I'm not sure if it's the imminent arrival of Halloween or what exactly is the cause but there seems to be an outbreak of shuffling zombies lately. They are wandering down main street, breaking into malls during the day, shambling down the aisles of your local grocery store, and stumbling into your home. The economic fallout has turned the world into the post-apocalyptic future infested with zombies that movies are so fond of predicting. They are everywhere, they are annoying, and unlike traditional zombies you will be arrested if you shoot one in the head to end its misery.
Some zombies are the kind who present with extreme cirrhosis of the liver and stumble into a shopping complex at ten on a sunday morning still so saturated with libations from the night before that a single spark would likely set the whole building on fire. These zombies may mouth words and try to communicate through hand-gestures as well but are ultimately not cognizant enough to intelligibly communicate and quickly break down into frustrated anger. Fortunately the zombies that have reached this stage have so little coordination they cannot effectively do any harm because they have to concentrate too much on just remaining more-or-less upright. The best weapon against them is disapproval and shooing motions.
Some zombies are the high-functioning sort who can manage to go through the motions of life over and over again without actually living. You may see them on the buses or walking down the street. You may hear them talking to themselves in the grocery story as they wander along largely unaware of the real world. These zombies are not violent and won't try to hurt you unless you hurt them but they can still be very dangerous. Do not allow them to back you into a corner and start talking about cats or celebrities or whatever other inane obsession they might have. Your best defense against these kinds of zombies is non-pseudo pseudopods which you can use to locomote away or if you are trapped in a situation where you cannot leave your best defense is a cellphone which you can use to fake a phone call or else make a real phone call to your work number to aid in your escape.
Other zombies are the drooling drug-induced kind. They grin like skeletons while moaning about their pain. They trap you in webs of questions that they use to hold you still while they tell you about their hallucinogenic visions of signs of god that they see everywhere and use to justify an evangelistic faith they only wish that they could spread as easily as the spore of zombism spreads in movies. These zombies are capable of extreme violence at the slightest provocation. Do not attempt to confront them physically. Your best defense may be flagrant atheism or threatening to call the authorities.
Still others are merely the dress-up kind who are literally wandering down mainstreet unconvincingly on an exceptionally cold saturday in late October in the middle of the afternoon. These zombies are completely harmless even to themselves and retain a distinct sense of self-preservation that manifests itself in the form of their uncanny ability to observe traffic laws. Your best defense is inclement weather and a healthy dose of mockery.
Then there is the most common kind of zombies. Those unfortunate souls who are so awestruck by celebrity that they become obsessed with glossy stacks of colored paper, thin sheets of color-emitting plasma, tweets, feeds, and applications on their phones- anything to give them that much-needed dose of vicarious excitement. Your only defense against them is to keep your wits about you. If you feel your cognitive intelligence may be impaired for some reason the only thing you can do is run as fast as you can.
Remember, if you see any of these types of zombies around you should immediately inform the CDC* so they can begin tracking and containing the outbreak. Do not try to take matters into your own hands in the form of a metal object being propelled at upwards of six hundred miles per hour by a tiny explosion or you will be arrested. Simply try to keep your distance from the zombies so as to avoid being infected with the brain-damaging malignancy they all possess.
*Center for Density Control
Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Bad Punchline: Scary Smart
One of my coworkers and I were talking about our 'formative years' last night and I was reminded of two things my father says about me when I was a little kid. One is that I was an "awfully cunnin little kid" and whatever happened to that? (If you're wondering 'cunnin' is a colloquialism applied typically to small children and it means 'cute'.) I am apparently no longer cute but I'm also no longer a small child so I think that one is easily explained. The other thing is that I used to be 'scary smart' and this coming from a man with a tested IQ of 156 (and who would probably score higher if there was no reading involved as reading is not the strong suit of a dyslexic) is an intriguing compliment but (again) he wondered what happened to that. I explained the latter in much less detail and then said something like this: "The thing that he's never correlated is that it's not that something happened to my intelligence but rather that I learned something else. Among my artillery of 'social skills' I learned how to seem less intelligent to other people so I could fit in better and even then I still come off as an arrogant jerk. If I acted as intelligent as my father felt I was back then I'd be insufferable."
Saturday, October 15, 2011
A Thing I'd Like to Say: Sick of Sympathy
Sadly I've not said this spiel because I like to keep my working relationships with people at least civil if I can manage but I simply can't stand this.
"Yes, I know you managed to slice your finger open through an act of your own stupidity. That's what happens when you pick up shards of glass with your bare hands. Next time put on some gloves or make use of a dustpan or something because if you cut your finger again I know I'll have to listen to this garbage for another two weeks. You cut your finger and it's horrible and it bled a lot and band aids leave sticky residue on your nails and obviously nobody else you know has ever experienced a paper cut or any kind of other laceration or puncture wound ever in their entire lives so obviously every time you see them you must not only update them on the status of the healing progress and how much it still hurts but also regale them with the story of how it happened over and over and over again until they want to further injure you just so you will shut up about your tiny little cut and complain about something else at the very least! I know it must seem absolutely inconceivable to you that anyone could have been in a comparable amount of pain before and that they don't have other things they'd rather do than listen to your desperate bids for sympathy but I have news for you: They have and they do. The reason I don't bring up the time I stabbed myself in the shin all the way until I felt the serrated knife scraping over bone or the time I split my thumb open on a ill-placed french chef's knife or the time I got gall stones or the eight million paper cuts, bramble scratches, glass lacerations, cat scratches and other injuries I've sustained in my life at every opportunity is not because they happened in the distant past or because I wish to avoid setting off a pity party but because, fancily enough, nobody cares. That's right. Nobody cares so suck it up and shut up about it already before you offend an amputee that happens into the store or something. Seriously."
"Yes, I know you managed to slice your finger open through an act of your own stupidity. That's what happens when you pick up shards of glass with your bare hands. Next time put on some gloves or make use of a dustpan or something because if you cut your finger again I know I'll have to listen to this garbage for another two weeks. You cut your finger and it's horrible and it bled a lot and band aids leave sticky residue on your nails and obviously nobody else you know has ever experienced a paper cut or any kind of other laceration or puncture wound ever in their entire lives so obviously every time you see them you must not only update them on the status of the healing progress and how much it still hurts but also regale them with the story of how it happened over and over and over again until they want to further injure you just so you will shut up about your tiny little cut and complain about something else at the very least! I know it must seem absolutely inconceivable to you that anyone could have been in a comparable amount of pain before and that they don't have other things they'd rather do than listen to your desperate bids for sympathy but I have news for you: They have and they do. The reason I don't bring up the time I stabbed myself in the shin all the way until I felt the serrated knife scraping over bone or the time I split my thumb open on a ill-placed french chef's knife or the time I got gall stones or the eight million paper cuts, bramble scratches, glass lacerations, cat scratches and other injuries I've sustained in my life at every opportunity is not because they happened in the distant past or because I wish to avoid setting off a pity party but because, fancily enough, nobody cares. That's right. Nobody cares so suck it up and shut up about it already before you offend an amputee that happens into the store or something. Seriously."
Monday, October 10, 2011
Situational Irony
I had a lot of conveniently empty time in which to think the other morning while I was battling nausea and a runny nose at work. I had some initial thoughts earlier in the morning that revolved mostly around the fact that this was the fourth morning in the last five that I had thrown up and of course not actually eaten anything for breakfast before heading off to work. Once made sense to me because I started a new job Monday morning and extreme nervousness had previously had this effect on me. Four out of five, though? That seemed excessive. It seemed like my body was trying to communicate something that my logical mind had not yet figured out. And it had something to do with my new job, obviously. Taking the job had seemed wholly rational at the time and I doubt I'd make a different decision even if I could rewind up until that point three weeks ago.
Some of the things I thought about had nothing to do at all with the situation at hand but rather trying to get into the right mindset in order to even consider it. I settled on a mostly logical and partly math-driven decision making process. I started by doing some calculations of what my earnings were with and without this job. I calculated how much it was costing me to get there each day. I calculated the amount of time I spent traveling between my job and apartment and between that job and my other job. I calculated the hours I had spent actually in my apartment in the last five days. I calculated the number of hours I had genuinely enjoyed in that same time period. I calculated the approximate cost of getting my license and acquiring a car and sketched out a conservative timeline for that process to take place in. I ran into one of the same sort of logic spirals I had used as a counter-argument for why I hadn't bothered to get a second job when I first started living in this city. In order to have a second job I would need a car (true of this situation with the new job because of its location) and in order to afford to have a car I would need a second job.
Considering the slippery nature of the logic spiral and some of the less intrinsically calculable facets of this situation (including my happiness, the value of my non-work time, the fact that Linda would be much better at this job than I was, the fact that the very nature of the job riddled me with anxiety, the detrimental effects of having to get up early every morning would have on my mood and health, and the fact that I will soon be moving) I concluded I should make sure that this was within the bounds of reason before becoming fully committed to the conclusion I fairly inevitably came to. Actually, that's not true at all. I was pretty committed to the conclusion by the time I came to it. I just wanted to make sure that I was not acting irrationally while being blinded by my logical constructs. I was also fairly certain of this. I just thought I should check on the finer points.
The conclusion I had come to, though, was that I should stop working at my new job and Linda (who has for the past few months been a coworker of mine at my book-shuffling job) should do it instead because it was, in fact, the kind of job she was looking for when she'd settled on the place I work and she'd be much better at it. The downsides were few in that I thought that it might fluster my boss at the book-shuffling job and I might not get to work with Linda anymore. The only real obstacles to this conclusion were how to explain this to Linda without making her feel guilty about it (this was foremost in my mind despite it theoretically being lesser than the second obstacle) and also how I should go about explaining to my new boss that I didn't really think I wanted to be employed by him anymore. Previously when leaving jobs I always had genuine reasons for doing so such as my mother requiring back surgery and needing assistance (though that wasn't the whole truth of why I really left Amato's) and moving to another city. I was also in no way desirous to give a 'two weeks notice' as it were but neither did I want to actually quit. I considered whether the phrase 'I don't think this is working out' would be too much of a cop out or if it adequately encompassed my calculations regarding the situation without explaining them all explicitly.
Despite my inability to consult about this problem with another rational human being beforehand I was immensely relieved when my new boss made just the kind of leading statement I had in no way been expecting. He said: "You know, the hardest part about my job is when I have to do things like this." And I knew exactly what he meant by that. I was a little put out that I didn't get to break up with him first but the statement he followed with invited what would probably be a response he wasn't expecting. He followed with: "But I just don't think you're going to work out here." I agreed with him before he'd even finished what he was going to say. I think my firm agreement confused him because he started to launch into what felt like a prepared explanation of his motivations until I interrupted him again by agreeing with his assessment and after another half a phrase he seemed to realize that I'd actually been agreeing with him and no explanation was required. After that the sort of things you have to say in that situation were said. I told him to have a nice afternoon and left. We parted by mutual agreement.
I knew when I got to my book-shuffling job a short time later that the first thing Sue and Linda were going to ask me about was the other job. So I headed them off with saying something phrased roughly like this: "Well, he and I regrettably came to the same conclusion from different angles today. My logic had much more to do with the fact that it was not economically better for me to work there and physical illness due to the job itself and his logic seemed to have far more to do with the fact that I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, a mind reader." I shrugged. I was going to stop working there anyway so what did it matter that he felt I should, too?
Linda asked me a short time later if it would be alright with me if she contacted the guy at the garage and saw about getting that job. I assured her that it would be fine. I spent all morning trying to manipulate things so Linda would work at the garage and I wouldn't and in spite of the fact that none of my machinations were even so much as set in motion they came to pass. Classic situational irony.
Some of the things I thought about had nothing to do at all with the situation at hand but rather trying to get into the right mindset in order to even consider it. I settled on a mostly logical and partly math-driven decision making process. I started by doing some calculations of what my earnings were with and without this job. I calculated how much it was costing me to get there each day. I calculated the amount of time I spent traveling between my job and apartment and between that job and my other job. I calculated the hours I had spent actually in my apartment in the last five days. I calculated the number of hours I had genuinely enjoyed in that same time period. I calculated the approximate cost of getting my license and acquiring a car and sketched out a conservative timeline for that process to take place in. I ran into one of the same sort of logic spirals I had used as a counter-argument for why I hadn't bothered to get a second job when I first started living in this city. In order to have a second job I would need a car (true of this situation with the new job because of its location) and in order to afford to have a car I would need a second job.
Considering the slippery nature of the logic spiral and some of the less intrinsically calculable facets of this situation (including my happiness, the value of my non-work time, the fact that Linda would be much better at this job than I was, the fact that the very nature of the job riddled me with anxiety, the detrimental effects of having to get up early every morning would have on my mood and health, and the fact that I will soon be moving) I concluded I should make sure that this was within the bounds of reason before becoming fully committed to the conclusion I fairly inevitably came to. Actually, that's not true at all. I was pretty committed to the conclusion by the time I came to it. I just wanted to make sure that I was not acting irrationally while being blinded by my logical constructs. I was also fairly certain of this. I just thought I should check on the finer points.
The conclusion I had come to, though, was that I should stop working at my new job and Linda (who has for the past few months been a coworker of mine at my book-shuffling job) should do it instead because it was, in fact, the kind of job she was looking for when she'd settled on the place I work and she'd be much better at it. The downsides were few in that I thought that it might fluster my boss at the book-shuffling job and I might not get to work with Linda anymore. The only real obstacles to this conclusion were how to explain this to Linda without making her feel guilty about it (this was foremost in my mind despite it theoretically being lesser than the second obstacle) and also how I should go about explaining to my new boss that I didn't really think I wanted to be employed by him anymore. Previously when leaving jobs I always had genuine reasons for doing so such as my mother requiring back surgery and needing assistance (though that wasn't the whole truth of why I really left Amato's) and moving to another city. I was also in no way desirous to give a 'two weeks notice' as it were but neither did I want to actually quit. I considered whether the phrase 'I don't think this is working out' would be too much of a cop out or if it adequately encompassed my calculations regarding the situation without explaining them all explicitly.
Despite my inability to consult about this problem with another rational human being beforehand I was immensely relieved when my new boss made just the kind of leading statement I had in no way been expecting. He said: "You know, the hardest part about my job is when I have to do things like this." And I knew exactly what he meant by that. I was a little put out that I didn't get to break up with him first but the statement he followed with invited what would probably be a response he wasn't expecting. He followed with: "But I just don't think you're going to work out here." I agreed with him before he'd even finished what he was going to say. I think my firm agreement confused him because he started to launch into what felt like a prepared explanation of his motivations until I interrupted him again by agreeing with his assessment and after another half a phrase he seemed to realize that I'd actually been agreeing with him and no explanation was required. After that the sort of things you have to say in that situation were said. I told him to have a nice afternoon and left. We parted by mutual agreement.
I knew when I got to my book-shuffling job a short time later that the first thing Sue and Linda were going to ask me about was the other job. So I headed them off with saying something phrased roughly like this: "Well, he and I regrettably came to the same conclusion from different angles today. My logic had much more to do with the fact that it was not economically better for me to work there and physical illness due to the job itself and his logic seemed to have far more to do with the fact that I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, a mind reader." I shrugged. I was going to stop working there anyway so what did it matter that he felt I should, too?
Linda asked me a short time later if it would be alright with me if she contacted the guy at the garage and saw about getting that job. I assured her that it would be fine. I spent all morning trying to manipulate things so Linda would work at the garage and I wouldn't and in spite of the fact that none of my machinations were even so much as set in motion they came to pass. Classic situational irony.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The Meaning of 'meh'
My mother was cool enough to get me a t-shirt bearing one of my favorite interjections for my birthday. White letters on a black t-shirt that just says 'meh.' Though you might not find 'meh' in a hardbound dictionary typing 'define: meh' into Google brings back nearly seventy-two million results the first one of which is more or less how I've always defined the word. Even though I'm sure I've used it in conversation unconsciously on dozens of occasions with all sorts of different people without any communication problems within two wearings of the shirt I'd been asked four times what in the world 'meh' meant. Maybe it's the little bit of 'teacher' my mother managed to build around the seething ball of frustrated impatience for a lack of understanding that I inherited from my father but I explained patiently and thoroughly what 'meh' meant to each person that wanted to know. But even though I gave them the correct answer I almost wish I hadn't. I could have said anything- anything at all and they would have assumed I was correct. So I decided to amuse myself for a few minutes with coming up with some responses to the inevitable 'what does "meh" mean' that I'm going to get the next time I wear it.
Malicious Emo Hipster
Managably Erratic Hypothalamus
Marketing Event Horizon
Making Everything Horizontal
Malignant Electrodactylic Hypertension
Massive Esoteric Hashish
Mildly Exclusive Histrionics
More Evil Harpies
Missing Every Happiness
Munchies Every Hour
Men Eating Hashbrowns
Most Entertaining Happenstance
Got any other suggestions for me?
Malicious Emo Hipster
Managably Erratic Hypothalamus
Marketing Event Horizon
Making Everything Horizontal
Malignant Electrodactylic Hypertension
Massive Esoteric Hashish
Mildly Exclusive Histrionics
More Evil Harpies
Missing Every Happiness
Munchies Every Hour
Men Eating Hashbrowns
Most Entertaining Happenstance
Got any other suggestions for me?
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Bad Punchline: Psychic Vampires
This is a special post for someone who has their birthday today.
I recently read about a experiment where they sent some of the muon flavor of neutrinos from one location to another and they traveled faster than the speed of light. And you know what moving faster than the speed of light means? Time travel! So my first thought was that I'd make some kind of construction out of them in order to delay time for one day for you. But the thing is neutrinos are sub-atomic particles of matter and though they have mass you can't even look at the things without changing them so that kind of made me throw that idea out. I had another science-related idea though that I'd actually thought of earlier. On the basic premise of a Faraday cage (a mesh or cage made out of a conducting material that keeps out electromagnetic radiation and interference) I would make you a Faraday Amulet. The amulet would be for keeping out the malicious electromagnetic impulses (otherwise known as brainwaves) from the evil psychic Vampires that want to prey on your mind while you're at work and drain your energy and psychic lifeforce. Additionally it makes a rather attractive piece of ugly jewelry which I know you like. Unfortunately you can't have it until the next time I see you but I thought you might like this in the meantime.
I recently read about a experiment where they sent some of the muon flavor of neutrinos from one location to another and they traveled faster than the speed of light. And you know what moving faster than the speed of light means? Time travel! So my first thought was that I'd make some kind of construction out of them in order to delay time for one day for you. But the thing is neutrinos are sub-atomic particles of matter and though they have mass you can't even look at the things without changing them so that kind of made me throw that idea out. I had another science-related idea though that I'd actually thought of earlier. On the basic premise of a Faraday cage (a mesh or cage made out of a conducting material that keeps out electromagnetic radiation and interference) I would make you a Faraday Amulet. The amulet would be for keeping out the malicious electromagnetic impulses (otherwise known as brainwaves) from the evil psychic Vampires that want to prey on your mind while you're at work and drain your energy and psychic lifeforce. Additionally it makes a rather attractive piece of ugly jewelry which I know you like. Unfortunately you can't have it until the next time I see you but I thought you might like this in the meantime.
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