Blog Challenge: 9/25 - Moving with the times

Despite all of technology's wonderful powers, its strange how we cling to the past. I discovered that my library has a large number of eBooks you can 'borrow'. I say 'borrow' because rather than just letting anyone who wants one download it and read it they have a fixed number of virtual copies and a new person can't check one out until someone returns theirs. Considering this is all free I find that insane. Here are some other potential examples of old business models limiting the possibilities of technology:

-Sites having two "proceed to checkout" links where one is only for people with less than 15 things in their cart

-Travel sights showing you a video of someone typing at a keyboard for five minutes while you just sit there watching for no discernable reason

-Shopping sites streaming you crappy music while you shop

-MP3 sites forcing you to buy nine crappy songs for every two good ones

-Porn sights showing pictures of less attractive people/animals/things during off-peak hours

Blog Challenge: 8/25 - Bad Bad Teacher

I crossed a new threshold in bad teaching yesterday.

Do you remember having a class in college where the professor was so useless that by the middle of the term almost no one would show up to lecture? It was pretty pathetic. Well, I discovered yesterday that a teacher can sink even lower: I had no students show up for class. Sure the class is free and sure the weather was bad, but still: that's a sorry state of affairs.

I decided to make the most of it and get some other work done during the two hour time slot. Just when I started feeling good about that decision one of the students showed up and hour into it. If it had been any other student this would have been a great chance for me to really help them one-on-one, but this particular student is an oddball conspiracy theorist who not only spent the hour asking pretty insane questions about radiation and Bin Laden viruses, but also took FOR-EV-ER to get out of there, and I couldn't close up the room till they left.

Moral: Nature abhors a vacuum, and it really f***ing loathes an ineffective teacher.

Blog Challenge: 7/25 - Spring Forward

I always forget about daylight savings time. Before I owned devices that update themselves automatically I would just have to show up early or late for a few days before I figured out what was going on.

I'm still not sure why we bother - I suppose more sunlight during the latter part of the day is nice, but what else do we get. Here are some possible benefits:

-Ensure that people who really love their routine are inconvenienced at least twice a year

-Give digital watch owners one more reason to feel supperior to their analog nemesi

-Mess with the heads of pets who had been figuring out when you wake up to feed them based on the amount of daylight

-Let those weirdos down in Arizona have their little rebellion

Blog Challenge: 6/25 - Eight Month Old Perks

We have an eight month old baby staying with us this weekend. Here are some of the obvious benefits to being that age that I have observed.

-You can almost always get what you want just by crying a little

-You can nap whenever and wherever you want

-You can fart whenever you want to and no one will look at you funny

-Actually, all of your bodily functions are considered charming for some reason

-You're allowed to get so fat that your knuckles turn into dimples

-People carry you everywhere even though you're so fat

-You can get to second base at will... even in public places

-You can smile at a stranger and they will actually smile back rather than calling the cops

Blog Challenge: 5/25 - Pay Your F***ing Taxes

Like 99.9% of Americans I would rather not pay my taxes(*). However, because I am no longer a child I understand that my desire to not pay taxes is secondary to my desire to live in a world that at least ties to give everyone a fair shot at happiness, which means I will pay them so that our elected officials can try and find a way to make that happen.

Furthermore, I understand that in the current "economic climate"(**) that a lot of people are having a harder time with the aforementioned shot at happiness, and so I'm glad to hear that the aforementioned elected officials are trying to take said tax money and help them.

So when I hear someone like Bobby Jindal get up on TV looking like Jim Henson's attempt to re-create Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, and say that what America really needs are tax cuts and not programs designed to create jobs I have to assume one of the following things

1) He thought it was CNN's Open Mic night and he's trying out some jokes that he wasn't sure would work.

2) He's just posturing to try and gain some recognition for a presidential bin in 2012. Good luck with that.

3) He knows some secret technique by which paying less income tax will help people with no income.

4) He only cares about his wealthy constituents. Where's New Orleans again?

5) He's just some crazy guy who thinks he's a governor.


* - There are some strange fetishes out there. If paying taxes is yours then god bless you.

** - I love this phrase. If I had to liken the current economy to a climate then it would be a tobacco field in North Carolina on a 100+degree day in August right after they spread manure.

Blog Challenge: 4/25 - Bacon-Wrapped Blogging

Here are a list of things I would like to be eating right now:

-A rare steak

-A medium rare steak

-A slightly undercooked steak that was ordered as 'medium'

-Bacon-wrapped scallops

-Scallops stuffed with bacon

-Bacon-wrapped shrimp

-Bacon-wrapped dates

-Dates stuffed with blue cheese

Blog Challenge: 3/25 - The Mean Streets of Toronto

Walking in to work today I was looking at two Canadian Geese doing what geese do: pecking and defecating, when I saw something odd. A crow hopped over to where they were and started cawing at them. They responded by hissing and eventually the crow flew away.

Mentally I likened this to a racially charged exchange between rival gangs of different cultural backgrounds. The hard part was you had to assume one of the gangs was Canadian, and that's not a group that lends itself well to gangster bravado.

Try to imagine someone with a thick Canadian accent saying "This is totally our turf, eh? You'd best take off now. I'm aboot to put my size-negative-ten webbed foot in your backside!"