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Changes IV
(16-25 June 2003)
25 June 2003
-Helen made The Pitch (TM)
today, catching me a bit off-guard. Basically I had expected that she might make an overt
attempt to get me to stay at JMMC, but it would likely be the day I told her of my leaving (i.e.
yesterday) or the day just before my two weeks were up (i.e. next Thursday). Instead, it was
today. She's a tenacious person, one who tries very hard to make choices sound like they
are not choices at all. She's not good at understanding "no". So I made the
gargantuan blunder of mumbling that I'd think about it. Which means, of course, that I
will think about how much I don't want to go back & let her know this soon. Maybe in
writing. Bah.
-The first case of hives I've had in many years persists, now more than
24 hours after showing up. I just wish they'd made Benadryl caplets when I was younger...
the taste of the liquid stuff is etched in my sensory memory from days when I seemed to get hives
once a week.
-Billows of thick black smoke were covering I-680 today, stemming from a fire
at one of the refinery-type places around the Benicia bridge. I was most impressed by how
many miles away the smoke was plainly visible from.
-I never thought economists were big on
mysticism, but the late moves of Greenspan & Friends are changing my mind. The federal
lending rate is 20% of what it was back when the economy was bad in March '02. This just in:
the economy is actually worse than it was 16 months ago. Hm. Well, they
must know what they're doing, right? Maybe when the interest rate is -2%, the economy will
just soar! Banks just taking some of your money every time you open a savings account HAS
to be good for your financial situation, right? Mmmm, deflation. This'll work, I
know it.
24 June 2003
-Earlier today, I fully
intended to post in vague irony about how the most I've liked my jobs in months has been just
after giving notice to leave them. I was going to quote a friend of mine who once told me
that my perceived identity consisted mainly in "a flair for finding the dark lining on the
silver cloud". I was going to underscore how easily people adapt to settings &
realities & even when they hate them, it's hard to let them go. The idea that any
situation creates an aura of nostalgia upon departure, at least for some people. Even
gulags, perhaps, or prisons. But then I had one of the most aggravating days at Chapman
since hiring in October, trying to balance the demand of 5 classes for 2 LCD carts & 3 classes
for one TV/VCR unit. I was ultimately successful, but this required unscrewing the world's
most tightly-screwed monitor cord & reusing it elsewhere. The point is that even though
I may briefly have a wave of nostalgia, I won't miss these jobs. I'm making the right
decision in a landslide. & now people (especially at CU) will realize what they've
been asking people to juggle & make changes more quickly. Maybe.
-As a note that
should've been up a couple days ago, Kevin Grinberg has returned to the land of updating web
journals, & cites my admonition (circa 10 June) as one of his reasons! You'll find him
on the BP People page.
23 June 2003
-It appears that the
internet has a fever, & the only prescription is more Country Quiz. Remember when less
than a month ago, I was impressed by 84,000+ page accesses in a week? Last week, 400,682
page accesses hit the Blue Pyramid, an astounding 302% of the previous record, set the week
before. With a full 95.1% of the hits coming in the InterActive section, it's clear what
everyone's looking for. More than 30,000 quizzes were taken last week, which is now 39% of
the quizzes over all 23 weeks it's been up. If this isn't the height of the popularity of
the Quiz (7th on the LJ charts), I'm a little
scared to find out what will be.
-I would've launched the sequel Quiz by now, but things like
job-quitting & marriage preparations have gotten in the way. At this point, even if
1/10th of 1% of the people who have taken such a huge interest in the Quiz looked into Loosely
Based, that would be more than 75 people from all over the world who wouldn't have looked
into it otherwise. Of course, I have no real reason to believe that they will take that
interest, but you never know what can be helped with a small little link. Just ask the
guy who made Nation-States.net solely to promote his first book!
-My JMMC boss took my quitting
much better than I expected, & especially was worried about. I was nervous all night
last night about reactions, & so far they've been much more positive than I really even could
hope for. I guess everyone I was working for thought 85 miles a day, 11 hours out of the
house, & jobs without intellectual stimulus were crazy for me too! On 3 July, I'm a
free man. Crazy timing, eh?
22 June 2003
-For the first time since July of last year, the
Book List has been updated, now including
the 25th submitter, Adam Zimmerman. See how Zimmy's picks have impacted
the overall list of 468!
-I just submitted two e-mails quitting my jobs. If I didn't have to work
18 more shifts at the two of them, I'd feel like the freest person alive. As
is, I'm nervous about how my resignations will be received. But rest assured,
this is the best decision I've made in quite a while. Time to stop wasting
time!
21 June 2003
-For a brief time, we're a 3-car family. I
guess Pandora gets the extra vehicle. We're in the process of trading
the ol' Probe for one of Em's eldest brother's family's Saturns. The Probe
will be sold eventually in Fresno, & we get the Saturn for a modest fee.
But the Probe hasn't been dropped off yet, so we have 3 cars for a bit.
-The Albatross in Berkeley is probably as good as a bar could be for my tastes.
It's very dark, has plenty of active & subdued gaming options, &
has maps all over the bathroom walls. Being in California, it's also smoke-free.
Sure, people still go there to get drunk, but if one has to have that,
the Albatross is as good as one's going to get.
20 June 2003
[from Clovis, California]
-Pretty sure that I'm giving notice on my jobs over the weekend. This
will enable me to quit before needing two weeks off for the wedding, after which
it wouldn't be particularly nice to quit right away. I'm afraid some people
are in for quite a shock, but it's better than me being miserable any longer.
-I want to clarify something about my abortion comments yesterday, briefly,
because I think at least one person (maybe many of you) misinterpreted them.
When I said "purely practical [arguments] about quality of life",
I meant quality of life of the unborn child, not the mother. The
only justification I've seen people effectively use for abortion (excluding
rape, because I think that gravely complicates the issue & makes abortion
much more acceptable) is that the quality of life of an unwanted child is more
important than the quantity of life of that child. In an overpopulated
world where an unwanted child is likely to face extreme hardships from day one,
an argument can be made that the child might want to be euthanized rather than
face its future. This is the only thing I've found to be compelling. I
don't think I'm "trivializing" the difficulty of a potentially abortion-prone
situation, rather I think that personal responsibility for the pregnancy takes
on a much more important role than I think most people in this country believe
in. & yes, that personal responsibility obviously falls squarely on
both responsible parties. Just as I believe that the decision to get an
abortion, in a society where it is legal, ought to fall squarely equally on
both parties. In short, pregnancy, in cases of abortion or bringing the
child to term, should be taken a lot more seriously than people generally take
them. Just my opinion.
-I seem utterly unable to get good sleep anymore.
19 June 2003
-The Kia no longer makes
massive engine noises whenever it's running! & fixing it was all covered under
warranty. Paying a bill for $0.00: priceless.
-Wow! The Quiz is up to 12th on
the LiveJournal charts with 770 links!
Also, more fun with foreign
forums...
-More joys of working in Walnut Creek: hearing one's boss & coworkers
congratulate each other on how much money they give to the English as America's Only Lanugage
campaign. Yeah, that's why I moved to Berkeley.
-Lots of folks linked on the BP People
page are talking about interesting things... Pat's latest installment is about a
dichotomy he draws between "thinking" & "doing" blogs. This entry
took me 2-3 read-throughs because I started by skimming & it wasn't immediately obvious to me
which type would be thinking & which doing. He classifies thinking blogs
primarily as subject-specific & doing blogs as primarily personal. I think that
accepting such a dichotomy would make this page either a fence-sitter or one that flits back
& forth from day to day, which is probably why the dichotomy strikes a sour chord with me.
He goes on to explain why he believes that "It seems that thinking blogs are cooler
and have broader appeal than doing blogs". My experience has been quite different,
primarily because most subjects that people focus on (such as when Phil's page had a daily
Lab Notes section) leave me pretty cold... I've yet to find a history blog, & I can hardly
ever read Amy's front page (she divides her thinking from doing pages, if you will) without
getting upset about her political views. Furthermore, people that I don't even know often
have extremely interesting blogs that are really only about their personal lives. This is
where I probably part ways with the average reader, since I'm obsessed with studying personal
interaction & think that the only really fulfilling study is of human thought, interaction,
& perspective. For example, Sam's [*] webpage is linked on the BP People page &
I read it (like all the rest on that page) every day. I haven't had any contact with this
person in nine years, however. & we were never close at all to begin with. Yet
I find that her perspective is interesting to read. Another example are the many random
blogs that I surf when checking out opinions of the Country Quiz from those who have linked it.
I often get engrossed in the personal rantings & ravings of people (ranging in age from
14 to 40 from what I can discern) who I will never meet & have no bearing on my life other
than taking my Quiz. I recognize that mine is probably not the majority perspective, but I
almost always prefer a good personal blog to one about the study of a given field.
-Everyone's
talking about the line between infanticide & abortion & I
say I would tend to agree with making the difference in how society treats these two things less
severe. There's clearly not that big a gulf between someone -2 months old & someone +2
months old. The question of punishment, however, is purely academic to me, as I'm just not
interested in standard punishments for people who commit wrongs. Punitive measures by force
seem universally unfair... who am I to give one over another? I've said before that I'm
having real qualms with abortion as a concept & it just seems to violent for me to find
acceptable & have yet to find really good arguments for it other than purely practical ones
about quality of life that seem circumstantial at best.
-Despite my usual frustration with
Amy's libertarian views, she also has many views which I strongly agree with. One of these
is about vegetarianism, where she displays part of our dialogue here. It's too
bad we haven't gotten more of a response about this, because I really want to
understand...
-Finally, on my day of featuring other web journals, I must say it's the low
point for my enjoyment of Adam Duritz's offerings. In the same entry, he endorsed the
concept of capitalism being inevitably ubiquitous in human society AND praised the Rolling Stones.
This double dip of disaster will be difficult to forgive. Which for some reason makes
me wonder what will happen if fans of my book (should there be any when it comes out) will
discover this page & be appalled by what I say here. I guess there's something to be
said for keeping one's opinion of art & the artist at least somewhat separate.
18 June 2003
-At lunch today, a bird
attacked my head twice. I have no idea what sort of bird, as I was unable to get a look at
it. I was walking towards the Carl's Jr. when claws swooped down & grabbed at my head,
as though they wished to carry me away. I was a little freaked out, but I figured out very
quickly that it was a bird & one that posed little threat to me, especially if I kept my
eyes averted. It made a second attempt at lifting me, & then I entered the restaurant.
I quickly made sure that there were no bugs in my hair & then ordered my meal.
-It's
definitely fun to have people rave to each other about something you designed... in another
language!
-Everywhere I look in this country, I see nothing more than meager plutocracy
trying to pass itself off as popular will. The chain of corporate funding buying advertising
buying votes is in perfect unending working order. Until that chain is obliterated, there
will be no hope for leadership in this nation's political spectrum.
-One of my very favorite
rants, especially on this page but also in life, is about mental health, drugs, & authenticity.
It seems like I rarely bring much new to this debate that I haven't said before, but every
time a new step is taken towards the literal, non-satirical manifestation of Huxley's Brave
New World in our society, my outrage is renewed. The latest instigator of fury is the
late JAMA study (I shuffle copies of this mag almost every day at my morning job) declaring that
$48 billion is lost each year due to decreased efficiency from depression. Many people
(though strangely not even most) are dissatisfied with their jobs. The following
fact was not included in the study: most jobs stink. An insanely high percentage of
jobs are unfulfilling, unrewarding, sustain a marginal quality of life, & are, in short,
depressing. The fact that so many Americans can deal with having such jobs is a testament
to the amazing distracting ability of the entertainment & material junk in our society.
I have two jobs that I would consider to require far less work than average, make a great
deal more pay per "unit of effort" (imagine we can quantify these things) than the
average job, & that I chose for myself (think of how many Americans, let alone people
worldwide, cannot choose their profession). & I absolutely hate them. Almost
every hour I've spent at them lately has made me feel depressed. It's not because there's
something wrong with me that can only be solved by doping my brain cells into submission with
coercive "be happy!" chemicals. It's because my jobs stink. & I'm one
of the lucky who can get out of it, improve my life, take on a rewarding job, afford the pay cut,
& all these other things because of my natural abilities & my opportunities. Most
people can't do that, they have to face a life of anonymity & isolation where their primary
defining duty is something that bores them, or they hate for some other reason. You can
either come to grips with this reality, & start trying to build up a consciousness of
meaning over materialism in our society, or you can go take some drugs & you won't
have to think about it.
-People who think I have waaaay more programming skill than I actually
do, on the Country Quiz: "I think it chooses three or so countries are random to start
off with. Then asks you questions to choose which of those countries you are." I found
that on one of the many random (English language) forums the CQ is circulating on.
17 June 2003
Happy Birthday to David Gray
-Zimmy became the first person since last summer to submit
his top 25 to my compilation of best books from various friends & acquaintances.
I will integrate his list with the sum total sometime this week, when
I'm not working a 9-hour schedule (12 hours of work & driving time), which
I am this week so I can have Friday off to go to Fresno. But I want to
remind everyone who hasn't submitted a list that the list is still alive!
-"Unfortunately, these jobs have proven very disappointing. Most
library work is devoid of challenge... It consists of predictable rote
tasks which take little effort to figure out, and less effort to repeat."
-from my cover letter, dated yesterday, to a community service organization.
16 June 2003
-People like to come up
with stories to get you to give them money. & not just large corporations! This
is a pervasive trend amongst small-time panhandlers as well. I can completely understand
the desire to come up with a story... it makes one seem more believable, it pre-empts the
potential query as to why they want the money, & it illustrates why a person is not
"lazy" or any of the other things people attribute to those who panhandle. What
is harder for me to understand is why the following story is almost the only one that anyone
uses: "Hi, I was driving here & my car broke down & my family is back in the
car & I'm $X short of getting it filled up with gas, or towed, or repaired." I
believe I have heard this story more than 10 times in my life, almost exactly the same each time, & in
communities ranging from Washington DC to Albuquerque to Boston to (today) Walnut Creek.
Often I am tempted to directly ask the person why they want to make up this particular story
when everyone has heard it a million times. Instead I gave the man one-sixth of his
"shortage", no questions asked. I think that if I ever end up broken down with
my family in the car & no money in a strange community, I will have to consider making up a
believable story to actually get money from someone.
-I knew it! The famed Counting
Crows/John Mayer tour of this summer, in direct conflict with my wedding (thus disenabling us
from attending said concert) WILL have Mayer as the official headliner. I predicted this
against the skepticism of many who were sure that the better band with quintuple the studio
albums, double the radio songs, & infinitely more stage experience would actually get to
close the shows. But instead the flavor of the month gets center stage. To be fair,
I do like most of John Mayer's stuff, especially this "Why Georgia" song. But
even the radio announcer who relayed this information was shocked that CC is opening at this
stage in their career, & for someone other than The Who. I knew it, but getting
confirmation makes me feel much better about missing this tour.
-There are many people whose
standards are so high that they will never be met. They turn their nose up at almost
everything in sight, they are constantly complaining, constantly ragging on people in basic
service industries & the community. What mystifies me is where these standards came
from in the first place. The individual I'm considering now grew up on a farm & had
little to no high-class expectations growing up. Where did she learn to be such a critic?
Why do so few people give basic things that don't really matter a break?
-Meanwhile, it
was another record-obliterating week at the Pyramid o'Blue. The previous record was broken
by nearly 50,000 page accesses, to a new all-time high of 132,497 accesses in a single 7-day
period. Flag Day brought out fans of the flag-based Country Quiz, as the week ending that
day also set a record with just shy of 8,500 quizzes, besting the old mark by almost 3,000.
I am almost certain there will be a sequel now, 'round about the time I hit 50,000 total
quizzes taken. I'm also considering a very different type of quiz, per a suggestion from
my Dad, but I'm pretty sure CQII will come first. I must admit that people searching with
quotation marks has gotten pretty lackluster lately, but people really think I'm the source for
things like issues analysis of laci petterson case, latest news on laci petterson case,
latest laci petterson news, news about laci petterson, & of course latest on
laci petterson case. Most amusing about all of those searches, of course, much like
last week's winner about Hans Blitz, is that Laci's name is therein misspelled. That
spelling only appears on my page because of Elias' last-name, which is different, being listed on
his birthday.
-I was in denial about Ray Bradbury's One More for the Road being the
last short story collection of his career, even though Em pointed out fairly bluntly that the
title probably meant something more than just trying to be catchy. But finishing the book
this morning, I read the afterword & it looks like this is probably it. A great
collection, certainly not his best, but better than many. Sigh. I probably will never
get to meet the guy.
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