Category: NaBloWriMo

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The government wants to regulate the Internet?

The stories are blazing through Twitter that the feds are voting on a bill that’ll let them prevent you from looking at various websites for… I’m not sure how they’ll justify deciding which ones are bad, but it’s probably gonna end up like Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion about pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Under the circumstances, I think the government should know my opinion this situation as well:

I think Congress is full of Mustuselongerwords tomakeallathisflibbertygibberish lookimpressiver.. They get elected, then sit around and IguessIhavetouse somespacesjust soitallfits intoseparatelinesas opposedtobeinglarge blocksoftextso onlyfiveor sixwords mightbeina lineonthescreen whichisatotalbummer.. I swear, if it weren’t for the democratic system, they’d Mansmooshingstuff togetherlike thisisharderthanIexpected.. To me, Congress is trying to Butaman hastomakesacrifices forhisart all the time and it’s getting Guesswewill seewhatthereadersthink whenthisispostedand itlookslike everythinggot censoredout!! Sorry, I don’t mean to yell, but they just make me so While throwinginsome random sentencesand phraseshereandthere and I wouldn’t want to play Parcheesi against these Timeto giveitashotandsee whathappens.. Hopefully, someone can do something to Andapparently noapostrophesallowedbut IthinkIshouldbeokay…. remember the whole “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” thing? Yeah.

Oh, and one more thing: Thiscouldbealotoffunandindeeditwas.. Thanks for reading.
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ADDENDUM: It looks like the plugin that originally “censored” the gibberish in here may not work with this version of WordPress. Itwasalotoffunbutnolongerisdammit..

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The passing of another day

I’m trying to think of positive accomplishments I made today… it’s turning out to be a short list.

  • I dressed myself (always good).
  • I didn’t hurt my knee while I dressed myself (bonus!).
  • I read some stuff (literacy is nice).
  • I used my laptop (yay for technology!).
  • I picked up the mail (nothing for me).
  • I ate nachos (mmmmm, nachos…).
  • I drank Mountain Dew (mmmmm, Mountain Dew…).

Yeah… pretty short list. I’m sure I could focus harder and think of more stuff (I got out of bed, I breathed oxygen, I pooped, etc.), but it might be better for me to use this last hour and fifteen minutes of the day to do something more than add another item to the list: “I made a list.”

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Haters gonna hate

“I hate my cell phone.”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that phrase. “I hate my cell phone.” “I hate this place.” “I hate it when that happens.” Really?

You can probably blame the comedian Louis CK for this blog entry because he had an interview with Conan O’Brien a few years back that felt like a slap in the face. Technology has advanced so much in our lifetimes (especially in yours, all you young ‘uns) and what do we do with it? We use it, we only sometimes enjoy it and we almost always take it for granted.

When I was in Norway with my parents, we bought a new cell phone with some prepaid minutes. We needed it to call people, find out where we were supposed to go to meet them, contact hotels, etc. It came in really handy. When we got home, I wanted to keep it for my own, but the chip inside was related to AT&T’s network. The people at Sprint wouldn’t replace the chip, so I couldn’t use it. Since I couldn’t use it, we gave it to my niece. She was 10. 10 years old with a cell phone! I would never have dreamed of having a phone at that age and some adults almost expect it these days.

Now there are iPhones and Blackberries and various other “smart phones” that you can use to download music, find restaurants, make fart noises and who knows what else. Do people using their phones to watch videos on YouTube think, “Oh my God, this is amazing!” Nope!

I see people trying to send text messages or surf the Internet and sometimes it doesn’t work right… “I hate my phone!” No, you don’t. You may be upset that it doesn’t work, but hate it? Then stop using it. Put it in a desk drawer or hide it from yourself for a month. Or a week. Or even a day. How does it feel? Are you nervous and jittery without it or do you feel better because you hate your phone? I never say it, but I almost always think it: “If you hate your phone so much, get rid of it and see how much you hate it afterward.”

Which is not to say that I’m immune. There are times when I’m doing simple stuff like taking vitamins in the morning. I’ll shake the bottle a little to get one in my hand and it’ll fall on the floor. “God, I hate that.” Really? Do I hate it? No. It’s annoying and inconvenient, but I don’t hate it. I try to make a point to correct myself whenever I think something like that. “That’s so annoying.” And I feel better.

And if you hate something as insignificant as your phone, what does that say about everything else by comparison? What do you think about the Holocaust? If someone killed your parents? Vin Diesel’s acting? “I hate my phone, but I super duper really really really hate that other stuff.”

We’ve been given a lot of gifts in this world and we tend not to notice them. They’ve become a expected part of life. When parts of our lives don’t work, that sucks. Fair enough. Does that mean we should hate them? No. There is very little out in the world that deserves hatred and we should remember to appreciate how much awesomeness is inside these tiny handheld devices that we can hold up to our ears and talk to our friends around the world. Around the world. Isn’t that amazing?

As for Vin Diesel’s acting… like I said, haters gonna hate, but sometimes it’s well-deserved.

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Okay, so my phone is old-school…

It’s a flip phone. I like it. The little hinge helps it hug my face (yay for hugs!) and puts the receiver closer to my mouth so I don’t have to talk as loudly. It keeps the conversation… more private? I know that might sound a little weird, but that’s basically how it feels.

However! I’m starting to think I should upgrade, if for no other reason than people keep sending me text messages. This is important because 1) my current calling plan doesn’t have free texting; and 2) when I say “phone is old-school”, I mean it’s the 10-digit pad where you have to hit the 7 button four times to get an S in the message. It takes a while to write stuff, especially when you’re committed like me and type out entire words as opposed to “how r u?”

I’ve started doing some research online and just looking at the information (and the prices) is making my wallet feel like a piece of charcoal that’s going to burst into flames any second, which is especially bad since I keep it in my front pocket. Part of the reason is because I don’t want to get a fat wallet and start leaning to one side every time I sit down; part is because if someone’s going to pick my pocket, I might as well get a little thrill out of it.

But due to the joys of the Interwebs, there’s an ungodly amount of information floating around that may or may not useful. Consequently, I figured I could ask all of you what phones you have and why they’re awesome/why they suck. Thoughts/comments/suggestions? (Writing “I can’t believe you’re a geek and you don’t have a smartphone” isn’t productive, so don’t bother, Matthew…)

Oh, and I was also thinking about buying a new GPS on Cyber Monday because mine sometimes has issues and the company that made it no longer exists. (One time I used it to try to get home—when I was “at my destination”, I was actually in St. Paul, about half an hour’s drive north.) If I get a smartphone, it could fulfill that need as well, so two birds with one calling plan…

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You Better Watch Out

I went to see an Expressions show tonight in downtown Lakeville, mostly because three of the actors in this play were also in Mind Over Matt. I had a good time, it was cool seeing the guys again and a bunch of us had fun chatting at Applebee’s afterward. However, I had a question for the director about the end of one scene that took him completely by surprise.

It took place on Christmas Eve at a bed and breakfast with a handful of people staying there, one of whom was Santa Claus. The owners had invited her father for the holiday, he had turned into a big old grouch when his wife died and Santa wanted to instill the Christmas spirit back into him. During the first act, we see the wife and her dad continue a family tradition of lighting candles, putting them on the mantle of the fireplace, then letting them burn until they go out on their own.

An actual tradition I’ve never heard of before—the director told me about it at Applebee’s—is turning down the lights before blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Thus, at the end of a scene (after the candle lighting), one guy looks around, turns down the lights, starts quietly singing “Merry Christmas To Me” to the tune of “Happy Birthday”, then blows out the candles and leaves the room.

A very important note about the stage setup: the light switch is behind the coat tree. To turn the lights down so he could blow out the candles, he had to reach through a bunch of coats. When he did, one of them moved. Then he walked away from the coats singing “Merry Christmas To Me”. Basically, what I saw was this guy singing because he just gave himself a Christmas present: a wallet that was in someone’s jacket pocket. And boy, if that was Santa’s jacket, you’re damn right you better watch out.

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Merry Christmas! Love, Walmart!

Today, I decided I want to hunt down the Walmart executives and strangle them with Christmas lights. Why? Because they’re continually moving the winter holidays forward. Perhaps they weren’t the ones who started playing Christmas music in October, but they’re the ones responsible for the pain in my stomach when I was reading the paper this afternoon. (I sincerely doubt it was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich…)

On the front page, there were a few paragraphs about Best Buy now accepting electronics with screens for free where they used to charge people ten bucks. It attracted my attention because I have an old computer from the 90s that doesn’t communicate with other computers anymore. Seriously. I’ve tried to put stuff in the USB ports and the old computer doesn’t understand what the hell the thing is, just that it’s being violated. So now it’s all unplugged and sitting in my room: tower, keyboard, mouse and big monitor.

The paper said the article continued on another page, so I delved into the business section, read the last few paragraphs, then looked at the other page and discovered how Walmart is celebrating Thanksgiving this year. They were the first ones to start Black Friday at midnight. This year, they will be the first ones to start Black Friday before Friday. On Thursday at 10:00pm, they will begin selling toys and clothes, then everything else starting at midnight.

I cannot insert enough curse words to explain my frustration. This reminds me of the late night TV struggles a year or two ago when NBC wanted to push The Tonight Show back to 12:05am, meaning it would technically be The Really, Really Early Show. Things ended poorly there, but in Walmart’s case, no one’s going to stop them. No one can stop them. They’re a retail monster. Hell, this’ll probably get other companies to start opening on Thursday just to stay competitive. Regardless, if they ever start playing Christmas music before my birthday—October 19th—I’m gonna hunt down some Walmart executive and teach my old monitor how to communicate with his head.