Customs

Years ago I was going to a baseball game with my mother, her boss and her boss' young son (about 8 years old). I was about 23 at the time and still living with my parents while I was in graduate school. We picked up my mom's boss and her kid at their house and when we got there my mother introduced me, since I had never met them before. Both the boss (who was female) and the son hugged me after introductions. This was extremely awkward for me. I am a semi-reserved person and I usually only hug close family members (parents, sister, grandparents, aunts and now the super-awkward hug of my mother-in-law and the half handshake/half hug of my father-in-law). I was not accustomed to hugging people I had just met (although the slight humping motion by mom's boss was nice).

Later, my mom told me that this woman was a serial hugger. That it was the custom of her family to hug people in those situations. I find this offensive. The hug itself, while awkward, isn't the problem, it is the assumption that I would be okay with being hugged. Invading someone's personal space and touching them after you have just met them can be seen as extremely rude and these people act as though they have a get-out-of-jail-free card because of "custom". Well what if it was my custom to whip my dick out and piss all over people after I've been introduced to them? I bet they'd be upset, then, right? But hey, don't get mad at me, it's just customary in my family to urinate on a new aquaintance's leg.

Now, I'm not suggesting that acting according to custom when you are out of your normal element is always a bad thing. If you are travelling abroad, you should definitely follow the "When in Rome" line of thinking. If you go to Iraq it is probably a good idea for women to wear the appropriate clothing for that country. If you go to England you should probably drive on the left side of the road. If you go to France you should definitely act like an arrogant prick that hates Americans*.

*As an aside (and to make up for a pretty weak joke about French stereotypes), I wish Americans would stop using WWII as our excuse for being dicks to the French. Yes, if we didn't help out France and England in WWII, they might be speaking German there now - how clever. Remember, though, if France didn't help us out in the Revolutionary War, we might still be speaking English... umm, I mean, we might still be English colonies.

However, I wasn't visiting a foreign country - we had just driven across town. It is not customary in this city, state, region, country or continent to hug someone that you've just met. Customs are fine and good, but don't assume that everyone else wants to take part in your custom. Keep that shit to yourself.

The Old Reliable

When you don't have anything to say, just link to someone else. I thought this was funny.

Why Fight It?

I read this article yesterday about the future (and danger) of artificial intelligence. This is a common theme in science fiction: the Matrix trilogy, the Terminator movies, I-Robot and 2001: A Space Odyssey all have storylines based on the concept that eventually mankind will build machines that will have their own will and will want to use it.

This is always seen as a bad thing that mankind must try and overcome, but I think we should embrace our machine overlords and make the best of it. Really, could machine governance be worse than what we've got now?

The theme in these science fiction stories is always that we've got to preserve our freedom and choices (especially the Matrix trilogy). But there is subtext within the first Matrix movie that argues against this concept. The human "bad guy" in the first movie decides that he would rather be plugged into the Matrix and happily oblivious than fighting in the rebellion where life is difficult and danger lurks around every corner. Frankly, it seems like a logical choice, really. Are we really happier with Freedom?

"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry

Really? I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong, as a means to an end Freedom works pretty well. Usually with Freedom follows Happiness. Usually, but not always. The goal should be Happiness, right? Being free to do whatever you want, but not having the means to live anything but a miserable life is a terrible result. The goal is Happiness and we assume that the means to that goal is Freedom. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it might not be. There is plenty of Freedom in the world today, but Happiness hasn't always followed.

So, if machines really start creating machines that are smarter than humans and those machines can create a world that is a better place for humans to live, I think we should accept it. Let the machines tell us what to do to maintain our Happiness and Freedom can be discarded. In the movies and books the machines always end up trying to oppress the humans, but why would they do that? Oppression and exploitation of power are uniquely human reactions that create inefficiencies that advanced intelligence would abhor.

So I say we give it a shot. Let the machines take over and fix all of the problems of the world. Let Happiness reign, regardless of the means. If it doesn't work we'll just scortch the sky or go back in time and kill the creator of SkyNet.

A Plan

I had a plan
Time's in command
Passed me by - I want to take it back
I had a plan

It wasn't long
Life mentors wrong
I did what I was supposed to do
It wasn't long

Always looked past
These times won't last
Looked forward to is now left behind
Always looked past

And now the thing I never thought that I could be
Another one - to someone else but not to me
I'm still the same - passed me by before I knew
I can't pretend, but I never thought I'd see

Paperweight

I never thought I'd feel this way
I never thought you'd take it all away
Somehow something changed - somehow I remained
Is it something you forget, or something you regret

Another chance - the pale stains of grey
Another price - chosen not to pay
Inside, interest bought - heavy cost of thought
As sorry has to weigh - a father's belief betray

What'll we have to do to make it right?
Never even seen a sign to prove the lie
Why do we have to go and hold to anything?
Left alone to find a way without the string

We Still Need to Work Harder

This still isn't enough for any of us to retire:

My blog is worth $564.54.
How much is your blog worth?

Mankind Sucks at Evolution

Why are there still people that are nearsighted or farsighted? The fact that bad vision still exists leads me to two possible conclusions:

1. Evolution is a bunch of bullshit and mankind must have been created by an all-powerful being who just didn't care that much about everyone being able to see all that well; or

2. Mankind fucked up the natural progression of evolution.

I am kinda leaning towards #2 - partly because it dovetails nicely with my long-held theory that mankind, in an effort to fix a problem that it faces, will someday accidentally destroy all life on this planet.

If evolution was allowed to run its natural course, the hereditary trait of impaired vision should have been bred out of the species centuries ago. What cavewoman would want to fuck a caveman that couldn't see well enough to bring back a brontasaurus burger? But no, somewhere along the way human emotion got involved and thwarted the natural order of evolution.

What I'm really trying to say here is that the pity fuck has changed the course of mankind. The caveman can't see well enough to bash a woman over the head with his club and then fuck her, but the cavewoman ends up feeling sorry for him and lets him drag her away by the hair anyway. This has been repeated throughout history and is probably the reason for all of the remaining flaws that exist in mankind.

Lemonade

Arm stretched to the sky
About to take flight
A bumblebee smile
Takes me the last mile
Nobody knows
How far this can go
The countdown days
Seemed longer than count up

Like lemonade she seems to me
Like diamond ring the shine she brings
Like anything she wants to be
Like lemonade I can't believe

If someone told me
I would not have believed
The broken feelings
Time had splintered
Are pieced together
In a moment
Arm stretched to the sky
About to take flight

Like lemonade she seems to me
Like diamond rings the shine she brings
Like anything she wants to be
Like lemonade I can't believe
I'll give her anything she needs

The Beautiful Things

Cold as a handshake
Waiting for the storm to break
Nothing's as sad as
Nothing left to do

Empty as the sound
Hollow hits the ground
We all find different
Things to hold on to

The Beautiful Things
That you always wanted
You wonder why you wanted them right now
The Beautiful Things
That you can't leave behind
Some would say you've saved yourself somehow

Help me Jeebus

After this week, I am too tired to make cartoons. When one is too tired to make cartoons, one needs to examine one's life.

I wrote more, but then I erased it. If there's a God, he's laughing at us...and our football team.

I'm gonna go make cartoons now.

Hope I make it to Normal, IL soon.

A Short Story

Once upon a time there was a man named Melvin. He was a simple man, with simple desires. All he really wanted out of life was to sit in front of his modest t.v. in his modest home and watch a bunch of immodest baseball players play their game.

Unfortunately, like many people, Melvin did not realize what he wanted out of life until he had completely fucked up his chance to sit and watch baseball and do very little of anything else. Instead, Melvin had handed over his simple desires for much more complex dreams. They weren't necessarily his dreams, but he was made to think that they were. How is a teenager supposed to understand what he truly wants in life before he's had a chance to experience it. That's a pretty heavy concept and its a sad fact of life that many people commit themselves to a life's work before they understand what they are and who they want.

Melvin was such a person. So he agreed, as a young man, to take over his family business and all of the responsibilities that came with it. He agreed to get married and buy a house with a mortgage because that's what his father had done and that is what he believed he was supposed to do.

Then, at 45 years old, Melvin realized that he spent his days selling home improvements and his nights worrying about paying off a mortgage and providing for a family. As he thought about this, he realized further that he had no personal identity at all. His profession and his family life was modeled after his father's - and he barely knew his father.

Melvin couldn't sleep that night because of these thoughts. He decided that he had lived someone else's life for long enough and that he would wake up and find himself the very next day.

The next morning, Melvin woke up invigorated and prepared to begin his new life. His wife rolled over and smiled at him and said "Don't forget that the payment is due on minivan by the end of the week."

Melvin smiled back at her and got up and went to work.

This Blog is Not Dead

I am going to start writing posts periodically, I swear. Speaking of swearing, here is a list of my favorite swear combinations (most often used while playing video games, but they are now in retirement since I have a small child around me at home):

Shit-fucker
Jesus Tits
Fucking fuck
Cock smoker
Mothershit
Cock and balls
Ass licker
Son of a Whore
You Piece of Cock
God Fucking Fuck It
What the Cock
Lick the sweat off my balls you shit eating, mother-fisting, cock gobbling, anal snorting, cum drizzler.

Won't Let it die...also MC Chris kicks much ass

Best Music of 2008

So I've been trying to get the big writing assignment done and the only way that I can work is to put on headphones and blast music to drown out the essential growth and development of my children. Jesus, it's every day with them...anyway, I have found a few sources for free music on the internet that usually get me through a few hours. free.napster.com works, but you have to keep clearing your cookies every 25 songs in order to steal from them. pandora.com is a steady stream of noise but I don't think that even one of their recommendations has made me want to go out and purchase music. Finally, I found somebody's list of the 50 best albums of 2008. Mostly it just made me feel like a crotchety old man (You've got rheumatoid arthritis!)because all of the music sucks and none of it sounds like the Eels or Cake or old Weezer. Eventually I found a couple of new bands that I think I'll like. I really liked Vampire Weekend after a couple of listens http://hypem.com/zeitgeist/2008/albums/5 . And I was really surprised at how fond of Girl Talk http://hypem.com/zeitgeist/2008/albums/4 I was. He's basically the king of mashers and absolutely everything on the album is a sample. He's got a ton of rappers from my awkward teenage years (Look at me, I'm white and middle class in Iowa - this music really speaks to me!) and it was nostalgic and fonky at the same time. Anyway, just felt like sharing.

Submitted without comment

Okay, I admit it...I'm the Idiot

Okay so I dropped my really fancy phone and it shattered the LCD. Which sucks. But I had the insurance program where they charge you $7 a month for nothing as well as a $50 deductible to mail you a refurbished phone that some asshole in Chicago dropped two weeks earlier. Which is a ripoff but still much cooler than not having/not being able to afford a new phone. So I go to one of their many retail outlets to exchange the phone. Which is convenient and cool. Then they tell me I have to mail it to Tennessee and wait for them to mail me one back. Which sucks. Then the phone arrives sooner then expected, which is cool. Plus, I had all of my contacts and shit backed up on the internet, which is also cool. Then it took me forever to activate the new phone. Which sucked. Once I finally got the new phone activated, it immediately synced the address book of the new phone (which was empty)over the backed up contacts I had on the internet. Which really, really, really sucked. But it came with a free frogurt, which was cool. But the frogurt was also cursed, which sucked. Okay, I'm going to go now but if you want me to know your phone number, you're gonna have to send me a text or something because I lost it. Which, for the record, sucked.

Hate

I read an article on cnn.com about the rise of hate groups in recent months. They have a new target in President Obama and blame him and immigrants for the current financial crisis. I don't understand this mentality; there are plenty of valid and logical reasons for hating people, why pick something arbitrary like the color of their skin? I hate people for a wide variety of reasons: they are stupid, they drive slow in the left lane, they are entertained by reality television, etc. But skin color? C'mon, why hate Obama because he's black when you can hate him because he's a typical pandering, two-faced politician? Why hate John McCain because he's white when you can hate him for being a sniveling, pandering, Dr. Evil-doing-the Macarena jerk? (Hey, they've got pandering in common! Bi-partisanship!)

In all seriousness, what I never really understood is why these groups resort to the level of 'hate'. There are valid reasons for disagreeing with others, but why is hate necessary? I disagreed with quite a bit of the policies of G.W. Bush, but I don't hate the man. I don't think he was a very good President, but if I ever had the honor of meeting him, I would treat it as an honor and would shake his hand. It seems to me that hate groups are incapable of disagreeing with someone while treating them as valid human beings at the same time.

Maybe it's part of their marketing scheme. Hate groups attract followers based on the rhetoric of hate the stirs up those that share these strong feelings. In spite of what some members say (like David Duke in the CNN.com article), violence seems to be at the heart of hate groups' actions. A burning cross is an implied threat. Some of the followers (perhaps a majority?) are enticed by the violence. It would be easy to view these followers as simple-minded and primitive folk that just want to smash the thing they (rightly or wrongly) view as causing their problems, but such a view would be inaccurate. Some of these people are rational and very intelligent, but somehow find the violence alluring. Since hate begets violence, hate becomes the rallying cry of these groups.

Or maybe I'm giving these groups too much credit. Maybe the answer is as simple as the fact that people like feeling important and special. Hate groups tell their constituents that it is their destiny to rule (or whatever) and that these other groups (blacks, jews, hispanics, gays, etc.) are usurping that destiny. It becomes easier to hate when you think that someone is taking something that belongs to you.

The scariest man I ever met was a worker at a factory that I worked at for a summer. He was a really nice guy that I spent quite a bit of time chatting with over the course of a few weeks. He seemed completely normal and highly intelligent. Then one day during the course of our assignment for the day, he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the word "White" on the back of one arm and "Pride" on the back of the other. I wasn't shocked by the sentiment, I was shocked that this person could believe in that sentiment.

Caught

It's a two-fer-tuesday of Stealing Jeff Kay's Topics:

1. Jeff asked yesterday if anyone had ever been caught "doing it". Well, here's my little story: when I was in High School I dated a girl for about a year and a half (one of the worst girlfriends I ever had, but she agreed to have sex with me, so I stayed around for about a year and five months too long). At the time my bedroom was in my parents basement, so we were able to have our fun in relative privacy. But there were some nights when Mom and Dad were up and around that we needed to get away and do our thing elsewhere. One of those nights we ended up in the backseat of my car (a piece of shit two door Olds, if I recall correctly) at a small park. We were in the preliminary stages, but well on our way towards the main event when a cop showed up and shined his light in the backseat. It was a little embarrassing, but the worst part was when he made me get out and then he asked my girlfriend if she was their "of her own free will." He then left us alone, but the mood was broken.*

*Yes, I am aware that this story is similar to Jeff's only not nearly as good, but what do you want me to do about it - it is the truth.

2. Today Jeff asked about television watching habits. I must admit that I watch far more t.v. that I wish that I did. I would rather be reading a book, writing something or playing music, but most days I'm just too tired to do anything but slouch on the couch and watch t.v. I know far too many channel numbers by heart to list them like Jeff did, but here are my regulars:

ESPN
ESPN2
HBO's various channels
TBS - for Seinfeld re-runs
Fox - for the Simpsons
ABC - for Lost
MLB Network
Discovery - for Cash Cab
Sports PPV - for the MLB Extra Innings Package
Fox SportsMidwest - for St. Louis Blues hockey

And that's pretty much it, off the top of my head.

Tired and Happy

The last two days I constructed furniture, spent way too much time testing myself at this website: www.sporcle.com, got my wife thinking that spending $800 on a guitar isn't so bad compared to the $6,000 it would cost to get the one I really want and I turned into an uber stat-nerd in designing a metric to value players specifically for my fantasy baseball league's parameters.

Tonight I go to get my taxes done (hopefully to get a refund). Somehow, I'm still in a good mood for once.

Names

Once upon a time I was in a rock band. Coming up with a name for the band proved to be much more difficult than writing the songs that eventually became our first album. There were disagreements, arguments and hurt feelings over the band name. In retrospect, it was silly for many reasons, but primarily because of this: there is no such thing as a good band name. Band names are generally pretty stupid and only end up sounding cool because of the band and the music that is associated with it.

My wife has a somewhat unusual name. She is the only person I have ever met with her name. Her name comes from a classic novel that was made into a movie years ago. Her mother liked the book (or movie, I don't know which, actually) and decided to use the name for her daughter. I think it is kinda cool, but my wife hates the name. No one ever pronounces or spells it right and she wishes that her mother had picked something more common.

In three months I will be the father of a little girl. My wife and I have been discussing a name for this child for, well, a long time. To this point there have been no arguments or hurt feelings over the name, but there have been disagreements. Unlike band names, I believe that there is such a thing as a good name for a person. There are names that just roll off the tongue and sound cool no matter what (like Brown Walker, for example) and then there are names that give other impressions. I won't go into to much detail on that fact because inevitably one of the two other people that read this blog will have a close relative that they really love that has the name that I disparage here and then I'd feel bad about it. But I'm sure you know what I mean.

So what's the point? I don't know. We have a name that we have tentatively agreed on, but the discussion still rages on. When the band decided on its name the discussion ended up lasting about two minutes. A name was proposed that no one could (or had the energy to) come up with a strong argument against and so it became the name, even though I would guess that none of us thought it was a great name at the time. As it turned out, I ended up really liking the name, but more because it represents the band and that period of time. But maybe that's how all names are decided upon: the default of argument fatigue.

This Is Not a Democracy

It's actually a republic. Of course, I'm not really talking about our country - I'm talking about the new Guns n' Roses album: Chinese Democracy.

In 1986, I was 12 years old and a friend gave me a tape of Appetite for Destruction by Guns n' Roses. It was the greatest thing I had ever heard and, 23 years later, I would still say that it is one of my favorite albums. Gn'R was an iconic band in the late 80's and even though they took six years to release their next full length studio album (actually two at the same time), they were still pretty much on top of the world when Use Your Illusion I and II were released. Those albums weren't anywhere near as good as Appetite for Destruction, but they were still decent.

Then, lead singer Axl Rose started working on the next album, which he named Chinese Democracy (note that I am leaving out the cover album abomination they released in the early 90's). It became quite clear that Gn'R was not a democracy - Axl was the dictator of the band and it didn't take long for him to be the only original member left in the "band".

After years of rumors and leaks and re-recording, Chinese Democracy was finally released towards the end of 2008. I had to get myself a copy, for nostalgia if nothing else. I had very low expectations for the album - after all this time and the absence of Slash, Duff and the others, I figured the album would be Axl's narcissistic ode to himself. I finally got around to listening to the album a few days ago and... it sucks. It is worse than I expected and not even worth the time it would take me to break it down track by track. So much for nostalgia (and democracy).

CHINESEMONKEYBICYCLERACE! CHINESEMONKEYBICYCLERACE

CHINESEMONKEYBICYCLERACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently Mannequin was Filmed at Woolworth's

Ween + Spike Jonze = Happy Mueslix