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!!!

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.

Picture PLUS

Since she seems to be so much in demand, here is probably my favorite picture of my new daughter and her big brother.




FYI: If you need even more pictures of her, just go to adahpascale.blogspot.com for this one, and many others.


Speaking of sons and daughters, it’s kind of intimidating being a father of both. I mean, let’s face it; I’m pretty much just winging it. I grew up as an American Boy (obvs) so I at least have a child’s understanding of what that was like coupled with an adult (I hope) perspective on it. This means that I’m aware of some of the benefits of growing up white, male and at least middle class in the US, and the Levi will have pretty much the same advantages. However, I’m also aware, as a parent, of the difficulties that face little boys growing up. You know, the old culture of toughness stuff, competitiveness, smug sarcasm as a defense mechanism (just me???), requisite dismissal of emotion, &c. I don’t mean to be dismissive of those problems, though, because even though they are hackneyed and clichéd, they are still real. Then there’s the added problem of schooling, but that’s another post. (actually probably not).



But girls? That’s another story. All I have are first-hand accounts of what it is like growing up as a girl, and I find those so outlandishly terrifying that it’s hard to believe they are real. But my sources are all intelligent, honest women, so I’m quite scared for my daughter, since I have no choice but to believe them. Unfortunately (and typically, I expect), as a child I was aware primarily of my own situation and experience and not really at all concerned with anybody else. For example, I know almost nothing of what my own sister went through in high school because I just didn’t pay attention.



Uh, anyway, I am sort of departing from my train of thought here (I hear that’s common for parents of newborns) so I’ll just say: It’s scary being the father of a daughter and thank God I’m married to a brilliant, kind, observant, understanding woman who is comfortable (usually) in her own skin. If my daughter can grow up to be a woman like her, I’ll be very happy.

Happy Belated Birthday

Hey everybody, I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I've been real busy lately, you know, doing stuff, having babies...

Speaking of having babies here's my new daughter, Adah Pascale, born yesterday at 3:38PM. 6lbs, 13oz of healthy baby girl.

So it goes.

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.

Lies All Mixed Up With Omissions

So it's not Tuesday. Sue me already.

Things People Searched For That Lead Them Here (Well, Not Here Exactly, But Rather to Somewhere in The atonofbricks.blogspot.com File Library) And The Exact Page to Which The Search Results Directed The Intrepid Searchers

1. PEOPLE KILLED IN A BIG HOUSE NOW IS HAUNTED MEXICO MONCLOVA


2. Zach 3years Genius


3. Manthong Photos


4. Mama Cass died of Ham Sandwich


5. Trombone Hemorrhoid


6. What stores carry honey i shrunk the kids on dvd


7. "Historical Global Temperatures"


8. Jiffy Pop popcorn Meijers


9. Peter Bulanow Budweiser


10. Short reviews of diary by chuck palahniuk


11. zipconnect itower

There’s Only One Thing That I Know How To Do Well

For awhile there in the last couple months I was all, like “I’m gonna try to stop being so lazy and actually do something with my 30 minutes to myself that I get every morning instead of just laying there in bed after the alarm goes off dreading the moment at when I really REALLY have to get up in order to make it in to work ‘on time.’” I’m sure you can guess what I decided to do. Yep, that time-honored tradition of pompous, self-important and repetitious people everywhere: read non-fiction books to widen my understanding of the world. Unfortunately for me, a previously dyed-in-the-cotton fiction reader, non-fiction books generally do not offer any world-view-broadening capacity. They do offer gimmicks, though, so at least I had that going for me.

Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America by Barbarbarbara Ehrhenrheich

If you can get past the (not) incisive parenthetical “not” in the title and actually get into the book you’ll find, well, you’ll find a book about how hard it was for the author to live like the poor folk she feigns compassion for. I was hoping for an insightful look into the lives of the people out there that work minimum wage jobs and have to somehow string things together. Or not. Instead, this book provides a wonderful portrait of just how annoying it was for the author to have to live in rundown hotel for a few weeks and how much working a minimum wage job sucked for her and how all the poor people she worked with (ancillary characters at best and typically just Socratic foils for the author's self pity) just didn’t get it that if they would just demand better pay, unicorns and rainbows would start shooting out of their asses. Oh yeah, she also loved to take stereotypical pot shots at the people whose houses she cleaned when she worked as a maid because they thought they were better than the people who clean their lovely suburban houses, but really, HA HA, THE JOKES ON THEM because Ms. Ehrenrhehich is so totally their intellectual and moral superior!! Take that!

At first I was frustrated that the book took such a one-dimensional (not to mention demeaning) look at the minimum wage subculture and didn’t delve into what life is actually like for that class or how they got there or what obstacles they face. But then I realized, hell, that kind of stuff doesn’t move copies! Gimmicks move copies (well over a million so far) and that’s what being a “muckraking” writer is all about, isn’t it? Making your readers think you care (and vicariously they themselves (not a real word, but whatever) care) while simultaneously using your story about being a fake poor person and your superficial dealings with actual poor people to make yourself a good chunk of money! Oh Irony of Ironies. But then again, writers got to make a living, too, so I guess I have that going for me.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by The Most Awesomest and Brilliant Young Economist in the History of the World

I should have read this book before Nickel and Dimed because then the gimmickries of the first book wouldn’t have bothered me as much since I wouldn’t have expected anything deep or incredibly insightful. While well-written and interesting, Freakonomics explores the hidden side of things if your idea of “the hidden side” is “around the corner.” If you were thinking “buried under 50 ft of molten lava hundreds of miles off the coast of Madagascar,” sorry, but nothing is that hidden. For instance, did you know that drug-dealing organizations funnel almost all the money to the top and that the street soldiers, the ones that deal directly with the customers, hardly get paid anything? Shocking, I know. Dealing drugs is NOT the socialistic, money-sharing utopia we all thought it was! The other annoying thing about the book, for a statistically minded person such as myself, was that, as is typical of mass-marketed stuff in general, statistics were used extensively without any discussion of their significance or applicability. I trust the economists who wrote the book understand and are correctly using statistics, but man, I wish they would have used their position to encourage a more stringent statistical methodology in published materials. But still, it was a fun, gimmicky book to read so I guess I have that going for me.


Silent Spring by Rachael Carson

This book is so important that I learned about it in one or maybe two of the countless classes I had on American History in my formative public school years. Blah blah blah, pumping noxious, carcinogenic chemicals into our water and food isn’t good for us. The crazy thing about this is that 40 years ago, when the book was written, a lot of people DIDN’T know that all these amazing new chemicals could be dangerous. Now that this danger is common knowledge, the book loses some of its “I DON”T BELIEVE IT!!!!” punch. But hey, Al Gore like it, so I guess I’ve got that going for me.


The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson

Gimmick: Mankind has systematically, throughout history destroyed all life on earth up to and including humankind and a huge die-off of 80% of the world’s population is needed to return the Earth to its natural condition. L

But since the US is such a rich and powerful country, you and I probably will be among the surviving 20%, so I guess I’ve got that going for me! J

P.S. the book doesn’t say that last bit.


The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by Doomy McDoomerson Kunstler

If you live in the suburbs and drive to work every day and go shopping at Target at least once a week (read: me), this guy hates you. He thinks you are blithely driving the world off a cliff and if you don’t know how to brew your own beer, make your own shoes and grow your own vegetables (I am 1 for 3 on these so far, but that’s another post) you are probably going to die or have to fight tooth-and-nail for you life in the near future. Peak oil, blah blah blah, we’re all going to die, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. So what? I know how to ride my own bicycle (if I actually owned one that is), so I guess I’ve got that going for me.


Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

Boy, what I wouldn’t give for a gimmick. For all my bloviating about how other lame non-fiction books don’t give you a deep enough view of things, I sure could have used a shallow view here. I’m not even half way through it yet. I can tell because I haven’t got to the pages with the pictures on them yet. If you ever wanted to learn about the medieval Norse society on Greenland, this book is for you. If not, well, it might still be for you but you might want to skip a few chapters. I’m pretty sure he’s going to start comparing these old collapsed societies with our modern globalized world pretty soon, but I’ll let you know when I get to that part. Check back in, say, October. He also writes about the expansion and inevitable collapse of the “Anasazi” in the Chaco Canyon area to which I have been, so I guess I’ve got that going for me.

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

Turn Off Your Smoke Machine

Warning: This post will discuss the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian church. If you can't take it, then stop reading now and save yourself. If you can take it, let's start a movement to end this horrible abomination.


Simply put, the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian Church is not any of the following:

1. Leadership


2. Fundamentalism


3. Guns


4. Stale Communion Bread/wafers (this one was close)


5. Reticence to change

No, it is not any of these. It is the architecture. Modern American churches by and large have the most boring, uninspiring, unhelpful architecture in the history of the known church universe. Let me "explain."

If I wanted to let everyone know that I was an obnoxious, horrible douche*ag (edited for content), would I drive a Jetta with a broken mirror and wear 5-year-old socks? NO! I would wear crisp power suits with red and blue striped ties, have a faux-hawk, drive a BMW 325xi (or maybe the Z4 convertible if I was going for the douchebag/tool difecta) and probably have a Hill badge displayed prominently on my person at all times. (Side note, by driving a Jetta with a broken mirror and wearing old clothes, I'm saying that I'm totally not in any way a douche).

Likewise, if the modern church is serious about it's beliefs that it and It alone hold the keys to the knowledge of good and evil (God = good, funky buttlovin' = evil, pants = ????*) then the church buildings need to show it. If the way, the Truth, and the Life is through the church, let me know, man. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, if I knew all this important stuff about Jesus H. Christ, I would write it in big letters and perhaps statues of sinners burning in hell all over my church. Come on McLean Bible, give the people what they want need. Admittedly it's probably hard to simulate eternal hellfire but there's gotta be something you could do other than look like a mall (actually, there may be something to this....aw, never mind). At least try to be majestic or something like the Crystal Cathedral.

When it comes right down to it, the modern "traditional" American church is the only church movement/body/pantaloon in history to not match it's architecture with it's theology. here a just a few examples"

1. The Catholic Church - Huge, ostentatious cathedrals, some even built with the bones of their enemies**.
   What is says: "We own you. God lives here and we own him too. Plus, we have a truckload (cartload? Popemobileload?) of money, so we've got that going for us. Plus we have cool miters, so we've got that going for us."



2. Islamic Mosques - Tall minarets, domey looking things.
   What it says: I don't know. I don't speak Arabic.



3. Good Ol' One Room Clapboard Baptist Churches - "One Room Clapboard Churches" kinda says it all.
   What it says: One Room Clapboard Churches. Simplicity. Something to do with water or immersion, or squirt guns or something. Also potluck dinners that the same person will bring the same pot of spaghetti to every month for 50+ years.



4. "Emergent" "Churches" - so many options to reflect who they really are!
   
   • Coffee house - "Look how cool we are! We meet in a coffee house! A secular coffee house!"
   
   
   • An Old Warehouse - "Look how cool we are! We don't care at all about our image!"
   
   
   • And old unused church building - "Look how cool we are! We're 'subverting' the mainstream church!"
   
   
   • Strangely, for all the gushing over the "ancient-future" idea, I have yet to hear of an "Emergent" church that meets in underground catacombs like the authentically ancient Christians did. That would actually be pretty awesome.
   
   
   
5. Episcopalian Church - I don't know, something vaguely English/Celtic looking.
   What it says: "If you liked Lord of the Rings, you might be Episcopalian***!"



6. Unitarian Universalist - Anything they damn well want to build.
   What it says: "Do you like it? If not, we'll change it so you do like it!"

So come on mega-churches of America, take back the mantle of "most important buildings in the city!" Show the people what you're about! Bring out the Left Behind-style corpse dummies. Kill Persecute a Muslim. Fight in the Holy War! You've got a soul, now be a soldier! Or a construction worker!




*The Southern Baptist Convention recently published a document disavowing its former stance on the necessity of wearing pants. Pants-wearing is now technically a "greyish area" as defined by the bylaws of the Convention.****

**Could just be the bones of dead parishioners, teh internets were unclear on that point.

***If I am confusing Episcopalian and Anglican, please forgive me since I don't really care at all which is which.

****Not actually true. Pants are still required at all times.

Today in History

Eighty years ago today my mother's mother was born somewhere in Idaho, I don't remember exactly. Some things I do know about her: she has six children and 18 or 19 grandchildren and a bunch of great-grandchildren. She went to the same middle school/junior high school as me, Franklin, in Yakima. Like my mother and I, she is the third oldest child in her family and like my mother and I, her birthday falls on the 23rd day of the month. She plays bingo. She worked in an apple packing warehouse for many years. Her mother died at age 96 when I was in the fourth grade. Her husband died when I was in the 10th grade after being partially paralyzed for more than 15 years. He fought in World War II. She grew up in an orchard in the Yakima Valley and at harvest time, actual real-life indians in teepees would camp out in the orchard to work. She doesn't like having her picture taken. She is a wonderful grandmother and great-grandmother.

For her birthday my mom and aunts and uncles are throwing a big bash in Franklin Park in Yakima. We won't be able to attend, but we did send a little message and picture for the "memory book" or whatever you want to call it that my aunt is putting together. Here's what I said.

Dear Grandma,

We love you.

Thanks for being such a great hugger. Maggie, Levi and I all agree that you give the world's best hugs every time we see you, which isn't nearly as often as we'd like.

Thanks for making Maggie feel so much like a part of the family. Thanks for loving her like you would one of your own grandkids.

Thanks for being such an awesome Great Grandma. Levi loves you. A lot.

Thanks for letting us all get together at your house every Christmas Eve. Even if we never did get to open the presents as soon as I wanted (as soon as we got there!).

Thanks for letting us run wild in The Shop back in the day. And thanks for the lemonade or water or whatever it was we needed to drink after spending a hot summer afternoon baking in The Attic.

Thanks for giving me my first taste of coffee when I was three years old. I'm sorry that I spit it out all over you. I like it now!

Thanks for everything you've done for our family. From teaching me to play bingo to so many other things.

Most of all, thanks for being a part of our lives. We love you.

Love,
Schuyler, Maggie and Levi

Geez, it's getting a little dusty in here. Somebody turn on the air filter.

Wheelchair Extravaganza

Well, interest is waning from all parties so today you get two very brief stories from the year I spent in Mrs. Beehler's class in thrid grade.

1. I had a friend named Dan. He now works in politics in Oregon according to his myspace page. The summer before third grade started, he was hit by a motorcycle. It broke his leg in about 5 places or something like that. At school, he needed help going to the cafeteria/gym to get his lunch. Different people were signed up for different days. Once, my turn came up, but I didn't feel like leaving the room. So I didn't. He went hungry.



2. I got a spelling test back one week and saw that I received a bad score. The reason? I had literally forgotten to dot some i's. I was freaking pissed.

Yakimemories

Well, you know how the old saying goes; vicious mockery is the sincerest form of flattery. And if that's true, then my home town of Yakima, Washington is about to get sincerely flattered.

I was born at Memorial Hospital on Tieton Drive the morning of November 23rd, 1979. It was a Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. And while I would like to say that I was born into a region of fantastic culture and amazing opportunity, I can't. Well, that's not really fair. There are some good things about Yakima, but it's way more fun to ignore them and pretend the whole place sucks. It will always be uber-cool (ha! I used the word uber, which hasn't been a cool thing to do since 2003, and paired it with the word cool! Oh my, how my self-consciousness and self-deprecating desire to be cool is not at all obvious. Umm, now I don't know how to end this parenthetical comment....sooooo.....ummmmmm.....) to be from a small town, live in the big-city and pretend that everything there was retarded and everyone from your hometown is some kind of liberal-hating, truck-driving, homophobic, fundamentalist lunatic. But all y'all know that a part of you kind of, maybe just a little bit, wants to go back there someday. Maybe your family is still there. Maybe you still have friends there. Maybe there's a certain time of year where something in you just longs for the air of your hometown. Whoa. This is getting sappy. Let's just cut to the mockery.

Let's start with the low hanging fruit: There is a sign on the freeway as you approach "downtown" that reads, "Yakima, the Palm Springs of Washington." Based on the fact that if you Google that phrase, in quotation marks mind you, you get 732 results, I am definitely not the first to point out that the sign is kind of stupid. Let's just say that Yakima has an average high temperature of below 60 F and an average low of below freezing for 5 months out of the year. Palm Springs' average high never dips below 70.

In other news, Yakima recently landed an Applebee's! This was front-page news in the Yak. That should give you an idea of what it's like there.

When I was a kid, you had to drive to the Tri-cities (Richland, Pasco and Kennewick) to do any good shopping. And by good I just mean "not sucky."

And don't even get me started on all the fruit that they grow around there. Oh, wait. The apples are actually really good. You can even buy them back here on the east coast, though believe me, they are way better when they haven't been shipped all the way across the country.

In high school, the best thing to do on the weekends is drive around. That's it. Just drive around. You can usually find groups of hooligan kids all up and down Nob Hill Ave at car washes, empty lots, and even the Burger King parking lot. At least that's the way it was circa 1997.

Yakima has the highest ratio of very poor to very rich in the whole state of Washington. Way to go fruit growers. Keep those migrant Mexican workers in poverty with your low wages, and if they speak up, call INS and ship their asses back to Mexico (Note: this actually happens. Growers actually do call INS on their own illegal employees).

I still don't understand how a town as small as Yakima has a gang problem. What turf is there to fight over? Yo, vato, we totally claim all land South of the 5th Ave Safeway and North of Front Street between Yakima Ave and Lincoln as property of the Surrenos!

Stupid Yakima Brewing Company went out of business. The company that opened the first post-prohibition brew pub in the country ran itself into the ground. Probably because they're from Yakima and everyone that didn't leave after high school at least for college is an idiot.

The white people that live there (about half the population) thinks that the North and East sides of town are "the ghetto." You want the ghetto? I can show you the ghetto. Go drive down M-53 through Detroit. Go hang out in Anacostia. That, my friends, is the ghetto.

Well, there's so much more to complain about, and I don't have the time, so I'll stop here. But as a final piece of advice, if you ever find yourself in Yakima, make sure you check out as many random taco busses as you can. You may not always know what the meat is, but those are some good burritos.

A Ton of Retrospective

Today, I want to take a little time (or a lot, I’m not sure yet) to reflect on the long and illustrious history of this beacon of internet integrity: A Ton of Bricks, the Blog.

It all started back in June. I was bored, and typing things at work makes me sound busy. I’ve got this big old keyboard that makes loud clackety-clack noises when I type, so everyone thinks, “oh, wow, he must be very busy, he is typing so much.” So I thought to myself, “hey, why don’t you write some crazy garbage and then,” and this is the clincher “put it on the internet so everybody can see it?” And then I answered myself, I said, “Self, that might be stupid, but let’s do it anyway!” And thus was born A Ton Of Bricks. Actually, thus was supposed to be born Anthropomorph (a way cooler name, don’t you think?) but that was already taken so I had to think of something else. And what sucks even more is that the Anthropomorph blog really sucks. I mean it hasn't been updated in like, ten months!

Within 4 days, my readership grew by over 500%. I mean, it went from me to me, my wife and three (of four!) friends. One of my friends, Mike, already had his own blog so I could even put a link on my blog to his. It was sweet. It was even sweeter when he put a link on his blog to mine. And from there, things just blew up! My wife started one, and so did everybody else! Literally. I think the ratio of blogs to people in the world is now approximately 15:1. But a lot of those blogs are just trying to sell me stuff like Viagara and real estate and those weird protein shake things. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, things blowing up. Once, I saw a video of a chemical plant blowing up.

Anyway, before we get to my greatest hits and moments from the past four months (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?) let’s do some scientific analysis of my blog’s history. If you are reading this and thinking “he has too much time on his hands,” you are wrong. My watch died three days ago, so I have no time on my hands and it is driving me crazy. Back to the topic at hand (why am I talking about hands so much???), the blog. The following chart shows both the trend in cumulative words written and the weekly rolling average of words per day, that is, the average number of words written per day for the last week.


As you can see, prior to this post, I have written almost 40,000 words. Okay, a lot of those words come from poems I didn’t write, but I still had to take the time to copy and paste them. The bottom line is that that is a lot of words. And they are all completely useless. I could have used those 40,000 words to write the first 75 pages of a novel or something. Instead, I just polluted the internet with worthless tripe. Unless you’re a publishing agent and you like what you see, then give me a book deal! I will turn you down flat, but then I can tell people at parties that I was offered a book deal by a big company but I turned them down because I am not a sell-out. Unless the money is big enough. Then I’ll be a sell out. Also, please notice that there are no long term trends in the rolling average of words per day. I guess that means I’m pretty consistent. Although there is a trend that I never write anything on the weekends. That’s because I’m not at work. My overall average words per day is 364.7. On days that I make a post, the median is 444 words. The following chart shows how that is broken up among the days of the week.


I guess it should come as no surprise that I apparently get more and more bored as the week goes on, that’s why Friday has the most words. And I know that I just claimed not to write on the weekends, but those average numbers for Saturday and Sunday are just vestigial results from my first few weeks when I had so much to say that I just had to write on weekends.

Finally, to give you a good idea of how the words are distributed in terms of words per day, the following chart shows the frequency distribution of words per day over a range of values.


You can see that this distribution is definitely not normal. It is very highly skewed to the left, and would probably be best modeled as a Poisson distribution, since it is indeed discrete. A Poisson distribution is defined as a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independent of the time since the last event. If you don’t believe me, check this out smarty-pants. I’d estimate the lambda for this distribution, but I don’t really feel like it.

So, after hitting you over the head with some pointless and inconclusive statistical analysis, let’s get to what we all came for in the first place. Remineshen….Reminescences….Reminiscences. There, that’s got it right!

So, follow me as we step back in time and relive some of A Ton of Bricks greatest moments.

This beauty is from July…. “And I was like, "weird, man." Could it just be a coincidence that, within ten minutes, we had seen both the original song and the spoof version ON THE VERY SAME TV???? No way. I figure that the universe was about to "do me in" or something, but at the last minute, totally wussed out because it had grown accustomed to my face. Lucky for me I've got such a lovable face.” That was such an awesome post!

And do you remember this one from July 15th? “And to think that this post started off in my head as a social commentary on why yuppies and hipsters are so stupid. Maybe next time I guess.” I don’t even care what the rest of the post was about, yuppies and hipsters ARE stupid! Ha ha ha!

I still stand by this quotation! “Even if I became the most famous blogger in the whole wide world, I would still never write a book related to it because, come on, that's just stupid.”

And who can forget my first List Tuesday post? You know, the one that included this nugget of wisdom? “The black squirrels that can be seen in various places in the district, especially in the northwest, are not indigenous to the area. Although they are the same species as the common grey squirrel, the black variety were originally brought down from Canada around the turn of the 20th century. Much like the all-too-common Labatt's Blue.”

Let’s not forget this one! “So I take the exit, turn right towards where I can see the truck sitting at a stop sign waiting for me. The following conversation ensues.

Me: Is something the matter?

Him: Can I interest you in a blowjob?

Me:..............Ummmmmmmm..................What??????

Him: Can I interest you in a blowjob?

Me: No! (while simultaneously flooring it)”

And then, remember when I introduced Random Picture Friday? That was so cool. “I stumbled across this little beauty: Livejournal pictures (I'd put the link directly to the post, but I don't know how. It's about 2/3 of the way down the April archive). This post contains the link to a great little page that shows you the last 40 pictures uploaded on Livejournal by anyone, anywhere. It is......fun, to say the least. Here ya go. Enjoy. Please note that some people post some really weird (alright, sick) stuff to their Livejournals, so watch out.”

And I know I still don’t like the misuse of irony! “Rain on your wedding day.
Not ironic, it just sucks.

10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.
Not ironic. What would be ironic is if you had 10,000 knives yesterday, but you needed a spoon.

A free ride, when you already paid.
How could it be a free ride if you paid? Not only is this not ironic, it doesn't even make sense!

A death row pardon, two minutes too late.
Okay, that is ironic.”

And now, for my penultimate hit, that one time when I wrote about that one thing, remember? “Anyway, in reading this biography I have been formulating a horribly hackneyed and clichéd theory that dying or killing yourself will make you more famouser than other people. The following are a few unresearched and undocumented and sketchy case studies to "prove" my point.” Yeah, that was great.

And now, for the my greatest hit, I know you all remember this one….. “It is very highly skewed to the left, and would probably be best modeled as a Poisson distribution, since it is indeed discrete. A Poisson distribution is defined as a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independent of the time since the last event. If you don’t believe me, check this out smarty-pants. I’d estimate the lambda for this distribution, but I don’t really feel like it.” That one is so good I almost peed my pants.

Actually, there's probably some more good ones, I just got tired of looking. If you have any favorites that didn't show up on this list, let me know so I can read them and then do a total retread of them and pretend it's a new post!

Well, peace out, y’all.


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