The Miracle of Technology
Thanks to the miracle of technology, I'm now able to press "snooze" on three different electronic devices. I can now procrastinate with an even greater degree of efficiency. I can get more done tomorrow than I ever have before, giving me even more reason not to do it today. Within just a few decades, I predict that with the help of technology, I will be able to put off everything, thus freeing up all of my time today. That's what I call progress.
Getting Caught
I think I got caught yesterday checking out a woman's ass - by her ten-year-old daughter. Yeah, of course I didn't mean it. The ass was right in front of me. The ass was also wearing stretch pants. [Insert additional excuses here.]
The funny thing is, I wasn't embarrassed by this. I probably just assumed the girl hadn't developed the "a guy is checking out my mom's ass" sense yet. I felt reasonably safe because of this.
Well, at least things didn't happen the other way around. I think that would have been embarrassing. It probably also would have prompted a silent "What the fuck was I just doing?"
But let's face it, it's possible. Unbeknownst to you, you're walking behind some ten-year-old, looking down at the sidewalk. You slowly raise your head, you see a couple of feet (ok, a couple of sneakers), you see some legs... and because everything's smaller, maybe your eyes just assume the woman is farther away.
Nope.
By the time your eyes reach the pony tail (you can't see the bubble gum she's chewing from this angle), you've already evaluated the ass. Then the queasiness hits you. It doesn't matter if you thought the ass was too thin and bony, you looked at it. And you didn't just look at it, you evaluated it. For a second or two, it might have even looked like a good ass. Shit, this happened to me once when I was walking behind a long-haired man. I'm sure as hell it could happen with a ten-year-old girl.
There ought to be a law against this stuff.
The Apprentice Corporate-Speak Drinking Game
Here's a new drinking game. You play it while you're watching The Apprentice.
- All participants take three sips every time someone on the show says "step up". As in: "I really expect you to step up on this task."
- Take another three sips if you hear "hit it out of the park".
- Take another sip when someone says "task", "team", "project manager", or when everyone agrees that someone on the show is suppressing the desire to use the phrase "you annoying fuck".
- If someone actually says "annoying fuck", finish your drink, finish every drink in your fridge, empty the liquor cabinet, then go to the liquor store and drink everything there, too. You won.
All My Sushi
It occurred to me that, to the best of my knowledge, the sushi take-out place I've been going to for at least five years has never once screwed up an order. I must have purchased sushi from this place 150 times. Every time I phone in my order, I place the order a la cart, rarely ordering one of their pre-selected meals, and English is clearly not the order-taker's first language. In other words, the opportunities for fuck-ups have been plentiful.
Do you know how rare this is? That two people (the order taker and her husband who makes the sushi) are in this much focus, is an almost nonexistent occurrence. Most restaurants screw up my order at least once every four or five times.
Now, I'm trying not to be cynical here, but I think this says more about the masses who screw up the orders than it does about these two people who don't. It says that we live in a culture in which a focussed mind is not a valued commodity. If we lived in a world in which an unfocussed mind automatically led to serious misfortune or death, I guarantee that the people you'd see hanging around would be the ones who chose to activate their own brains, and generally kept them running.
Instead, we live in a world in which people yell, scream, and demand to be fed and rescued from the worst of disasters. Depending on your mood, that is either very sad, or annoying as fuck.
Fun Discoveries with "Ayn Rand" Google Searches
"ayn rand" "jason roth"
There's another guy named "Jason Roth" who writes: "Capitalism is my religion. I worship at the altar of the free market, and get giddy each time I walk into a Wal-Mart or shopping mall." He also writes: "I believe that it's the duty of the federal government to confront international issues before they show up on my doorstep," and his favorite authors include Ayn Rand and favorite sports include boxing. All of this describes me. That's pretty goddamn insane.
"ayn rand" "aimee mann"
I've known for a long time that the band Rush was influenced by Ayn Rand. What I didn't know was that Aimee Mann sang background vocals on the song Time Stand Still on Rush's "Chronicles" album. I don't even think I've heard the song, but now I want to.
"ayn rand" "nerf herder"
The origin of the band name "Collective Soul" is a phrase from an Ayn Rand novel. But I knew that. More interesting to me, however, is the origin of the band name "Nerf Herder". According to this site, it's: "What Princess Leia called Hans Solo in the Empire Strikes Back." Cool site.
Pulling a Ragnar
I pulled a Ragnar the other day. It was in a bathroom of an Italian restaurant. Since I pay taxes to the City of New York, I felt well within my rights to take back some of that which had been taken from me by force. No gold bullion was available, so I took the "Employees Must Wash Hands" sticker.
This wasn't just any "Employees Must Wash Hands" sticker. This was one produced by the "NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene". That's right: mental hygiene. This bureaucracy, which couldn't manage to keep a fucking bathroom clean, is in charge of people's mental health. This doesn't sound particularly healthy to me. You want to talk about "mental hygiene"? Look at their website address:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/home/home.shtml
What kind of psychopaths designed this directory structure and naming convention? (I'm not a techie, but even I've heard of "virtual domains".) They must have been the same mental patients who decided that the following links should be the most prominent ones on their homepage (in this order):
- Birth Certificates
- Death Certificates
- Restaurant Inspections
- Order Condoms
The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene needs a sticker somewhere in their office that says, "Employees Must Think." The reason they don't already have this sticker must be for the protection of their mental hygiene. They must believe that if they don't use their brains, they won't get them dirty. Plus, they'll spend less of my money on stickers.
Definitions
While doing research for an article, I made the somewhat surprising discovery that the word "definition" is not contained within the Merriam-Webster thesaurus. Neither is the word "thesaurus".
The word "dictionary" is in the thesaurus, however, and "thesaurus" is listed as a related word. This is rather disconcerting, considering that the first dictionary definition of "thesaurus" is "treasury, storehouse", both of which are single words that could easily enough have been contained in a thesaurus.
Interestingly, "thesaurus" has two definitions in the dictionary, the second of which has two connotations.
"Definition" has four definitions, one of which has two connotations and another of which has three connotations.
The word I was trying to find in the thesaurus in the first place was "connotation", but I don't remember how I eventually realized that. It wasn't used in the definitions of "dictionary", "definition", "thesaurus", or "synonym". Somehow, I found the word I was looking for, without knowing the word I was looking for, and without knowing how I found it.
What is perhaps most surprising is that the word "definition" is in the dictionary, along with the word "dictionary". This, to me, seems like a waste. If you didn't know the definition of the word "dictionary", how would you know where to look it up? And if you didn't know the definition of the word "definition", you sure as hell wouldn't be looking for it, even if you knew where to look it up.
I would love to know Merriam-Webster's statistics on the number of times per year people look up the words "dictionary" and "definition". If I worked for Merriam-Webster, I'd probably track these people down and send them a free dictionary (or thesaurus). These people clearly love looking stuff up, and they'd probably be great dictionary and thesaurus promoters. Just make sure your dictionary and thesaurus are complete, guys. Otherwise, I guarantee these people will tell everyone about it.
