I'm Sleepy

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but it's the holidays anyway, you should be out celebrating something. The site will still be here in January when the so-called "Christmas vacation" is over. By the way, whoever came up with that term needs to be slapped mightily and repeatedly. It might be time away from the regular grind, but a vacation it most certainly is not. I always thought that the idea behind a vacation was to slow down, relax, and then come back rested and recharged with the ability to put renewed energy into whatever it is that you need to be putting energy into, not running all over the universe in an even more rushed fashion than usual. I'm not trying to slag Christmas or anything, but it seems like very few people actually get to take an honest to goodness vacation this time of year. They just trade in one set of stresses for another one and wind up coming back to everything in January even more tired and angry than they were before they left.

But speaking of Christmas, mine has been great so far. It generally is even though living in a 3-sided family makes things kind of hectic. It's always nice to get home to see family and friends, and when some of those people have stuff to give you, it's even better.

But one of the things I was given is still making my head spin. Ok, I suppose it wasn't technically a Christmas gift, but it was still given to me around Christmas, so I'm counting it. But when it was given to me isn't the important thing. The important thing is that I am now the proud owner of several packages of frozen SpaghettiOs. Feel free to stop and read that again, or if you don't feel like going back, I'll type it out one more time. Frozen SpaghettiOs. It wasn't a gag gift (at least not in that sense) that somebody put together to be funny, the Campbell Soup Company actually makes and sells these things. How they manage to sell them I'll never understand, but somehow, they do.

For the benefit of anyone who has never had the misfortune of seeing these things, here's a quick description for you. They're SpaghettiOs in a bag, and they're frozen. That's about it really. They're just harmless icy blocks of pasta-like substance in a plastic bag. But what I can't figure out is who exactly are these for and who came up with the idea and why. Who was the person who sat there staring at an ordinary can of SpaghettiOs and thought to himself, "cans are stupid. Somebody really ought to put these things in a bag. And not only should that person put them in a bag, but he should also freeze them while he's at it, because SpaghettiOs aren't quite watery enough as they are, and I have no doubt that the extra moisture that gets into everything when you thaw it out would do nothing but wonders for the flavour and texture"? And who's buying these things? When has there ever been a situation that would make something that is perfectly fine when canned more convenient when you need to first thaw it out and then spend the next 5 minutes trying to get it open and force pasta circles and sauce through plastic that neither one has any desire to come out of? I just don't get it. I understand why we have both frozen and canned vegetables, but I just cannot for the life of me get my head around the need for a bag of SpaghettiOs. I've never seen fresh ones, so why freeze them? It would be like putting a TV dinner in a can. But maybe I should stop right there before I give somebody another brilliant idea.

Ok, I'm off to get ready for my New Year's party now, but before I go, here's the next part of the
Top 50 Wrestlers Countdown.
Enjoy and I'll talk to you all soon, most likely once things have a chance to settle down a little. Happy New Year.

Thought Salad, Munch Munch!

Well hello all. I hope everyone's having or has had a good holiday, and is now full of turkey/desserts/whatever else you might have eaten/drank over the past few days. I had a good holiday, it was pretty cool to see my sister back on this side of the pond since she spent almost 2 years in Korea teaching English. I didn't have any huge monumental things happen to me, just your usual run of the mill holiday fun, but a bunch of stuff ran through my head, and since the next few days are bound to be chaotic, here's the pile of stuff that ran through my head. Let's divide it into the good and the bad, the yea and the boo!

Yea: Getting an Ipod shuffle for Christmas rocks. I think it's the only mp3 player without a screen on it. So there's a chance that this bumbling blink might be able to figure it out. That was like woe way over the top from my brother. Also, getting a pile of funky Korean souvenirs rocks. I now know I was born in the year of the sheep.

boo: To all you morons with guns in Toronto, piss off with your random shooting sprees. Seriously, how senseless, thoughtless, and absolutely fucking stupid is it that some armed lunatics in a BMW fired into a random crowd of boxing day shoppers on a busy street? I mean, it's bad enough that there's gang violence going on, it's bad enough that young lives are being wasted over some differences in gang territory or who the hell knows what, it's bad enough that there are more funerals needed after a shooting at a funeral. But at least those shootings were connected, and maybe there was a reason to explain why those people got shot. I'm not saying it was right that some 50 people died this year in Toronto because of that stuff. But I guess it kind of makes sense. It's kind of like when someone gets burned after they put their hand on the stove. Well, if they hadn't put their hand on the stove, they wouldn't have gotten burned. It doesn't make it any less painful, but you can understand it happening. But to fire into a crowd of completely innocent bystanders? What in hell is that? That's like someone turning on the stove and it exploding in their face, except a stove explosion, in most cases, isn't carried out by people with minds enough to understand that what they're about to do is bad. IT's an accident. Someone sticking a gun out their BMW's window and pulling the trigger is not a fucking accident. It's a disgusting lack of respect for human life, and it makes me sick.

Yea: well now that I've let out I guess the heaviest part of the post, I'm happy to hear that that horrible excuse for a television show "growing Up Gotti" has been canned. God, that show just drove me nuts whenever I watched a bit of it. I think it's about x-mob-boss John Gotti's daughter raising her 3 obnoxious teenagers, and being a super bitch about everything to everyone. I mean, to do a whole episode about preventing her son from going to college in Boston just because she doesn't want him to leave the nest is a waste of TV time. I'm glad the ratings agree with me, and, good riddance, hopefully those boots that are made for walkin' don't get slammed in the door on the way out.

Boo: What is with the huge amount of porn spam today?! Is it porn spam day or something? Or maybe it's Give a Few Grannies Cardiac Arrest Day. Seriously, I opened my spam folder, and just about puked. I usually get a mix of spam trying to sell me cheap software, spam trying to make my absent member bigger, spam selling me cheap drugs of all kinds and mortgage deals, and the scams from Mrs. el googoogoo from the state of walawalablablabla trying to get my banking information so she can make me rich beyond my wildest dreams, and, sprinkled in there, some really nasty gems describing the porn I can have a look at if I just go to their site. They're not just, well, making vague references to what I can have. You know the ones. There's usually references to children or animals, and lots of descriptive words like oozing, squirting, dripping, ok I'm going to stop before I lose my lunch.

Well, today, I had nothing in my spam folder but those gems! What is with that? Talk about your Christmas gift.

yea: That's some awesome not so wintery weather. Hey there, mother nature! If you can hear me, you can just keep doing that for a little while. Any time I can be spared from freezing all extremities off in the bone-chilling cold would be awesome. I know, I'm a giant wimp, and I should just deal with it, after all, this is Canada. But we can all find something we don't like about where we live, and this is it for me.

Boo: I've run out of stuff to say. Unless a miracle happens, I probably won't get around to writing anything up here until after Newyears. So happy Newyear everyone, and stay safe so you can come back and read more in 2006.

More Countdown Goodness

Salty Ham's Top 50 Wrestlers: # 30 to 21.

Ok, I'm going back to being full and sleepy now.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Well, it's early, and I'm getting ready to head home to my parents' house. Ah my parents' house, with the good food, family, and...dialup! Eeek! So if you don't hear from me in a little while, that's why. Plus, I'll be doing the family/friends-visiting trek that's always insane. So before I disappear into the wild blue yonder, I just want to say, have a safe and happy holiday everyone, and I'm sure I'll be back with stories in the new year...if not sooner.

Did You Ever Wonder?

The other day when everyone was sure we were going to have the snow storm to end all snow storms, I had the oldies station on because they're better at giving updates on weather and local crap, and I noticed something. Have you ever noticed how, in songs, when they talk about girls, I can't say always, but a lot of the time, it's in child-like terms? Little girl? Child? Baby? And the guy is her...daddy? And when you think about that, don't you find that a wee bit disturbing? Do we all have some kind of latent pedophilia going on?

I remember being confused by that as a kid. I remember thinking briefly, why is that man talking to his baby like that? Babies are those things that go waa waa and are in strollers right? And then it happened so much that I guess I figured out that it wasn't an actual baby he was talking about. But now that I'm grown up, I feel like I've gone full circle, because I still think it's weird. Does anyone else think so? Or have I lost my marbles?

People are Funny

I was walking home through this giant pile of slush that is our town right now, and something happened to me that I should have mentioned when I was bitching about the things people do when I'm walking around. I got off the bus, but it had stopped a bit short of the curb. So someone was good enough to warn me about that, which was cool. Now here came the fun. I walked forward and my cane hit a giant bank of snow. As I'm trying to figure out the best way around it, a voice said very slowly, "She's going to walk into a huge pile of snow!" Ok, instead of taking up play by play commentary, how about saying, "Go left." or "go right."

But that one I can sorta understand. Maybe she was thinking out loud, just really....really...slowly. But it made me think about something people do. They love to talk about me in third person when I'm right there. Sometimes it's to the person I'm with. "Where is she going?" and sometimes it's to each other. "Look at that girl with the cane. How old do you think she is? Where is she trying to go?" It's like they think I'm deaf. How about asking me? You might get an intelligent answer.

Cut the Drama!

Does this drive you as nuts as it drives me? You're scrolling down through your msn contacts. You see people's names, a lyric or two, a funny quote...and then a complete display of overdone mush! Sometimes it's something like "I love my honey bunny shnookums buttercup!" or something equally as nauseating. Or, if the flavour of the week didn't work out for that person, as it's usually these types who flock to the overdone mush-pot, it's "Woe is me, there is a whole where my heart once was, oh how will I ever live?" I saw one tonight that brought back why I hate these displays of meaningless sap. It was in French, and the poor unfortunate soul couldn't even spell. But what he tried to say was "I need a new spirit because this one's empty." I called him to see what all the fuss was about. Do you want to know what was wrong? He was just tired because he finished his exams. Wouldn't "so tired" or "phew I'm done exams" have sufficed? Empty spirit? When I think of empty spirits, I think suicide, depression, horrible family tragedy, or something equally bad. I don't think semester's end.

Please, people, save the profound for when it is actually necessary. That way, if something big does happen to you, I'll actually notice and not think it's so much neaningless drivel. I get enough pointless sap in the
hug certificates you send me. And don't use your msn name as a place to proclaim your undying love or infinite heartbreak. I love to hear about it, but not in that way. It's the electronic equivalent of planting a big sloppy French kiss on your significant other or having a lover's quarrel in front of a crowd. So disgustingly public!

I'm not saying I don't like to hear about something that's going on in people's lives on msn names. It's just when it goes right over the top that I get a little fed up. Please, people, cut it out!

The Year In Weird News

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

More Plugs, More Rants

I Hope that everybody's doing well and that if you do that sort of thing, that your Christmas shopping is almost done. Mine is just about finished. I have to buy things for about 4 or 5 more people, and I know what I'm going to get all but 2 of them. So, does anybody have any ideas for what I should get my Mom and Dad? If you do I'd appreciate them, they're really hard to buy for this year. Just keep in mind before you suggest anything that my Mom isn't your typical Mom and that there's a pretty good chance that my Dad will be too drunk to remember what I got him anyway. I don't generally make talking about my personal life a habit, but the guy's so messed up that he can't even remember which year the whole family left him, how sad is that? I love to drink and I've had a lot of fun doing it, but Jesus Christ, what that stuff does to some people is just tragic. I thank my lucky stars every day that I took more after my Mom and didn't inherit my Dad's addictive personality.

But enough about that. While we're talking about Christmas, I need to say something. I am by no means a religious person, but can we please knock off all of this "holiday tree" bullshit? It's a Christmas tree. that's what it's called, that's what it is. It's a symbol of Christmas in the same way that a menorah is a symbol of Hanukkah, but you don't hear me talking about the menorah like it's nothing more than some sort of fucked up candle holder. What ever happened to live and let live? Sure, Christmas is everywhere, but it always has been. We live in a part of the world where the celebration of Christmas in either it's marketed or religious forms is taken part in by a majority of the citizenry, and there's no good reason to change that because we also live in a part of the world where everyone, be they majority or otherwise, is free to celebrate whatever he wants whenever he chooses. If I want to wish somebody a merry Christmas on my way to the mall where I'll then proceed to spend way too much money on shit that my friends are probably going to hate and bring back as soon as the stores open up again, it's my right to do that. By the same token, if you want to be a miserable prick because somebody has the nerve to be who they are, it's your right to do that, just don't fuck with my symbols while you're doing it, that's all I ask.

It's kind of strange being back in my own house after spending so much time away from it in the last little while. I think that in some ways I still haven't adjusted to living alone, because every time I come back here I'm always amazed to discover that everything is still exactly where I put it before I left. I'm not sure if I'll ever entirely get used to that.

Ok, time for a couple of plugs.

Salty Ham's countdown of the Top 50 Current Wrestlers is still rolling along, and the second part of it is now posted
here
for your reading pleasure. Or maybe pleasure isn't the right word, you make the call.

And before I go, I wanted to let everybody know that Flagg is back! He writes about TV now, and just like before, he's still all kinds of awesome. You can check out his newest column by clicking
here.

Ok, I'm gone for now. I'm sure you'll hear from me before too long, but just in case you don't, have a safe and happy holiday season no matter what you're celebrating. that even goes for you politically correct sacks of shit out there who don't want me to celebrate anything. What can I say, I'm feeling charitable, it is Christmas after all.

Breathe In The Name Of The Law!

Mayor wants to ban death.

"The mayor of a Brazilian town is trying to bring in a law making it illegal for residents to die.

"Mayor Roberto Pereira da Silva, of Biritiba-Mirim, came up with the idea because the town's only cemetery is full.

"He wants to bring in a law that would see relatives of people who die before their time face fines or even jail."

I'll never understand the whole "before their time" thing no matter how many times I hear it, especially when it keeps coming from those people who think that everything is "God's will." If it's God's will and he does everything when it's time to do it according to some sort of "divine plan" he's cooked up, then how can any death be a premature one? When you're supposed to go, then you're gone, no matter how or when you go. You can't have it both ways, pick a side and stick with it. Mark that down as another problem I have with the whole religion thing. Too many logic gaps for me.

As a small side note, this story has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with physical space, but I needed to throw that out there because those "God knows everything" people drive me endlessly up the friggin wall.

If There Was a Net God...

I read the ten net commandments from the Spyware Weekly Newsletter, and they're bang on. Anyone who doesn't already follow these rules should start. I guess I'm partially breaking no. 2, but only in the safest possible way.

Note: When he says every second Tuesday, he means the second Tuesday of every month.

1. Thou shalt not buy merchandise found in pop-up ads or spam.
2. Thou shalt not post thy email address, phone number, address or social security number to the internet, nor shalt thou post anyone else's.
3. Thou shalt not forget to update thy Windows every second Tuesday.
4. Thou shalt not connect to the internet without installing an antivirus, nor shalt thou begin a scan without checking for updates.
5. Thou shalt not connect to the internet without installing a firewall.
6. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's credit card number, nor his bank routing number, nor his social security number.
7. Thou shalt not enter thy credit card number without seeing the tiny padlock icon on thy status bar.
8. Thou shalt not reply to the email from the Nigerian banker.
9. Thou shalt not forward chain letters to thy friends and family.
10. Thou shalt not use "password", nor thy birthday, nor thy children's names, as thy password.

Pretty Weirdness

I hate to throw something like this on top of Carin's great post about the shelter, but like they say, the show must go on. By the way, who are They? I know a million people have asked that question, but none of them have ever been able to answer it. Ok, there's always
this guy,
but I'm not counting him since he just decided to become the answer last year in a rather creative attempt at cashing in on his 15 minutes of fame, and surely the real They have been around longer than he has, so his little publicity stunt means next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. And it's at this point that it dawns on me once again that I sure do spend a lot of time thinking about stupid crap. I'm not sure how healthy it is, but hell if I'm stopping, it's somehow worked for me up to now. Why tamper with marginal success I always say.

Wow, I actually had to look up at the title to remember what my point was supposed to be. Guess my fingers kind of got away from me for a minute there. And is it just me, or does that last sentence sound far more disgusting than it should?

Ok, after all that, let's talk music!

Does that new INXS song "Pretty Vegas" weird you people out as much as it does me? I don't know about you guys, but whenever I hear that song I always have to stop for a second and remind myself that this is 2005, that's JD Fortune singing, and that Michael Hutchence is most certainly still dead. He might still be hanging from the hotel doorknob for all I know, but wherever he is, he ain't singing on that song. But even though I know that, the lengths to which Hutchence 2K5 goes to sound exactly like him are extremely frightening to me. I'm so bothered by this that I can't even enjoy Vegas for the not bad song that it is. Maybe it's because I can't get over the fact that I was fooled into thinking it was an old INXS song and it took me like 4 minutes to realize I was wrong when I'm usually the guy who knows that kind of thing in about 4 seconds, or maybe it's because I can't get the damn thing out of my head, but whatever it is, this song has started driving me nuts. It's gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering dropping way more cash than anybody should have to for an INXS album just for the sake of hearing what the rest of it sounds like. Isn't that sad? Ok, you don't have to answer that. But please, somebody, tell me that I'm not alone. Or better yet, send me a copy of the album or at least hook me up with a few mp3's so I can get a sense of whether the whole sound-alike thing is a marketing ploy designed to sell albums to idiots like me or something that should legit scare me. Whatever the answer ultimately ends up being, there needs to be one so I can finally get my mind back to a state of relative ease.

And on a final note,I'd just like to point out that about 93% of all of the Christmas music I've ever heard in my life is really, really bad.

More later.

Big Fuckin Post, No Fuckin Title!

Yep, I gave up. After sitting there for a good 20 minutes trying to find a title for this post, I just threw one in. Hey, at least it's a title of some sort. Sorry I haven't written in a while. I really don't know where this week went. I guess that's what happens to time when you get closer to Christmas. But I've been thinking about something for a while, and tried to post about it, but oh no. My computer had other plans for that post.

Like I said a while ago, I started volunteering at a women's shelter. I knew going in that it might be heart-breaking. But I guess I expected the heartbreak to just smack me in the face like it does sometimes at the telephone help centre where I volunteer. But I'm figuring out slowly that the things that rip me apart aren't in the obvious, but in the subtle.

Let's just run through a few things that have happened over my few shifts there. At the beginning I didn't know the way there because the address is confidential. So they were meeting me and showing me the way. As we walked towards the door, the staff walking with me stopped me, turned and talked to someone else. She said very nicely, "Hello, are you looking for some apartments? I live in the area, I know it well, do you need some directions?" It turned out to be a man. After gently directing him away from the shelter, she told me she wasn't sure if he was trying to sneak in and get past the staff. That freaked me out. How often do they have to politely fend off people from trying to get inside? And One day, would I have to do this too?

When I finally get to the door, I am told it has cameras, shown a keypad where you punch a door code that I still haven't been given, and a doorbell that connects the person on the outside of the door to someone who speaks over an intercom speaker. I understand the reason for all this security. I mean, the women in here have x's that aren't exactly friendly and when they drop by, it's not to bring the women some cookies and maybe a nice card. But even understanding it doesn't make it any less forbidding. Then, the door opens, and I have five seconds to get through the next door.

So I'm now inside the walls of the shelter. At first it feels sorta homey. I can smell some rice cooking, I can hear some music playing and some women talking. And then I hear something else. A baby crying. This should add to the homelike atmosphere, but it doesn't. It shakes me and brings me back to reality. This is a shelter. A shelter for women and their kids to get away from someone who's beating them. That means, what has this poor baby seen already? In this baby's brief life, what has he or she had to go through? What does this world seem like to this little baby?

I walk to the office to check in and see which kids need a babysitter. I get there and the phone rings and someone's prescriptions come in, and she doesn't even have the money to pay for them, so they have to be paid for by the shelter. Then I start to notice the state of organized chaos that is the norm here. As one of the staff starts to deal with the prescription, a woman comes in, cannot speak English at all, and the staff on the phone has to hand off the phone to someone else because she's the only one who can speak Spanish, so she can talk to the woman who's just walked into the office. Can you imagine not only needing to run away from someone who has probably controled every aspect of your life, but on top of that, not having the ability to speak the predominant language spoken where you are? Not being able to ask for help? Having to hope that the person offering help is an excellent reader of body language? She's just lucky that there is one person in the shelter who can speak Spanish fluently. But what happens when that person goes home?

I'm told there's a little girl who needs a babysitter. So I meet up with her and we go off to play. She decides to play with a jack in the box. But the character refuses to come out of the box. So the little girl says to me, very calmly, "I know how to fix it." With that, she picks up the jak in the box and smashes it down hard on the floor. My mouth opens a little and then I manage to not make a big deal. I say to her, "Oh, I don't know. I think you might have scared him. Now, he might not come out at all." Then, with the next crank, the little guy pops out. I find this whole situation freaky. Think about it. She got what she wanted by smacking the thing around, just like I'm sure her mother's abuser got what he wanted by smacking her mother around. I know the jack in the box doesn't have a mind and it was just a strange coincidence, but it was the wrong kind.

Back at the office, someone comes in and wants to speak to the staff about donations. What she has is not anything huge, but what it is seems to be needed. It's a bunch of clothes and blankets. Then I got thinking about how these people usually arrive. With nothing but the clothes on their backs, and maybe a kid's favourite toy if they managed to grab it on their way out the door. And they'll likely be leaving soon, having to start all over again from scratch. How does one do that when they don't even have the money to pay for their prescriptions?

I come back a couple more times and the little girl really wants to see me and is talking to me. As I go to leave I say, "I'll see you next week." There is a pause and the staff with me says, oh no you won't because she and her mother are moving out on the weekend. I give the little girl a hug and tell her I hope she likes her new place. And that was the last time I saw that little girl. I wonder how stable her life has been up to this point. Has this been the only time of Chaos? Or has it been a series of moves, always hoping the next house, the next town, the next man, will be better?

Then I think about how it's going to be the whole time I'm there. The high turnover, the constant change of faces. I know it's a good thing that they're not stuck there long, it means there's hope for a new life. But for me, It also means I'm going to have to grow a thick skin and not get attached to anyone there, because likely before I know it, they'll be gone.

As I go to leave because my shift is over, I have to hit a big button to activate the intercom and ask if it's safe to go. She says it is and I step back into the parking lot, the street, the seemingly normal world. Then I wonder how normal it is, or how many other strange worlds are spinning in their own little orbits all around me. And then I think I should stop philosophizing because nobody needs a big pile of philosophy. Whatever I may think, I know this. It sure didn't need much time to simultaneously scramble up my brain and make me thankful for how good my life really is.

Well, Now We Know

The three wise men arrived to visit the child lying in the manger. One of the wise men was exceptionally tall, and bumped his head on the low doorway as he entered the stable.

"Jesus Christ!" he shouted.

Joseph said, "Write that down Mary, it's better than Moishe!"

How Did They Miss That?

Woman sent to male prison.

According to police in Buenos Aires, Mrs Aguilera was checked by several policeman but none noticed she was a woman.

A police spokesperson said: "She looks and acts exactly like a man, it was impossible to see that she is a woman.

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the world's most sheltered police force!

Cheap Plugs And Pointless Awards

Ok, time for me to whore myself out a little.

The good people over at
Salty Ham
are in the middle of celebrating 2 years of existing, and there are a lot of things going on over there right now. Among them is the Top 50 Current Wrestlers list, the first part of which you can read
here.
I wrote stuff there, go check it out if you're either a wrestling person or a Steve person. Do Steve people actually exist? Probably not, but I can pretend.

And I know that this has nothing to do with anything, but as of Tuesday night, I'm convinced that pop music is pretty much dead. They actually presented something called the Ringtone of the Year Award during the Billboard Music Awards that night. Why do ringtones need their own award? You know who deserves his own award? The first guy to get so pissed off when he hears one of those fucking things in a public place that he kicks the person square in the nuts and shoves his cell phone up his ass. Then again, watching the Billboard Music Awards in the first place is a pretty good indication of what sort of state pop music is in, ringtones or no ringtones, so maybe I'm just getting way too worked up about this. That being said, piss off with the ringtones already, would ya please? It's a phone for God's sake, not a fucking jukebox.

Stalker's Drug Mmart

I heard something on the news that just gave me the shivers. The Canadian Pharmacists' Association is changing it so that people who get the morning after pill have to give the pharmacist their names, addresses, phone numbers, and details about there sexual activity before they can get it. This is apparently to make sure people are using it appropriately and effectively. Doesn't that just make you shake your head and go, huh?

In case you didn't know what the morning after pill is, it's a few pills you get within the first couple days after a roll in the hay that you think might have gotten you pregnant to stop the pregnancy from going too far. It's basically like a whole bunch of the stuf that's in a month's worth of birth control pills all squished into a couple of pills. it used to only be available by prescription, but now they made it available over the counter, presumably to make it easier to get than before. Do you see where I'm going?

If you have to give all this info to some random pharmacist, how many people actually will? Now, instead of a bunch of people using the morning after pill and no one having stats on its effective use, oh fiddledy dee, we'll have a bunch of unwanted children instead. Doesn't that sound like a wonderful plan?

And, why is there any good reason for someone to collect these people's addresses and phone numbers? Are they trying to create a "for a good time, call" database? Someone's phone number isn't going to tell you if they know all the right info about the plan B pill. Why not just take each person who requests it aside and tell them the info they need to know and not bother taking shit down and filing it away for tracking purposes? Isn't that what they say pharmacists should do anyway in all those commercials with the cute old ladies?

If I am to take these people on faith that this is something they need to do to make sure people are taking their medicine as directed, why not do it for everything you get over the counter? Why not ask for someone's headache history when they need a pain-killer? Why don't they ask if you've bought other cough syrup when you break down and get some Buckly's? *Everything* can be abused and administered the wrong way. That Southpark episode about cough medicine abuse was a joke, but I'm sure there's some base to it. Hell, some of the stuff in crystal meth comes from cold medications. While we're at it, why not ask people if they've ever had drug charges brought against them because they want something to make them stop hacking up a lung? Surprisingly, extreme as it may be, it makes more logical sense than this shit.

This Is Progress?

First things first, if any of you reading this emailed me something any time between Wednesday night and 9:30 or so on Thursday morning, odds are good that I probably won't be getting it unless you send it again. This morning I downloaded a bunch of mail onto Carin's computer, which promptly proceeded to crash and eat about half of it. Needless to say, Steve was not a happy guy this morning.

But the tragic and untimely death of a massive amount of electronic correspondence did get me thinking. It got me thinking about the way we live and the ways in which we function as a society. How we do things, how things are done for us. Who and what we trust, and the things with which we trust them. In short, it got me thinking about whether we, as a people, are truly as advanced as we tend to think we are.

Stop and think about your own day to day life for a few minutes. Think about all of the conveniences that inovation has afforded you in the hopes that you'll be a more efficient and productive worker during select hours, and lazier during others. Consider how much you've come to rely on those conveniences, and how much it sucks when you're placed in a situation that doesn't allow you to have access to them. Remember all those times when you were running late for something and you didn't have your cell phone with you? You got pretty pissed off and annoyed with yourself, didn't you? It's ok, you can admit it, we've all been there and we've all reacted the same way. And why? Because we've become a culture that depends on computers and gadgets to keep us in touch 24/7. If you don't think that's true, think about how angry you get when your buddy doesn't have his phone turned on, or the profound sense of shock you feel when you happen upon somebody who doesn't use the internet and has no use for an email address and then tell me again that I'm wrong. Ok, now that you're on side, ask yourself this question. For all of the teleconferencing and instant messaging and email and whatever else you want to throw in there that's supposed to save time and make things easier, are we really that much better off? Have all of the technological safeguards that we've put in place to prevent mistakes and their associated misery really worked, or have we simply swapped one set of problems for another? Personally, I think the answer is pretty simple.

I won't try to argue that technology doesn't have it's good points. I understand and appreciate that a great many inventions have been a great deal of help to a lot of people. Without some of the concepts and improvements that have come along over the years, I can pretty safely say that my life as a blind person would suck mightily. Because of technology, I can pay bills without help, I can keep track of notes I need to read in order to do various jobs, I can piss around doing stupid crap on the net while I'm supposed to be doing those jobs, I can do, well, pretty much anything I want, and I have technology to thank for that. But that being said, I truly believe that we've come to depend on and blindly trust in it's supposed infallibility way more than we should. What happened to my email today is a fine example of that. Sure, email's great when it works, but if for some reason something goes wrong, boom, it's all gone and you're out some important company memos, just like that, no questions asked. It's all gone and there's nothing you can do about it. Think of it this way. When a postal truck flips over on the highway and bursts into flames, what do you suppose happens to all the mail? That's right, it's gone. that's it, there's no getting it back. John's house payment and Francine's thank you cards are all incinerated and they won't be getting to where they need to go. So how is it then that email is so much better? I know that in the time it takes to snap your fingers a couple of times you can send 1093 emails, but what good is that if they don't get to their destinations? Have you ever gotten an email from somebody 2 weeks after it was sent? What's the difference between that and those stories you hear on the news now and then about a postcard from Paris that was sent during World War 2 finally getting to somebody in Virginia 65 years after the fact? When you scale it down and consider how long each is supposed to take, there's really no difference.

But where the point is really driven home for me is at the bank, or maybe I should say at what passes as a bank these days since you can bank from pretty much anywhere now. Me for instance, I do a majority of my banking over the phone. Stop and think about that. AT no time do I ever have to handle money, or interact with someone who does. Isn't that weird? My entire monitary existence has been reduced to what amounts to nothing more than an abstract idea and some blind faith that the hard drive is good at math. Gee, I don't see what could possibly go wrong there. What used to be me exchanging money with somebody else for goods and services has now become one machine telling another machine that I have the correct number of numbers required for that other machine to agree and then convince another actual person that they can then give me what I need. I'll give you a moment to get your heads around that.

But in any event, I think I've made my point. All of this technology, as useful and helpful as some of it is, isn't the saving grace of humanity that people would have you believe. Think about that the next time one of your "virtually faultless" CD's starts skipping because it has a scratch in it. That sounds an awful lot like what happened to all of those records that sucked so much back in the day.