06 November 2010 - NaNoDieMo.

Do you ever get the feeling that your subconscious mind has nothing better to do than stalk you around and record bits of your life for the sole purpose of replaying them back to you when you least need to see them?

I hate that.

I remember a conversation which occurred about six months ago, when a very dear friend of mine had expressed a distinct and compelling urge to impale himself bodily upon his computer. He was in the thick of the end-of-semester angstbugs, having something like five million billion papers to write and relative analysis of Gravity's Rainbow as interpreted by the Mexican Gila monster to complete. He'd often received the more cynical end of my merciless taunting because he was an English major, and I often neglected the fact that he doubled it up masochistically with psychology just so that I could tease him about it and make myself feel better, as a math major, about the fact that the only friends I have are derivative.

Ha, ha.

Anyway, all this culminated into me pointing and laughing at him because I didn't have to write stuff very often and he did. A lot. The end of the semester was apparently very difficult because the last thing he wanted to do was write. He wanted to do fun stuff like play guitar and come get drunk at my apartment. (This did happen, but much later.)

Now, we're in November, and as I still have about two months before I start on the classes I really need for my degree, I decided to do something "enriching" and "creative," two words which when applied to me are usually utilised to describe baking flour or swearing, respectively.



I'm pretty sure there will be blood.

It follows that the way I typically avoid writing something is to write about my complaints about writing something, which is hilarious if you think about it. So that's what this blog post is about. I signed up for National Novel Writing Month only to hit about 6,500 words and go "halp." The way it happened in 2006 was, I did about 25,000 words up to the last week of November, whereafter I failed entirely as a human being and spent the following four days locked in my room, subsisting off Macaroni Grill chianti, cheddar cheese, and my own self-loathing until I hit 50,015 words by 11:58pm on November 30th.

But look! I got a prize!



It was completely ridiculous.

I worry about myself.

04 November 2010 - Patty Murray is an Anchovy.

The fact that Patty Murray won a fourth term to the US Senate causes me no small amount of mental anguish. I'm pretty sure that she's the reason the dinosaurs died, thus preventing me from having a procompsognathus as a pet. She's responsible for the crater in the Yucatán Peninsula, therefore it follows as a postulate that she should be banished to there for the rest of forever.

The Senate is a pizza that has to contain a balanced amount of cheese and tomato sauce. Adding anchovies to this pizza is a recipe for doom; the pizza is ruined, and the entire house smells like fish now. You can't get rid of the smell no matter what.

This is what will happen since Patty Murray has been elected to a fourth term: continual massive federal debt, unnecessary bailouts, and your house will constantly smell of fish.

TAX CUTS

First of all, I'm pretty sure that the entire body of the compromise goes something like this:

Republican: I have lots and lots of money.

Obama: I want to take your money away.

Republican: I challenge you to a Pac-Man standoff.

Obama: I still want to take away your money, but I'm down.

Republican: But it's my Pac-Man machine.

Obama: Oh, snap.

If you earned the money legitimately, then it should be your money. End of story. We are not responsible for the ridiculous spending habits of the US government. However, if you are in cahoots (I love that word, by the way. Cahoots! I could say it all day and never get tired of it. Cahoots, cahoots, cahoots.) with the government itself, or rely on it for any purpose, then you should give your fair percentage and help to decrease the deficit.

Unless you're Patty Murray. If you're Patty Murray, you spend your fair percentage on bitter "I Hate Rossi" adverts and steal everyone's Pac-Man machine and stink up the Senate with your anchovy-ness from the Yucatán.

Telegraphic Holograms

I want one. Like, instead of my brother calling me while I'm at the grocery store because he's stuck on an algebra problem - he would record his pleading expression and puppy eyes and then send it to me, and thirty seconds later his image would appear over the collard greens in the front of the cart. "Domain is the x part, right? RIGHT?!" And he would commence flailing over the tomatoes.

But it would have to be in the grocery store. Right next to the automatic sliding doors, which were also taken from Star Trek.

(Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/server_virtualization/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228200194&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All)

My Life

It's progressing normally. I'm really behind on my NaNo, but I'll freak out about that in the next post. Because I could probably write more about how I can't possibly finish this thing on time than I can write the actual novel. I obviously win at everything.

Now it's time to watch Jon Pertwee be awesome, and to laugh at women who try to run away from evil aliens and antimatter in high-heeled boots and miniskirts. WHUT.

30 October 2010 - DOCTORS

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you - what? Oh, you mean to tell me that this blog hasn't actually been active, and I wasn't interrupting anything at all, so I should get on with whatever I have to say before you pummel me with stilettos and bury my body in a trench?

Okay.

Anyway, I can explain my absence. I have a very good excuse for not posting. Not that anyone watches this blog, but still. My vanity has no bounds.

- I quit my job and got really really depressed because unemployment actually sucks (who'da thunk), and for a few months I actually didn't feel like doing anything at all. So, I didn't. I watched South Park and BBC America and the cooking channel.

- When I found out that my unemployment was probably going to last an inexplicably long time (I'm estimating at around forever, given the raw data), I suggested pulling my brothers out of regular school so that I could homeschool them, because I hate public schools with the vitriol of your colon after you've eaten a laxative salad and washed it down with a thermos of Ol' Joe's Extra Spicy Chili (now with extra pain). My mom was like "okay, cool," and I don't know whether that was because she trusts me as a viable tutor, or she's finally had it with having kids altogether and figures we'll all just kill each other off.

- It turns out being a home tutor is a lot of work. Not only do I have to face all the crappy subjects and assignments I had in elementary/high school, but I have to legitimately teach them to two boys who have the collective attention span of a tsetse fly and who are capable of about a kajillion times more physical violence toward each other. Nine weeks into the school year, I'm finally realising that the only way to transfer the information from the books to their heads is to bash the latter repeatedly with the former. Not only do I have a little more free time, but I'm also more relaxed.

- My mom is suffering from an aggressive form of fibromyalgia that I'm assuming usually only attacks Sasquatches, and my stepdad is going to have back surgery in a few weeks. There are a lot of appointments to go to and a lot of pills to keep track of, and being the only adult child (lol) and the only licensed driver in the house, I have to make a lot of the chaos not so chaotic.

Now that I've explained all the boring stuff, here's the main point of this post: DOCTORS.

I've had a chance to grow improperly obsessed with the show Doctor Who during the course of my unemployment. Before, I could only catch an episode every month or so, and of course I thought it was a great show, but I never found the time to watch the episodes in succession. This carried on through two or three months of my unemployment, until one day, my parents got something wonderful.

This means that I have about 90% of the shows I would ever want to watch at my fingertips. I should weigh five hundred pounds by now.

BUT. DOCTORS. I devoured the episodes like Oprah devours cake, and my family began watching as well. Pretty soon, we were all fused to the couch by our magnificent and gigantic rear ends, fighting each other to the death for more cushion and the last sweet-and-sour pickle.

Around the middle of September, I started to get the idea that I would dress up as the 10th Doctor for Halloween - not because I could pull it off or do it justice, but because David Tennant is impossibly hot and dressing up as the 10th Doctor was the only chance I would ever have to get in his pants. Mid-October came, and while I was piecing together the last bits of my costume, my 11-year-old brother decided that he wanted to be the 11th Doctor. I panicked because I insensitively lacked 11-year-old-sized Oxford-style jackets and bowties, so we scavenged from all of central Washington's thrift stores until a suitable costume could be assembled.

Well, tonight, we took pictures. I'm especially proud of the Tennant!hair, because it took a lot of work and a million cans of hairspray to achieve. Note my retarded image editing skills and my ability to steal images off the internet:

Moral of the story: We are awesome. Possibly pathetic. But mostly awesome.

30 March 2010 - Healthcare (dun dun DUNNN).

This is The Issue, right? This is like the One Ring for the Democrats, and the Tea Party is like a group of hobbits en route to Mount Doom, except they totally don’t have the ring yet. But by golly, if Sarah Palin says they’ll get the ring, then they’ll get it. Then, they’ll destroy it. By golly.

Health care reform is a sensitive and peculiar issue in that everyone’s willing to go to cutthroat debates about it, but no one really seems to know what’s going on. Pollsters can give you numbers, but those numbers vary by the day and region, not to mention network. Not only that, but the opposition is mainly from those who have health insurance, making these groups lose status as paragons of objectivity. (Source: CBS. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000846-503544.html, CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/30/pol.health.care/?hpt=Sbin)

I currently don’t have health insurance, but I’m still dubious as to the long-term effects of the health care bill that was signed in by the House on Sunday. The Obama administration is reporting that it’ll significantly decrease the federal deficit over the course of ten years, but others (mostly Republicans, naturally) are reporting that it’ll significantly increase the deficit over the same period of time, given individual mandates along with other hidden taxes. (Source: Wall Street Pit. http://wallstreetpit.com/20916-will-health-care-reform-really-lower-the-deficit)

So, which is it?

In my opinion, these arguments are both short-sighted and irrelevant, unless you take into account the far-reaching fingertips of the Fed as legislation such as national health care is put into effect. For one, if we have an outstanding deficit due to overseas intervention (Iraq war) and government involvement in business strategy (big-business bailouts), amid the thousands of other “responsibilities” taken on by those in Washington, then it doesn’t support the argument that the federal government is in the condition necessary to foot a however-many-hundred-billion dollar budget for fed-regulated healthcare. Even if potential revenue will outweigh the losses sustained, and by some stroke of magic those involved in positions of authority don’t cancel out the profits with unnecessary programs, this is a single entity claiming responsibility for over 300 million people sans preparation or, I believe, adequate analysis of the situation. I love this country, and for a moment being completely devoid of political argument or wing-based vigor, I only wish to say that I don’t want to see it crumble beneath what appears to be well-meaning but misappropriated humanitarianism. Americans are, by our nature, by our foundation, at the core a very conscious and humane people. It would be an unfortunate irony to be felled socially and financially by that same principle.

Likewise, being conscious and humane should fall to the individual, not forced upon them by an entity that has declared itself the regulator of kindness.

Now, on to the tin foil hat segment. Should the healthcare bill be a fiscal success, that doesn’t necessarily take into account the numbers conundrum. Already, we’re assigned Social Security numbers that follow us through life, technically robbing us of our individuality and humanity. You can assign a number a monetary value, but you cannot assign a human being a similar value due to the impossibility of estimating the worth of a human life. Will the new healthcare bill allow us to be treated as numbers or as individual people? 300 million is a lot of faces to recognise.

Healthcare is a volatile industry, and it should be treated as such. I believe we would have been much better off with state- or even region-based changes. For instance, allowing people to place non-family members on policies, and having hospitals funded by the communities they serve. I’m beginning to realise, though, that this is a conservative pipe-dream, and would only work if the greed that permeates all facets of the nation’s inner and outer mechanics suddenly disappeared and was replaced by the true Robin Hood, humanitarian spirit upon which the country was founded.

So, to that end, I say “good luck” to the trailblazers. Due to the looming fine if I don’t comply, I’ll likely be partaking in the national healthcare system. I’ll still be looking over my shoulder. Don’t be offended; I’m only human.


P.S. On an unrelated note: GO GO LHC! http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE62T26K20100330

29 March 2010 - Moscow Bombings.

Today’s attack on the Moscow subway by two female suicide bombers (I note here that “female” is specified in the report, presumably to either show that a) it takes all sorts, b) now we get to be afraid of everybody, or c) both a and b) is completely unrelated to Al-Qaeda (those responsible for the 2001 attack on the WTC et al); however, NYC is tightening security anyway. (Source: Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62S33V20100329)

I’m quite partial to feeling secure during travel, and I have a habit of being paranoid while sharing a cramped space with a bunch of strangers. However, this brings up several questions with regard to privacy, or how far we should be expected to comply with stricter security regulations that require us to sacrifice our personal space in order to feel safer. It instigates an endless cycle of misplaced or mishandled trust, wherein we provide personal information about ourselves to the appointed individuals in order to protect ourselves from others. Then, suspicions are aroused that the appointed individuals are using our information against us, so we resort to paranoia and distress. I wonder if I sound like a conspiracy theorist when I half-jokingly suggest that it’s a ploy to keep us frightened, as if by the dog that herds the sheep in and out of the pasture. I’m sure it’s true in few, isolated cases, but I’m almost certain that the people who instigate these measures of security are just as frightened as we are of plane hijackings, subway bombings, or identity theft, which are all classified by now as forms of terrorism. (Source: FBI. http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/idtheft.htm)

My only suggestion to protect privacy and still remain secure is to know your rights, and know the limit of the law. Report suspicious behavior, yet be mindful of your own right to anonymity.

And for God’s sake, don’t try to be John McClane. There can be only one.