!” Except Network also features a group of domestic terrorists, I forgot to mention that part. Crap. What have I gotten myself into?
   Rating: I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!


6. Duck Soup: Uh, I only watched about 15 minutes of it. Sorry
   Rating: A Painted-on moustache.


7. The Bicycle Thief: Just in case you don’t get it, in case you don’t quite grip the fact that everything falls apart and the center never holds and life sucks most of the time, you should watch this movie. It builds and builds (in a post-war Italian neo-realist way of course) up until the end when the main character humiliates himself in the eyes of his young son. The end. It’s arguably De Sica’s best film. It is currently in an argument on this topic with the next movie in this list.
   Rating: Threadbare, third-hand linen trousers


8. Umberto D.: This is arguably De Sica’s best film. Unlike the previous one, there is at least a small glimpse of hope at the end. Sure the eponymous character is broke, debased, homeless and alone at least he didn’t go through with the suicide because of his cute dog. (Spoiler Alert!!! He doesn’t go through with his suicide attempt at the end because of his cute dog!) Of course you’re left to imagine what happens after the film ends. Sooner or later, Mr. Ferrari is going to get malaria or something and die homeless in some back alley in Rome and his cute dog will probably have to eat his dead body for sustenance. So it f’n goes.
   
   But really, I like the movie. The cinematography is great and it’s primarily performed by non-professional actors. When it looks so good, who cares if it’s all about the banality of evil. Or not even evil, just the banality and hopelessness and inevitability of life?
   Rating: 10,000 Lire



9. The French Connection: Probably the best drug-running espionage detective movies I watched that day. There’s this one part where Gene Hackman is driving a commandeered car through the streets of New York (?) chasing an elevated train that pretty much is one of the top three movie car chases ever. It also has realistic violence! On the whole, I would watch it again if I didn’t have to return it to the library.
   Rating: Plaid suit pants with a .45 strapped to your ankle.



10. Red Dawn: WOLVERINES!!!!!
    Rating: Patrick Swayze 50 - Communist Pigs 1



11. Tokyo Monogatori (Tokyo Story): Quite possibly the 4th best movie ever made (behind Citizen Kane, M, and Howard the Duck). Basically, nothing happens in the whole movie. You really have to listen for what’s NOT said (don’t you want to slap me now? I always want to slap people after they spout some BS like that). The camera angles and views are phenomenally telling. It’s like you’re a voyeur sitting on a grass mat in almost every shot, just watchinfg things unfold. It’s an even better movie to watch if you’ve had a lot of dealing with Japanese people. Trust me. What is it about, you ask? Just Google it or something, they know more than I do. Essentially it all boils down to this…
    

    Kyoko: Isn’t life disappointing?
    Noriko: [smiling] Yes, it is.

    
    
    Rating: 6 beers and an old pair of fishing shorts.

*All reviews of Bonnie and Clyde are required to use the phrases “hail of gunfire” or “hail of bullets.”

There are 17 links in this post.

A Watch With A Minute Hand

Due to an unexpected day off from work, I've got some extra time. What's the best thing to do with extra time? Yep, go to the library, check out 6 movies and watch them. I was going to write a post reviewing each of the six movies, but I couldn't wait more than 3/4 of the way through the first one. It's called "What the (Bleep) Do We Know. Putting it into the same post as Network, Chinatown, Duck Soup and Bonnie and Clyde wouldn't be fair to anyone.


The Review
PLEASE DO NOT WATCH IT. It is the worst movie in the history of the world (even worse than Practical Magic if you can believe it). How it ever got more than 1 star on Amazon is as beyond me as any little grasp of science is beyond this movie. It's like watching the crazy chef character from Beakman's World explain the ideas from a Deepak Chopra book. If that doesn't put you off, how about this? The main message of the movie is that anything wrong in your life is your own damn fault because you are thinking wrong and are addicted to your negative emotions. The Holocaust? Yep, those European Jews brought it on themselves because they really were addicted to the persecution. (No, smartass, Godwin's rule doesn't apply here because I didn't specifically mention Hitler. Crap!) Same goes for those negative thinking idiots in Darfur etc. And to add to all these horribly mis-guided ideas, it's a crummy movie. I mean, it really just sucks. Note to the filmmakers: if you are going to have interviews in a movie implying that these people know what the hell they are talking about, you really, really, really have to put their names on the screen or else I'm just going to assume they are a bunch of phonies reading from a teleprompter. This is essentially the polar opposite of a real science movie. I've never agreed with censorship, but if all copies of this movie could be loaded onto a rocket and fired into the heart of the sun, the universe would become a better place. Maybe by positively thinking, I can make it happen. *closes eyes and meditates on breaking the laws of physics as taught to do by this movie* Damn. It's still playing. What a bunch of baloney.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE.


A few choice quotations -

"I'm taking this time to create my day. I'm affecting the quantum field."

"You are a God in the Making"

"God is the superposition of all spirits."

"I can influence space itself. I am responsible for all those things."

"It is my belief that our purpose is to be [something idiotic that I couldn't hear because I have no category in my mind to understand such a nonsensical statement]"

"Everyone is God"

P.S. I'm going to start praying to You today.

P.P.S. I know what the (bleep) they know. They know how to make a God-awful synth-heavy soundtrack.

P.P.P.S. Oh, oh oh this is too good. One of the "experts" is a teacher at, I can hardly say this with a straight face, Ma....Maha.....Maharishi University. ROTFLMAO.

I Think About You

I just don't know what to think any more. I thought I had seen the world's best and worst commercials. I thought I was immune to the efforts of the Global Marketing Elite. I am not. I saw this advert two days ago and the song is still reverberating around my head. Make it stop. Except you can't make it stop. I'm pretty sure it's a secret government plot to beam these sorts of things into our head with high frequency radio waves that can make us hallucinate. That way we are under control when the inevitable Malthusian collapse comes along right about...........NOW!



Flea Market!

Montgomery!

It's just like,

It's just like,

A mini.............MALL!

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention that one of the leading conspirators in the Global Marketing Elite is, without a doubt, the Vatican William H. Gates III, Jr. of Microsoft infamy. It's Windows 386, beotch! (Yes, this is real)


*there are 6 links in this post

List Tuesday: I'm Your Charity Case

Potential Purposes Behind Nefarious Chemtrails

1. "To implement the New World Order (NWO) by eliminating society s "useless eaters" and the infirm and/or to reduce the population to a support level for the 'elite'". [source]


2. To block out the sun with the aim of reducing global warming. [source]
   


3. Weather control/cloud control


4. Top Secret Next Generation quantum computing communication encryption technology [source] UPDATE: LINK REMOVED BY DARPA


5. Radar Visualization Project


6. An addictive chemical that makes you crave for it nightly [source]


7. Mind control causing many to purchase vast amounts of gifts and other commercial goods to bestow upon family and friends around December 25th. [source]

If you would like more details on any of these possibilities, please contact me using your personal 128 bit PGP encryption key on my website here. .mil readers will be forbidden, man.

We Take it Day By Day

There comes a time in every man's life in which he must needs pick a conspiracy theory to espouse. That time is now. That man is me. But I don't know what conspiracy theory to believe in. Also, the options aren't looking good.

1. 9/11 Conspiracies: I'm on record as thinking these are a load of internet crap. Literally. I don't believe that they are created by any individual but instead by the internet itself as it continuously devours and digests all that information. 9/11 conspiracies are the sold waste product of that process (aka: poop). MySpace is the liquid waste product.



2. Zionist Global Domination: Historically, the grandaddy of them all, plus believing in it would put me in the same raft as Kareem-Abdul Admindenihajabidad or whatever that Iranian guy is called. He is a world-class conspiratist. Still, it doesn't scream "21st century!!!one!!" loudly enough. More like "16th century."



3. Peak Oil Apocalypticism: Oooh, this one is very appealing. Imminent (but not too close) destruction of our way of life, oil company bashing, middle east involvement, the Bushes, nuclear war, this one really has it all. But I've got no faith in it. There are too many people with too much money riding on this to have it come true. THEY won't let it happen.



4. AIDS was created in a Lab to control the black population. By the CIA: Patently absurd. Which makes it a perfect conspiracy actually. Nah, too weird for my tastes. And too loaded with racial stuff. I'm on record as not believing in the existence of races.



5. The Moon Landing Never Happened, Man: If there hadn't been a movie (starring The Juice, by the way) made about something really similar, this would be it. But there was. So it's not.



6. The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: You know, how all all airplane manufacturers make the right wing slightly heavier than the left which in turn actually affects the rotation of the earth so that more sunlight hours are given to solar power stations run by Halliburton.



7. Chemtrails: Yep. This is it. I will become a dyed-in-the-wool chemtrail apologist. What's not to like?
   
   
   • Chemicals of unknown origin and purpose? CHECK
   
   
   • Potential mind control by powers unknown? CHECK
   
   
   • Involvement by the Japanese mafia, also known as the Yakuza? PROBABLY
   
   
   • Wikipedia entry to which I can point unbelievers (to have them thoroughly convinced that I am definitively wrong? DOUBLE CHECK.
   
   
   • And last, but certainly not least, websites devoted to LETTING THE MASSES SEE FOR THEMSELVES with unsubstantiated rumors/claims and only slightly modified pictures? CHECK MATE!
   
   

Also, please note that I am done delaying the obvious (thanks Rusty) in that my next twelve (inclusive of this one) post titles will be quotations from GnR's fantastic Appetite for Destruction album

A Ton of Hot Air

Okay folks, I wasn't going to write about this, like, ever, but I have to. Did you see the Post today? No? Okay, here's the editorial cartoon...



Can we all just stop blaming things on global warming? Global warming is not an on/off thing. It doesn't directly cause any weather patterns. It influences average weather patterns over decades not days. This rain? Not caused by global warming. Hurricane Katrina? Not caused by global warming. Were the intensities affected by global warming? Possibly. But please, please stop saying "well, looks like it's global warming."

Also, while we're on the subject, no, colder weather than usual during the winter does not mean that global warming isn't true.

Also, while we're on the subject, I've heard that last year was the hottest in 2,000 years. Are you telling me that we are freaking out and blaming death, destruction and flooding on weather that isn't even yet out of the normal distribution of historical global temperatures? You are? Well I'll be! I thought global warming was a never before seen wave of highest ever temperatures. Huh.*

[Redacted due to policy violation]


*For those of you who don't normally read this blog, or for those of you that do, but never understand when I am joking, this is one of those times. I actually think global warming is real and a big deal. It's a big deal because our industrial society was built during a period of historically low global temperatures and is vulnerable to any major shift in weather patterns, even if it takes decades. And stop feeling smug about it. It'll affect you, too.

Dispatches from the Metro: Magical Happy Land

Just so you, you know, know, the greatest thing ever happened yesterday at about 1:05 PM on the New Carrolton Platform at Metro Center. Let me set it up for you....

A typical six-car train came barreling into the station, just like usual. I was standing towards the "front" of the platform. By that I mean I was standing where the front of the train would stop. I thought. However, as I stood there, I found myself thinking, "dang, that train is going pretty fast!" And fast was it going indeed. So fast in fact, that it didn't manage to stop until the first car was almost entirely past the platform. "Sucks to be the people on the first car," I thought. "I don't think they can get out."

Well, as it turned out, no one could get off the train for about, oh, five minutes. At that point the doors opened. The only trouble was that the doors that opened were not on the platform side, they were on the other side. After about 3 more minutes the real doors finally opened and several people spewed out of the train. And that's when it got amazing and awesome!

So, I walked onto the train while both sets of doors were open. What an opportunity this was! Deciding that I may never have this chance again, I stepped across the threshold into the most incredible land I've ever seen. I don't know if the WMATA uses some sort of cloaking device, but opposite the platform, where you never see anything but a vague light is actually a magical wonderland.

I stepped through the doors and found myself walking amongst lovely trees bearing all kinds of fruit. Except cashews because those things will mess you up with their urushiol. Anyway, it was just like heaven. You know that scene in Happy Gilmore where Adam Sandler goes to his happy place? Yeah? It was just like that. That's the best way I can describe it. Well, not just like it. Adam Sandler wasn't there because then it would have been like hell, not heaven. And there were no midgets because they freak me out.

I wandered for what felt like hours. I saw flying cars that ran on air, talking squirrels discussing dirt viscosity, and even some chick throwing moldy tangerines at a case of wine. It was undescribably beautiful. But in the back of my mind I knew that I needed to return to the train and get my butt over to DOT headquarters. And so, with pain in my heart and the seeds of a longing that will never be fulfilled, I returned to my door. I said goodbye to that place knowing that I would probably never visit again. As I was about to reboard the train, I asked the tangerine chick what this place was called. "Is it Narnia?" I asked. She looked at me like I was some sort of nutbag and said, "No, you dork, this is the real world. Where you live is just a hologram projected by the new world order shadow government to keep the masses under control. It's a conspiracy dude."

Maybe I'll make a documentary. I'll call it "Loose Change."

Street Nonsense

Yesterday, as I am wont to do from time to time, I purchased a copy of Street Sense (the DC Homeless newspaper if you don't already know) from Charles Nelson, my friendly Metro Center vendor. Amazingly, this was the first copy of the current issue that I had purchased. Well, maybe it's not that amazing since I was in Japan for two weeks. I meant to buy one last week, but all I had was a twenty. I meant to give him the twenty but I wussed out. Money, she's really got a hold on me dang it.

Anyway, one of the feature articles in this edition has to be one of the stupidest things I have ever read. The whole thing is one big long lament about the puny salaries of local homeless non-profit's CEOs. In the article they provided a list of local NPs, their budgets and their CEOs' salaries. It is ridiculous. Some of the CEOs have salaries that take up more than 30% of the total budget! On average their salary takes up nearly 5%. This is outrageous. All I ever hear about are the "exorbitant" salaries paid to the heads of big corporations. I never hear about how non-profit CEOs are fleecing the public. Let's just look at some numbers here.



Just look at that. It boggles the mind! Non-profit CEOs get paid, on average, more than 100 times the amount that CEOs of big companies (I used the top 28 from the Fortune 500) relative to the organizations' budgets. How is that fair? Okay, we're just looking at averages, that's true. Let's look at the medians then. For nonprofits, the median salary as a percentage of organizational budget is 7.5%, that's MORE than the average. For major corp. the median is 0.0162%, LESS than the average. Now are you happy? We looked at median, and it just got worse! Okay, I will grant you that there is one non-profit that pays the CEO $0.00. There is also one that pays the CEO $39,000 on a budget of $121,000; that's more than 30%. Sickening. The most that ANY CEO of a major corporation gets paid, as a percent of revenue, is 0.18% (Valero Energy). And that takes into account all the long term benefits. If we just looked at salary it would be much much lower.


Just for the heck of it, Let's throw out most of the Fortune 28's revenue. Let's only look at salaries vs. profit. Check out the chart.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. As a percent of profits, the CEOs of nonprofits get paid INFINITY PERCENT! That is so incomprehensible, that, well, I can't comprehend it. INFINITY PERCENT! Even the major corporations only pay, on average, about 0.7%.

So all of you out there complaining that Oil Co. CEOs get paid to much and what not. Change your target. It is the non-profit CEOs that are getting paid at levels that are completely out of whack.

Stupid non-profits.

List Tuesday

Things to do during the day to kill time

1. Draw weird pictures


2. Read conspiracy theories on the internet.


3. Call somebody


4. Draw even weirder pictures


5. Daydream about bears and ice skates


6. Stare out the window and contemplate the rapidly approaching end of innocence


7. Fill up your water bottle, drink all the water, then fill it up again


8. Repeat


9. Write a post. Or two.


10. Go home early

Yes we've got no money!

Here's a good memory for you all!

Once, right after I got married and we added Maggie to my account, making a joint checking account, I said to myself, "well, no sense keeping these old checks with only my name on them around. I might as well throw them out!"

Little did I know that we had a dumpster-diving vitamin fiend living in our neighborhood. On second thought, looking at where we lived at the time (in The Hyatt apartment building on the corner of 47th Ave NE and NE 15th St in Seattle) the existence of such a person shouldn't have surprised me. Also, little did I know that I was such an unstoppable moron that I would throw away perfectly good checks without tearing them up. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

Anyway, cut to a couple weeks later (financial aid day!! WOOHOO!!!!!) when we go to the bank to deposit some money. "Hmm.." I think while I look at the balance, "I don't always keep exact track of how much money we have, but it should be.....well, quite a bit more than this.... So we get home and call the bank and they tell us of all these mystery checks for random amounts that have check numbers not listed in our checkbook register. "Oh crap!" I thought, "My second-worst fear has come true! Someone stole our checks and is out there pretending to be me!" (For your information, my worst fear is falling out of bed into some kind of weird space-time vortex or bottomless pit or something)

So we went to the bank and filled out all kinds of paperwork to get the fraud fixed. The woman who helped us at the Roosevelt Ave Washington Mutual was very helpful (thanks, whoever you were!) The only problem was that we had to wait, like, 20 business days to get our money back. So, we basically ate no food and bought no stuff for awhile. We tried to heat our apartment by lighting copious amounts of candles. It was pretty cool, really. Then, one day, we went back to the Yak to visit family and we totally scored a whole bunch of food from our parents because they felt really bad for us. HAH! Suckers, little did they know, but we actually got all our money back two days before we raided their kitchens! Oh man, they totally got OWNED! (To all of you who think that using OWNED or one of the typoed variations of it is really cool, let me tell you this: There is a big difference between cool and stupid that is immediately obvious to everyone. Except for you, apparently.)