Comfort Rating Zero

Any of you that have worn any type of uniform know well enough that aside from looking sharp and identifying you as being a part of a particular organization they are inherently uncomfortable. It seems to be part of the design process. "Yea, man, it looks good. But it's way too comfortable. We're going to have to tighten up the pants in awkward places and add some shirt stays." What? What's that you say? You've never heard of shirt stays? You poor deprived soul. Shirt stays are as uncomfortable as bow ties are ridiculous. They are elastic bands that attach to the hem of your shirt and either loop around your feet or clip on to the tops of your socks. They have little metal clips that let you adjust the lengh. Though it seems that no matter how tall you are, everyone has to extend them to their longest possible position. The metal clips pull the hair on your legs. This isn't all bad, after you've worn them long enough you get a sexy smooth spot from the extensive chafing action. Couple that with the fact that no matter how loosly you are able to set them, the pressure from the loops starts to tweak your feet. Then your underwear rides up because of the straps running down the outside your legs. In conclusion, my feet hurt, my thighs are balding, and I have crotchal bunching of my undergarments.

Bobsleding!

That's right kiddies. Where on your adventures have you ever had a chance to try out some no shit bobsleding? For months now I've been wondering how it is the Latvian people don't go absolutly crazy during the winter. Surly I've been working it myself, but what do they do? So when my boss suggested that we all go bobsleding, we all thought it would be a pretty sweet time. Due to how flat most of Latvie is, I'm thinking a rickity four man cart down a huge pile of ice pushed together outside the local supermarket. Turns out that the Latvian Olympic Bobsled Team is in hot contention every four years for first place. Not too far from Riga is where they train. It costs 35 Lats for one run, about 70 dollars, and only lasts 47 seconds. Luckily, I didn't pay for it. It was -11 degrees C and we were barreling down this hill at 70mph incurring up to 4G's on the corners! Total blast. I'm really not built for this winter stuff. Especially when it's this freaking cold, but I think I'm giong to hit there little snowboard slopes before everything melts.

mp3 player

My ipod died. For real this time. No bringing it back to life like the time I spilled beer all over it. Though it did work surprisingly well for having enough good German beer to knock me over, hence it's drinking habit (of the ipod, stay with me). So into the wild blue yonder (internet) I rocketed myself like that bratty little bitch on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory after her golden goose looking for a new mp3 player. But which one? There are so many to choose from. Arguably, Apple's ipod and Microsoft's Zune are dominating the market. They both have their ups and their downs, so which one? The ipod is sleak, sexy, and (lets face it) you just aren't cool if you dont have one. But the Zune has much more features like: easier navigation, better catorgization, a FM radio tuner, syncs wirelessly with your computer, and (best of all) you dont have to spend a meaty portion of your natural born life to transfer the mp3s you already have into that stupid, USELESS, itunes freaking format! Lets talk cons, iTUNES FORMAT!!! complete BULLSHIT! that's just another way for these tech companies to eat ever further away at your soul while you wait yet again for something you shouldn't need to do. Like when you spend loads of your time installing "upgrades" and "updates" to software the day you get it because Microsoft knows you're going to buy their unfinished shit anyway. Which brings me to the Zune. It's like heaven, the idea of all of these features packed into one tiny box is awesome. But their tech support is complete shit! Lets stay with the heavan analogy. That would be like taking every significant quotable reference out of the Bible. How good a chance do you think you'd have getting into heaven if you didn't have the freaking 10 Commandments? I was on the phone for 45 minutes trying to order one of these damn things and nobody could help me. WTFO? (that's "what the fuck, over" for you non geek types) Initially I was just having a problem with the web site but after being transfered to nearly every department they have I discovered that you can't order the shit you want over the phone when the website is throwing a tantrum. Being involved in the money making business for some time now, that just doesn't make sense. Shouldn't you want to make it as easy as possible to sell your stuff to people so you make more money? Silly me. I guess there comes a time in every evil super gigantic company's life when they realize that they really are omnipotent presence their leaders always dreamed of, at which time my lowly order of $259.99 + the cost of shipping doesn't fucking matter. I'm not going to lie, I still want one but fuck, why does it have to be so hard.

Strange Dreams

Ever have one of those dreams you have to pry yourself out of? Like you're watching a really bad B movie and you want to leave, you really do but you're stuck in your seat. I was at work (in the dream, not sleeping at work) and everything was all wrong. Something about the building and the lights and some other stuff. There were black bag scattered about, they looked like weapon cases. So I'm looking around, cause that's the most awesome part about my job, and I find this guy in one of the offices. He's kinda dumb looking. I don't mean to be rude but just by the looks of him you could tell he was a bit slow on the uptake. And he had these tribal tattoos on the left side of his face. Fucking weird. I asked him what he was doing in the buildign and he pulls a gun on me! So I pull mine but I pull the trigger for some reason but lucky for me, he can't get a round off anywhere near my direction. He gets all pissed off and tries to throw it at me and misses that too... I pick up his gun and try to shoot him with it but it's a revolver and it's empty. I walked back into the hallway and that was it.

Philosophy Paper

This was the last assignment I turned in. Not the final paper, I dropped the class. Turns out I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of why I should give a shit if Plato thought my computer has the Form Squareness... In the face of modern science, that's completely ridiculous. I can see why back then it might of made sence to quantify things any way you could, but now, it's not worth the time.

Does the universe have a purpose? Does life have a purpose?

I think that the idea of a purpose is entirely made up. It’s a thing that people made up as we went along to quantify our existence. We realized fairly early on that we weren’t quite like other creatures on the planet. We tried to explain this. We tried to explain events. “Why did that just happen?” “It happened because of this.” “Well what should I do about it?” Human beings have a never ending compulsion to reason. Whether or not the reasoning methods of a particular person make sense isn’t important.

The simple fact of the matter is that the universe just is. Life just is. You can play out a seemingly endless game of cause and effect to ascertain the “the beginning”, or whatever you want to call it. But it doesn’t change the fact that stuff exists. If you were to ask my mother why the universe existed or if life has a purpose she’d say, “To make you ask questions”. Now this devilishly annoying response, which I’ve been getting for nearly a quarter of a century, might be more profound than I had originally allowed for.

I find it extremely difficult to think that an all powerful being or collective of similar inbred beings, see Greek/Roman mythology, would ever get it in their head to create something for us to contemplate endlessly. I can think of a million other things I would rather do with my time than think of ways to confuse other people, or start wars…

What I do appreciate about my mother’s tagline is that it makes more sense than trying to answer the question of “why does it exist”. More interesting to me is the question of, “Why do you care?” I don’t care if a rock exists or why Chinese people used to think foot binding was sexy. Why does it matter? Contemplating questions of the past makes sense. It allows us to evaluate our experience and learn from our mistakes. But wondering why the universe exists doesn’t really make a lot of sense, it’s an unanswerable question. Just as soon as you think you’ve got it, someone else tells you, you don’t, and you’re back to square one. You can’t truly know you have the answer unless everyone is in agreement, but this presents another issue, “does that rock really exist after all?” Since everyone agreeing is as difficult as getting ten people trying to agree on pizza toppings, we’re all going to go hungry.

Dream

I had THE strangest dream last night. Cast includes but is not limited to the following:

Me
Shane
Samuel L Jackson
Tanya
Hayden Panettiere aka Clair Benet
My Mom

There were more people but I think the list so far illistrates the strangeness.

As with most other dreams, I woke up out of this one and it was the world around me that didn't seem real. Unfortunatly, I don't remember the whole thing. What I do remember is the Haden part.

The scene starts off with her as a baby. She's being watched by a babysitter and everything is cool. Scene cuts to the end of the night when the parents come home and the babysitter is gone. Parents freak out, blah, blah, blah. Fast forward. Haden is about 7. We come to find out she's really some sort of freaky alien creature that happens to be an excelent swimmer. She proceeds to run around eating people and somehow always seems to swim away before we catch her. I woke up later in the story when she was the Haden we all know and love. By this time she had "control" over her urge to eat people though. I really wish I could remember more, but this by itself is freaking weird.

TMO

don't ask me what the hell that stands for, because i'm not sure that anyone knows. and if they do, i don't care.

I got my TMO today. My 'puter is up and running with my thump thumps. I'm all giddy about that one. They were the first thing I unpacked. Now all I need is a couple of cables for my other screen. But I'm totally loving having two computers again. So much better. I also got my books and my skates, which I'm taking out tomorrow. OH! and my movies!!! Super stoked about that one. But mainly, I think I'm mostly excited about having music again. I really feel like part of me is missing when I don't have my tunes. And my toy helichopter... Yea, I'm awesome.