May 29, 2005

wash me!

Written in the grime on the back of a Semi:

“I wish my wife was this dirty.”

May 25, 2005

singularity sounds like it should mean this, but it doesn’t

I only have one mind. It can only maintain momentum in one direction as it is one single thing. If my head contained multiple instances of intelligent entities I would be capable of doing much more, for example as I write this I could be studying for my biology quiz later today or even work on my programming project whose description is so vague it would have been better communicated through a series of shrugs and facial contortions.

But that is not the case. And so I’ve failed out of my first class ever. Two programming classes is too much for my feeble mind. I thought I might be able to pull off a C after not completing two programming assignments in a row, but one blank midterm later, I realized it’s not possible and endeavored to save my other classes from the same fate instead of continuing the futile grind which consisted mostly of a staring contest with my computer monitor punctuated by restroom breaks and spontaneous fits of cursing.

but all is not lost

I’ve been offered a summer job actually writing code with quite a respectable company. I’m still waiting on the background check to go through, but pending that speed bump, I shall be starting June 13th at a certain company whose name rhymes almost precisely with Lockheed Martin. I’m thoroughly excited, though intimidated by the task I’ve been assigned.

congratulations

Lauren graduated from USC, which is hard for me to comprehend. Right now, she’s just looking for a job, and once she has that I’ll still deal with it mentally by telling myself it’s an internship, but once she doesn’t go back to school in the fall and refuses to go to class despite my urgings, I’ll have to come to terms with the situation.

At least by then USC football will be back and I’ll be able to go to a game with the free ticket that Lauren gets….. Wait a minute! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

May 23, 2005

good times…

“I tend to become a bit condescending when people say stupid shit.”
-Anon

May 13, 2005

knowing is half the battle

Did you know if you added Orange Juice to Champagne you can have it for breakfast?

Man, alcoholics are creative

May 11, 2005

advice I hope I’ll take

“Remember that. If you start a startup, you’ll probably fail. Most startups fail. It’s the nature of the business. But it’s not necessarily a mistake to try something that has a 90% chance of failing, if you can afford the risk. Failing at 40, when you have a family to support, could be serious. But if you fail at 22, so what? If you try to start a startup right out of college and it tanks, you’ll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Which, if you think about it, is roughly what you hope to get from a graduate program.”

-Paul Graham, from here.

I’ve heard this same argument more than once… except for the last three sentences, which puts it into a proper perspective.

May 3, 2005

just a thought

If you take the “el” out of “People,” you get “Pope.” This is due to the fact that el Pope is much like “people,” except that there’s just one of him.

Thus, “El Pope.” A man of the people; so much so that his name is an anagram for people.

the new jeff

There’s a new manager at staples, and we had a lovely conversation!:

TheMan: What are you going to graduate with?

Me: Debt.

May 2, 2005

it’s official

lauren asks me out on the facebook

Only the facebook can make it official.

This means that the only remaining scholarly person I know who is not on the facebook is my sister. Alex Reed, the one man I thought would withstand the gusty winds of change, caved like an anorexic in a hot dog eating contest.

May 1, 2005

i-slam-o-fascists

Stopped by Barnes & Noble today for a coffee and some free reading, when I discovered the book Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage.

First off, excellent title. It’s what drew me to the book. I’m sure he considered many other reasonable titles before he settled on it and he definitely went in the right direction. Other titles he rejected include Liberalism, the new commy-terrorism and Liberals: They WILL eat your baby; but it got my attention and that’s what matters.

When I initially went to see Fahrenheit 911, some conservative minded friends went with me and so, in a reflexive post-movie state, I asked them what they thought of the film. After they expressed an inclination to burn down his house and kill his children (see: terrorism), they pined for a movie of similar caliber from their point of view. I think Michael Savage is the man for such a movie. I would probably enjoy a movie like this so long as it was truly funny. While a great many friends take politics very seriously, I really believe that comedy is much more important in my day to day life. I propose instead of having “debates” (I’ll get back to Savage’s use of quotations later), we have each candidate do 30 minutes of stand-up and choose the next leader of the free world with a device that can only be called the laugh-o-meter. Their performances wouldn’t be any more scripted than they are now.

Incidentally, if this system had been in place in 2004, the election wouldn’t have even been close. The Great Reverend Al Sharpton would have annihilated the whole crowd. Bush’s frat boy humor just isn’t appealing, Kerry could bore a guy on laughing gas to tears, Howard Dean has that mad look in his eyes that makes you question whether or not he’s kidding. Only Sharpton could say, “George Bush giving tax cuts is like Jim Jones giving Kool-Aid. It tastes good but it’ll kill you,” and get away with it.

Getting back to the book, what makes Michael Savage great is his fanaticism, he put “United Nations” in quotes, apparently Mr. Savage believes the UN is a fictional body of world leaders, much like Super Friends (Come to think of it, calling Korea, Iraq, and Iran the “Legion of Doom” wouldn’t be any more ridiculous than “Axis of Evil”). Now, I’m not saying the UN is in any way efficient or effective, but to put quotes around an international diplomatic organization calls your grip on the bike handle that is reality into question. At a later point, Big Mike inventated the word islamofascist, which to me sounds like a game where you run around hitting fascists on the head with a laughably over-sized mallet; the point being that this was a situation which necessitated a hyphen, to indicate your intention is humor and not a failed attempt at english. I suppose it is possible that it comes up so often in his daily vocabulary that he has actually started to believe that this word is, in fact, in Webster’s, under i.

My favorite quote from 15 minutes of reading has to be:

“Ultimately, the legions of leftist revolutionaries are laughable. Their ideology has been a complete failure wherever it has been tried… …Which is why I invite you to sneer at their Big Lie. I invite you to remain vigilant before a bomb goes off in your mother’s house.”

Did… …did Michael Savage just threaten to level my mother’s home if I refuse to sneer?

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