The Monkey's Typewriter

I'll Take The Pork

2008-10-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry about that, everyone. I've been extremely busy as I've started taking classes again. I apologize for letting my blog production wane so dramatically. Hopefully I'll be back to getting a periodic flow of writing going, though I may have to take another month off as I try to participate in my first NaNoWriMo.

So what am I going to talk about? Of course, the economy. No one's going to start shutting up about it, so I might as well start talking about it. As I write this on Friday, I see that the Dow is hovering close to 8,300 points. I could point out that the S&P 500, a more reliable index, is at 880, it's lowest since 2003, but who gives a shit when the Dow has such a more massive number? Anyway, the point is the economy blows right now, and no one is going to stop talking about it.

I'm reminded of the stock crisis of 1987 (still the biggest one-day percentage loss in history.) I was three at the time, so I didn't even learn of it until high school. You try talking to your toddlers about stock woes. I bet you won't get very far before you have to suspend your dialogue in order to prevent them from sticking something in their nose.

Remember American Psycho? There's a film (and supposedly, book) that made light of the Wall Street greed and materialism of the 80's that was so characteristic of an entire generation. Thank God we've moved on as a society. Wait a minute, we haven't. The victims of this huge financial mess are the the same ones who are the essential catalyst for the reaction - the consumers who have thrived on easy credit only to now realize that there are repercussions for not paying up.

Greed is despicable, surely, and it's almost like a drug. A drug in which I've partaken a few times myself. I mean check out this new coat I bought. But there are times when that dirty, stinky, sweaty cash and all the excess for its own sake that money brings truly make you proud to be a human being.

There's a restaurant in Japan. (Right there, see? You know this is going to be good.) Specifically, it's in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. Actually, to be more accurate, it's a very exclusive club. Membership in said club requires that you have a ¥20M (or $175K) salary. And one visit to the members-only restaurant can cost up to ¥800K ($7,000). The menu comprises chicken, dog, pig or goat... not unreasonable choices for Eastern dining. After you make your choice, they bring you a corresponding live animal of either sex for you to fuck. And that's taken literally. You actually have sex with it. When you're done, the beast is slaughtered, cooked, and served to your table.

Are you absorbing the images that your mind is creating right now? Isn't there something - I don't know - poetic about the whole thing? Screwing an animal and then eating it just a short while later? What a primitive and carnal experience for members of only the highest society. I think that's irony at its peak, ladies and gentlemen.

The article is more than a year old, and depending on the original source, it may not be wholly accurate. But I hope it's true, because its message resounds even more today. This shows that money can buy anything, and those who have it will show no hesitation to prove it. Greed affects us all, from the people who can eat prostitute pigs to those who have merely maxed out their credit cards. And if you put it all into perspective, it all comes down to what you can afford in the end. I think Patrick Bateman would be impressed.

Midnight Snack

2008-09-23T00:19:00.001-04:00

If you happen to be making a delicious banana milkshake, then don't do what I did and drink it in bed. If you spill a few drops on your sheets, then it looks like you've been up to something else entirely.

Week Off

2008-08-26T22:57:00.001-04:00

I know, I know, there was no new post this morning. Gimme a break - I'm settling in to the idea that I'm going to be a grad student taking classes again.

Regarding Advertisements

2008-08-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

So if you're a loyal reader (and judging by the absolute overflow of comments I keep getting, you're not) you may have noticed that there are now a bunch of ads on the site, in between blog posts. They're part of an experiment to see whether I can get any sort of income from this site. That's right, I actually get a small amount of monetary credit when you click on these various ads from Google. So while I am expressly prohibited from encouraging anyone to click on various harmless, good-natured advertisements, I do promote you readers (who, again, don't exist) putting 2 and 2 together, so to speak.

Olympic Rings

2008-08-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

One of the recurring themes on this blog, as you might have noticed, is my neverending inability to get laid. It may be exaggerated to some degree for humor's sake, but I would say it's a pretty safe bet that most people my age have had sex with way more people than I have.

Then I read this. (Oddly enough, it's not posted under "Sports" but rather "Entertainment.")

Have you read it yet? Good.

So just to sum up, China has graciously provided a tenth of a million condoms to the world's Olympic athletes, of which there are ten and a half thousand. If this seems like overkill, it surprisingly isn't. Evidently a supply of 70,000 in Sydney during the 2000 games wasn't enough. Doing rough math, this is roughly ten condoms per athlete, or up to twenty per sexual encounter, if we're assuming it's possible that the athletes could be fucking each other, rather than random people on the street. Furthermore, we may be able to assume that some of these athletes may be married, and some of that subset might want to have children, thereby further reducing the population of athletes who would be using these condoms. Conclusion: Olympic athletes are the most effective ass-getters in the world, and they're horny as all hell.

I guess this isn't too much of a surprise, given that their bodies are constantly engaged in activity. I've recently started running, and I can affirm that regular physical activity has serious effects on all aspects of your body. For example, it has manifested mental benefits as I find I'm far less likely to get depressed. And yes, it also tends to increase your sex drive. Of course, that will happen with any sort of deviation from a lifestyle wherein you're sitting on your ass alone for all sixteen hours you're awake, watching baseball, reading, and playing video games.

Wait a minute... Now, I'm all for practicing safe sex and preventing the spread of HIV. That's clearly the driving motive behind this condom-fest and there's nothing wrong with that. But these are Olympians, the cream of the crop and the best of the best with regards to human physical form. And we're preventing them from procreating? Why not let them go all out and get a future race of superhumans? And before you call me a crazy deviant who's been studying Nazi breeding tactics, realize that this group includes members of all the cultures of the world! You know why Brazilians are so super-sexy? It's because they're the product of a natural process of massive intercultural breeding. Brazil's got the best genes from all around the world. Talk about a melting pot.

So I say make your decisions with great care. Perhaps, Olympians, you're of the opinion that you should set a great example by exercising safe sex and demonstrating the value of responsible thinking. Or perhaps you want to make an equally informed decision by electing to attempt reproduction with your significant Olympian other and produce the world's next ~~master~~ exceptional race. I see you're thinking really hard. Maybe I should take over for you until you've made your decision. I have some extra condoms of my own since I got that last Harry Potter book.

Africa Hef and the Kangaroos

2008-08-12T09:00:00.002-04:00

During my week spent diligently attending to the needs of video games and baseball message boards, I neglected to write an article for this blog, and now it's only 12 hours until publishing time. Fortunately for me, I was able to turn to my most trusted news source, the BBC, to give me news that you probably won't find anywhere else. And for good reason.

In the first instance, we have a bit of advice from an 84 year old man in Nigeria. Quite succinctly put, it's a simple recommendation: don't marry eighty-six women. The former teacher and spiritual leader has admitted that he's superhuman, acknowledging that only God's help has allowed him to "control" his eighty-six wives and "at least" 170 children. I'm speechless. Who could have ever imagined that a self-described religious person could have built his own personal mini-empire on polygamy and massive procreation? Oh yeah, I knew that sounded familiar.

However, I'm much more willing to ignore the case of Mr. Bello Abubakar. First, just look at a picture of the guy - he looks dead tired, and obviously for good reason. Second, there has been no media frenzy regarding a possibly unjust raid on his "compound" the way there was with the Texas FLDS raid in April. Watching the effects of that raid truly made me horrified and ashamed. Mostly because I thought everyone in this country had long since burned those clothes.

But all is not bleak for those who want to save the world by leaving polygamy behind and rallying together to save the planet. Just eat more kangaroos. Or so says Dr. George Wilson, of the Australian Wildlife Services. Meanwhile, minimal research on my part led me to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., which indicates that in 2002, the United States alone consumed 40 million tons of meat. Granted, that's probably not all beef and mutton. Still, assuming that the average kangaroo might weigh 100 pounds - and not all of that is usable meat, I'd imagine - that would mean we'd need to perhaps slaughter 800 million kangaroos in this country alone to replace our existing red meat. If someone in the U.S. plans on executing this plan, the fact that kangaroos are not native to the States is going to lead to the Australians making a killing in exports. (Pun most definitely intended.)

I guess I don't really have any further commentary beyond that it seems a little absurd to start the factory farming of kangaroos. And a simple word count at this point reveals that I'm only barely above four hundred, which makes this a pathetic post from a purely quantitative viewpoint. I could, at this point, begin to believe that I've let down my adoring public. But life is too short (especially if you're a kangaroo nowadays) to think negatively. Instead, I should think happy thoughts and look on all the positives in life. One that immediately jumps to mind is that I don't have eighty-six wives. If I had to devote all my attention to them, what would my poor video games and baseball message boards do without me?

Snip Snip

2008-08-08T03:14:00.003-04:00

Every time I have to go to Wal-Mart, I want to treat myself to a vasectomy. That way, there would be no way that I, too, would help inflict the punishment on the rest of the world that is children. Why can't stupid people - the ones who are procreating so much - think this way?

And while I'm at it, why is it that no kids ever know how to shut the hell up? I suppose kids will be kids, but if that's the case, don't bring them to a place where I could potentially be.

Oh wait, I don't get laid regularly anyway, so I suppose that's not that much of an issue.

Number of the Sheikh

2008-08-05T09:00:00.002-04:00

There's no shortage of things I could be talking about right now. I could mention the fact that George W. Bush, self-proclaimed champion of the men and women in uniform, has decided to go ahead and reward one with his favorite gift to give in the whole wide world, a state execution. Or I could be talking about the recent move by the House to make the first apology on behalf of the federal government for slavery. But these stories are both on CNN, and anyone could have heard about them. Instead, I'm going to turn to Slate, the online magazine that I read whenever I need to feel just a little bit more pretentious. There's an article on Slate that gives us an insight as to how the youth of the Middle East are taking their destinies into their own hands. They're doing it the same way we did it in 1985 - by listening to heavy metal.

While really a long advertisement for a new book by Mark Levine, the article does offer some fresh perspective on life as a dissident in the Middle East. Apparently, the overwhelming sentiment in the Middle East is dissatisfaction with authoritarian government. I can imagine that this is pretty widespread. I became friends with one guy from Iran who was fiercely opposed to his own government, with a passion even stronger than my distaste for any neo-conservative elements here in the U.S. (And I am convinced, by the way, that if the Evangelical Christians rise to sufficient levels of governmental power, then we will have become our own evil terrorist state.) He even claimed that all the kids in Iran wear George Bush T-shirts as a blatant bird-flip to the powers that be.

So wearing t-shirts that worship Satan is really not much of a stretch for the youth of the Middle East - or at least Iran - is it? Haha, of course I'm being jocular - I know that not all heavy metal worships Satan. In fact, many music that's assumed to be the devil's music is in fact anything but. For example, the members of Iron Maiden - penners of the hit "Number of the Beast" - are all devout Christians. Then you have the Norwegian Death Metal bands, one of which made necklaces out of the skull fragments of their former lead singer, who shot himself.

But anyway, this is all distracting from the fact that heavy metal is the music of nerds. Especially in the 80's, when Conan the Barbarian and Dungeons & Dragons were especially prevalent. If you don't believe me, then take a look at your average metal fan today. If you can't imagine them in a comic store, then you're not looking hard enough. Personally, I love metal. I don't know most of it, but I do have respect for it. There's an inherent attitude that disregards any criticism of the social outcast status that the music seems to cause (or reflect) in its listeners. True fans of metal care nothing about the outside world's perceptions and take complete ownership of their music.

And that is the spirit that the youth of the Middle East should embrace. It's what made the 60's cool, and it's what's made metal cool. If emo music were cool, it would be what would help make emo music cool. The youth in the Middle East are in a unique position to potentially incite a social revolution through music, and I believe that they should take full advantage of the fact. Just ditch the Bush t-shirts and open up a comic store instead.

Music For Stupid People

2008-07-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

Last week, Ryan offered me a bit of news from about this time last year that has led me to discover the efforts of one Virgil Griffith. His website, by the way, is at http://virgil.gr/. If he happens to stumble upon this blog entry, all I can say is, I feel your pain. Best of luck with grad school, my brother in arms. Anyway, he wrote a bit of software that tracks the sources of Wikipedia edits. His little experiment revealed that many major companies had edited their own Wikipedia pages. Companies such as Exxon-Mobil, Pepsi, and Diebold all made edits to their pages that removed undesirable information from being displayed.

Originally, I was planning on doing a long commentary on the state of quality control on Wikipedia. I was even going to cite the recent incident wherein my friend, an undergraduate engineer, found an error in a section on vortex tubes and tried to rectify it. But as everyone knows, I'm easily distracted.

On Mr. Griffith's site, he has a feature entitled Music That Makes You Dumb. By scanning Facebook for numerous schools and their listed Top 10 music interests, he was able to list the top 133 musical interests on Facebook and their associated average SAT scores. The results are pretty interesting.

As I would have guessed, the lowest SAT scores are associated with Rap or R&B artists - Lil Wayne and Beyonce, for example. However, it's not necessarily a racial divide, as a range of "Emo" artists such as The Used and My Chemical Romance are close behind.* There were also your standard expectations at the higher end of the SAT spectrum, with bands such as Radiohead, Sufjan Stevens, and really all of the "Indie" genre, which did the best in terms of scores. What I loved to see, though, was that there was only one Classical composer to make the list - none other than my main man, Beethoven. He actually blows everyone else out of the water, with 120 points over the second-place Mr. Stevens. I'm popping in my copy of the 9th Symphony as I type.

Another interesting project to note from Mr. Virgil's site is essentially the same thing using favorite books instead of favorite music. In that case, Erotica and African-American literature rank on the lower ends of the spectrum - followed, of course, by religious books. The highest-ranking genre comprises Classics (topped, oddly enough, by Lolita), followed by Philosophy and Science Fiction (one of the highest-ranking books in that genre being Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle).

Of course, for me, that's just an interesting aside. Anyone who knows me knows that I care much more about the results of the music study. If I ever have kids - and I'll try not to for the sake of humanity, but you never know - I will be sure to point them to this study if they start to listen to Rap music. Of course, that assumes that Rap will still be popular at that point in the future. God forbid "Emo" - a much more depraved and mindless genre as of late - surpasses it in popularity. Whatever genre it happens to be, I refuse to pass on the myth that masturbation will make you blind. Far more important to me is the belief - however baseless - that listening shitty music will make you stupid. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get a stronger prescription for my eyeglasses.

* - I'm using quotes here, because I've long been against the use of the "Emo" label to describe whatever you'd call this music. True Emo was an evolution of the Hardcore scene of the 1980's Washington, D.C. area. It sounds nothing like what these bands today are putting out. The so-called Emo music of today is really an overly-dark version of the Bubblegum Pop paradigm. I therefore dub it "Licorice Pop." If this phrase gets used by music journalists, just remember you read it here first.

Quip

2008-07-26T02:42:00.003-04:00

Maybe I've been paying too much attention to Vonnegut or Bill Hicks, but I came up with this little observation:

Sex is the ultimate joke of the human species. If everyone were to devote their time and energy to promoting love and sexual congress, I think we'd be a heck of a lot closer to achieving world peace. But of course, the cruel joke is that it would ultimately lead to procreation, meaning new lives and the perpetuation of humanity's problems anyway.

Polly Want a Lift

2008-07-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

It being an election year, most so-called journalism is preoccupied with producing reasons for you to believe that we're on a painfully slow descent into Hell. (Author's note: Hell is capitalized out of respect for Satan.) If you're registered to vote and feeling like shit, then thanks for sticking to the plan. In refusing to conform to the depression that I feel most people in the world would rather I experience, I've come across a rather uplifting article. And by uplifting, I don't mean "heartwarming and inspirational" nearly as much as I mean "bizarre and funny." Your reactions may differ.

As usual, I'm going to summarize the article, assuming that you're too lazy to click on the link (this helps drive up my word count and correspondingly makes me feel more productive). Yosuke, a red-tailed African Grey parrot in Japan, was captured by police and taken to an animal care shelter. Having been taught to say its name and the address of its owner, Yosuke was eventually transported back home after two weeks. The article is not a very detailed story, but it gives you a rough idea of what transpired. It also mentions that the species, considered one of the most intelligent birds, is believed by experts to possess the cognitive abilities of a six-year old human. So if anyone reading this is a parent of a toddler, congratulations; your child is not yet smarter than a parrot. It's something to strive towards.

Come to think of it, this parrot is really smart. Remember reading that book, The Incredible Journey? Man, those animals were stupid. They didn't realize that if you just reveal your name and home address, most people - out of an insane love for animals that often exceeds their love for other humans - will give you a free ride home, not even asking for half the gas money in return.

Then again, perhaps that's only the case in Japan. It's a pretty bizarre country. If you need proof, just re-read the article. The parrot was originally captured after a woman saw it sitting on a fence and called the police. First, why the hell would you call the police regarding a bird sitting on a fence? In America (meaning only the United States thereof) we're too busy concerned with the possibility of terrorists raping gonorrhea into our gasoline to be worried about a mere bird - however odd-looking - sitting on a fence. I highly doubt we'd even be looking outside to notice it.

Even more bizarre is that the police apprehended the bird, for whatever reason. I guess it was all in the name of animal control, but imagine if you called the police with avian issues in this country. The best possible reaction you could hope for is a stifled chuckle and a transfer to animal control. I'll even bet that if you speculated that the bird was African American, you wouldn't get a reaction, as bird talons are ill-suited to operate firearms. I remember the news last month of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo. I'm sure that if this occurred in the United States, it would be a massacre with an automated weapon, and I'd probably have forgotten about it by now.

Both the fact that the police have time to respond to bird sightings and that a knifing spree is the biggest crime event the country has seen in a few years is reassuring about life in Japan. I may even consider moving there if I could find a job and it weren't so expensive. Then again, I could just buy a parrot costume and learn the address in Tokyo where I want to live. People love animals.

Real Estate

2008-07-17T00:59:00.002-04:00

I went to Atlantic City last week to see about starting my very own real estate company. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, because I had $12,000. In my experience, that's more that twice what all the property in that city is worth ($5,690). But everybody in city hall just laughed at me.

Man, Monopoly™ is full of shit.

Shock Value

2008-07-15T09:00:00.001-04:00

I came across a very recent article in the New York Times that discusses, of all things, Milgram's famous psychological experiments of the early 60's. In case you're too lazy to read it, the experiments were set up so that the subject was instructed to give a series of increasingly intense shocks to another subject when they answered questions incorrectly. The subject did not know that the "victim" was really an actor pretending to get shocked. At 150 volts, the victim requested that the test be stopped. Some refused to continue shocking the victim, while others turned up the voltage as required by the test. Milgram is also responsible for the idea of the "six degrees of separation," otherwise known as 64% of the reason Kevin Bacon is still popular.

I was previously aware of the Milgram shock experiments for the same reason that I'm aware of pretty much any other bit of information that most would consider trivial - I've heard a song about it. I am of course talking about the eighth track of Peter Gabriel's 1986 album, So, entitled "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)." The title is a reference to a variation of the experiment wherein forty people were given secondary tasks such as reading the questions or doing paperwork. They weren't actually triggering the shock. In this test, all but three (i.e., thirty-seven) saw the test through to the end. It's a classic study in the nature of obedience. (Similar references to the deontological proof for the existence of God and Pascal's Wager can be found in the lyrics to Devo's "Whip It.")

As a quick aside, how awesome would it be if scientific journals required that their findings not only be documented in articles, but be accompanied with relevant pop or rock songs? I'm envisioning something like Now That's What I Call Research In Optics, Vol. 6! Maybe it's not such a good idea, but at least it shows I'm thinking.

Nowadays, the experiments of Milgram are as relevant as ever. There are accusations of the Bush administration and federal agencies using torture to obtain information in this absurd War on Terror. There are significant questions as to what degree the process of torture is immoral, and there are doubtlessly questions of who ultimately may be judged responsible. (Of course, given my current opinion of the Bush administration, I consider everyone involved to be severely guilty just by association, even if torture is not occurring.)

I propose that everyone involved in the recent alleged instances of torturing prisoners in pursuit of information be required to read up on the findings of the Milgram experiments. To make the reading more enjoyable, you can even have some Peter Gabriel playing in the background. Hopefully those who might have to do the dirty work and actually execute these cruel torture methods would pause and consider whether they may truly be culpable for failing to raise their voices in protest. I have a dream that one day they will rise up and refuse their so-called duty, and prisoners of this War on Terror will no longer be subject to that horrible punishment of being forced to play "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." But here's a hint - don't forget that he was in Animal House with Donald Sutherland.

Rotten in the State of Youtube

2008-07-08T09:00:00.005-04:00

Never before have I read two articles that seemed so relevant to each other, despite being on completely different subjects. The first article, found here, tells us that Denmark, of all places, is the happiest country in the world. And you thought it was Disneyland, you fools. Yes, apparently #2 and #3 are Puerto Rico and Colombia, respectively. The United States, while the nation with the greatest economy, falls to a pitiful 16th in the happiness rankings. Oddly enough, the study was conducted by Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan with NSF money. Come on, man, the government bribes you and you don't come through for us?

What's your first reaction to this information? I know what mine was: "Maybe there's not so much of a direct correlation between money and happiness." OK, I'll admit that was also pointed out in the article above. The article states that there are many other factors involved in determining a nation's happiness index, and apparently personal freedom is a much more important issue than money.

So I cruise around the BBC news website for a half-second and I see this article, which states that the courts have ruled that Google (owners of Youtube) must hand over its viewing log to Viacom. The log contains the login IDs, IP addresses, and video clip details. In case anyone reading hasn't yet taken sides in the two seconds it's been since you read that sentence, let's go over some television channels Viacom owns: Comedy Central, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, MTV2, and CMT. In other words, Viacom can be held directly responsible for 83.7% of the bullshit in modern culture. (Politics accounts for 16.1%, and the rest are remnants from the time before the creation of MTV.)

I could go on to talk about what this means in terms of privacy considerations, but instead, I'd like to give you more of an idea of how evil Viacom is. This blog entry details a story where a guy in North Carolina made a cheesy little elect-me-to-the-local-school-board commercial and posted it simultaneously on Youtube. The folks at VH1 grabbed it (without informing him) and used it for Web Junk 2.0 (which I'm assuming makes them money). Then when the guy decides to post the segment of the show that makes fun of his original video, Viacom alleges copyright infringement and has the video pulled. That's the kind of sick company we're dealing with here.

So drawing from the conclusions of both articles, we can observe a number of points. (1) Viacom is an evil bastard corporation that regularly clubs the baby seals that are our minds. (2) Viacom has repeatedly assaulted personal freedom and privacy in the name of copyright protection, or at least revenue protection. (3) For cultural happiness to flourish, personal freedoms are more important than money. Therefore, (4) Viacom is deliberately making us unhappy. Of course, I could have proved that last one just by showing you an episode of ~~Cribs~~ ...~~Flavor of Love~~ ...~~whatever's currently on Nickelodeon~~ ...~~Rock of Love Girls: Charm School 2~~ ...~~Hogan Knows Best~~ ...~~The Real World~~ ...anything on any Viacom-owned television station.

What should we do, then? I would have suggested merely getting your video fix you're just jonesing for from Youtube, but even then Viacom apparently has rights to access information about you. Dear lord, what if, in order to protect ourselves from the evil television behemoth, we have to return to physical activity or something as dismal as reading to keep ourselves entertained? Come to think of it, I've been meaning to re-read Hamlet after all these years. Wasn't he the Prince of Denmark? Man, he must have been one happy guy.

Why I Play

2008-07-04T00:05:00.001-04:00

After rereading the post entitled "The Gaming Closet" and thinking a bit, I've come up with a startling realization. I really only have one reason to come crawling back to D&D time and time again. I love rolling the oddly-shaped, colorful dice. Call me shallow, but I'm addicted to such shiny, simple things. In no other situation do you get to roll an icosahedron to determine an outcome of any importance. I'll bet if there were a Vegas casino game that used all those dice, I'd be hooked.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

Gyllenspoon

2008-07-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

I saw a headline Tuesday that announced rumors of a Jake Gyllenhaal-Reese Witherspoon romance. Nothing too notable in and of itself, but the headline referred to the potential union as "Gyllenspoon." It's the latest in a long line of bad celebrity joint-names. ("Bennifer," "Brangelina," and of course, "Filliam H. Muffman."*)

Might I suggest that we apply the term "Gyllenspoon" to denote the spoon that is used to prepare heroin for injection? We'll see how long the media mentions it then.

* joke taken from The Colbert Report

The Gaming Closet

2008-07-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

I have a confession to make, and it might be pretty disturbing. Or it could shock absolutely none of you and be one of those realizations of a long-harbored suspicion. Like when you discover how that odd-smelling kid who sat in the corner and picked his nose all day grew up to be a child molester. The confession is: I have, in the past, played role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. There, I said it. But there doesn't seem to be that sudden lifting of a great weight from my shoulders. Instead, there seems to be a heavy burden of nerd-based shame that is raining down upon me as I type.

(Some may be lost as to what the game itself entails. Basically, a group of people team up to form a cast of fictitious adventurers, each with vital statistics - strength, intelligence, etc. - recorded on sheets of paper. Another person, the Dungeon Master, or "DM," feeds the players the story and dictates the actions of monsters and other characters they encounter on the adventures. Various dice rolls, modified by aforementioned recorded statistics, represent the luck inherent in the gameplay.)

Of course, no one is unaware of the stereotypical scene of a bunch of acne-ridden, ever-virgin geeks sitting around in a circle pretending to be adventurers in some Tolkien-derivative fantasy world. I'd like to think that this stereotype is not as steadfastly true as one may think. In fact, some famous players of the game include Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs, Patton Oswalt, Robin Williams, Mike Myers, Vin Diesel, and even Stephen Colbert. All have acknowledged their indulgence in the D&D hobby, and with exception of Vin Diesel, all are admired and respected public figures.

Being wary of eventually falling victim to the stereotype, I refuse to play the game with anyone except my very closest friends who have eventually revealed that they are also familiar with the game. The best games, in my opinion, are played by those who fully realize the sad nerdiness that surrounds the game and rather than be ashamed, fully embrace it in the most comic way possible. During the hours I've actually played role-playing games, I've only enjoyed the sessions wherein everyone playing is proudly wearing their self-derisive geek badges.

Oh, and as a side note, the sooner that you realize and come to terms that you're a nerd, then the happier you're gong to be, and I highly doubt that anyone reading this isn't a nerd in some way or another. Being a nerd, the way I see it, is defined by a strong desire to gain a lot of knowledge about a specific topic, in addition to the pursuit and acquisition of that knowledge. The characters in Hornby's High Fidelity, Rob Gordon and his cohorts Barry and Dick, are pop culture nerds. I've come across a number of English majors who know a lot about classic literature. They, too, are nerds. Oh yeah, and men (or women - let's not be sexist) who can lecture you on sports facts and historical data? Nerds.

With a game like D&D, where the rules are so extensive, you have no choice but to be a nerd, and I think this is how the stereotype came about. You have to devote a significant amount of effort to learning the mechanics of the game before you can even play. Even though I am proudly a nerd in other areas (ask me what kind of music I like and get ready for a thirty-minute lecture), I try to avoid becoming so familiar with role-playing games. For example, the most enjoyable games were those I played with my old roommate, who valued creative stories above all else and never used dice or rules. Really, it was a form of collective storytelling much like improvised theater. Only with no effort put forth to costumes or acting, and entirely for our own enjoyment.

Maybe I'm still a hopeless music nerd, but I like to think I know where to draw the line when it comes to this fantasy gaming. I never take D&D seriously on any real level, and I've given away my lot of Magic: The Gathering cards. Maybe that one will be worth another post. But for now, I need to apply some astringent to my face and gain some charisma points.

Whiteboard

2008-06-30T11:17:00.002-04:00

The whiteboard has got to be one of the coolest things about any office. But boy, did they get pissed when I started playing Hangman on it. Maybe it was because it was in the middle of a group meeting. Or maybe they're just sore that they couldn't guess the word "orgasm." Tic-tac-toe, anyone?

GMail

2008-06-25T13:58:00.008-04:00

Gmail lets you send e-mail from any e-mail account you own, and will go out and collect all the e-mail from the same accounts and put them in one inbox. It's like having your own personal secretary! Though you can't have sex with it. Hmm. Suddenly, I'm a lot less enthusiastic about this.

(This is my first "Quickie" - a post to be made whenever I get an idea for a short, funny post. All the longer posts are now tagged with "articles," and they should hopefully be coming out every Tuesday morning. All the quickies are also appropriately tagged.)

Time Out Of Mind

2008-06-24T09:00:00.001-04:00

Let me set the scene for this post. I've started a new job, working on various projects until the school year starts and I can start my new graduate assistantship and work on my Ph.D. The lab I'm working for, like all great labs, gets a significant amount of funding from the U.S. military. Joy of joys, I get to work for the military yet again. And this time for three straight years instead of one summer.

Quick note: for those who are unaware, I spent a summer in Albuquerque, New Mexico - a.k.a. I'd-rather-watch-instructional-videos-on-puppy-torture-than-live-here, USA - for the Air Force Research Lab. The job was fun, but there was far too much procedural bullshit associated with the government/military.

Last week, there were a series of information sessions on how to start filling out your time sheet electronically. Basically, you log in, you find the projects you're working on, you enter them into the sheet along with how many hours you spent on each. There. I just explained to you in thirty seconds what it took them an hour to explain. And if that wasn't bizarre enough, there was - get this - a question and answer session.

And boy, did people take full advantage of the question and answer session. In the beginning, the questions were kind of valid. Questions such as, "what do I do if I'm going to be on travel for two weeks?" These are non-asinine questions. Then it got to the point where there were questions such as, "what if I try to put down more hours than are in the work week?" To paraphrase, what if I try to put down 25 hours a day? I wanted to take my sweet new RFID badge and jam it up their ass. Or maybe I wasn't that outwardly hostile - maybe my own ass. Point is, I wanted that question to be some sort of Queen-of-diamonds trigger to a violent episode of inanimate anal entry.

What really annoyed me were the lines that were good enough to get laughs. Stupid answers like, "Well, [if you put down too many hours] I guess I'll have to report you to human resources!" Then everyone chuckles? That is not funny. That's nowhere close to funny. I may not have the best sense of humor in the world, but at least I don't suffer from - as Hornby put it - premature laugh-ejaculation. My response would have been something to the effect of, "If you put down too many hours, then I'm going to force you to put a Hannah Montana poster up in your office/cubicle. That way, everyone will regard you as either a pedophile or someone with horrible taste." And that's just off the cuff. Imagine if I had time to think about it.

In short, No other hour of my life has so single-handedly cast a shadow of doubt upon if not my choice of career, then at least the nature of it. How can something truly exciting as living on the very cusp of scientific discovery attract the most boring people on the planet? If there are any social theorists out there, I'd like to know the answer. You work on that while I return this puppy-torture video to Blockbuster.

For What It's Worth

2008-05-23T05:19:00.003-04:00

Last night, before going to see the midnight showing of Indiana Jones, I went to Barnes and Noble and decided to pick up some new books in hopes of stimulating my reading efforts. (read: I payed too much for books that were impulse buys.) The purchased comprised The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and a Winston Churchill biography. I seem to be going through a phase of interest in history.

Speaking of history, we're in a time of changing history. I read today that the price of oil has hit $135 per barrel. This translates to a gasoline price in Blacksburg of $3.89 per gallon. I hear that prices in the rest of the country are higher, which is not surprising, since this is a mountain town. Most people in the country are freaking out, surely buying nylon stockings and Eggo waffles for the coming apocalypse. Those who are seeking election are making sure that you know their detailed plans for lowering the cost of filling up your tank once they take office.

Actually, this is just our cheap living catching up with us. It would have been nice if it didn't catch up so quickly - quadrupling in cost over the past five years - but it's actually still relatively cheap. Back in 1922, a gallon of gas cost $3.11 per gallon, if you adjust the value of the dollar back then to match that of today's dollar. But compare the cost of gas to the cost of petrol. Europeans (at least those in the UK) are paying $5.79 per gallon. Honestly, we're paying exactly what gasoline is worth, finally. We may even still be underpaying.  The bottom line is, high gas prices are here to stay. I foresee one of two possibilities to deal with it...

For about two years, I've held the belief that the infrastructure in this country is totally fucked. Highway motorists consume 83% of all energy used for transportation in the U.S. (Source). Meanwhile, Europeans - who enjoy a better infrastructure with (a) more public transportation in general, (b) an effective train system, and (c) a friendly and forgiving attitude toward bicycling - use an average of only 17% of the gasoline that we use per capita (Source).

Therefore, the first possibility of dealing with high gas prices is to invest heavily in a reinvention of the nation's infrastructure. Similar to what Eisenhower did with the Interstate Highway System, only not assuming an infinite gas supply and not partially motivated by fear of the Reds. I'm moving to Pennsylvania in less than two weeks, and it's absurd that the only feasible way to so do is to drive. Why the hell were we so quick to abandon our railway system the moment the automobile came along?

The second and more likely scenario is the development of an electric car. Tesla is already making them, albeit at $100,000 a pop. Given the efficiency of gasoline engines and the cost of electricity, I'm guessing that charging up an electric car would cost a quarter of the equivalent gasoline requirement. That was a number I got one night as I was messing around with different figures. I wish I had written it down, come to think of it. But why is this the more likely scenario? It supports the good old capitalist drive for success via the introduction of a new invention. Revamping the nation's infrastructure would cost a fortune, and it would be virtually impossible for anyone to convince our leaders that it would be worth it.

Anyway, that's enough complaining and prophecy for one night. Time to study the story of Churchill, hero to future statesmen and drunks alike. (That reminds me - the "statesmen" bit, not the "drunks" bit - best wishes for Senator Kennedy and his newly revealed ailment. I hope he can pull through.)

Imagine That

2008-05-21T21:06:00.003-04:00

I typically don't usually take the time to form many opinions that are relevant to hot debate topics. They usually take a significant amount of time to research in order to defend properly. The best example would be the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate. I could lean one way or another (for the record, I lean pro-choice) but I could not do the debate any real justice, as about 95% of my reason to take a position is based on intuition alone. There are other people who know more about human pregnancy, so let them fight it out. But the one issue that gets on my nerves more than anything else is the clash between evolution and intelligent design/creationism.

If you're unfamiliar with the two positions, let me attempt to summarize them for you. Evolution is the theory, held by people who can examine evidence and think for themselves, that the current population of world organisms developed as a result of a long series of genetic mutations among various species, resulting in the flourishing of organisms possessing the traits most suitable for survival in their given environment. Creationism is the belief that a supernatural God, who only favors white fundamentalist Christians, created the world and all of its species, and in a mere six days according to available research publications. Upon realizing that the scientific community was very likely to deem this theory "complete and utter horseshit," proponents of this theory altered it to be called "intelligent design," which only removes the word "creation," simply states that nature is too complex to have come about as a result of anything less than the guidance of the supernatural. (In short, nature is supernatural. Yeah, chew on that statement.)

One of the most famous supporters of the intelligent design non-scientific theory is Ben Stein, the man we can all thank (read: blame) for the career of Jimmy Kimmel. You have probably heard of his movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It's one of the worst crimes against humanity, as its poster image features Stein in an Angus Young schoolboy outfit.

I mention this movie a month after its release date because of recent lawsuit news that I just discovered here. Yoko and the Lennons are suing the makers of the film over their use of a clip from John Lennon's "Imagine." The film apparently criticizes the content of the song as being anti-religious. There's a whole bunch of "fair use" vs. licensing semantics that are yet to be ironed out by the judge. I have a number of points to bring up:

1. You never criticize John Lennon. He was a genius and everything he ever touched was golden (except for Yoko Ono).

2. This is the same man who sang the entire song "I Am The Walrus" a few years prior to the performance in question. So there's a certain threshold of seriousness that we're going to allow here.

3. What's wrong with a piece of art being anti-religious? It's a song, not a manifesto.

4. Seeing how far you religious zealots (fundamentalist Christians, Ben Stein, Tom Cruise) are willing to go to defend religion and/or inject it into the parts of our society that are necessarily secular only makes me further appreciate the fantasy of a world without religion.

In the end, I ask myself what John Lennon would say if he were here to comment. My favorite image is that Lennon, in his trademark wise-man idiom, states that his message to everyone involved with this case - even right down to little old me writing this blog entry - is the same:

"You're missing the point."

Money Laundering

2008-05-20T17:05:00.001-04:00

"A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people." This information came to me today by way of CNN, which is probably the best source of news I can get that originates from this country. (If anyone knows of a better one, let me know.) I’m subscribed, however, to the BBC Global News Podcast, so at least I get some sense of what the rest of the world deems is important. Their coverage of the China earthquake and the Burmese Typhoon (yeah, remember that?) has been unparalleled. I like following the upcoming election and all, but there’s just so much Obama and McCain I can take when there are actual things happening around the world that it wouldn’t hurt to know about - like the deaths of thousands of people.

Anyway, this news about our money is no surprise to me. I remember when I was in Northern Ireland a few years ago, every bank note was different. Well, first off, every bank printed their own version of the Pound Stirling, and every singly one of those printed in Northern Ireland were not accepted in England. It’s a real bitch if you suddenly think that taking a vacation to England would be a good idea and all you have are the Northern Ireland notes. It’s like trying to bring Fleer or Topps cards to an Upper Deck table. It just doesn’t work.

But the key thing about the Pound was that every different denomination was a slightly different shape and size. I noticed this one day and asked our group’s leader, Neil, what the deal was. He simply said, "That’s so that blind people can tell the difference. We’re actually considerate over here."

So ever since then, I’ve always held the view that the U.S. Treasury department really is screwing blind people on a regular basis. I mean, Ray Charles had to be paid in singles, for crying out loud. Instead of actually designing our notes to be distinguishable by something other than sight alone, The treasury instead devoting every last ounce of effort toward making the notes impossible to counterfeit. Their latest effort has redesigned the five-dollar bill, and with great success. If you look on the back of the latest incarnation of the five (shown below), there’s a giant, purple, flamboyant-as-hell "5" in the corner. No counterfeiter on earth is secure enough in his or her sexuality to put that on their fake money. Fun fact - the denomination of the bill is also the age of the person who thought up that dumb-ass idea.

Fortunately, though, this bill should be short-lived after it has finally been discovered that the blind are being shafted by John Q. Henry Paulson. I'd like to finally see us adopt the European system of money printing - a different color and a different size for every note. But before that takes place, we're going to have to eliminate the existing regime of bills, especially the fives. I'd recommend we all buy some Upper Deck cards. I'll trade you my extra Alex Rodriguez for your Carlos Delgado.

Karma Police

2008-02-07T16:37:00.000-05:00

I believe there are mysterious forces at work in the universe that influence everyday occurrences in inexplicable ways. Call it karma, or luck, or even divine will. Whatever it is, I am pretty convinced it is there.

I'm not entirely sure what I did recently to trigger a good streak, but I do know that whatever the hell I did is paying off. For example, yesterday I purchased my first pair of jeans from a retailer other than J.C. Penney, Wal-Mart, or Target. When I was a kid, my dad got my jeans from J.C. Penney, and the latter two bargain stores were my own retailers of choice once I got to college. The jeans looked the same, and only cost about $19, plus whatever emotional costs there are in buying something that was likely a product of Chinese child prison labor.

However, once I got around to talking to girls - which should seriously be considered for inclusion in engineering programs across the country, seeing as how I didn't get a girlfriend until my senior year of college - I found out that my nonexistent sense of style was far too old-fashioned. However, only recently was I given a recipe for the remedy of the situation. A very recent girlfriend had planned to take me shopping, using my pale, awkward body as a canvas to try and transform me into someone who could fool people (read: girls) into thinking that I was up to date on what's cool.

Well, that chance never came, but we were talking about it recently. We decided that I should go to the mall with a mutual female friend and start looking for a new pair of jeans from the Gap or somewhere similar this weekend. But because I was feeling crushed by a boring work routine, I ducked out of the office early yesterday and ended up going to the mall by myself, on what I dubbed a "recon" mission, trying to find out prices and sizes that were available for a host of different vendors. At first I went to American Eagle, but didn't find anything close to my size. Then I went to the Gap.

I was greeted by a sales associate with the standard, "let me know if I can help you find anything," that tired refrain of people who work in retail. I must have really shocked her by saying that I actually could use her help instead of ignoring her, because for the next half-hour, I became her personal project. I threw out some of the words and phrases that I had been given as potential starting points, such as "boot cut," "wash," and "your fashion sense could qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention."

OK, I'll admit that last one I made up just to be witty. She made me try on about six different pairs and gave me her expert opinion. She qualified as an expert both because she gave me a brief history of fashion since the 1980's, which apparently I was stuck in, and because she was female. I ended up buying two pairs of good-looking jeans for the same price as maybe three pairs of my normal jeans. But if they actually make me look good (and both the sales associate and my former girlfriend claim they do), then I think I'm actually getting more for my money. And as a result, I'm starting to feel slightly better about myself.

Maybe that was a reward for my hard work last week finishing my literature review and enduring long drives to and from Penn State. Or maybe a result of trying to put forth more effort into maintaining healthy relationships with all my friends. But I knew that it was one of those aforementioned mysterious reward forces of the universe when I checked my e-mail this morning. To my surprise, fantasy baseball season is once again upon us.

My close friends and I love fantasy baseball. Accuse me of being the stereotypical male if you want, but it's truly an amazing part of the year - just like the celebration of Jesus' birthday. Fantasy baseball is comparable to having a beautiful woman walk up to you, mysteriously taking off her bra from underneath her shirt and handing it to you, though to your surprise, it has her phone number on it. They're both just about equally awesome. The only difference is that fantasy baseball is guaranteed to happen every year, and the bra-phone number scenario has never, ever happened to me. Though maybe it will now that I'm wearing decent pants.

Drunk People Are Funny

2008-01-26T11:48:00.002-05:00

Since yesterday was my birthday, we all went out and celebrated the way any good, self-respecting American citizen does - by getting wasted. At one point, I was sitting talking to my friend Chris, who is an English major, and telling him that we should collaborate on a piece of literature. As a response, we created these two lists on a napkin, which I will now reproduce verbatim, as per numerous requests.

Crazy shit you could feed a dog:

beers
birth certificates
a babies
drugs
another dog!
your wedding album
several balloons
a dildo!
onions
hamsters
a horse
toothpicks
A Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Novel
Eudora Welty
Bacteria Cultures
-----> Yogurt
Cunt*
The Crew of the S.S. Minnow
Itself
Captain Picard
"Personal Lubricant"
BET...the entire channel
Elephant shit
Bill Nye the Science Guy
Bouncy Balls

*-added by Deb

Things you should beat off to/with:

2girls1cup
Midgets
Donkey Show?
Paula Deen
Angry Bartender (Brandy)
"Ace of Spades"
BET
Tax Refunds
Nicole's 30 Victoria Secrets
Jason's Playboy Offer (Blacksburg or Dumfries edition)
Sears Catalog
Kirks uncircumsized penis
Paula Dean's vagina (she loves butter)
(with) cooking spray
Paula's Dean buttery vagina
(with) Slip N' slides <----- accidental boner
(with) Peanut Butter (chunky is like ribbed for my pleasure)