Category: Blog

Thinky Thoughts

So I’m wondering why I’m in school again.
Absolutely none of my life goals require me to be here. Its just what I’m supposed to do. I find a lot of it interesting, and I really do like the environment, but seriously – this just doesn’t do anything for me.

In every future job I see myself in, a college degree is not required. That would just be silly.
I’ve told people how I would like to teach, and that is true. But I think that can wait until later in life. Seems to be a waste to throw away the present into years and years of schooling.

I hate thinking like this, because it is always just limited to thought. These thoughts never actually materialize. If I could actually leave school, go take some stupid job that would make me happy, and build my bus, then I wouldn’t feel so bad. But I can’t. At least not yet.

I have a lot of things I want to do with my life. Not a single one requires me to be in anyway wealthy.

So why am I in school?

Intellectual enrichment? No.
I’m stuck in classes that are set by my major, and I get the feeling I will be endlessly filling requirements. God forbid I actually focus on something I would like to learn. This well-rounded education is killing me.

In high school, I pined for focus in what I learned, but I calmed myself with the knowledge that college was different. I’m still pining for focus, and I think grad school will have it. It may.

Maybe we’re supposed to pursue that focus on our own time, and the classes we take are just tools for interpreting what we learn outside of school. There is only one problem with that:
we don’t learn enough outside of school.

My schooling is interfering with my education.

Maybe that is the problem. What I want to learn can’t be taught in a classroom.
I have to go out and do it. And I can’t.
Not yet.

Retarded Poetry

Stranger Than Fiction by moe.
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/moe.1997-03-12.flac/moe1997-03-12d1t02_64kb.mp3]

John: I just wrote a fun blog entry
John: I like putting line breaks at the end of a thought, even if it is mid sentence
Joe: haha nice
John: ya, I enjoyed it
John: almost makes it look like some sort of retarded poetry
Joe: retard poetry
Joe: it’s a whole new genre
John: lets take it literally, and just make poetry meant to be read really slowly
Joe: i don’t know how you would write something that communicates to the reader that it should be read slowly
John: just specify that it is retard poetry
Joe: that sounds a little circular
John: I’m thinking that when read slowly, it makes sounds and meanings that wouldn’t be apparent when read at normal speed
John: kind of like hidden messages
John: but retarded
Joe: hahahaha
Joe: i think you can find retarded hidden messages in any poetry if you read it right
John: then we ought to work on that
John: give this genre some legs
Joe: that seemed to be what my creative writing teacher was teaching
Joe: i don’t think i’d trust a poem with legs
Joe: “keep that creepy mutant poem away from me!”
Joe: before you know it they’ll have eyeballs and angry eyebrows
Joe: maybe a scraggly mouth
John: we could race poems against each other
Joe: the retard poems would always finish last
John: not if they were the only ones with legs
Joe: okay, so now it’s the poetry special olympics
Joe: “even if you win, you’re still retarded”
Joe: i’m pretty sure that’s the official special olympics slogan now
John: I’d go to the poetry special olympics
Joe: i think it’s at the same event as the physics special olympics
John: I don’t know where else to go with this joke
Joe: garbageman, garbageman…

Employment

So I started my new job today.
I call people and ask them surveys they don’t want to complete.
Not quite a telemarketer, because I don’t actually sell anything. In fact, all I do is take from you.
I’m totally teletaking.
Unsurprisingly, this job is easy as hell. Almost as unsurprising, it is boring as hell.
I can’t complain though, it pays well, and requires little to no thought on my part.
But I can’t help but think that I would much rather be in many other jobs.
Jobs which I can’t do because they conflict with school. Like baking. Or painting.
What I like about those jobs is that at the end of the day
you have something that you can point to and say “That’s what I did today!”
Today I called literally hundreds of people. Two completed the survey.
That’s what I did today.
I’m not disappointed in this, as I have absolutely nothing invested in this survey.
In fact, people not answering makes my job easier. It also makes it more dull.
I couldn’t think of any little game to play with myself and the folks I was calling
because for the most part, they weren’t actually there.
In truth, I may have spoken to 40 people today, and that is on the high side.
Most numbers I called were answering machines or numbers that don’t exist.
(Thanks, autodialer!)
So for four hours today, this was the only song that came to mind. Appropriate.

Focus

DF Tram’s set from Chillits
[audio:http://music.cloudfactory.org/chillits05/chillits05-dj-dftram.mp3]

I’ve got two papers to write tonight, both due tomorrow, and I’m having a really difficult time focusing. This is the first day back to school over break, and that certainly doesn’t make this any easier. It is not even the things happening around me which are distracting…even when the tv is off, and when the music is silent, I still can’t focus on this garbage.

I take that back. It isn’t garbage, and I’d normally be interested in at least one of these topics. But not tonight. Too restless. I couldn’t focus last night either. I need to take some time to re-orient myself, but I don’t have that time under all this schoolwork.

Fuck it, no sleep until its done.

The Dictionary Goes Web2.0

Floodlights by the Disco Biscuits
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/db2006-05-26.early-dpa4027.flac16/db2006-05-26early-dpa4027d1t02_64kb.mp3]

Word Source (word.sc) is an online dictionary which, unlike other dictionaries, is advertisement free. It is also pretty simple to manipulate the url (word.sc/[insert word]). Users can upload photos, rate words, all sorts of useless things.

Weatherman

I’m going to start posting conversations I have online, or in person, on here if they are in any way interesting or entertaining.
This is the first.

Joe: i’ve decided the weatherman is secretly a drug dealer
Joe: he’s always telling us where the biggest highs are
John: nicholas cage?
Joe: no, real weather men
Joe: though it wouldn’t surprise me if nicolas cage sold drugs too
John: maybe that explains why they’re always outside in shitty weather
John: they’re out in the good weather too, they just don’t show it
Joe: haha
Joe: all that shit when they’re standing in front of the map – that’s coded information about where and when you can get the best stuff
Joe: that also explains why when you take it literally, they’re wrong more than half of the time
Joe: “There’s a good chance we’ll see some ‘snow’ coming in from the west.”
Joe: “It could be quite a lot of ‘snow’.”

Inconvenient Quote

You know, there are a lot of people who go straight from denial to despair, without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem.

This is a quote by Al Gore from the movie An Inconvenient Truth.
One fun thing to notice about this quote is the logic.
Because even if someone does the intermediate step, the chain goes

        Denial -> Do Something -> Despair

:)

Oh, and some tunes:
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/um2007-01-06.flac16/um2007-01-06d2t03_64kb.mp3]
Dick in a Box as performed by Umphrey’s McGee
Now, I know that Dick in a Box made the rounds a long while ago, but I’m pretty happy to see bands like Umph covering it in their live shows.