Thinking Blogger?

The rules of the meme are as follows:
1. Post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to original source blog. (Which would be The Thinking Blog, probably, but the person who put me down, and I thank ye, didn't link it, so why should I?)
3. If you don’t choose to do either then please display your thinking blogger logo as shown on this posting.

My own personal rules:
I won't be linking to the two who were already called a "Thinking Blogger": Choochoo and Jazz.
Each of the five blogs will have two links to posts to help illustrate why I like them so much.

In no particular order:

JustLetMeRead's Blog
To be alerted to her blog posts is one of the main reasons I check in with MySpace everyday. She does things I have never done and many I probably won't do. She writes about her tutoring jobs with annoyance and wit and understanding and joy. And then there are the memories.
They say grief is the celebration of love


Rolling My Eyes
Queenie was the one who found my blog and I always figured if someone took the time to check out my page and actually comment on it, they deserve the same from me and I lucked out. Back then she wrote lists of things. One was 101 questions about the last time you did something. I answered them all. She also wrote short-short stories. Some are serialized, some are one shots. She doesn't write much about the life she lives, she prefers to write about the lives that are trapped within her trying to get out. She hasn't posted in a while. I hope she comes back soon because I'm sure the people trapped in her are getting restless.
Soul To Keep
Punks-Before The Beginning


Written World
There are a lot of good comic book blogs out there, but this is the first one I found and is one of my favorites. Ragnell is a feminist and wants women (and minorities) to be fairly represented. She doesn't want all the women to be damsels in distress and she doesn't want women to be portrayed as men with narrow waists and breasts. More represented than her feminism, though, is her love of comics. She's a fan first. She has a great love of Green Lanterns, and their butts. Power Girl is one of her favorite characters, even with the window. And the first thing she really wants out of her comics is a good story, she just knows that the stories would be better if the women were written more honestly.
Green Lantern Fun: Night of the Emerald Table
Wonder Woman Should Be Tall


Rude Cactus :: What normal would be if normal were something else.
I found this blog through a comment he left over at Heels's blog. He's a father. He's a rocker. He's an IT guy. He's really funny. Schadenfreude Friday. Monday Haiku's. His blog is fun and sometimes serious, but it's always a great read.
Cinematic Dorkdom
The Fifth Year


Heels
I've known this blogger for a long, long time and her writing doesn't really show all of her. I went through her entire blog looking for a post that really shows off the white hot rage of righteousness she sometimes works her way into, but I couldn't find any. (Those are moments, in regular life, that are both frightening and wondrous. It seems to me that when she writes in her rage, she deletes the post a hour or so later because she doesn't want to piss people she cares about off too much. Still, her passion in those moments astounds me.) It's hard to describe, but Heels's blog has an energy to it that she has in real life that I wish I had.
Our weekend was...interesting.
Star Wars Review

And that's the five that I choose.

One of the things that I learned while looking through the blogs I read daily/semi-daily is that I read a lot of blogs written by women. I wonder why that is?

365 Days

I wonder what he's up to.

My Brain Is Scattered

I feel awful. When I first got the sore throat, I was hoping it was allergies. When I woke up this morning, I knew it wasn't. If, this morning, I felt like I feel right now (and I'm not talking about feeling like we feel with our fingers) I wouldn't have come to work today. If I felt this awful at lunch, I would have left then. Right now, though, there's only an hour left and no matter what I have the walk back, so I may as well wait it out and not use any of my sick time.

Now there's 45 minutes left. It's going to be forever isn't it.

TMVS just told a story about a guy she knew who flirted with his roommates and the roommates would insult him so one day he made cookies. His roommates started in on the cookies and thought the cookies tasted funny. TMVS said she took a little bite and put the cookie down. She said they tasted like jism. The roommates kept on eating them, though.

On that note, I'm going to sit around and look busy, but try not to move much so I don't feel any worse than I do now.

Yesterday

I developed a sore throat and a stuffy nose and I got a letter telling me I didn't get hired by the people who interviewed me.

When it rains, right?

A Game Before I Go

It's called Boomshine. Just click the mouse once and watch where it goes.

I've only gotten through lever 12 once with 250 point. It was all luck.

Estimate

I estimate that if I that I have about 71632 hours of work left in my lifetime, if I work for the state until I retire. That figure assumes that I work 21 days a month (we work 20 to 22 day, according to the pay calendar) and I take ten days off each year for vacation and/or sick leave. That's a total of 2984.6667 days, or 8.1716 years, of work left until I retire.

If I add in my lunch hour (which, if I were given the choice, which I'm not, I'd rather work through) and the maximum amount of travel time I want to spend getting to/from work the figure is 89540 hours, which is 3730.8333 days, or 10.2145 years.

Of course, all this assumes that my retirement age will be the same then as it is now.

I figure that between now and retirement, after subtracting average sleep time and the amount of time spent doing work related crap and an hour a day for reading, I have 106416.625 hours (4434.0261 days, or 12.1480 years) to accomplish... something.

How can 12 years seem like so much and so little at the same time?

Cold War Lit. Written Twenties Years Too Late

I finished reading Faith of the Fallen (the sixth book in The Sword of Truth series, but I haven't read the ones between it and the first; these were the only two the used bookstore here had) the other day and I briefly pondered the novel.

My main thought was that it would have been much more interesting if it had been written during the Cold War. See, the book is about a huge empire trying to overwhelm smaller kingdoms and cities to bring to under the rule of The Order. The Order is a group of people who see it as their duty to bring peace and equality to the world and the people. The Order regulates the prices of bread and iron and all other good. It regulates housing by taking buildings away from people who charge too much and puts a landlord in charge to care for the place for The Order. It places people in jobs and then heavily taxes the pay to help support those who can not work and therefore don't make any money, but also can't be left to starve. People wait in line for hours to buy a loaf of bread. Shipping companies are only allowed to ship a certain amount a day so they won't cut into the profits of other shipping companies. Men who load carts aren't allowed to drive them because that would hurt the drivers. And all this is done in the name of The Order because within The Order the individual means nothing, the group means everything.

The book very clearly states that The Order is wrong by the horrible condition of the cities, the starving people, the terrifying artwork, and the lack of desire among the people. It's the enemy of mankind. According to the hero, The Order is an enemy to life.

HUAC would have loved this book. I enjoyed it for what it was (when I could ignore the some of the politics), but I thought that Terry Goodkind was being too black and white in his interpretation. In the book, there are good people, but they're the ones who want to live as best they can within the system until an opportunity comes to change, the rest of the people are all worthless lumps of flesh who are better off dead, they may not all be evil, but by supporting evil they're almost as bad. I shouldn't have been surprised, though, since this book is written by a man who claims Ayn Rand and Objectivism are his biggest influences.

Still, there would have been such an awesome reaction to this book twenty or thirty years ago. I bet Regan would have read it.

Brilliant!

This American Life, one of the best weekend shows from NPR, is about to start showing on TV. (They did a great episode this weekend where the theme of the show was What I Learned From Television.) I won't be able to watch it, although I'd really like to.

However, we can all watch this wonderful Chris Ware animation from the show.

If you've never listened to the show before, this little bit shows why it's brilliant and why everyone should be listening and now watching it.

Got It

Did I ever write that I got that program I wanted? It came in the mail two, or so, weeks ago. I haven't been able to run it, though, because I need to connect to the interwebs to get a key to make it run. (I may also need a different version of Windows (XP Professional) to run the thing and a better video card, sigh.) So, I signed up for a free 30 day thing to call up over the phone so I can get the damn code so I can run the program so I can hopefully have something at my apartment that I want to do besides watch my DVDs and snack.

Probably Not

The other day, I was asked if I had any kids by one of the new secretaries.

"No," I said, "I don't."

"Well," she said with a knowing smile, "then you have lots to look forward to."

"Uh, yeah," I said. "I guess I do." And we walked into the office together.

This got me thinking down the normal line of do I really want to have kids? (Which seems like a strange thing to even consider since there's one with whom I have the possibilities of procreating with at the moment, and in the near to foreseeable to far future.)

The only answer that keeps coming to me is, "Probably not."

Sure I've seen how happy Heels and Johnny Logic have been since they had their son. I've also read about the ear aches and the fevers and the falling and the general fussiness that sometimes just happens. It seems that along with the many moments of happy, there's a lot of worry involved during that early time. Still, it seems that many people would agree that those good moments out weigh the worry, and even with the worry the kid won't be falling down forever; children tend to get older and learn how to walk and talk and (sort of) express themselves.

I'm not sure that matters, though. I walk around town and through the malls and I look at kids of all ages and I think, what would I do if I had a kid and it turned out like that. And even if they don't, the worry, at least if you're a caring parent, never goes away. I'm sure that there are 90-year olds out there worried about their children. And it'd only get worse if the kid is a fucked-up crack-head, wouldn't it?

Ticknart, you may be saying (unless you know my real name, in which case you're probably saying that instead), there's a good possibility that any kids that you happen to have won't be a fucked-up crack-head. You seem like a decent person, Ticknart, and that means it's more likely that any kids you may have will be pretty decent as well.

I suppose that's all true, but still, I look around at people in high school, people my age, people older than me, people my parents' age, and people my grandparents' age and I think that the grand majority of them really suck. Old or young, they suck. I'm not so sure that I'd want to do the tough job of raising a kid (hopefully with someone who was willing to make it with me) in a world full of as much bullshit and batshit-insanity as there is. I bet raising kids was tough enough when a family only saw stupid people maybe three or four times a year.

How hard is it to keep the stupidity from sticking to children now, since so many of the learn how to turn on a TV and pop a video tape (if the family still has a VCR) in before they can string a full sentence together? There are hundreds of channels and thousands of hours of inanity on TV, and I love me some inane TV but, unlike little kids and a growing part of the adult population of this world, I have a filter that keeps reminding that what I see on the TV, even the news, isn't all true. And it's not supposed to be all true, but can a little kid be expected to know that? How--in a world where a kid sees its parents spend so much time watching TV, using a computer, playing with a mobile phone, and treating those things as if those are what make up life--are children supposed to learn how to discern possible truth from probable lies?

(I'm not really trying to bash TV or computers. When I have television, I'm a real junkie. I like watching the fictionalized lives of fictional people in their fictional worlds in the same way I prefer to read fiction to non-fiction. I think, though, that I'm pretty good at remember than the things I watch and read aren't real, even if they claim to be based on real life events.)

It seems really silly spending this much time thinking about something like this. Especially since I think I did this sort of thing a few years ago here (although I couldn't find it). There's really no reason for me to be concerned about this because without someone to fornicate with on a semi-regular basis the possibilities of having a kid is (unless some of the things I've seen on TV are true) impossible.

Still, if asked if I want to have kids, I think I'll be answering, "Probably not."

799

That is all.

A Few Questions

Do real cowboys call their hats "cowboy hats," or do they just call them "hats"?

If real cowboys just call them hats, is it okay for me to assume that anyone who wears a cowboy hat (along with other cowboy type accouterments) and calls it a cowboy hat that the person speaking is just a poser who doesn't even have enough drive to really find out how to fake being what they're not? Can I just assume that person is an asshole or an idiot?

In Loo of Real Content

Links To Comics:

The future?
How do you display your baby?
Sony/Microsoft vs. Nintendo
E-mail editing, and madness.
Approved techniques.
I sort of hope Harry Potter ends this way.
The best reaction to Captain America dying I've seen yet.

So, which was your favorite?

Interview, 14 March 2007

I think I blew it. I won't know until next week if that's true, though.

You Can Tell It's Almost Spring

The semen trees are in bloom and stinking up my walk to and from work. At least their not right outside my window so I don't have to smell them while I sleep.

In other spring time news, we're having a meeting this afternoon. My lunch is being bumped up a half hour so I'll be back in time and the meeting was bumped from tomorrow to today so I wouldn't miss it. I don't know exactly what it'll be about, but "an agenda will be provided" and we are to "bring a notepad, pen/pencil and [our] input." Supposedly, this meeting is only going to last two hours, although the e-mail we all got last week said it was going to be from 1:30 to 4:30. If this meeting goes the way the other meetings we've had here, it'll take until at least 4:30, maybe even longer, but if it hits five, I'm out of there.

I'm going to do my best to keep my input out of this meeting, too. I just don't want to deal with the crap that goes on here. All the other meetings we've had at this place since I started, three if I remember correctly, were about telling us, the clerks, what everyone else in the office thinks we are doing wrong and how we are supposed to correct it. (Most of the times, the things we are supposedly doing wrong are things that the other people in the office don't want to have to do themselves, so we get stuck with doing it for them so they don't have to do the things anymore.) I'm tired of being stuck at the bottom of the pile here. I'd like to move my way into the lower middle so I don't have to put up with the same sort of bullshit all the time.

I'm ready for some new bullshit.

On that front, I have an interview tomorrow afternoon. It's at the prison in Cowtown. Here's hoping they're in desperate need of an SSA and I'm the only person they interview for the position so I get hired.

Found in Spam Filter

Against which we have been projected? What . . .
Gray the cloud-like oaks
I know,
High on this surface, guarding the edge of P�e
Between the high and the low, in this night.
XV. The International Circumpolar Stations: The Greely Expedition
Swaying in unison beneath the snow,
Covering the land�/FONT>
Like theirs ends? From what distant point of vision
As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light,

An Actual Conversation, More or Less

Her: I love having Daylight Savings time early.

Me: Why?

Her: Because we get more sun earlier in the year.

Me: We don't really get more sun.

Her: Yes, we do.

Me: No, we don't. We don't start actually getting more sunlight than darkness until after the Spring Equinox.

Her: Solstice.

Me: What?

Her: You mean the Spring Solstice. That's what it's called.

Me: What?

Her: Sure. You have the Summer and Winter Equinoxes and the Spring and Fall Solstices.

Me: Okay. Anyway, we aren't getting any more sunlight than normal.

Her: Sure we are.

Me: We aren't. It's not possible.

Her: Then why is it light for so much longer?

Me: Because we bumped our clocks up an hour.

Her: Which means the sun is up longer.

Me: No. That's not how it works.

Her: Then how does it work?

Me: The sun rises later, like at seven instead of six, than means the sun sets later, like at six instead of five.

Her: But that means we get more sun.

Me: No it doesn't. Either way, it's still only eleven or so hours of sunlight.

Her: And I love getting more sun during Daylight Savings.

18 Months

Saturday was the day that marked me living here for 18 months.

Today is 18 months at this job. And I still haven't had a review that'll, hopefully, get me a bit of a raise.

I want out of both.

Through

I'm thinking that I don't really want to be blogging this week.

If I do, great. If I don't, who cares?

Because I Pormised My Brother I Would

I'm linking to his fantastic Made In The USA comic strip that he's been posting every week on his *shudder* MySpace page.

I really hate sending people to MySpace, but the strip is really great.

Test!

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion |||||| 23% Stability |||||||||||||| 60% Orderliness |||||||||| 33% Accommodation |||||||||||||| 56% Interdependence |||||| 30% Intellectual |||||||||||||||| 70% Mystical |||||| 30% Artistic |||||||||||||||| 70% Religious || 10% Hedonism |||||| 30% Materialism |||||||||||| 43% Narcissism || 10% Adventurousness |||||| 23% Work ethic |||||| 23% Self absorbed |||||| 30% Conflict seeking |||||||||| 36% Need to dominate |||||| 23% Romantic |||||||||||| 50% Avoidant |||||||||||||||| 63% Anti-authority |||||||||||||||||| 76% Wealth || 10% Dependency |||||| 23% Change averse |||||||||||||||| 70% Cautiousness |||||||||||||||| 63% Individuality |||||||||||| 50% Sexuality |||||||||||| 43% Peter pan complex |||||| 30% Physical security |||||||||||||||||| 76% Physical Fitness || 10% Histrionic |||| 16% Paranoia |||||||||||||||| 63% Vanity |||| 16% Hypersensitivity |||||||||||| 43% Female cliche |||||| 30%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Orderliness results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment. Extraversion results were low which suggests you are very reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.

trait snapshot:

secretive, reclusive, messy, disorganized, introverted, unassertive, rarely worries, dislikes large parties, does not like to fit in, does not need to control others, solitary, ambivalent about chaos, tough, leisurely, does not respect authority, not aggressive, observer, abstract, impractical, dislikes leadership, daydreamer, bizarre, does not make friends easily, not a perfectionist, suspicious, rarely irritated, strong physical instincts, unsympathetic at times, risk taker, submissive, weird, sarcastic, strange

Well, this one seems pretty accurate.

I have decided.

I have made a decision.

I've thought about it seriously and responsibly and, all things considered, it's the right thing for me.

I feel good about it.

And here it is:

I am going to get over my useless fucking problem and get on with my life.

Sure, I'll still have a gaping hole in my middle, but the more I pretend it's not there the less I'll notice it until I'm so used to it that it may as well not be there at all.

I don't think I'll get the program I ordered. I should be able to get the money I spent on it back. I don't think I can return the books I bought, though. So, that's only sixty buck I'm screwed out of. If I do get the program, I won't be screwed out of anything.

I doubt I'll be hired by the one place that's given me an interview. It's Thursday and I don't think they'll be calling me with good news tomorrow, if they call at all. I'm pretty sure I can live with that. I have an interview scheduled for the 14th. Sure, it's four hour trip for a 1:30 interview, but maybe they'll be desperate and I'll be hired, it seems to be the only way that I ever get hired. (If requested to, I'll tell all about why I was hired at the jobs I've had in my life.)

And I am going to WonderCon (Google it) this weekend. For sure on Saturday, possibly on Sunday. If I can convince my brother to spend $10 and however much bus fare is, I'll be there on Sunday.

Tomorrow may be as stupid and dreary as today and the rest of this week, but I'm going to put a smile on my face and push through.