December 2005 Archives
As I was driving a few days ago, I noticed the battery light was on. This is never a good thing. "Oh, shit" I think was my exact thought.
My second thought was "Man, it's cold in this car." And that's when I noticed the heat wasn't blowing out. Thank God and the Bavarians for heated seats.
Looking it up in the owner's manual, they suggested that if the light stays on, either the alternator has conked out or the alternator belt has broken. Either of those being the case, you'd have thought the car would stop running, but it didn't. It stayed running (and cold) for a whole day.
Using my fine-tuned debugging skills, I drew a picture of what I guessed the electrical system looked like. One box was the battery, connected to another box that was the alternator, and a line coming from somewhere leading to whatever piece monitors all that, and a final line leading to the little lightbulb that kept glowing menacingly at me. I was hoping it was just one of those little lines leading between the boxes. Maybe a cable was loose! That would be relatively cheap. Wouldn't it?
So, I took it to the closest dealer in Clayton, while beforehand looking up a nearby coffee house. I was praying that somehow the heater and the light had the same cause, and thus fixing one would fix them both. I also figured, if I'm already going to have to clean out the savings, I might as well have them look at that odd clanking noise that happens whenever I hit a bump at 60, the one I'd been trying very hard to ignore.
I dropped the car off with Bob the, um, I think he had some kind of self-important title like Service Liason or some such. This BMW service center was something. The floors were some kind of tile that were very nice while still giving the impression of being rugged. Must have cost a fortune. It looked like you could eat off any surface in the place. And there was a gift shop for the poor souls for whom owning a BMW wasn't enough of an ego boost, and they wanted a monogrammed golf shirt and matching leather-billed baseball hat.
I gave Bob my three problems, and -- bless his heart -- he wrote on the top of the form, "Wait! Call before working!" with my cell number. I think this may have had something to do with the 99 cent dock worker-style stocking cap I was wearing that I'd bought 10 years ago at a 7-11 in Oklahoma.
Bob asked if I needed a loaner car. I said, "Nah, that's all right." Then I said that I was going to walk around the corner to a coffee shop, since I need the exercise anyway. Bob gave me a quick look to make sure I wasn't pulling his chain, then gave me his card in case it started raining or something, they'd give me a ride.
The look might have also had something to do with the fact that it was 19 degrees outside. I hadn't considered that when I was planning this the night before.
After a bracing 3/4 mile walk, I ordered a cup of generic house roast coffee (which was delightful), while trying out my new positive mental outlook. This worked very well. I kept feeling like I had a bright neon sign on my chest saying "This guy doesn't belong in Clayton*", which, since I don't belong in Clayton, is probably natural. Although unlike Bob, the bohemian coffee schleppers didn't seem to mind at all.
I read my copy of "Homage to Catalonia" by Orwell, and waited. And waited. And waited. After a couple hours, I called Bob and asked for an update. He said they're still looking at the suspension.
About a half hour later, I got the call. The good news was very good: one of the bushings in the suspension needed lubrication, which they were doing right then. Turns out there's a third kind of repair, the $50 repair that I'll probably never have again.
Then he dropped the hammer: Well, the good news on the light is that there's no problem with the alternator. Or the belt. Actually, the electrical system (as far as they can tell) was working just fine. It's just the bit of circuitry that monitors the alternator is kaputz. The bad news, that's not a cheap part. The worse news, to replace that part in involves taking off the dashboard. Which involves roughly 11 hours of labor. At BMW labor prices.
Then the second hammer: The blower resister had fried itself. This may or may not have happened at the same time the cirtuit panel blew up, but they're different parts. Once the resister was out, the blower wasn't long for this world. Those parts were actually more expensive than the above circuit.
The good news on that, such as it was, is that this would also involve taking off the dashboard, which I was going to have to do anyway. So, I suppose I save a bit on labor the fact that these two happened as close together as they did. Assuming their conking out simulateously was a coincidence, which it probably wasn't.
The heater blower wasn't in stock and wouldn't be until Wednesday, so I made my way through the biting cold to the service center. The car is completely drivable. In fact, if I can ignore the cold and the light, I don't actually have to repair anything. Although they can't be 100% certain on the alternator until they have the instrument monitor thingymabob fixed. Regardless, the car will probably propel itself and its freezing the driver just fine.
Thus, I was going to pick up said car, and schedule an appointment with Bob for next Wednesday. When I got there, I said to Bob, "Good news! I talked with my Mexican organ harvester, and he said he'll be able to buy my kidney on Saturday. So, let's schedule an appointment for Wednesday."
Bob was wholly unamused. I fought the urge to pull my collar nervously and say, "Is this thing on?"
Anyway, that's the story. Fortunately for me, I've tightened the screws on my budget such that I've saved up just enough to cover this. But this will still end up being catastrophically expensive.
But man, I do love that car.
* If you're familiar with Dallas, Clayton is basically two parts Highland Park and one part Addison.
For obvious reasons, they don't say the name of the officer who was attacked.
Cynicism harnessed to your advantage can help debunk fraudulent mysteries that prevent us from sharing in what is possible and what is ours.Or, to put it another way, it's cynical to try to destroy magic in this world. However, if it's something that people claim is magical but isn't, and the fact that people claim it's magical is keeping you from doing it, well, that's something that we all should be cynical about.
There are a lot of things like that, things that have a bad reputation but can be harnessed to your advantage. Like defeatism. Sometimes dreams come true just by dreaming them hard enough. (There's another idea deserving some serious cynicism.) Sometimes dreams come true through hard work. And sometimes dreams just aren't going to come true and all you're going to do is waste your time and build frustration.
Defeatism, as deployed here, is the obverse of cynicism. It's defeatist to assume that something isn't going to work before you've tried as hard as you possibly can. However, if it is wildly improbable that your effort would amount to anything, then defeatism is a good thing.
Somebody is going to be center fielder for the Cards. That person is probably not going to be you. Unless you're unbelievably talented, if this is your dream, you would be well advised to abandon it at your earliest convenience. Have you considered going into plumbing?
I mention all this because something occurred to me that caused a wave of defeatism to sweep over me. And I also think it's a good thing.
Most of you are not aware of this fact, but as you all know, I don't drink. That's not the thing that occurred to me. What did occur to me -- and I don't know how it could possibly have taken me this long to figure this out -- is this:
People who drink don't want to date people who don't drink.
Not all of them. There are people who don't drink and don't mind someone who doesn't drink. There are also straight men who like show tunes. This does not mean that going to see Rent to pick up guys is a good idea.
My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that roughly 85% of all women in St. Louis drink. If we limit ourselves to Catholic women (for whatever reason), that number rises to about 97%. Which is to say, I'm sure somewhere out there are people who don't drink, but I don't know who they are, and I don't think I've met any of them. Except one time, although she turned out to be one of those Pentecostal snake-handlers, so she doesn't count.
So, that's my bit of good defeatism. I'm giving up on at least 85% of all women here in the STL. The thing that would make this a bad thing is what I did about it. If I said "Oh, woe is me! I'm giving up on all those people! I don't even know if these non-drinking folk actually exist! Boo freakin' hoo!"
Instead, I'm going to use this defeatism to focus on what might actually work for a change.
The Manual: (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)
This is by The KLF, the guys who wrote, among other things, that song "Doctorin' the Tardis", which you've probably heard at some time or another, possibly at a basketball game. It has the same basic tune as "Rock and Roll" by the extremely creepy Gary Glitter. The lyrics go a-like-a so:
Dr. Whoooo! HEY! Dr. Who! Dr. Whooooo! HEY! The Tardis!
Anyway, after writing that gem, and after that song went all the way to #1, they wrote The Manual, which shows how to do it. I mention that it's kinda useless because it was written in Britain in 1988. First off, a lot has changed technologically since then. Take this eerily prescient quote:
It's obvious that in a very short space of time the Japanese will have delivered the technology and then brought the price of it down so that you can do the whole thing at home. Then you will be able to sod off all that crap about going into studios.As it happens, it was some combination of the Japanese, the Americans, and, depending on what you're going for, the Swedes. But it's true, you can, to a large extent, eschew the studio. So, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader what you can and can't do.
And there's the fact that he was writing about the British market. You can say whatever you want about the evils of media consolidation in the U.S. and I'll probably agree with you (although I probably won't agree with your solution). But in terms of one monolithic presence in media, there's no equivalent of the BBC here. No, not even Clear Channel.
But because the BBC is so monolithic, that simplifies things there to an extent that it can't be here. But the rough outlines are the same. For instance, you'll still need a plugger, or, as they describe theirs:
Without him this book would have to be retitled "How To Get To Number 47 - With A Certain Amount of Difficulty".And it's sprinkled with little bits of philosophy and commentary about the music industry:The man is a true star.
The "indie scene" in this country since then has been filled with a new found confidence: everything can be achieved. It was as if having a Number One single was the last bastion of the majors. Certain cynics will point fingers and whinge that the indies of today will be just the majors of tomorrow. Wasn't Richard Branson and his Virgin Records the ultimate hippy ideal in the early seventies? We won't deny that behind the majority of indie labels is a would-be Branson, whose stunted megalomania will undoubtedly be reflected on the way he brings up his children.or this one:
Up until now you might have felt these chapters have been riddled with cynicism.That last line is sublime, by the way.Cynicism is a terrible, disfiguring character trait if used by the individual who is forced to carry a bitter chip. He will use his cynicism to cope with the weight of life and all its trials. But cynicism harnessed to your advantage can help debunk fraudulent mysteries that prevent us from sharing in what is possible and what is ours.
Anyway, read the whole thing. Highly entertaining.
Not that it's annoying in the Screech from Saved by the Bell sense. It's annoying because it's so tantalizingly close to being good without ever getting there. But it's not so bad that you can just give up on it.
So I'm stuck watching it, hoping that it'll take it to that next level and being disappointed week after week.
I don't really talk about myself all that much. Now, you might have read that last sentence in mid-sip and splattered coffee all over the monitor, thinking, "What is this jackass talking about? All he ever does is talk about himself."
If that's the case, then my super-secret strategery is working. In fact this strategery is so super-secret, I didn't even realize I was doing it until lately. It's one of Christopher Walken's "pantomimes" in True Romance, the Show-and-Tell. I'll show you everything, but I won't tell you anything.
It comes down to the difference between the "personal" and the "private", which are not the same thing. If a guy has a rash on his ass, that's private. If a guy visits a whorehouse in Tijuana, that's personal. There's obviously a lot of overlap between the two. For instance, if a guy has a rash on his ass that he picked up visiting a whorehouse in Tijuana, that's both personal and private.
Aside from the overlap between the two, the most basic similarity is that they're both lumped into the category of "stuff most people don't talk about". Most people don't usually talk about something wrong with their asses. And if sometimes, as they're drifting off to sleep, they're overcome with a heart-wrenching feeling of loneliness that causes them to trace with regret the chain of poor decisions they've made with their lives to put them in that state, most people don't usually talk about that either.
Obviously not everybody. Some people never freakin' shut up about their personal lives. But never mind that.
The point of all this is that because I end up talking as much as I do about my private life, it's not obvious that I never talk about my personal life. Not that I don't talk about it with some people, I don't really talk about it with anyone.
Anyway, it's apparent to me that there are glaring flaws with my personal life, and I'm never going to get them sorted out if I don't figure out what they are and then how to deal with them.
Oh, wait! I remembered another reason I don't usually talk about my private life. Because, unless the other person is clinically insane, I think other people's private lives are boring, and therefore I assume that other people would find mine boring, too. Despite the fact that I'm probably clinically insane.
So, I'll probably spare you all of that. Except for little nuggets, if I think they're interesting. The rest, I'll share with the dog, who'll be happy for the attention.
Here's something for starters. I mention this because it's important to me, and possibly lucrative for everyone.
Right now, I'm in the midst of a serious drought in the whole dating scene. The reasons for this are long and numerous. If you want the full story, ask Charlie the Dog, who's been privy to all the sordid details.
If I could sum it up in one phrase, I've lost the Eye of the Tiger. To extend the metaphor unnecessarily, I'm standing in front of a bronze statue of myself from a prouder, more successful time in my love life, and I've just hurled my motorcycle helmet at it in a fit of drunken rage. And alas, there's no Apollo Creed to take me to the mean streets of L.A. to show me how to mack again.
The closest I've had was, I was complaining about this to a friend. We'll call him Frank, to keep from incriminating him later in the story. He came upon one of those insights that was so simple, so obvious in retrospect, I couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to me.
FRANK: J, you know what you're problem is? You're too negative. You need to start giving off a positive mental attitude.
J: [considering for a second] Holy shit! You might be onto something.
FRANK: You're damn right I'm onto something.
J: You know what's ironic? I'm actually much happier than I let on. Most of the time, when I say I'm having a so-so day, I'm lying, and I'm really having a fantastic day.
FRANK: I know! You really have to knock that shit off. It's all about a positive mental attitude. And your attitude sucks.
J: Holy shit.
It should be pointed out that "Frank" was very high when I was talking to him. But that doesn't change the fact that he's right as rain.
Here's a typical interaction between me and some random person:
RANDOM PERSON: Hi, J! How you doing?
J: [he's actually doing superb, as usual, but he pretends to think about it for a second] Eh. I dunno. I guess I'm doing okay. I probably shouldn't complain too much.
**buzzer**
That's what I'm talking about. That's the shit I have to knock off. My life is awesome beyond belief. I've got it better than 99.9999% of people throughout history, and probably 97% of people worldwide today. So, why not start acting like it? Why not present that to the world?
And that's where you come in. You know the guy who decides to give up swearing, and when someone hears him swear, they call him on it, and he give them a dollar? That's what I'm doing.
So, if you should see me out and about, and I start going all negative on you, call me on it, and I'll give you a dollar. I'll even give you a dollar if I'm just not being very positive.
This isn't to say that I ought to be like a member of Up with People, or anything like that. Just, you know, positive.
Actually, the dog did quite a bit better than I did, scoring her own dog house. Though that will redound to my favor, since it will extend the temperature range she can stay outside. When the dog is outside all day, she manages to run around terrorizing squirrels and bunnies and making threatening noises at the mailman. When she's inside, she just sleeps, which means, as soon as I'm home, it's play time!
My younger brother is in town, sleeping peacefully in The Cub's room as we speak. Each year we have a contest where we try to get the other one the worst present. I won by default, as it happens, since he's been embarrassingly busy with the band and didn't actually do any Christmas shopping until he arrived in town Christmas Eve. But I would have won anyway, having gotten him clam jerky. Yes. Clam jerky. He didn't try any of it, but I'll probably end up having a nibble at some point just to see if it's as bad as I imagine it would be.
The Cub scored his own iPod Nano. I had made a deal with him a few years ago that when I filled up all 15 gigs on my current iPod, that I'd get another one and give mine to him. Well, I did that and he had mine, but he wanted a Nano. Because they're so freakin' small you can't help but be impressed with them. I know I'm impressed.
My presents for him were Halo for the PC and a wireless mouse. After class gets out at his overpriced school, the kids play each other on the LAN, and a wireless mouse gives someone a distinct advantage over that crappy laptop touchpad.
I also got him some squid jerky at the same time I got the clam jerky. Which sounds like a gag, but he's a big fan of calamari, so that's not so ridiculous after all.
Christmas Eve was spent at the folks' place. I had to bring the Eponymous Dog with us, and that was a harrowing experience. The folks' house is not puppy-safe at all, and they take a pretty dim view of having their high dollar carpets peed on (for some reason. Gaw, what a bunch of killjoys!).
We did midnight mass at the aforementioned overpriced school, which was much longer than I'd have liked. It was one of those rock-and-roll masses, with the guitars, synthesizers and a dude on the bongos. As me and The Cub have discovered going to the no-music 7 a.m. mass, the difference between a long mass and a short mass is 80% music and 20% whether or not you have a gasbag giving the homily. When the the responsorial psalm clocks in at 20 minutes, you're in for a long night.
Presents on Christmas morning, then off to Aunt Debbie's for the extended family presents. Jacob returned to Oklahoma for his other side of the family's Christmas, and me and my brother went to see King Kong.
About that...
The stuff between when the mist rolls in around Skull Island to when they finally make it back to the ship was probably the most exciting hour and a half of film I've ever witnessed. Holy crap! Unbelievable!
Everything before that was long and dull as dishwater. Well, the sights and sounds of New York City in the 30's was really cool, but it mostly focused on characters. Jack Black wasn't an embarrassment, exactly. He was Jack Black. He did his schtick, it was about what you'd expect, but still. It looked out of place. Naomi Watts was very good, as was Adrien Brody, but frankly, I'm not there to see a love story. I'm there to see an ape beat up on dinosaurs.
Everything after they make it back to New York City, well, it seemed like this:
ASSISTANT: Sir! Wasn't there supposed to be some point to this?
PETER JACKSON: Oh yeah, something about, um... I dunno, how man destroys things, and, isn't he the real monster and, um... Yeah! That's right! We have to kill off the ape!
I don't want to say it was perfunctory, but it didn't have the same flow as the stuff on the island. Rather than just have more action and let the message find its way out, it seemed like they decided, "Okay, here's the message we're trying to send, and let's see if we can't throw some action at this. Preferably something with Model T's getting smashed! And I want lots of shots of Naomi looking pained! That'll really send this message home!"
And maybe it's just me, but I never quite did get what the message was. It's like when you walk in the room and everyone stops talking. You know something was up, and when you ask what was going on, you just get nervous looks and someone says something cryptic and evasive. That's how I felt about the ending. I know there was some point to it, but I wasn't getting it.
Overall, the first third gets a B-, the middle third gets an A++, and the last third gets a solid B. And because the middle third was so good, I give it three and a half Charlie Heads.
And I should point out that my brother would probably deduct a half a head because they never did show how they got the ape in the boat. I mean, how did they do that? Did they have a crane stowed away that they weren't showing us? And how were they going to row him back to the ship with one rowboat? And how were they supposed to keep his head above water so he didn't drown?
So many questions...
One last thing:
When the movie's over, don't forget to wait through the credits. At the very end, they show the autopsy of King Kong. As they're dissecting the beast, they cut his stomach open, and some guy reaches in and pulls out something. You know what he pulls out?
A sled! A symbol of King Kong's lost innocence!
I just read what might be the most cynical thing I've read in months. I'm aspiring to maintain a more positive outlook (more on that later), and therefore, I'm trying to shy away from such things. But this seems to be a scenario where hard-core cynicism is not only justified but required.
There's more coverage at Asymmetrical Information where the above story is found.
Update: Factoids of the day:
- Average train or bus driver salary: $63,000 per year
- Average station agent (i.e. the person in the cage) salary: $51,000
- Average New Yorker salary: $45,000
- Starting salary for a NYC policeman: $35,000
It's supposedly a true story. Say what you want about Stalin, but that man dreamed big.
The bed was toasty warm, though, but the puppy was having none of this lounging around thing. And the Cub was with the folks knuckling down for finals*. So I had to get out of bed long enough to feed her, and then got back in bed. When I heard the empty bowl skitter across the floor, I jumped up, tossed her outside, and then back to bed. And when I heard her pawing on the door, I jumped up, let her inside, put her in the puppy kennel, and back to bed.
When I finally got around to getting up for good, I decided to hit the basement and hope I could see what the problem was. My furnace was from the 70's, which means it had a pilot light. If I were going to get that started, I'd need one of those fireplace lighters. So, off to do some Christmas shopping.
I got back, took the lighter and flashlight down to the basement and thought I'd see if I could get this running. As I've probably mentioned before, me doing home repairs calls to mind the metaphorical monkeys and a football.
This time I didn't disappoint. I tried to remember how I got the hot water heater started at the folks' place that one time. Something to do with holding down this one button, and doing something or other with the lighter, and voila.
Honest, that was the entirety of my knowledge of how to get a pilot light started.
Suffice it to say, I didn't get it working. I considered calling Steve, my coworker from whom I bought the house, but his number had disappeared from my phone.
Now, I have a new homeowner's policy that, with a $75 deductable, will fix everything in the house for free. But you have to work through them and their contractor, who, as it happens, didn't work on the weekends. Now, I was 80% sure it was just that I couldn't get the freakin' pilot light started (which they don't cover, by the way). But on the off chance I called someone to come out, and it was something else, I'd be on the hook for that guy's visit. So, I went for the safe bet: be miserable until Monday.
So I did all the things you do to get the house a little more warm when you don't have gas but no furnace:
- Close all doors to every room you aren't going to be staying in.
- Turn on the oven.
- Fill up all the sinks and the bathtub with hot water. That one actually makes quite a bit of difference.
- Go to Target and get an oil heater. This model was on sale for $35, and worth every penny.
I was a bit leery about getting something that I was only going to use for a couple days, but the Cub has complained that it gets cold in his room at night, and the basement is very chilly a lot of the time, so it'll continue to be used, I'm sure.
So, with the heater working, the dog and I slept very comfortably Saturday night. Until the morning, when the dog had to go outside again.
My dad came by on Sunday afternoon, determined to get the dern furnace working. And I remembered an old Word document that had Steve's cell number in it. So, while my dad took a look and tried to figure out how the furnace compared to the water heater, I called Steve.
Steve, it should be pointed out, is a mechanical engineer. Like most engineer people, if you ask them a question, they don't just want to answer your question. They want to explain what the problem is and how everything fits into the problem. The advantage being that you don't just get a solution to your problem, you get a solution to every problem like it. And even if he gets some details wrong, if you know what you're trying to accomplish, you can still get the problem solved.
The disadvantage being that the three minute explaination now takes 20 minutes.
So, after listening through the answer, which started: "The pilot light system has two parts, the pilot light itself and a thermocouple. The purpose of the thermocouple is..." I was armed with enough knowledge to try a few things and then call him back with more questions. But then the big picture came into focus, and I not only got it fixed, but now I know how pilot lights work and I'm reasonably confident that I could fix anyone's pilot light†.
Thanks, Steve!
So, the whole house was toasty warm within an hour, and freezing cold an hour after that. Turns out I forgot to put the front panel back on, and the pilot light blew out again. But then, having relit it and putting the panel back on, we were good to go.
And that's my story. Let it suffice to say, I'm feeling much less surly, and I learned a lot about how, um, thermocouples work.
* Yes, finals. He's in sixth grade, but they still give him finals. So while that school of his is overpriced, you do get some value for the money.
† Editor's Note: J will not actually fix your pilot light. Unless you get him dinner. You'd be amazed the stuff you can get J to do if you throw free food into the mix.
When I hear Mannheim F-ing Steamroller for the first time, my heart turns cold, and I think, "F-word. I'm going to have to listen to freakin' Mannheim Steamroller for the next month and a half. F-ing Christmas."
Yes, I hate Mannheim Steamroller so much, it makes me hate Christmas just a little bit by extension. To give you an example, I'd rather listen to Chewbacca singing silent night for a month than have to put up with Mannheim Steamroller any more.
When will it end? Who can put a stop to them?
I know! Two weeks!
This has been deleterious to me spouting off on my usual nonsense for several reasons. First off, when I get home each night, I'm tired. Second, there hasn't been a lot else going on, either with me or with the world around us, and I'm too worn out to drum up something.
But the biggest problem is that this new workout regimen has been all that I've been thinking about lately, and frankly, working out is like dreams. They might be absolutely fascinating to you, but to everyone else, they're probably boring. You know, unless they're just really bizarre. Like if someone has a dream about an invasion of space zucchini and being pushed forward (literally) to negotiate and everything you say, however benign, ends up infuriating them more and more, and in the end you have to run away from a hail of white-hot plasma pickles, that's a dream worth hearing about. Dreams where you run into your high school chemistry teacher at Long John Silvers and you try to talk but for some reason words won't come out, please spare me. And spare everyone else while you're at it.
So, working out is like that. Only there aren't interesting workout stories. You know, unless you're Mr. Olympia, and people want to know how you get so ripped. With me, anything I'd have to say would just be a story about some guy getting sweaty.
But then, when have I ever let being utterly uninteresting get in the way?
After a few weeks of thinking about it and researching, I came across this site called Crossfit. I started reading it off and on for the next month or so, thinking maybe I'd give it a try. And finally, I did.
The way it works is this: you go to crossfit.com. They tell you what workout you'll be doing that day. It's just right there on the main page. No logging in, no nothing. Every day it's something different. Every four days is a rest day. It's just that easy
This system has several advantages and disadvantages. One advantage, it's free. Honest, the guy just posts the Workout of the Day right there on his web page. Along with little java slideshows of what all these exercises are. And a helpful FAQ containing the recommended warmup.
Another advantage is that it's used by people who are in really good shape (SWAT teams, special forces, etc). Which means, if I stick with it, I can be in awesome shape too.
One disadvantage is that it's used by people who are in really good shape. Which means, if you're starting out after spending the last several years sitting on your ass, there's no way you can do it all. The typical workout is something like this:
"Greta"The bottom line means not only are you supposed to do all that, you're supposed to do it as fast as you can.Run six miles
Deadlift a 1979 Chevy Nova, 30 reps.
Run six miles.
Post your time to the comment section.
And that's just the workout. I can't even do the warmup, which requires you to do at least 30 pullups. You know how many pullups I can do? Zero! After working at it for these past two weeks, I can almost bend my elbows.
That being the case, obviously, I have no chance of actually doing the workout. So, I've been easing into it. Instead of running six miles, I'll run one mile. Instead of deadlifting a Chevy Nova, I'll deadlift the bar. And if I can still move after that, I'll run another mile.
I switched gyms to a much bigger, better stocked one. This new gym has one of those rad pullup assist machines, where you step on this lever which subtracts 20 lbs from your weight, so your weak and puny arms can pull your fat ass up. I keep using that, and I keep getting slightly stronger, and subtracting a pound from the lever thingy, until one day, I'll be able to do it all by myself!
Every morning I wake up and there's something sore that wasn't sore when I woke up the day before. Today it was shoulders.
But I'm sticking with it. I think the keys here are the frequency and the variety. I'd heard that you should work out everything twice a week. Which is fine, as far as it goes. "I'll go to the gym Mondays and Thursdays." Simple as that, right? But then one Thursday rolls around and something comes up, or you just don't feel like it. Next thing you know, you haven't been there for weeks.
With this regimen, I end up going to the gym pretty much every day, so it's becoming part of my routine. Go home, let Charlie out, change into my gym clothes, and hit the gym.
And since there's a different workout every day, there's something different going on every day. A few days ago, I had to do something called the "Snatch Balance", which I'd never even heard of*. I'm hoping once the novelty of these bizarre exercises wears off, I'll have a good head of steam behind me.
Anyway, that's all I have to say about working out for now. I've finally found something I can stick with, and I'm excited, but I'm exhausted as well.
* Disappointingly, it doesn't involve dating two women at once.
They say you should never blame the victim. With all due respect that is both bladerdash and poppycock. Since it all depends on what the victim was up to. There's a big difference between a guy who gets a bottle smashed over his head because some drunk guy mistakenly assumed he was looking at his girlfriend, and some guy who gets a bottle smashed over his head because he suggested that someone's girlfriend is dressed like a whore. I don't think anything merits getting a bottle to the noggin, but I wouldn't have a lot of sympathy for the guy in the latter scenario.
Everything I've read seems to indicate that the Lebenese Muslims who were the focus of the rioting would probably fall closer to that second category. Sure, they didn't do anyting that merited getting attacked by a mob of drunken beach trash (a term which probably has a lot more weight in Australia).
But then, when was the last time you heard about someone being gang raped in this country? Apparently they're a lot more frequent in Australia, and they aren't being perpetrated by Paul Hogan and Yahoo Serious. Or, picture yourself (if you're female) or someone you care about (if you aren't) in this scenario:
You're working on your tan when the sun is blocked out. You look up and there are four "youths" "apparently of Middle Eastern descent" blocking out the sun with a look that doesn't seem to be saying "Don't mind me, just minding my own business."
"Come on," says one of them. "She's not worth doing 55 years for." (This being a reference to the prison term for gang rape.)
This is serious stuff. But it gets to the bigger problem.
Australians are just like Americans in this respect: they don't want anyone to think that they're racist. Well, most of them, at least. And the Australian mulitcultural aparatus is just as rampant there as it is here. Basically saying anything negative about any race (except the Anglo-Saxon one, of course) will get you branded a racist and banished from polite society.
The only problem is, what if people have (in their mind) serious concerns about other races? It doesn't matter if they aren't serious to you, just that they're serious to them.
If you banish all complaints about other races from polite society, if people still have complaints, eventually they'll just end up expressing them in impolite ways.
Another similarity with America: Australia needs a dialog about race. But they need a real one. Not the one they're getting, where every minority group says what a horrible bunch of people white Australians are, and white Australians say, "Yeah, sorry about that".
This guy gets it about right. A quote:
I do not embrace multiculturalism, as such, because I do not believe all cultures are compatible with non-discriminatory liberalism. I prefer a multi-ethnic, non-racial society, which has at its core a canon of values that include racial and gender equality.I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law.
Some multicultural theorists will squawk and say that I prefer only a soft multiculturalism (if they insist on calling it that) that does not offend western liberal values. They would be spot on. My acceptance ends when the assault on the liberality of society itself begins.
As for the rest of you suckers -- assuming there are any -- you're SOL.
As for the responses, they fell roughly half and half between those who like the wacky misadventures of Famous J and those who like the links to random crap I've stumbled upon. Both of which, as it happens, account for about half the stuff on here. Therefore, I suppose I'll keep writing about whatever I decide to write about, and half of you will like it and the other half won't.
This Global Warming thing fits the definition of a pseudoscience to a T. A pseudoscience is something that can't be disproven, i.e. you can't set up an experiment to show that it's false.
Newton's second law is actual science: force = mass * acceleration. You can disprove this. You toss a bunch of masses at certain accelerations at each other, and measure their forces. If the force doesn't equal what it ought to, the law has been disproven*.
A wishing well would be an example pseudoscience. Let's say I have a wishing well, and I make the claim that if you drop money into the wishing well, and your heart is pure and your intentions are good, your wish will come true. I further add that the likelihood of your wish coming true increases with the amount of money you toss in there.
There would be no experiment that could disprove that my wishing well works. It's not enough for you to toss in a dollar, make a wish, and it doesn't come true. "Aha!" I would counter. "Your wish was selfish, and therefore your intentions were not good." Or, if your wish were purely altruistic, I could claim, "Well, sure your intentions were good, but your heart wasn't pure. What have you been up to, lately, hmm?"
So, that's about where we are with global warming. If it's hot outside, that's evidence for global warming. If it's cold outside, that's also evidence for global warming. I suppose the only thing that might disprove global warming would be if the temperature stays the same year after year. But it never does. There are always some years that are warmer or colder than others. And if it's supposedly a global phenomenon, you only have to point to one part of the globe that's having problems.
Remember back in August 2003, when a heat wave hit France and something like 15,000 elderly people died? And in September, once everyone got back from vacation, and carted all the bodies off, they started jumping up and down and screaming about how their blood was on Bush's hands for his failure to sign on to that Kyoto boondoggle?
I remember. I also remember that in St. Louis, that was the mildest summer on record. I believe for the entirety of August, the temperature didn't get above 95. It was just beautiful. It was like summer never happened, we just had a long, luxurious 7 month spring.
Somehow, nobody was talking about how nice things were in St. Louis, and how much we were loving life. All anyone wanted to do was point at Paris and say "See! This proves that global warming is real and that it's Chimpy Bushitler's fault!"
I'm not saying that there isn't something going on. It's entirely possible that man-made climate change is real, is happening, and we could be doing more about it. But when they can't even agree on something basic like whether global warming is supposed to make things warmer or colder, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that these people have no idea what they're talking about. And don't even get me started on the people blaming the tsunami on global warming.
Anyway, since we're now supposed to believe that any kind of bad weather is the fault of global warming, assumably any kind of good weather would also be because of global warming. If it's warm in the winter, it's because global warming heated up the atmosphere and made it pleasant. If it's cool in the summer, it's because global warming shut down the gulf stream, so we don't get all that overheated air from the Gulf of Mexico.
And if it's pleasant in the spring and fall, well, that's just how God intended things to be. Global warming doesn't get credit for that.
Just something to keep in mind.
* It actually has been disproven, but they've declared it "close enough for government work".
This is a letter from Dan E., formerly of Carson City, NV ("Where Dreams Go To Die™"), currently of the STL.
your web site says your are a philosopher..... please expand......I call myself a philosopher because, well, because there's no barrier to entry. There's no philosophical equivalent of the AMA. There's no Philosophy Bar you have to pass. Anyone can claim they're one, and there's nobody to stop you.I understand the part of Okie, writer of software, etc, but not the part about philosopher.
Whether or not that claim is plausible is a seperate issue. "Philosopher", based on its roots, just means "Lover of Wisdom", or, more colloquially, "Guy Who Likes Thinking About Stuff". And that guy is me.
But I think it's the being funny thing that I like the best. I like that way better than the self-delusional thing. But, like the engineer I am, if there's something I like, something I use, I have this insatiable desire to figure out how it works. Possibly by taking it apart.
I feel that way about humor. I like telling jokes and recounting wacky anecdotes from my life, often involving my ass. But I often find myself wanting to know why something is funny. What about that collection of ideas and the delivery thereof made humor spring forth unto the world?
(And don't count out the delivery part of it. If you want a scientific demonstration of the importance of delivery, have me and my mother tell the same joke.)
Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, is a very funny man. And he's got a blog. Which is higly entertaining. But also, it's insightful.
Like this entry here, where he discusses his formula for humor, the 2-of-6 rule, where everything humorous contains at least two out of these six elements:
Cute (as in kids and animals)
Naughty
Bizarre
Clever
Recognizable (You’ve been there)
Cruel
Next time you laugh at something, try to figure out which of those six things just happened.
But he doesn't just stop there. Since just telling people how to be funny should be like t-ball for him, since that's, like, all he does for a living.
He also gives pointers on how to dance, and how to engage in successful internet debating. A-like-a so:
1. Turn someone’s generality into an absolute. For example, if someone makes a general statement that Americans celebrate Christmas, point out that some people are Jewish and so anyone who thinks that ALL Americans celebrate Christmas is stupid. (Bonus points for accusing the person of being anti-Semitic.)Worth reading.
Update: As I was drifting off to sleep last night, I decided that there has to be a bit more to it than the 2-of-6 thing. After all Family Circus has been 2-of-6 for decades, those two being cute (arguably) and recognizable ("my grandkids do the same thing!") and yet, it hasn't been funny to anyone not suffering severe senility since 1987.
(Tee hee! I said "poppycock"!)
Thus, if you haven't mailed to salivatingdog thelittleatsign gmail by this Friday, you're out of luck. And you'll see people strutting around, their reader appreciation gifts tucked under their arms, looking like the Queen of Sheba. Especially Dan. Who kind of looks like the Queen of Sheba most the time anyway.
And there you'll be, wailing and gnashing your teeth.
Don't let this happen to you! Send me your address and something I wrote that you like, while you still can!
I think it's important to keep your eye on the ball. To make sure we all understand the real important stuff here. For instance: The McRib is back!
I don't know how long the McRib has been back. Maybe it's been back for quite a while and I just missed it, which is easy to do when you watch about three hours of live TV a week. But I'm ready for it now!
There's just something about the McRib. Maybe it's the nostalgia. I remember when they unveiled it, in 1981 or so. And unlike the McDLT, I actually liked it.
Whatever it is, it's not the best barbeque that can be found by a long shot. In fact, if they were a permanent fixture on the menu, I'd probably rarely get them. But since they only come out every once in a while, I get them when they're there, since there's no telling when they'll be back. (Which, I'm sure means that I'm doing exactly what the marketing people hope I'm doing.)
Now I find out that they're planning to pull the plug on the McRib forever! I'm shocked! I'm horrified! What are the nation's boneless pig farmers going to do now?
Alas, all things must come to an end sometime. Although, you could sign a petition or something. Not that it'll do any good. McDonald's didn't go from being an unstoppable fast-food juggernaut to being the mediocrity it is now by listening to customers.
But mostly -- how's this for irony? -- the page is actually run by McDonalds. (If you squint at the bottom, it says "© McDonald's") Since this no doubt was the brainchild of the same suits who are canning the McRib, I suspect the petition results will end up in the circular file.
Thus, the handwriting is on the wall for the McRib. I guess all I can really do is make sure I get as much tangy boneless goodness as I can before it all goes away forever.
P.S. Corporate propaganda or not, check out the Boneless Pig Farmers Association of America page. Note especially their page on the boneless pig. Very pithy.
I'm going to be giving myself a raise at the begining of the year in the form of withholding less money in taxes, but that's not going to do me any good until I stash some money in a savings account.
So, I got one. It was utterly terrifying. Here's how it worked:
I decided that I'd get one of those Capital One cards, because if I didn't, I wouldn't hear the end of it from someone. You know who you are. I figured I'd wait until I got a piece of junk mail from them, which show up on average four times a week. I got one just today.
I opened the mail, it sent me to a web site. I enter the -- what'd they call it? Invitation code? -- the code thingy and the other code thingy. Then I filled out my address, my income, and the fact that I own, rather than rent.
Bam! Ten seconds later, literally, I have a credit card. They said, "Hey, you know, we can give you your credit card number like right now, if you want. You can start overextending yourself financially right this instant!"
I said, "Jeez, no!", and they said, "That's okay. We'll be sending you your potential financial ruin within 7 to 10 days."
The whole thing took less than three minutes. Like I said, terrifying.
What's more, when you add up the whole blizard of junk mail I get, I'm sure I'm being offered tens of thousands of dollars of credit every week.
God, it's no wonder Americans spend 105% of what they earn each year. I'm content living a relatively spartan existence. Bologna sandwiches for lunch, the same TV I've had since 1995, a new pants every six months, which retires whichever of the four pairs of pants I own that's the most worn out. And despite this, and despite the fact that I make pretty good money, I'm still broke all the time.
Then I get these pieces of mail saying, "Live the good life now! You know you want to!" And I do! There's all kinds of things I'd like. For starters, maybe more than four pairs of pants. A tricked out Apple Powerbook. Satellite TV.
It all comes down to four words that too few of us can say: "I can't afford that." I've been been in dire financial straits before, and I don't ever want to be there again. It's nothing like being broke. It's like the difference between having a sniffle and having pneumonia.
So, when this card shows up, I'm going to drive it to the folks' place, give it to my mum and tell her to hide it from me. And meet me at the mechanics with it if anything comes up.
But still. Pray for me. Please, God, pray for me.
