Not sure I want to join the Live Search Club

Courtesy of my friend Susan, the folks at MSN are apparently just as single as I am. I don't care if you've got a sick mind or not, a game of Beat The Monkey only means one thing.

Need a break? Just go beat the monkey!

Only when Snoop is in town...

The Splinter

Even now its poison courses through my veins. I feel an inhuman strength...

Also, that is my finger. I don't want people getting confused.

Sunday Fun

Here's a fun activity you can do if you're looking for some Sunday Fun:

Go to a Circuit City. When the sales person comes up to heckle you, tell them what you want, but don't actually buy it. Just tell the sales person about how, if you are older than 40, you earned everything this country has or something like that, or if you are younger than 40, you grew up on the streets, and about how hard it was, but you still came out on top. Just keep talking about it for as long as the sales person is there. And don't feel bad if you start repeating yourself, that actually makes it better. Just see how long it takes for the sales person to go away.

OH WAIT YOU CAN'T BECAUSE CIRCUIT CITY CLOSED ALL THEIR STORES BECAUSE THEIR SALES PEOPLE WERE TOO GOD DAMN ANNOYING.

Dancing Bird of some sort

I'm giving you a morning two-fer. First off, check out this video because this bird is really dancing and having a good time, which is great.



Secondly, look in the background at all the cages these people have in their living room. Having a pet is one thing, but if you collect colorful beings of flight and stuff them into cages in your stinking living room, you're a fucked up person. That the kind of shit that's one-off from being a kidnapper/rapist/murderer. Some "It puts the lotion on its skin" shit. And if you're into that, you should go get some help or try to learn to appreciate nature in it's natural habitat, and don't come at me for some raping and killing, because I'm armed to the teeth.

So apparently these people rescue birds or something. I am not going to say that they're NOT fucked up, because something still isn't right about this, but... I retract the previous paragraph.

Fuel Cell Research Cut

Money for fuel cell research has been cut, and the funding instead redirected towards stationary plants, citing slow progress in vehicular fuel cells.

GOOD. My message to the auto industry: STOP FUCKING UP. Everything you do is fucking balls-under whatever everybody else is doing. I bet if they asked you to design a car with no fucking headlights it would take you 100 years for the innovation. Fuck all of you.

Review: Music

Music is such a big part of my life. So important to me, in fact, that I would kill a man. For your extreme pleasure, I am reviewing 5 songs which I will allow to be selected at random by my iTunes robot. If the lord's power is within me, which I am sure it is, then the 5 songs which are chosen will be the ideal ones for you to experience.

The information and lyrics here are provided exclusively for educational purposes, and I make no claim to them.

1. Lil Troy - For Years
I don't have the album artwork for this song, because I was too lazy to find it, so I don't really know what Lil Troy looks like, but that's not important. Lets just focus on his music.

I've had to keep restarting this song to try and understand the lyrics. I've not made it past forty seconds yet, but this is what I've got. I warn you that these lyrics are explicit: "Yeah, die niggers and shit. Talking about stopping me, how are you going to stop me? I have shortstopped everyone in here." What this song is about is Lil Troy, shortstopping people, for years. This song really hits home with me because he even mentions my hometown, Hamilton 'H-Town' Hamilton.

Lil Troy mentions that his "nuts hang to the floor like drapes." This statement really illustrates what his nuts are like, which is what makes this song so amazing. The graphic imagery and rapping that he does is just fan-tastic. Also, I'd like to mention that there is another rapper who is featured in this song besides Lil Troy. Once again, I didn't care enough to find out who it was, and he probably said his name at some point but there's no way I'm starting the song over again to be sure.

This song is probably great if you're some kind of gangster or if you need a motivational song for baseball.

2. Paul Oakenfold - This Is Trance
Holy crap, this is one of my all time favorite songs!!!

Right from the start, Paul starts kicking ass with some edgy beats. No, not really. Actually it doesn't really get good until a minute and forty in, but this song is almost 7 minutes long, so who cares?! Once we're into the good part of the song, there's like, this steady drum beat, and it's like a heart beat, and then there's like, some symbols or something, giving you a like, ra-ta-ta-ta going on, and then there's some robot noises, like a robot doing some beat-boxing.

There are some ups and downs in this song, and that's my only issue with Oakenfold's style. A good trance song will start out going awesome, and then get better, and better, and just keep getting faster and better and more hardcore, and at the end the only people still dancing have taken like 20-thousand hits of acid and can't feel the pain. That's how trance is done. You look in the clubs here in America, what do you find? Shit. You look in Europe, Mexico, Tahiti, what do you find? Shit. It's because nobody will push it, except the Russians. Go to a good Russian club and you'll get people with like, arms going all over, just dancing up a storm, because everybody is crazy-go-nuts.

If I had to rate this song on a scale of one to five stars, which is apparently what I did in iTunes, I'd give it a 5. I recommend this song for anyone who likes a little bit of party, but not too much, and is really conservative about how wild they can dance.

3. M.I.A. - Jimmy
I don't think I've ever heard this song. I just got the album for $20 and Paper Planes. By $20 I mean that's the name of the song. The album wasn't twenty dollars.

Ok, so right off the bat it sounds like this song is in a different language. Probably whatever the M.I.A. woman is. Her nationality. She keeps going, "Jimmy? Ah-cha." and I don't know what that means. And then there's some happy dancing music.

On the second verse, I think we're speaking English now, but it's hard to tell. Some words sound english, but others are completely foreign. It is possible that she's just a really bad rhymer, and has made up some words to satisfy the lyrical constraints.

It's not horrible, but I'm glad that this song is only three and a half minutes. Any longer and it would be really bad. My favorite part is when it is over. This is probably a good song if you have excellent linguistic skills and can decipher the words.

4. Rick Astley - Together Forever
Ok, so I don't want to talk about this song, but I will talk about 'Never Gonna Give You Up' by the same artist. Yeah. Rickrolling? I've got to say, I don't get it. Like, you trick someone into seeing this music video or whatever, but why this? And why is that the reaction? I think when somebody plays this song, everybody should get up and do a dance, or atleast snap and walk. And if anyone had a crazy 80s clothes they would put it on. If your intent is to get the better of someone, then you should trick them into watching a video of somebody pooping. That's how you do a number on someone. Hah! Literally!

I think all Rick Astley songs are great for when you just want to be a crazy guy or lady.

5. The Zombies - She's Not There
Aw man, this song is one of the best ever written. Only problem? It's only two and a half minutes long! So you only get to jam for two and a half minutes and then you have to repeat it or play a different song. What a bummer! The only thing I can come up with to explain this is that maybe when this song came out, people were just getting so high that they usually didn't stay conscious for much more than 2 minutes after putting on an album. So The Zombies, being of sound mind, knew that they didn't have to waste any more time than that. Shit... maybe everyone just passed out and they were like, 'Fuck it, keep this one short. I'm starting to see shit.' A crazy time, the 20s.

This is a song with a story, and he's got these great lyrics to explain it. He's like, oh man, this babe, she's like, DD's, itty-bitty waist, butt like, 'Yeah!', but she's crazy, man. Or maybe she's not crazy, maybe she's psychotic. Like she's a man-killer. See? The song isn't about her being missing or some shit. It's about her being mentally 'not there'.

The Zombies utilize several instruments for this song, which is no doubt, one of the things that makes it great. There is an organ, and a guitar, and some drums, and maybe more, it's hard to tell. Any complaints about this song? Unfortunately, yes. Since this song was written, there has been a notable lack of rhythm-sticks in any song. Why? The Zombies should have been keen enough to pick up on this, and really operate those rhythm-sticks in this song, and get the trend really going. Rhythm-sticks are always a great instrument, so more = better. Unfortunately that is not the case, and that's why this song gets a penalty, but I'm still giving it 5 stars because it ROCKS!

Quality of Life Index

Monday, May 11th, 2009:

Woke up with a hangover for the third day in a row: -19
Saw a dog looking over a fence: +21
Met a robot dinosaur: +14
Had a club sandwich for lunch which was perfectly designed: +5
Saw a chipmunk: +12
Cute barista made a smoothie for me, possibly using extra banana: +6
Cute barista did not give me the drink for free or wink: -3
Drove home and forgot that my normal route is closed, but the road was actually not closed: +4
Saw a bird picking up leaves and looking under them: +3
Watched The Fifth Element: +3
Daily QLI: 46

Captcha

Uhmm... Help?

Sacs in the city...

Some of the marketing I come across these days:

Exactly...

Exact Odds

9:33 PM
me: Jon
me: Jon are you really away?
me: Jon I have challenged someone to a dance off I think I may have made a mistake
jon: i am rarely away
jon: a dance-off is a mistake 50% of the time
me: how do you figure?
jon: well it either is, or is not, a mistake
me: but... that's 1 in 2 odds
jon: precisely

Scheduly

A mentally disabled child advertising a lemonade stand using a 'take one' flier only feet from his stand. This is not how one should describe their business:

And how the shit do you pronounce Scheduly?

Fly Fishing with Jon

10:17PM
jon: man, i could totally be fly fishing right now
jon: if i had, like, a fly fishing pole
dave: I thought you had to work
jon: and a stream
jon: yeah, but in the office if i had those things
jon: i could definitely put a stream right over there
jon: freaking salmon jumping all up in that bitch
dave: Jon I would file this idea away for another day.
jon: i'm going to start digging the stream

Optimists and Pessimists

It's not very often that I try to wax philosophical with you. It's not that I don't think you're worthy of the discussion, I just think we both like to spend our time on other things. But every now and again, a topic comes up, and maybe the mood is just right. Not like I've lit candles for you or anything, I'm talking more like me showing up for $5 pizzas tonight, and being told that they're sold out.

You see, depending on if, and how you know me, you might fancy me an optimist, or a pessimist, but in fact I am neither. I am a very, very strict realist. I am a scientist, and believe that the universe works, at some level, in a logical way. I do not have the luxury of 'luck' or 'hope'. I simply try to analyze the situation, and see the outcome logically, based on the information available.

And the information available is vast, and it's varied! No two situations include exactly the same data, and the possible amount of available data is so vast that no individual or collection of individuals could ever completely calculate it. And even if you could calculate all of the knowns of a situation, the unknowns are, by definition, uncountable.

But, this is how I operate. I take a situation which is unmanageable, and try to approximate it into something meaningful, and that is how I see the world. So when I walk up to the counter at the gas station, and they're selling lottery tickets, I think about how the lottery works, they have federal oversight to make sure they are operating legitimately, they have to make money for their employees, for taxes, for contributions that they make to education, to pay for advertising and supplies, and I can do the calculations, as to what the odds are of me winning.

I was once told not to start paragraphs with 'and' or 'but', but I did it just there. Fuck you I write how I want!

Some would argue that the odds are against me, and that there is a (making shit up) 65 billion to one chance of winning, but it's more than that! And I'm not talking about fate, I'm talking about the way the world works. Events have one outcome, not two, not three, not an infinite amount. When you approach an event, the roll of the dice, the action that you take, and the events which have led up to that action, determine the roll of the die, not fate, and not luck.

The story of Schrodinger's cat, famous lately because every gob with two ears thinks he's an expert on quantum theory, would be used as an argument against me. A random event occurs, the cat either dies or not, and it is not revealed. But this is not counter to my proposal! It is true we can not know if the cat in schrodinger's box is alive or not, but that does not mean that it is both alive and dead! In reality, the cat has died, or it is alive, and Schrodinger does not postulate otherwise! Schrodinger was discussing Magic, but demonstrating the linkages between things!

Now since there is only one outcome of an event which will occur, there is also only one best way to handle the event: the method which is optimal based on what the result of the event will be.

If we combine these two ideas: That it is not possible to determine the outcome of an event previous to it's occurrence, and that every event does have an optimal route of behavior, it does not mean we can not approximate an event, and even do so very well!

For example, getting out of bed in the morning. Will I get out of bed tomorrow morning? One might say that the odds are very good, but if a man says 'Yes', and I get out of bed tomorrow morning, that man was correct. Could he have known with complete certainty that that was the outcome of the event before it had happened?! No! But that does not change the fact that he was correct! His reason for him being correct is irrelivant, only that he was! He could be guessing, bluffing, he could have made the observation that I usually get out of bed and made his determination thusly, but the fact remains that this individual has navigated the event successfully!

That is an obvious example, but consider flipping a coin. One might say that the amount of information available is insufficient to make a decision, but this is NOT the truth. There is an overwhelming amount of information available! We simply are not able to process it! From the aerodynamic aspects of the environment and the coin, and the mannerisms which will determine how the tosser places the coin in their hand, how they will throw it, these things are real!

An optimist will believe that good things are likely to happen. A pessimist will believe that bad things are likely to happen. And a realist will attempt to derive an answer from what data they ARE able to gather and process, and make a decision based on that.

This is how I know that dishwasher-makers, and dish-soap companies are in league to try to get me to waste dish-soap.

Outback Tonight

These messages were sent while you were offline.

11:09 PM
Jon: david
Jon: i need your help
Jon: i'm considering going out back tonight