Getting Better All the Time 3.18

My day at work

It must be my double-plus-good-ultra-charm that brings people to confide in me.
Sometimes it makes me wonder, sometimes it makes me sad.

First, someone came up to me and started talking to me about the Iraq war and why it’s illegal. This is because of a young Lt. Watada.

I kinda like political arguments, usually I think they’re fun if people don’t get emotionally involved. But ya see, here’s the thing people get emotionally involved. I don’t think that the office is the best place to have a debate, especially since I’m like, supposed to be working and stuff. That was one of the few nice things about working in a dorm kitchen, the students love to BS. And, ya don’t get in trouble for talking if you’re still flipping the burgers.
But here’s the other thing. I’m not so much the MasterDebator. I can think better if I’ve got time to think it over. I mean look at how sloppy the writing is in this blog, in conversation there’s more “uh” … “yeah, but” and fewer footnotes/references. I consol myself for lack of oratory prowess, by thinking that the great thinkers of history are usually known for their writings, not for their speeches. Well, except for Jesus, He didn’t write anything. (Unless Dan Brown knows something that I don’t.)
Anywho…as you can probably tell, I don’t believe that the current war in Iraq is illegal. Yes, it seems to be horribly mismanaged. Yes, I agree that not following the Geneva Convention for “enemy combatants” is foolish and wrong. But I also think the world is a better place with Saddam in a jail cell, I’m sure the Kurds agree with me.
I think if people truly believed in the whole civil disobedience thing, I think they would be like Thoreau and not pay their taxes. That’s sticking it to The Man. Cuz we all know that we need tax money to run a war. (Insert rant about runaway spending by stoopid Republican Congress. What about the balanced budget Newt promised??)

Second, I’m back up for our receptionist. So I got the call. The caller told me he was a scientist, and had a DVM & PhD. Then he explained that he had a talking dog.

I took the call with a straight face. Once, when the caller asked if I thought he was crazy, I professionally responded, “well, I am a bit skeptical.” He answered that was understandable.
After the call I checked. The last name & phone number matched the WhitePages. On PubMed someone with same last name & same first initials has published four articles in peer reviewed journals.

Probably, it was a nice old guy, who has gone a bit off his rocker. Which kinda makes me sad for thinking this is funny. What will it be like when I go crazy?
Erdos said that the steps of losing your mind are:
1) you forget to zip up
2) you forget to zip down
3) you forget your theorems
Luckily, I only know the Pythagorean Theorem, so that should be easy to remember. Unless, I used to know more theorems. Oh, no.

How could we tell if a dog could talk?
I’ve been thinking about this. Allegedly the dog can talk, but let’s not assume in perfect human. What if only the trainer could understand the dog. How smart is the average dog?
First, put dog & trainer in separate rooms, but have it so that the trainer can still hear (or even see – if dog uses sign language) the dog. Ask the dog questions, but don’t let trainer know questions. Then trainer translates.
Then if trainer translates, “I like my toast done on one side,” and unbeknownst to the trainer the question was, “what’s your favorite Sting lyric?” then I would say, looks like the dog can talk.
But, what if the questioner is in on the scam with the trainer? Never can be too sure. Heck, the trainer and the questioner might even have a psychic connection, or the trainer might have super hearing. And remember, we only want to know, can the dog talk?
Chance. Flip a coin. Dog calls it when dog sees the result. Trainer doesn’t see result. By random chance, the trainer should be correct 50%. So, if the dog can talk to trainer, and the dog can tell the difference between heads & tails, then the percent correct should be much higher. (Once again, how smart are dogs?)
But just to be on the safe side, you better enclose the coin flipping area with lead, just in case the trainer has x-ray vision.

This goes along the lines of people claiming to talk to super-intelligent aliens, who only ever seem to give us the wisdom of platitudes, such as “stop war.” Seriously, if you can travel across the galaxy, show me a little something. What is a question that humans can ask, that we don’t know the answer to, but that we can quickly check if the answer is correct?

move over Ansel

I got a new favorite photographer.
Her name is Zoe.
She works with a camera phone.

Gig #2 recap

well, yesterday was the Lu'au...

I cooked up some pre-marinated Costco pork and then tossed it on the smoker for a bit. The tasty bit for me was using the dripping for cooking up some cabbage. Food preperation, I took the lazy route.

Me & Blub coerced people into letting us play music.

"Ballard Lu'au" Blub wrote that song on Thursday, it was a fun way to start our performance, AND a thank you song to the host. The song really relaxed me.

"CreequeAlley" by the Momas & the Poppas
"Cry Baby Cry" by the Beattles.
Both of these songs have lots of non-sense verses, lots of work for our poor singer to memorize the songs. And in case you were wondering, yes it is easy to mix up Sophmore & Swathmore. Fortunately, I don't think anyone actually knows all the lyrics. So, I will say that she nailed it. I was happy, the performance was actually the best I've ever played "CryBabyCry".

(I tell you what, we had a rehearsal on Friday. And we were terrible. Nothing worked. )

Then we played the 3 songs of hers that we know.
"Silverspoon Papercup"
"Laundry Room Movies"
"Not Picasso"
In general, we were happy with our performance. (Naturally we'll nitpick)
I don't think I looked at the audience once.

accomplish-mints

So, one of the great things about cleaning out the shed, is sometimes, you can convince your friends to take your junk. Ha-ha!

today I:
a) rehearsed w/ Blub, because we have a gig at an upcoming Lu'au.
b) cleaned some junk out of shed & foisted it off on my boss
c) got my better half to clean some junk out of a closet & foised it off on my boss
d) fixed a piece of furniture
e) finally transplanted some strawberries
f) got the smoker prepped for the Lu'au

It almost makes up for icky yesterday.

DANG-IT....I just checked. I thought we had some yummy minty-green chocolate chip mint ice-cream. (Hence the title of this entry.) But no.
:-(
Looks like I'll have to reward myself with rocky-road icecream.

Death to me

SnarkyKat is trying to kill me.

I don’t know why. Maybe it because I forced SK to play Dungeon’s & Dragons as a half-elf druid. Anyway, SK said a while ago, “Hey, I wanna run a half-marathon. Wanna join me?” Knowing that I am an idiot and will try and do some type of crazy athletic event, just to fool myself into thinking that I’m an athlete.

We all know that people only run long distance because a) they are paranoid and think a lion is slowly chasing them for 10 miles, b) they want a lettermen’s jacket and they can’t play a real sport, c) they are too stupid to stop. For me it’s a combination of A & C.

Today, I didn’t finish our 10-mile training run. Discomfort in my knees. All the while I was thinking, “winner’s don’t quit”. But, heck, it’s just a training run, no sense injuring myself with less than a month left. Aerobically I felt fine. Very frustrating.

Speaking of frustration, I lost a few “curmudgeon points” today and joined the latter part of the 20th century. I finally was coerced, literally kicking and screaming I might add, into get a stoopid cell-phone. Grumble. I really don’t like them. They are too small, the rings are sucky, the sound quality sucks, I don’t really even use the phone anyway. I would much rather communicate with people the way God intends. E-mail and passenger pidgeon.

Speaking of things being better back in the old days. I visited the new library by the mall today. What the heck!! Where are the books? Seriously, my dungeon has more books/square foot than that place. Sure, there are computers, and comfy chairs, but the few bookshelves are half-empty. (Yes, Empty.) The library is someplace that is supposed to have so many books, that you just get lost in the aisles, and stumble upon crazy stuff that just happens to be somewhere because of Dewey, things you would never even consider looking for. I do like Amazon, and it’s “you might like this…other people looked at this” But the library is supposed to be a bit more random. And have OLD books. I might be interested in cutting edge textile fashion from 1943. I tell you what, kids today with their googling and interweb are missing some of the fun of getting lost in the stacks, or lost in a dictionary. You see, when you search on the ‘puter, you can follow the chain of connecting thoughts. Or it is something you asked for. You choose how you get to your final destination. With a big old stack of library, you look for something, and if you turn left, there are random books. A vote for libraries, is a vote for chaos. That’ll be my slogan.

Still trying to get my curmudgeon on…why the heck do people have to always be on the cell phones? Seriously. Ride the bus in silence. Walk around the lake with just your thoughts. Back in my day people weren’t going on their paddleboat rides with their telegraphs, I tell you what.