Category: Uncategorized

In ‘Office Space’ Jennifer Anniston worked at a Chili’s style restaurant. Her boss criticized her for not wearing enough flair, ie not showing enough enthusiasm. It was made out to be one of the mundane little torments of the modern age.

It was a really good scene, btw, because of the lowkey way Anniston played it. I got the impression she’d wear more flair if necessary but just wanted to know the standard. Her character came across as very mundane yet agreeable, which was the reasonable reply to that little torment. If your boss wants you to wear more buttons, you don’t march for JUSTICE! You just wear more buttons. You also maybe look for another job.

Anyway, I follow a few car and motorcycle enthusiast sites, and some of the writers clearly don’t like cars. If they do, they are incapable of conveying enthusiasm. What’s the dividing line between demanding the employees wear more flair and saying they’re not doing their jobs supporting the hobby?

Is the appropriate reaction for me just not to read these authors or visit these websites? I do do that. But the blogs are effectively selling enthusiasm, so it’s not a peripheral product. In Office Space, Anniston’s character technically sells food. The analog for a car blog would have Anniston’s job modeling buttons.

The VA sent me a quality survey email about how well some computer functions they provided worked. The survey didn’t load.

Ladies and gentlemen: the VA.

Edit: They misprinted the unsubscribe link, so unsubscribing from survey emails takes me to…the survey. That doesn’t load.

Firing your wad or shooting your wad is an old muzzle-loading musket term.

It’s funny that outdated terms tend to shift meanings to popular ‘modern’ ideas for whatever context of modern we’re talking. So in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, a lot of mundane terms that were then outdated became religious, spiritual, or mystic in connotation. Nowadays, things tend to become sexual.

It’s not that our old-timey ancestors were less sexual than we are, but we have fewer universally relatable concepts. This is due to both our generally increased world-spheres and more diverse social circles. Someone in 1700s Massachusetts would spend a higher percentage of their time talking to other people from Massachusetts, probably close to 100% for most people, than today. What’s more, those people would pretty much all be white Puritans. Now my friend circle crosses the Atlantic, is localized in much of the West, and hits people of varying religions, political beliefs, and so on. We don’t all have religious commonalities to fall back on. We have biology, and that’s eating, drinking, sleeping, and sex. And dragons.

The process of contraction is roughly random, so if you’ve got religion, locality, biology, and dragony in common with people, and say sex is 1/4 of biology (conversationally, whatever), 1/16th of shifting expressions would have landed on sexual. Nowadays religion and locality are far smaller, so say their relevance drops by half. So 1/3 (1 / (bio + 0.5 religion + 0.5 locality + dragons) of terms shift to biology and of those, 1/4 are sexual, giving a final proportion of 1/12. 1/12 is greater than 1/16. All numbers completely made up, but I’d be interested in historical etymology if someone has the statistics.

Anyway, it’s odd how languages change.

Every time I write something in all caps and italics, I want you to read it as if I leaned way forward and stared at you with an are-you-getting-this expression. Not necessarily yelling, but maybe a little too enthuastically loud. If we had that conversation in a library, the strict librarian would shush me loudly, but the friendly librarian would roll her eyes.

“You don’t want burritos?” loud.

How exactly does 5G cause Covid?

I don’t quite get…any of it, really. I understand the flat Earth. If you go outside and look around, it looks pretty flat. But millimeter wave signals aren’t viruses.

Is the virus the hoax? It’s not a virus. It’s…low energy EMR, comparable to the background radiation and vastly less energetic than sunlight, right?

Since dead people don’t need cellphone service, what’s in it for the cellphone companies? Are they not in it for the money?

AT&T isn’t in it for the money? Comcast, Verizon, and COMCAST aren’t in it for the money?

Comcast.

Comcast isn’t in it for the money.

Comcast.

Just so I’m clear, COMCAST isn’t doing something for the money?

…

Comcast.

Anyway, I’m very confused, and after searching some conspiracy theory websites I still don’t get the crux of the theory. I’m also probably on a government watch list.

Oh, also, quick shout out to all the actors in Europe, Africa, South America, everywhere really, who were willing to take one for the team and fake Covid to take out some American politicians. You did yeoman’s work supporting an anti-government conspiracy against someone else’s government. Top notch dedication everyone. What exactly is in it for you, if you don’t mind me asking? Do y’all get free 5G cellphone service? Is that the connection? Free internet?

Is it Comcast?

I really liked Carlos from the 2006 Casino Royale. That guy was excellent.

North is up

The St James Lowlands are a protrusion of continental crust stuck to the Fhysay oceanic plate. To the west of the Fhysay/Arsae subduction zone lies the St James subcontinent, called the Hashash (Icelands) in Whitehall and Morrun Vie (Vanishing Land) in Thangrodom. In Tharsi, it is the Hurror (Suffering Cold). The subcontinent effectively makes the Doon plateau.

Extending some five hundred leagues north of the plateau in a wide teardrop shape, the lowlands are broad alluvial plains. Mostly flat, the highest point of the lowlands is about two hundred feet above sea level if one eliminates the Doonish foothills. Some few islands lie off the coasts, almost entirely runoff and sandbars. In the winder, the west side of the lowlands is often icelocked. The east side is occasionally icelocked, but the prevailing currents swing wide north around the teardrop, sheltering the east. This creates polynya north of the goblinmounts where immense numbers of arctic wildlife, walrus, penguins, seals, etc. shelter from the winter.

Not in all years does this polynya form. In particularly cold winters, ice will push as far south as the Invedeletch coast. This is a 1% event, but results in immense hardship for the aquatic animals. Such freezes are called ‘Dyings’ by goblins.

Pool’s open. That’s nice.

Sometimes, when life gets me down and I need a little pick-me-up, I go stand outside in the rain to let a stranger stick a Q-tip up my nose. It’s just what I do. They swirl it around for a little while. Some are steady-handed, and some get a little squirrelly. Those swabbings wake me up like coffee never will.

I can’t take that away from the medical professionals. They look so happy to be in a little tent for eight hours a day, swaddled to the gills, and spending hours of their lives sticking Q-tips up noses. I feel like we have a bond, and that really keeps me going.