Paul McCartney hates everything.

Maybe hate is too strong of a word, but I believe I can prove that he "doesn't care too much" for anything, so maybe "Paul McCartney doesn't care too much for anything" would be a more accurate title, but if you've read this blog, you know it's not about accuracy (or style, definitely not content or structure... I guess I could tell you what it's about, but then I'd have to shoot me.)

Back to my point. If you listen to the lyrics for "Can't Buy Me Love" written by Paul and John, you'll hear this:

"....I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love"

The clear implication here is that the author/singer doesn't care too much for anything that can't buy him love. Since most will agree that nothing can buy love; clearly Paul and/or John is saying here that they don't really like anything. Paul later recanted, but not in a way that would warm your heart. He decided, based on his experience and success that indeed money can buy him love. This strikes me as even more cynical than his original position, that he doesn't much like anything, and not reflective of his thinking at the time of writing.

John Lennon later followed this up with the lyrics to "Imagine" which I'll excerpt here:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for

John embraced his inner dislike of everything and imagined a utopia when all of those things ceased to exist. Paul on the other hand seems to have repressed his true feelings about everything not himself and gone on to write/perform several songs that at the very least explain that he likes cannabis. Actions speak louder than words though and Paul clearly showed his dislike for both his fans and the rest of the world by recording two songs with Michael Jackson.

Cynical as I must sound like from time to time, clearly Paul and John have me beat here. I've never claimed to hate everything. Everything is a really long list and I can think of several exceptions to it right off the bat. For example, I don't hate gold striped cats named "Westley" or most cheese (brie isn't cheese, it's spoiled milk with a rind.)

I'm also OK with money, even though it can't buy me love. So Paul - you can send me a check (Google knows how to find me) to get rid of some of the stuff you don't care for. I'm afraid I can't help much with the rest of it.

Wall Eyed

There’s some sort of weird experiment going on at WallMart and it’s not the one you are thinking of. No, this one seems to have something to do with mind control (no, not the one you are thinking of now either.) What I’ve noticed is that as I walk around WallMart, looking for some elusive item, like a machete or a razor sharp double bitted axe, I see the following behavior repeated time after time. A stationary shopper, who’s body is oriented in direction A whose head is turned in direction B will suddenly and without warning begin to move in direction C, which space I am currently occupying.

First, I’m almost 6 feet tall, and large enough to do these shoppers serious damage if I planted my feet, stuck out my elbows and then checked them like I thought they had the puck and the referee wasn’t looking - but I would never consider doing that. My point is that since I’m large, wearing a bright red cap with reindeer horns and playing the bagpipes while I do my shopping it shouldn’t seem like a good idea to back into me. If I’ve already found the machete or axe, I would say that goes double.

So, what explains these people countering millions of years of instinctive fear of blundering into tar pits, sleeping lions and bear traps someone put under a pile of leaves that I raked? Walking in a direction you aren’t looking is sketchy even when you are in a safe place, in a wildly hostile environment like WallMart, it’s an evolutionary dead-end behavior. The only realistic explanation is that the aliens that own WallMart have decided to exterminate the human race by somehow encouraging this dangerous behavior through mind control. Remember, it’s not just backing into me, these victims specifically confuse the issue by pointing their body towards the expired cashews, looking at the demo-sized soap isle and then making a feral plunge to their 7:00.

Fortunately, the affected population is easily identified, even outside of the WallMart environment. Look for the ones with axe marks on their demo-sized soap container and tar on their shoes.

Anarchy shouldn't have it's own symbol

I've now seen the circle with an A in it on bumber stickers, window clings and as a non-spinning weighted hubcap cover on a minivan, and I'm confused by the whole concept. Not the concept of anarchy, anyone that has seen my office knows that anarchy and I have a close working relationship. No, the concept that I'm not quite fully understanding is how a concept which by its nature implies - a state of society without government or law - can have a symbol that is accepted by anarchists as the symbol. Who, exactly, is laying down the bucks to do a graphic design suitable for a bumper sticker / hubcap cover? If someone DID pay for a nice graphic design, did they copyright it or did they license it from whomever owns the trademark on representations of the circle A? Are there anarchist board meetings that discuss how distressed the swooshy brush strokes of the A will be, or how far outside the lines of the inverted V the cross stroke shall be? Can I get in trouble with some Anarchist governing body if I start using one with a perfect circle and a helvetica A in the exact center with no distressing or brush stroke stuff? Since nearly all of the representations I see are identical, I have to assume that like most organizations there is someone in charge of the ID, and enforcing conformance to acceptable versions. Can someone please send me the EPS scalable version of this thing?

Somehow related to all of that is the uniforms checked out to the students of the Art Institute of Seattle. If you drive by the Institute from time to time, getting onto the Alaskan Way soon-to-be-another-100,000-cars-each-day-on-surface-streets Viaduct, you know what I mean. Black shirt/blouse, black pants/leggings, black head thing (hat, scarf, headband, tatoo), black shoes, birkenstocks, Doc Martins and at least three items of flair which MUST include a stylized flame tatoo, a silver studded piercing and a "free item" which can be chosen by the art student. Does the Institute have a uniform shop where they sell these, or is it more like getting your boy scout uniform from regulated multiple suppliers? Do they have problems with rebels wearing yellow rain jackets or shameless gold piercings from time to time and have to crack down hard with the dress code?

All of these people are giving anarchy and rebellion a bad name. I think I'll go clean my office.

Economics of mystery shows

Just so you all know, this is a rant. I want to distinguish it from my usual postings, which are typically ramblings verging on tirades. I'm starting to hate the fact that you can always tell who the criminal/saboteur/evil mastermind is the second they walk on-screen by seeing that they are a recognizable B list actor. Almost any mystery series or show of any kind that tries to hide the identity of the antagonist has this problem, but I'll use Law and Order as an example, since they are one of the worst. If I recognize someone that just walked on screen from their appearances in other television dramas, there's about a 97% chance that they are the killer/rapist/fraudster for the episode.

One exception is when they bring in a A list actor, in which case you can depend on them being the villain only in the second or third part of a multi-part episode. Occasionally, an A lister will be the villain in only a single episode, but they will be really really evil. Like when Law & Order SVU brought in Martin Short as an evil psychic - Evil, evil, evil.

It pretty much ruins the show for me when you know whodunit 10 seconds after the bad guy walks on screen. I understand that these are the actors that are making their bread and butter on these shows, and for it to be worthwhile for them, it has to be a larger part, not just the grieving widow or estranged scion. I say give them a large part, and choose the killer from the extras list every once in a while.

What's the net effect? Well, since everyone I recognize on these shows are the bad guys, I'm only truly comfortable in the company of strangers these days. It's not that I can't separate reality from fiction (OK, but you have to admit it really LOOKED like a giant walking killer ham.) it's that I'm being conditioned to see the familiar as threatening by these shows. For those of you that know me, I've got my eye on you. For all of you total strangers, the key to my knife collection is in the adckuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

My AMAZING ABILITY

Not many people know, but I have an amazing 6th sense, which I believe I inherited from my father. Some people make interesting claims about mind reading or telekinesis, but those are all pretty much old-hat as far as I'm concerned. I've talked to a lot of you out there, and believe me - I don't want to read your mind. Sheesh, half of the time I can barely bring myself to listen to what you are saying out loud (...blah blah speed limit blah blah blah flock of turkeys blah hazmat team blah blah...) it's always the same old stuff. However, back to my ability; I can predict the future - but only in a really specific way. I can almost always tell when something annoying is about to happen, especially if I'm the one that's going to cause it to happen.

Yup, I know - you're wondering why all of the national labs aren't knocking on my door, asking for permission to study this ability. No no no, when they come knocking it's always about the "seismographic disturbances" or the "folded space" problem in my back yard - never about the cool 6th sense thing.

I remember clearly seeing my father demonstrate this ability when I was a child. He was working on a car, trying to get a nut to break loose with a cresent wrench. Pull as hard as he might, the nut was not budging and then it happened. He muttered to himself "if I pull on that one more time, the wrench is going to slip off and hit me" he pulled, it hit. I watched him pull on the wrench for 20 minutes before he said those fateful words, then smack, wrench sandwich.

While my Dad never again used his power in front of me, I soon found that I had inherited the gift. While lifting my breakfast plate I might suddenly be possessed by the thought "That newly buttered toast is going to fall off of the plate and land butter-side down on my new suede shoes, forcing me to jerk my foot away, thus spilling the orange juice on my homework, causing the citric acid to lift the ink right off the page, leaving me with a title and a blank page that smells like Florida. 10 seconds later, I'd be planning to skip first period to re-write my treatise on the chilling effect of high school on developing intellects, part IX.

Now, I take it all in stride. Yesterday, I looked at my shoelaces and immediately mentally added 5 minutes onto my exit for work, just microseconds before the lace snapped in my hand. I look in my rear-view mirror and signal a lane change, not because I'm about to change lanes, but because I want the person in the lane next to me to speed up and get out of my blind spot. What I can't figure out is why I still pull on the wrench, even though I KNOW it's going cause swearing and consternation. I guess I can't change the future, just be pre-annoyed by it.

Gah, I'm going to hit publish and then decide it's not worth re-opening this post to correct the spelling errors.

More Uncertainty

I usually don't stay on a single topic for more than one post here, but with a total of what - three entries you can't say that ANYTHING would be considered out of character, right?

One interpretation of quantum superpositioning and the observationally rendered wave function collapse is that for each and every possibility, all of the available options are realized, resulting in an astounding number of alternate universes, each precipitated by the observed resolution of (at the atomic end of the scale) an electron into a dicernable particle. If we consider that our actions at the macro level (e.g. choosing to hrrumph instead of snort as you read this) are precipitated by an extremely large number of events at the atomic level - we can imagine that for each of our actions, there are universes full of us that chose a near infinite number of alternate actions (assuming there are a finite number of quanta in the observable universe.)

If you're still reading, take a moment and consider what decisions in your life made that happen, and how you might influence things to produce better outcomes in the future, where you would be reading page 17 of your cellular phone manual instead.

So, if a few quadrillion versions of myself are spawning off new universes several times per second, manifesting all possible outcomes from each decision I make, that means a simple good versus evil choice that I make, like choosing the fajita versus the fish taco for lunch actually happens in equal measure by inumerable mes for every variant of each combination. So, while the me that's typing this has invariably chosen good (i.e. fajitas) over evil (clearly - fish tacos) there are JUST AS MANY mes that are out there ordering some horrific halibut with cheese and lettuce thing. So, while I'd like to think that I am generally a positive force in the universe, there's just as many mes out there wearing disco pants to the grocery store and voting republican.

Dedicated to our beloved Coda, still snoring on the couch in several quadrillion alternate universes, snoring evilly in about half of them.

Schrödinger's Outlook Calendar Entry

It has come to my attention that for periods of time, certain of my Outlook calendar entries are in a state of super quantum superposition, in that they are both scheduled and unscheduled at the same time. The state comes about when I've sent off several messages to people that I'm planning to meet with at some time in the near future (lets say within the week) and since I'm dealing with a finite resource (my schedulable hours this week), many of my announced available times overlap between meeting invitees. So, any specific entry may be:

1. Unscheduled (no invitee has decided to take this spot)
2. Claimed by one or more of several invitees (hence super quantum superposition)

Before I am able to get to my email and read the various responses, this means that the unobserved calendar entry is both unallocated, allocated and super allocated (everybody wanted Wednesday at 10:00.) According to the Copenhagen interpretation, My simple observational act of reading my email will coincide with the collapse of the wave function and resolve my schedule into something Microsoft Office can express. (That is unless you prefer to believe that non-conscious observers - in this case Microsoft Office - alter the quantum state of the observed phenomenon. If that's true, Microsoft Office is changing our reality at the quantum level millions of times per second. Try not to think about it.)

Now you know my problem. If I miss a meeting with you, it's because I was simultaneously also scheduled to be having tea with the Society for the Elimination of Annoying Car Sqeaky Sounds and saving a cat in a box with a radiation source nearby from certain doom. It's NOT because my scheduling habits are disorganized.

NOTE: The "laws" of "physics" portrayed in this note should have almost no resemblance to Schrödinger's "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik." Precisely, the similarities are:

• Use of the verb "know" although not in the same context.
• Reference to a cat, though mine was strictly to try and gain the reader's sympathy in the case where I stood/stand the reader up for a meeting (and attend it.)
  
• Improper use of comma splices.

Since I don't look at my blog logs, the entire planet has read and not read this entry. I'm VERY popular and ignored.

Titanium Spork as alternative lifestyle

So, along with the usual 4' hunting blowguns, lemur skulls, fish fossils and dried frog carcass-as-cell-phone-cozy that everyone I know received for Christmas this year, I also received a titanium spork. Much like the various versions of my TiVo thinks I'm gay out there, I begin to wonder what the gift of a titanium spork indicates that my good friends think of me.

I pretty much doubt that the people that bought me the spork have ever seen me eating with a spork. Hands, pocket knives, toothpicks, gravity and the occasional bendy-straw, but not a spork. So the focus is potentially on the hardy, will-survive-apocalypse nature of a titanium instrument, which holds more promise since they probably do know about the extensive system of underground tunnels under my house (and several neighbors houses if you want to get technical - see "hole digging") and the 3 years supply of food, water and silly putty stashed away just in case.

So, I'm thinking that they have thoughtfully provided me with an indestructible combination spoon/fork utensil on the off chance that Seattle will be destroyed by a combination of the Juan de Fuca Plate Tsunami / radioactive creature attack and spontaneous devolution of the Seattle city council and mayor into CHUD (their mothers would almost certainly notice the difference.) If that happens, I'll be packing around a very light weight single eating utensil while all of you are dishing up your rats and squirrels with your bare hands. You'll be all like: "Rarrrrgh aaarrgh, Spork man civilized" and I'll be all: "Quite true. Please pass the salt, this mutant opossum-squid is a bit gamey."

I'm glad folks are looking out for me. Oh, and for the record, my TiVo thinks I'm a llama.

Chitinous Gravy

So, as you are eating this holiday (or any other time of your choosing) you might want to point out to everyone (especially impressionable children) that the cell walls of mushrooms are made of the same material (chitin) that insect exoskeletons are made of, only since it's 95% of the mushroom's mass, it's like you're eating an insect with a 1/8 inch thick shell, or maybe the equivalent of a whole handful of beetles. Then, tell the kids that some cooks sneak mushrooms into all kinds of stuff like casserole, gravy, stuffing and lasagna. Feel free to add items that kids like to the list, though they might question you on soda-pop and ice cream - although "mushroom ice cream" does yeild 212 entries from Google.

My friend Mark points out that Jones Turkey + Gravy flavored soda would be the perfect beverage to accompany dung-beetle flavored food, and I have to agree. I would also like to suggest the following flavors to Jones, as they would complement much of the food we eat by bringing out the subtle flavors:

• Dr. Hamburger
• Bacon (root) beer
• Salmon Cola

Clearly, these would be big sellers with people that like meat flavored beverages, and who doesn't? For the truly adventurous, they might even consider sushi beverages - maybe an unagi Italian Creme (eels are good with creme) or a squid & chocolate soda, but we may have some hurdles when it comes to packaging raw fish in a soda bottle for distribution. Sushi beverages may have to be a fresh beverage only product for a while.

I'm sooooo looking forward to Christmas dinner now.

Hole digging

So, I've dug maybe 426 holes in my life, which I expect is about average for a shovel weilding non-gardener. Keep in mind that these holes have ranged across five or six states, and I've used most of the commonly available digging tools. The holes range in size from small ones to plant a mustard seed in through shallow graves for dead things that I had NO HAND IN KILLING to septic tank sized holes which certainly were for septic tanks and NOT dead things that I HAD NO HAND IN KILLING.

So, with this grand variation and variety of hole purposes, I'm wondering how it's possible that each hole was filled with 62% rock, one of which was 50% of the total hole volume and offset, such that the only way to extract it was to dig it out leaving a hole 75% too large. (For the purposes of this diatribe, I'm not particularly considering the other non-dirt contents of each hole, which include 2% roots, 1.3% glass and .05% cd wrapper plastic.)

When they show someone disinterring some hapless body that they had NO HAND IN KILLING in a movie or on television, it's pure dirt. They just remove shovel after shovel full of dark fluffy loam. In fact, if they are digging up a treasure chest of coffin, they suddenly know they've reached it when they go to lift out another shovelfull, and it goes "clink" or whatever that foley sound is. If I was near a treasure chest or coffin every time my shovel went "clink" I'd be up to the rafters in bodies and/or treasure....

And I'm not.

Really.

Cows absorb cellular phone signals

So, I've noticed that every time I see cows, I have poor cell signal. I mean I'll be driving around in rural America and see a cow - look down and I'm at one bar or less. So, I think we know now what the aliens have been up to with cow mutilations and such. They're pissed about trying to phone home and the smirking cows just absorbing their signal.

If you're not convinced of this, try this simple experiment. Buy a big beef roast, something 4 or 5 inches thick. Cut a cell phone sized pocket in the middle of it (closer proximity is required as dead cow meat is less effective) and stuff your cell phone in there. Now, sew the opening up tight and wait for an hour or two for the effect to take hold, and call your cell phone. See? No ringing. In fact, the phone itself may have been totally ruined by the cow effect (don't say I didn't warn you.)

So, try and keep the cows out of the major metropolitan areas where they might disrupt important communication infrastructure. Seriously, if you see a determined group of cows headed for your city, it could be the precursor to a terrorist attack. Repel them at all cost. Remember that not all cows are terrorists, but you don't want the one that is walking down your street.

Walking on the ceiling dressed like an elk

It's time to decide if you like cheese or not. I mean, think about it for a minute or two, and make a decision.