Hey, that's illegal

Sign seen on a bank board this morning as I ventured forth hunting donuts:

"REEFER A FRIEND AND GET A FREE GIFT"

Let's just see how long it takes them to change it...

Genius.

"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - With the countdown entering its final hours and a fuel gauge problem still unexplained, NASA said it is prepared to bend its long-standing safety rules to launch the shuttle Tuesday on the first flight since Columbia's doomed mission 2 1/2 years ago."

Most people who might be reading this blog have probably heard me go off on at least one anti-NASA rant over the years, so I'll refrain from launching into another one. Just imagine it in your heads if you really want to hear it. I don't care how much they downplay the risk factors. I don't even care if it truly *is* an infinitessimal risk. NASA's methods of approaching space flight are almost as outdated as the shuttle fleet itself and it's way past time for some serious restructuring of this country's space methodology.

The Amityville... moth?

I think we have a ghost moth. No, seriously. For the last month or so it seems like every time I open the front door of the apartment after dark, a moth flies in. Instantly. And it's always in the same place when I open the door. And it always flies in on the same path. Weird.

But then there's never a moth in the apartment! No moths fluttering around the lights, no moths in the closets, no moths found dead and crunchy on a bookshelf or starved and weak on the bathroom counter. Nothing zero zip. I honestly can't say that I've ever seen a moth in here since moving in four months ago. Weirder.

So I was noticing this a couple of weeks ago and vaguely wondering if I was going crazy or just hallucinating or what. But then when Gary was leaving for work last night, he opened the door and instantly said "stupid moth!" And I was like "hey, waitaminnit, moth?" And he proceeded to tell me that he swears that every time he opens the door at night, a moth flies in, and that it almost seems like the same moth doing it over and over. And so I came over and said "does it fly in right here?" and sketched out the little flight path, and he was all "how'd you know that?" Weirdest.

Maybe the Moth Gods are angry at me because I've been insisting for years that Mothra is the biggest pussy of a monster ever invented, and in retaliation they sent the Scary Moth Ghost to lay some bad juju on me. Well, you know what, Moth Gods? Mothra still sucks.

omg hot.

Ever work in a non-climate controlled room when the heat index is 110+? I can't say that I'd recommend it.

I'm gonna go take a nap.

I've got dreams, dreams to remember

I used to know this guy named Marcus in Springfield (not to be confused with the Marcus I know here in Tulsa), and the other night I had a dream about him. I never thought he was the shiniest apple in the barrel, if you know what I mean, but I also never thought he was a complete idiot. Apparently my subconscious thinks differently.

So in this dream he's up on a hill shooting a bazooka at cars on the highway. Which isn't as action-packed as you might think, because he wasn't firing explosive shells - he was firing cans of Vienna Sausages. Apparently he was all distraught because he had just found out that Vienna Sausages didn't actually come from Vienna. Go figure. Gary and I and some other few of the old skool Springfield crew were there, so since we knew him the cops gave us a chance to go up the hill and try to talk him down before they went in with their tear gas grenades and their guns blazing and all that good stuff.

Well, we go up and talk to him, and he's a mess. We say some soothing things, he says some tearful things, we say some more soothing things, yadda yadda yadda. Finally we get him calmed down to the point where he's willing to come back down the hill with us, and he drops his sausage bazooka and says "I just don't know why the world can't make sense. I mean, next you guys are going to tell me that Spam doesn't come from Spanimals."

"Er... um..." we stammer, trying to think of how to defuse this potential mess, but it's too late. He sees the truth in our eyes.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" he screams, fresh tears streaking down his soot-stained face. Then he runs off bawling at the top of his lungs - and that's when I woke up. It's a weird feeling to wake up laughing your ass off. ^_^

Oh God, You Devil

The following is part of an actual conversation I had while at work today. Twas a conversation about religion, which I should know by now to avoid because I almost always end up pissing people off, but I guess at heart I'd rather piss somebody off than quietly put up with their nonsense - especially when it's not a customer we're talking about. Customers I can usually just ignore unless they're calling me a god-hating babykiller (which has happened before) or somesuch. But I digress.

Person X... see, I'm not totally out to aggravate the world, or else I'd name names. ^_^ Anyway. Take two.

Person X: You atheists are all alike, you refuse to believe in anything that you can't measure.
Me: Oh? How much does a thought weigh? What's the speed of ingenuity? How large is an emotion?
Person X: That's not what I meant. I should have said "anything that you can't prove."
Me: But that's also untrue. I believe there's intelligent life all over the universe, although nobody can prove it. I believe that Einstein was wrong and that the speed of light isn't an unbreakable barrier, and nobody's ever proved that. I don't think anyone's ever proved the existence of true love, either. For that matter, if you want to get really philosophical, we can talk about how it may be impossible for anyone to prove anything aside from their own existence, and that only to themselves...
Person X: Stop being so difficult. You know exactly what I'm saying and you're totally avoiding the subject.
Me: But I'm responding to exactly what you're saying! How is that avoiding the subject?
Person X: I just don't understand why you atheists have to have an explanation or a reason for everything. Why is it so wrong to accept things on faith?
Me: I accept all kinds of things on faith. I mean, it's not like every single piece of human knowledge exists inside of my head. If I didn't take a lot of things on faith, then I could only believe in the things that I've personally experienced. Besides, even if I did know everything that anyone has ever learned - well, for example, science still hasn't fully figured out just why or how gravity works the way it does, but I would still have faith that I'm not going to go randomly careening off into space. And as far as explanations and reasons go, what would you call statements like "God works in mysterious ways" and "because that's what the Bible says?"
Person X: Just forget it. I don't have time for this. *walks off in a huff*

People just slay me.

My latest food addiction

Banana peppers. I just can't seem to get enough of them for some reason. I know how it started - the boss pays for lunch at the bookstore on Fridays, and I usually just run over to Subway because a) it's really close and b) it's healthier than pretty much anything else that is within convenient walking/driving distance. So I get banana peppers on my sub, and over the spring and summer it's gradually gone from "throw a few banana peppers on" to "pile it high with those babies". And then about a month ago I took the next step and started buying jars and keeping them in the fridge, and now a day hardly ever goes by where I don't have some on a sandwich or even just a handful as snackins. *shrug* I'm getting weird about food addicitons in my old age.

Vision Quest

Without the fasting and hallucinating, that is.

You know what a vision quest is, right? I mean, they've been with humanity throughout all of recorded history in one form or another... :op At their essence, what they are is a way to empty yourself of all worldly concerns so that your husk can then be filled back up with spiritual wisdom or guidance and direction or what have you. And that's kind of how I feel. Empty. Not empty in the depressed way that you hear people speak of, where they feel that their lives have no meaning or joy, but empty in that I'm waiting for something new to come along and fill me up. I just have this deep sense that my life is about to undergo another major change/upheaval, although I have no clue whatsoever what form it might come in.

I wish it would hurry up, though. I'm sick of this feeling, and of the itch at the back of my brain that's telling me something is on its way.

ION, do not under any circumstances let yourself fall into the trap of reading Dayton Ward's "The Third World War." It's complete and utter crap. Fledgling sci-fi writers who want to craft themselves a nice little alien invasion novel would do well to remember one simple credo: "The thing about aliens is, they're alien." Their thought processes and ideals and ways of life - all alien. These aliens, however, seem like humans in Halloween costumes, always going on about their religion (Christianity rehashed) and politics (American to a fault) and methods of war (straight out of a U.S. Army training manual, I'd swear) and monogamous relationships with nuclear family units and so on and so forth. Dayton - if there's intelligent life elsewhere out there, they're not Americans, OK? It's a big universe. Show a little imagination if you really want to be a writer.

Apathetic?

Disenchanted? Unmotivated? Indifferent? Spiritless? Just plain lazy?

Whatever I want to call it, it's obvious to anyone who reads this blog regularly (or semi-regularly, given my habits of late) that I've been a little off my game in the recent past. I'm not quite sure what it is, either. Part of it's probably the heat (and the fact that I've been spending too much time dealing with it at the bookstore lately - I don't envy the front counter people their jobs, but at least they get to hang out in the AC all day). Part of it, I'm sure, is the fact that the bank has been using me semi-regularly in the last month and so I'm kinda behind on sleep - but then, it's not like I'm ever caught up there, so that's probably not worth much as an excuse. Part of it is that I'm totally wrapped up in both GTA: San Andreas and the fiction of Tad Williams (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was amazing, so I decided to reread Otherland while I was at it) and there's just not enough hours in the day to do everything I'd like to do. Part of it is also the time I'm spending at the movie theaters this summer (I loved War of the Worlds, semi-liked Batman Begins, and thought Fantastic Four and Mr. & Mrs. Smith should have gone straight to video).

But all of that's not enough to explain it. I'm honestly just kinda "feh" lately. Not sure quite what it is, either - while there are parts of my life that could stand some improvement, it's not like I'm disappointed/depressed/upset about anything in particular. The one thing that I can say is really weighing on my mind is the fact that I need to quit smoking - the enjoyment is gone, and now it's pretty much just a disgusting, money-sucking habit. I've been planning to call the doctor, make an appointment, and get myself hooked up with a prescription for the pill. But I haven't gotten around to it. I need to do that. Overall, though, I dunno. Maybe I just need a big fat bowl of ice cream and about 24 hours of sleep.

In any case, I promise I'll try to do better. ^_^