A Word on Pluto

So the masquerade has ended. The truth has prevailed. Earthling Scientists have decreed that Pluto is not a classic planet, but rather a dwarf planet. Well duh, it's tiny. But the key word here is 'planet'. Dwarf planet just means a little planet; it's still a planet. We're just discriminating against it, and 2003 UB313, because of their size. Oh, and Ceres too, but the only way people are going to start caring about Ceres is if it gets up out of its lazy orbit and starts hunting planets down. Not going to happen any time soon. When did we have to start dividing the planets because of their size. Isn't bad enough that we segregate them based on what they're made of? Terrestial planets get all the prime location near the sun, while the gas giants are forced to orbit out in the cheap seats.

Pluto holds a special place in my heart. A world of ice and mystery. A place so cold that it hypothesized that the very air itself may freeze and fall as snow. Pluto and Charon perform their slow dance on the fringes of the solar system proper. They gaze out into the uncharted spaces beyond. They conform not to circular orbits like the others. And even further beyond lies 2003 UB313 ("Xena" to its discoverers, who should not be allowed to name things. Pay your 50 bucks and name a star, fan boys) and its moon Gabrielle, even farther from the hellish blaze of the sun.

So let the Astronomical Union say what they will. Icy Pluto needs not their labels. Just listen to these stirring words from one Plutonian Representative . A proud people no doubt, who will continue to hold their heads high.

Dating or Desperate Cries for Help?

Here is a post in the running series that we all seem to be doing on dating and its plusses and perils. A while back a good friend of mine recommended Internet dating to me as a remedy to my state of singleness. I’ve avoided the whole online dating sites thing mostly because I still can’t get over the feeling that desperation lurks just beneath its surface. I feel that way even though I personally know people who are in happy, long-lasting relationships with people they met on dating sites. So, even though I can’t take it at all seriously, I had decided to peruse some dating sites for shits and giggles. Here are some of my favorite headlines from profiles I saw. At the time I felt they were worth sharing, and I finally got around to posting this. They’re copied exactly as the author’s published them, spelling mistakes, stupidity, and all. I’ve put my thoughts and comments after each in italics.

Where are the good ones?????
Avoiding you.
Five punctuation marks is the sign of an insane mind you know.

I’m a nice guy and laid back, looking for kindhearted and fun.
Translation: I’m an uninteresting SOB who is unfamiliar with proper sentence structure.

“Sensual Butterfly, awaits fair maiden”
Sooooo…you’re gay?

Looking for a friend/fun/date, and maybe more
Translation: I really need to have sex, but I’m trying not to scare ALL the girls off

I’m just trying this
OR
I was just curious
Translation: I’m desperate

I don’t want to give away to much info about myself
WTF, you only have, like 120 characters. What kind of secrets are you having trouble not divulging?

Just looking
Oh, really? Then why’d you devote all this time to your profile and picture, dumbass?

I’ve been looking for a while, but not much luck.
Something is horribly wrong with you isn’t it?

UR SEARCH IZ OVER
I AM A FUN,CARING,FUNNY GUY. I LIKE TO GO OUT AND HAVE FUN NEED A SOMEONE TO SHARE IN THE FUN. FRIENDS FIRST THEN HOPEFULLY MORE WE'LL SEE.... THIS IS MY FIRST TIME DOING THIS SO I'LL BE SHORT. IF U WANT TO FIND OUT MORE EMAIL ME AND WE'LL CHAT. HOPE TO TALK TO U LATER!
You Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Cultured Guy !!
Wrong!

One of a kind!!
Uh-huh…sure.

Looking for a shy girl
That’s kind of creepy, but I can’t put my finger on why.

Shyness at first, but watch out!I am currently ending a marriage of 9 1/2 years with unrecognisable differenced and are looking for someone who wishes to take a chance
Wow, divorced after nine and a half years, just throwing that out there huh? ‘Unrecognisable’ don’t you mean ‘irreconcilable’? Or maybe you really couldn’t recognize the presence or nature of the problems, hence the end of the marriage

“Bar Flies” need not waste time…
You should have seen this guy’s picture. He looked like a hamster being electrocuted via its balls.

Complaints

Well, I was going to try and avoid bitching about work too much here, BUT this week has made me want to tell you a little bit more about one of my co-workers, the one I have dubbed the Physicist. He. is. an. ass.

First of all, when asked this guy has maintained that he has his bachelor's degree in Physics (hence the nick-name). However, B-rad has informed me that he had a class with the Physicist. A class that the Physicist ended up failing because he didn't do any of the work. I don't have a problem with this in of itself. I understand, shit happens. But to keep telling everybody that you got your degree and letting them go with that, well...that earns you a new name Faux-Physicist.

Next, Faux-Physicist eavesdrops on everyone. I mean this, he will walk up to a group of people and stare at them intently while giving the appearance of memorizing everything they are saying. He will run up to Colonel Eggroll and I every chance he gets to see what we're talking about. Specifically, whether or not we're talking about him.

Faux-Physicist is apparently an expert on everything.

He is completely unable to perform his job, yet he criticises the performance of everyone else. He has triend to tell me how to do my job, and not just anything, but completely obvious things. Whenever someone tries to help him he blows up. I cannot help but laugh.

He walks around mumbling under his breath. He gets indignant anytime he is ignored. However, when I've asked "What?" in response to his mumblings he just gets huffy and says "Forget it". What the hell is he saying? Is he muttering hexes, or prayers to Cthulu that we might be smote by tentacled minions? Whenever he interacts with a customer he curses them afterward. I've had to listen to a constant stream of "idiot" "fucking idiot" "fucking ridiculous" "goddamn ridiculous" "what the fuck" "idiot" "what the hell" "worthless idiot" "fuck" for hours on end.

I feel better now that I've gotten that off my chest

More posts to come

Before I created this blog I had another blog. It was on Xanga and it was my first foray into blogging, and it's awesomeness was limited. However, there were a few worthy posts and I am going to repost some of the stories here. Just a warning to anyone who has read the other blog that I do realize I am repeating myself. It will not be necessary for you to point it out to me. Because I know how all of you are.

My esteemed friend, Colonel Eggroll (aka Julia), has joined us here on Blogspot. Huzzah. Although she has yet to make a post...I expect good things to come. Welcome guy!

The Plastic People

In the past I would check my email once a week in a good month, lately I'm up to at least once a day, until the past week. I have no internet at home, and it is driving me CRAZY! I can't check my email, I can't read blogs, I can't buy crap I don't need on e-bay!

So instead of internet I've been wasting my time watching TV. I went three years without cable. I thought I missed it. The truth is that there are only about a dozen channels out of the 70+ I have that I'm willing to watch, and maybe 5 of those I watch on a regular basis. There's Adult Swim of course, I loves me my cartoons, and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report! And lately I've gotten sucked into the Style network, mostly How do I look?. And I get sucked into Trading Spaces too. I. Can't. Help. It!

The other day I was randomly flipping through channels, mostly because I still don't know which ones are which or what time any of the shows are on. I came across Extreme Makeover, on Style network (damn you Style network!) The episode that was on featured a couple that got made over and then received a "fantasy wedding" at Disney World. I had caught bits of the show before, but for the first time I really found the show disturbing me. I don't have a problem with plastic surgery itself. I think it's great when they help people who have some sort of physical abnormality (like a cleft lip), but I actually found myself being slightly creeped out by the "fixing" of certain "problems". The people on the show were saying what a great help Dr. So-and-so was. Well of course he was! He's selling you (and the viewing audience) a product. He's a salesman, honey. "Well, we can do yadayada to your nose and do a brow lift and your chin is kind of small compared to the proportions of your other features so we can do a chin implant to make everything balanced." There was nothing wrong with the woman's chin, it may have been a little smaller, but it gave her face a nice heart shape. Later, (yeah, I watched the show, shuddup) we get to see the bride and groom, and all I could think was that all the people I've seen on that show look like dolls after their makeover. They all kind of look the same. They showed the rest of the dude's family, who all had the same long nose he had before the surgery, now he looks nothing like his family. He looks like just another pop culture Ken doll. These people are erasing all the little bits of their appearance that make them themselves. "Fixing the problems" Stuff you wouldn't even notice. It seriously weirds me out.

It's not just on shows like Extreme Makeover that you see this sort of thing. Everywhere you look people are striving to look like everybody else. In a "unique" way, but still within the parameters set by the fashion moguls. Yes, I watch TV and read a fashion magazine or two, but I don't subscribe to a particular look or way of life because it's laid out in all it's airbrushed glory on glossy paper. Everyday I see people who look familiar to me, not necessarily because I've met them before I think.

It's not just in people's appearances either. It's in their heads too. The clones all think the same. They are told to think it and they do. Seriously scary.



P.S. I just did a spell check and Blogger told me that "Blogs" wasn't a word. Good job guys.

Ok, so the party wasn't as crazy as I imagined. My friends came over and hung out for about 2 hours, and we were actually all drunk by the one hour mark. Even B-rad who always is solid as a rock when I've seen him drinking said that he was getting tipsy. Some of them went out to the bar after leaving and there were some shenanigans, which I am sad to say I missed seeing. The nacho dip, enchiladas, and peanut butter pie all turned out to be supremely delicious. A lot of work had to go into those damn pies. I made them once before, and for the life of me I couldn't get the peanut butter to go all crumbly when I mixed it with the sugar that time or this time. So, I called my father, who is the expert. Actually I had to call him twice. During the second call I asked if perhaps he was putting more sugar in than the recipe calls for (the recipe that I copied exactly from the book he gave me). I told him what I was using and I was told to "put that science experiment down" because I didn't have the right amounts at all. I was also missing another ingredient from the filling entirely. Helps if you have the right recipe.

Events are in Motion

Party tomorrow. I am stoked to say the least. This is my first real "everybody come over and get drunk party" my friend that I've known since high school is having a hard time reconciling her self with this new me. The new apartment is still kind of a mess though. There are a lot of empty boxes and I haven't done any of the cooking I planned on, instead I went and visited a friend and helped another friend move. So I have dip to make, maybe enchiladas, and definitely peanut butter pie because I said I would, and a promise is a promise. Oh, it is so late and this makes no sense. I'm going to bed. Party tomorrow and it will be awesome!

You assume too much

I have a problem with people who assume a degree of familiarity that is not present between two people. I'm not talking about people who are over friendly, but people who do little weird things that kind of cross the line. Example: While at work day before yesterday one of my coworkers, let's call him Physicist, comes up behind me while I am very busy and begins DRUMMING ON MY HEAD! Not lightly either, but actually quite hard. I have no idea what he was trying to accomplish. Who does this? What is the point? Doesn't this seem like something a four-year-old would do? What he acheived was giving me a headache and pissing me off. I don't know Physicist that well, we haven't been working together that long. Physicist also tends to be more hands on than I like my work acquantances to be.

On a positive note, my roommate has returned from his trip to Canada (or Canadia if you prefer), so hopefully the new apartment will be getting sorted in the next couple days.

New Links

I figured out how to edit my template. (Go me!) Obviously, I'm easily amused. Since I had no idea what I was doing when I started I feel somewhat proud of this. If anything doesn't work (or leads some where weird) let me know.

Evil-mart. Work.

My town’s local wal-mart was recently upgraded/replaced with a Super Wal-mart. That’s like going from eating eggs, cheese and bacon with a side of fries and Ranch dressing for every meal to just injecting the cholesterol directly into your aorta. I’m not sure what they were going for with this new color scheme. The outside has two shades of brown, and the inside is also brown. Walls, floor, everything is brown. It’s like everybody’s favorite kids from the Brown family Khaki and Beige went on a 3-day bender, Khaki knocked Beige up, and this is the resulting inbred, crack-baby offspring of that unholy union.

We have a new creepy guy at work. I am very unhappy about this because I’ve realized that it takes an incredible amount of work to make these people not like me enough to leave me alone. It seems no matter how evil I am to them, they keep coming back for more. And when I don’t talk to them they pester me to know what is wrong. When imitating Newcreepyguy we give him a Silence of the Lambs voice (“put the lotion in the basket” type thing), it’s not 100% accurate, but it really coveys the feeling you get when he’s talking to you. The other day B-rad and I were talking before coming on for our shift, Newcreepguy comes over and sits down and just stares at us as were talking. He got up and left and I said, “He’s so Creepy!” B-rad said, “I know!” and they Newcreepyguy comes back over resumes staring at us. Another thing he likes to do is ask people what time they work until. I want to scream at him, “I’m not walking to my car alone later!”
The other day I asked Newcreepyguy to do something that was part of his job. He said, “What’s the magic word?” in possibly the creepiest voice evAR.
So I said, “I’ll get it myself.”
He then indignantly said, “I’m just playin.”
We are not friends Newcreepyguy. We do not play, tease, jest, or joke. And I’d really prefer if you never spoke to me again, ever.

The other day a coworker, whom I will call Bert, came up to get something and was standing rather close to me. I made some comment about how close he was and he apologized for “being in my bubble.”
I said, “I don’t have a bubble; I have kill zones.”
I can't figure out why my coworkers are terrified of me.

The Drunks in Number Six

Yesterday I moved into a new apartment with a friend of mine. We had been living in different units in the same building before; we moved across the parking lot to share an apartment in a different building. Moving less than a hundred feet has a lot of benefits I'll tell. Some of my friends helped me move in (Thanks forever guys!). I took a break last night to buy pizza and beer for them. When I returned (around midnight) to empty my old refrigerator and vacuum I met some of my new neighbors from the floor below me. They had rounded up some chairs that other people moving out had tossed and were drinking beer in the the parking lot.
On one of my trips upstairs I found the two guys trying to move a sofa up the stairs. The girl was watching them struggle with it. This time of year there's a lot of people moving out, especially this weekend, so you get a lot of cast off furniture. Personally I avoid couches and chairs whose pedigree I do not know. "You guys doing a little redecorating tonight?" I asked. "Shut up, we're DRUNK!" they shouted in reply.
Girl: "There's a stain on that couch!"
Guy #1: "Who cares! We're gonna Lysol it!"
Guy #2: "It's shaped like a penis!"
Guy #1: "LYSOL!"
I figure that they woke this morning looking at the extra furniture thinking Where the hell did this stuff come from?
Ah, the joys of living in a college town.