Category: Musings

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Wristband colors of the rainbow

Ever notice how quantity often has a converse relationship with quality? If someone screams “Fire!” at random times in a movie theater, people will eventually start punching him in the face to shut him up. But if on the 47th time, there actually is a fire, someone will punch him in the face and he’ll be unconscious while everyone gets burned alive.

Okay, so maybe that’s not the best example, but my point is that when there’s a lot of something, each item tends to lose its individual significance. If everyone is different, then being “different” doesn’t mean anything anymore. The same idea applies to all of the colored wristbands that are supposed to grab people’s attention for various causes, diseases, etc. For example, when people see a yellow wristband, they’ll probably think of Lance Armstrong and cancer of the nuts, but there are a limited number of colors of the rainbow and the various causes, diseases, etc. start to double up. (You can check out a loooooooong list here.)

Personally, I’ve been wearing a lime green wristband for a while now. (It’s been at least six months because I currently have a really odd-looking tan line on my left wrist.) For me, it’s meant to signify non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but for others, it may refer to Lyme disease or muscular dystrophy.

More recently, I visited a friend and we traded: I gave her a lime green wristband in exchange for a purple one, which was labeled “Someone You Know Has LUPUS”. Guess which disease it’s referring to… Then I went to that website link above and was blown away by the list of items under purple. I saw Epilepsy and thought, “Cool, it’s twice as significant for me!”

But then I scrolled down the list and found No Unattended Kids in Cars and Pagan Pride as well. Lord knows I love the Pagans, but supporting their cause on my wrist? Seems a little too close to yelling “Pagan Pride!” in a movie theater and getting punched in the face to me…

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Not everyone wakes up

We’ve reached yet another anniversary of the Twin Towers collapsing and I was thinking, “Hey, this feels like a good night to go to bed early.” Then I thought, “I ought to write at least a short entry since it’s 9/11 and I want to pay my respects to the deceased and their loved ones.” The internal debate didn’t last very long—I might have a harder time staying awake during work tomorrow, but I’ll be awake and it’ll be tomorrow. A lot of people had that opportunity burned out of their hands in a giant fireball seven years ago.

So before crawling under the covers and breathing heavily until my alarm goes off in the morning (people say I snore, but I know they’re lying…), I want to thank the Powers that Be for my covers, my alarm, my (lack of) snoring… and thank them most of all for 9/12. Sleep well, everyone.

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MLS: Major League Sadness

I was checking out an MLS game on TV this afternoon and became very sad. Not because of the game itself—I enjoy watching soccer—but because of one team’s jerseys.

Unlike most professional team sports, soccer doesn’t fill up large stadiums here and thus doesn’t get a lot of revenue in the States. If we had more soccer hooligans on our side of the pond who would get hammered, vomit on themselves, then beat the crap out of each other in bars for wearing the wrong colors… but I digress. My point is that to get some extra cash, enabling owners to give out contracts large enough for players to build pools they can fill up with money and swim in, they’ll get sponsors that plaster their logos on the front of the team’s jerseys.

For example, the New York Red Bulls. Can you guess what’s on the front of their jerseys? That’s right, it’s a giant cursive “G” to represent General Mills.

Okay, maybe not. In this game, it was New York (with Red Bull logos) playing against D.C. United. Can you guess what’s on the front of the latter team’s jerseys? That’s right, it’s that VW inside a circle to represent Volkswagen.

I’m not kidding. D.C. United, a team located in our nation’s capital, is sponsored by a German car company. I can only imagine what the motivation was on both sides of that deal. It’s possible that Volkswagen is owned by a bunch of soccer hooligans who want to force American bars to sell German beer (Tastier going down and coming back up!), but it could be part of a trade agreement instead: we’ll put your logos on our jerseys if you send us cars that the players can fill with money and drive in.

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Looks aren’t everything

Recently, I’ve been thinking back to an encounter I had at an Oktoberfest last year. Someone walked up to me and asked if I was on a show with beauties and “smart guys.” Very smooth… But she was merely a scout, chosen in large part because of the large rock on her finger that showed both that she was married and that you wouldn’t want to get in the way of her left cross.

After establishing my identity as a cast member on Beauty and the Geek, she walked back to her group of friends, at which point one of them came running out and yelled, “You were my favorite!” She then leapt into my arms and gave me a huge hug which would have been much less awkward if my girlfriend hadn’t been standing five feet away when it happened.

We talked for a while and she told me that she used to be a size 1, but… well, she wasn’t big, but she wasn’t a size 1 anymore. I don’t remember her story—it’s been almost a year since this happened—but when explaining the situation, she wasn’t concerned about having lost her petite figure: “I just don’t give a shit.” Continue reading “Looks aren’t everything”

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Where’s a time machine when you need one?

I was checking out craigslist.org in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area to see what kinds of writing/editing jobs might be available. There was one for an “Electronic Publisher/Proofreader” posted by this company:

JPG & Associates, Inc.
“The Publications Professionals”

It looked intriguing, but I don’t think I’ll be applying because I don’t meet a lot of the qualifications:

    1. Advanced skills in MS Word (templates, book marks, hyperlinks, etc.), Adobe Acrobat, MS Visio.
    2. Experience working Documentum or other document management system.
    3. High attention to detail.
    4. Must be able to start end of May.
    5. Must be able to work on-site 8:00-5:00.
    6. Previous contract experience is preferred.

I know very little about the first two, but 3 and 4 disturb me. They want someone with high attention to detail who is also able to start working at the end of May. My problem? The ad was posted on June 12th. They want to hire a proofreader who apparently started working for them two weeks ago. If that’s what they’re looking for, maybe I should start working on my resume and list all the jobs I’m planning on having through 2009…

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George Carlin: Righteously Indignant Person

George Carlin, one of my favorite comedians, died on June 22nd, 2008. Bummer…

But now that he’s croaked, you’ll find all these blogs and videos on Youtube that say R.I.P. I gotta say that considering the guy didn’t believe in Heaven or Hell, people are being awfully presumptuous about what he’s doing now. Resting in peace? Seriously?

He’s dead! He’d be the first one to tell you (assuming that he was capable of speaking from the grave… and assuming you could hear him through six feet of dirt…) that he’s not resting nor is he in peace. Either his corpse is lying there completely immobile with no semblance of consciousness or awareness attached to it or he’s screaming and banging on the inside of the coffin to let him out. (Personally, I think he’d appreciate the irony of the latter.)

Regardless, I want to take a moment of time to reflect on the happiness and joy that I’ve received while listening to his CDs, watching him on TV and seeing him perform live twice. Those good times may be over—at least the good times that involved new material—but his spirit will live on inside each and every once of us until… wait… that’s right, he’s dead. Never mind.