1000 Awful Things

This title could be misleading, but we
assure you it’s completely benign and has nothing to do with regretful, drunken nights or malformed body parts; it has to do with design decisions. Namely, when something is built with primarily one type of connector — like a screw — so that you need one (often commonly-owned) tool, why put one or two others. In particular, I was replacing the keyboard on a macbook pro ,and for the most part, all the screws are phillips, and so I’m going to town taking the thing apart. Then I get to a part that requires a teen-weeny torx — and I don’t have one. I really don’t see the see for it, why not just a phillips? This probably exposes multitudes of mechanical ignorance; well, sobeit.

On not so much a similar note, but a related one, I’m fully certain that my laziness will prolong the installation of this keyboard for another five months. So, my goal is to have this thing installed by no later then Fall of 2012, or at least by the Super Bowl of the following year.

So, birthdays were usually fun when you were a kid, really fun.  You’d get clowns, ponies, pools, hookers, presents… what a blast.  But as you get older some of things start to fade away (some, of course stay), and birthdays start to become more of a chore then a pleasure.  And the real kick in the balls is when there are somewhat large numbers that evenly divide your new age.  By large number I mean a number that at that age you can distinctly remember, and you weren’t a tiny kid.  So dividing a number is one of the most (if not the most) basic concepts.  It says the following:

For integers J and I, J divides I iff there exists an integer K , where K is neither 1 nor I and JK = I.

A simple example, 2 divides 6 because 2×3 = 6.  But, keeping with the elementary number theory theme, it’s no better, necessarily to have a prime age — especially a Mersenne Prime age, which is an integer of the form 2ⁿ-1 for some n>0.  I’d say after n=4, birthday’s start to resemble bowl movements.

No one likes getting older, but I guess it’s one of those things that happens.  I don’t think I’d really like to get younger either; nor do people really like to stay sedentary.  So I guess age is just an altogether poor subject for most people.  Not to give away too much, but there was an Arrested Development episode where Mother Boy was celebrating the same anniversary as my birthday tomorrow.  Speaking frankly in the third person, the author is not happy to turn this age, nor will he be happy in turning any more ages afterwards.  I’d say there are only a few good ages to turn.  Growing up in New Orleans, the driving age was 15, so 15 was good.  The drinking age was 18, so 18 was good.  The unofficial age to smoke pot was 13, so 13 was also good.  Otherwise, no one really cared about the rest of the ages.  I think the first really worthless age was 19; who gives a shit about 19?  18 is good, at 20, you’re not a teen-ager; at 21 you’re an adult; going back, at 17 you can see NC-17 movies; at 16 you can have sex with an 18 year-old without that 18-year old being prosecuted for statutory rape (though I never tried this one out); at 15 you can drive.  Anyway, I can look forward to 65, when I should (but won’t) collect any social security, I guess.

And not having anything to write.

(A special guest post)

I embarked yesterday on  an 11 day trip from JFK (that’s in NYC if you live in a cave or in Iowa) to LA and Vegas on Delta flight 605. I typically carry on my luggage, but for an 11-day trip I couldn’t fit it all into my small bag. So, i reluctantly packed up my big duffel bag and headed out to the airport. It was a great flight (literally pulled out from the gate RIGHT on time) and got into to LA early. Did I mention the on demand video units they had? No, I didn’t? Let me briefly explain…

Delta now has, or maybe has for a long time and I just never fly Delta, on demand videos, satellite TV, and games at each seat. The highlight (other than King of Queens reruns) was the trivia game you can play against the other passengers. They ask you 20 questions, which are almost all impossible, and after each question you see who gets them right…18F was a retard but 23A and B were amazing!…almost too amazing if you ask me, but how low to you have to be to collude/cheat at Delta Flight 605 trivia? OK back to sob story…

We get off the plane, I’m happy as a clam (are clams really that happy? I dont get that saying at all, anyone able to explain?) and head down to baggage claim. Now sometimes it takes a while for the bags to come off the plane which is why it’s annoying to check luggage in the first place, but today is a good day, and the bags start to come off the moment I get downstairs. After about 30 bags come off the conveyor belt stops…hmmm ok, there’s probably a bag stuck somewhere or a small delay for another silly reason I thought to myself…10 minutes later still no bag…

Fast forward 30 minutes I am waiting in a line with 70% of the 160-passenger flight getting claim forms for our bags which they just left in NYC. They literally brought 160 people across the entire country and gave us 30 bags to fight over. I am now without anything other than my computer, charger, a book I don’t like, a deck of cards, and 3 pieces of peppermint gum (couldn’t it have at least been bubblemint?!?!)…

Awesome, thanks a lot Delta!…vacation is much better wearing the same boxers (that were already dirty anyways) for 11 days

I recently had a mop for a head of hair, but had it chopped off last night by a horrid barber.  I’m not going to be slanderous and mention the person of this person’s employer, but I’m never going back there again.  I think I should have begun running out of the place when the barber said, right before starting with me, “we’re going to hurry up and make this really quick, so I can get something to eat“.  This isn’t what I wanted to hear, just as you’d rather not hear this from your anesthesiologist or rabbi giving you a bris or even the guy at the deli fixing your BLT.  Other things you don’t want to hear from any of these people include “whoops“, “shit“, “sorry“, “I hope that didn’t hurt too much“… you get the idea.  Anyway, at least it’s Winter, and I can get away with wearing a beanie or wooly cap without being mistaken for trying to be “hard”.

And no, I’m not including a picture of the after; writing this should be enough evidence why.

The title of this is a little long and seemingly-contrived, but it has purpose.  I just went to get a coffee down the street where I normally do, and there was a someone buying something and then an old gentleman behind him, kind of wandering aimlessly reading a paper.  So, I approached him, having just awoken about five minutes prior, and asked “Sir, are you in line?”, and he gave me the most befuddled look I’ve seen in a long time that just screemed, “what did you say you idiot”.  It’s hard to explain in words, especially, when you’re bad with words, like me, but this look was hideous.  It’s certainly more hideous than this picture, this guy, I think, is a moron.  Geeeeez, I don’t know.

I was kind of crappy last night, and is relatively crappy this morning, and there’s really nothing nice about shitty weather. Now, shitty weather is a far cry from nasty weather; in our opinion, there’s not a thing wrong with nasty weather. In fact, nasty weather is what makes the world go round (sort of). But it’s great. An example of shitty weather is a hurricane; I think everyone will agree that there’s really nothing nice at all with hurricanes. An example of nasty weather would be a snow storm, and snow storms are great. They aren’t as great in New York City — salt on the road, ice, cars, ugh. But, enter a place like, say Vail… Vail without snow storms wouldn’t be Vail and the World wouldn’t be the same with Vail. And as I look outside the window it has started to snow (in the former, not the latter, though I’m sure it’s snowing there too. Ugh, the author would rather be at the latter at the moment.

In today’s enthrawling edition of Fox News they have a headline showing that Nadal beat Federer and it’s labeled as Breaking News.  And this is somewhat true, it is breaking, and it is news, but if you read further down the page you see this headline: “Overturned gasoline tanker explodes in Kenya, killing at least 111 people.”  This leads one to believe what is really more important, a tennis match, or 111 people dying due to an overturned vehicle.  Apparently, one of those was not Fox News, but hey, they can have their opinion.

Again, we have no garauntee of at least or no more than one post per day.  That would just complicate things.

Perhaps this post should be titled taking long hiatuses, but it’s not. As we are a satire on the real 1000 item count down, we don’t promise to make posts everyday.  We just promise to go in order, not necessarily hitting all the numbers, though.

It’s about not being able to sleep.  Now this isn’t necessarily insomnia, but it’s just sleeplessness.  For whatever reason, I don’t know.  Maybe it’s the crazy video show on MSNBC and a fervor to finish up a project, but I’ve got it.  I’ve also got a bunch of crap all over my keyboard, and I have no clue how it got there.  That was off topic.  I seriously need a haircut — again off topic.  See, I told you I needed more sleep.