Words of Worso

Important things- a general list (Part 1 of ?)

2008-07-29T16:12:00.001-04:00

Important things- a general list

Instead of just going through life filled with all consuming rage about the stupidity of others (which was my tendency), I decided to compile a basic list of important things to know and consider while going through life. These basics will provide a better world for all. And following the Girl Scout creed, we want to leave the place better than we found it. (In all honesty, I doubt the verity of the previous sentence. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a girl scout. Nor was I ever really much of a cub scout, boy scout or eagle scout. It is more than likely something I fabricated out of thin air, but it works, damn it.)

When driving on the highway, after passing a car on the left, move to the right lane. Never under any circumstances should a person operate a vehicle at or near the speed limit in the fast lane. There is a special place in hell for people who do this.

When someone sends YOU an email with a question and CCs (carbon copies) several other people in the email, when replying, one should hit the button reply ALL. There was clearly a reason that the other people were involved in the original email. They are likely also interested in your answer. Save the original author the step of having to forward that email to those other recipients because you are too dumb to hit “reply all”. There is a special place in hell for you, too.

When standing in line at the grocery store, do not push the cart up so far that it hits the person in front of you in the ass. You may desire to hit them in the ass, but there is really no reason for that. You have a beef with them, you can take that up in the parking lot.

When in a public place and interacting with a customer service representative (perhaps at the bank, at the library, at the doctor’s office, etc.) do not ask that person you are interacting with to pause the conversation while you answer your cell phone. I can think of almost no reason why you should have to be rude to the service provider you are interacting with by acting in such a manner. Are you the president of the United States? Are you a pizza store owner? It the answer to these two questions is no, then don’t be rude.

Don’t talk on the cell phone in a public place in a loud voice and expect other people to NOT make fun of you. There is a time and place for speaking loudly to someone on your cell phone and that place is somewhere else.

Just because you can do something, does not always mean you should do it. Think long and hard on this previous sentence. Let it be a constant guide.

That is all for now. This list will likely grow and include more elaborate commentary. But for now, just these six basic things, if everyone did them, would make the world a better place.

Bottle water: fact and fiction

2007-10-27T10:24:00.000-04:00

I did a little research this morning because I ran out of bottled water and was going to run to the store. But the thought of carrying two 24-packs of water around Kroger was unsettling and made me think about the pain in my back today. I am not getting any younger.

So I surveyed the dozen or so empty water bottles on my counter awaiting recycling when I considered re-using them. I seemed to remember what I would call an urban legend about some danger associated in the reuse of plastic water bottles. In my mind, I formulated this idea that there was a soft plastic lining in each bottle that allowed for it to be used only once and then required recycling, that mild detergent would wash this away causing the bottles to be unusable. In my mind, I could see the major bottling companies hatching such a nefarious plot. But surely something this poisonous would be known to all and vastly public rather than something on the edge of public awareness. (And I have not even mentioned how ridiculously over-priced water is in relation to say, something like gasoline!)

So to google I did go and here is what I found.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fact+or+fiction+bottled+water

The above was my general search beginning.

But this one is what struck me as sounding the most legitimate. Why? It is riddled with footnotes and things that look scholarly and seem impressive. And of course, the language is high falutin to borrow some terminology from Eric M Smith.

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/digestive-health/nutritionarticles/LeisingArticle.pdf

Naturally, as someone who is very curious, I wondered who this panel of experts were, what their motivations for publishing such information were as well as who funded the research. As any qualified mildly intelligent paranoid knows, you have to follow the money.

But then my coffee kicked in and I had to leave the computer. So I leave that last part to all of you. Or I may do some investigative follow-up in another post.

Enjoy like me!

The Story of Thursday

2007-10-03T23:30:00.000-04:00

The story of Thursday started with a bottle of water. I was leaving my job, putting stuff in my car, when I put my bottle of water on the roof of my car. In movies, they always put a baby on the roof of the car and drive off. This was just a bottle of water. I got in, rolled down the window (at the time, this would seem an insignificant detail but later if figures big in the story), started the car and began to speed out of the parking lot. It was dark. It was, after all, just past midnight. And as I accelerated out of the lot, I heard the familiar thud reminding me I left something on top of my car. So, I stopped the car, got out, picked up the bottle, closed the door hard and began to drive off.

As I approached the highway and increased my speed, I went to roll up the window. However, in slamming my door shut with the window down, I knocked the window off the track and could not roll the window more than halfway up. But this was not a huge disaster. The temperature was a lovely 60 degrees, unlike the first time this happened three years ago when the temperature was 15 degrees and I had to drive a half hour to get home on the freeway. This would be no big deal. But I would have to leave my car in that state over night. Vulnerable. It is not like I drive a Jaguar or a Ferrari. It is a basic Honda Civic hatchback. I love that car like I love life. But that is another story. This is about a bottle and everything that came after.

So I leave it out there, exposed, opened like a heart waiting to be broken and think confidently I can fix that in the morning before class, no problem.

The next morning comes, which for me is 10:30. I have coffee, read email, check news and then (after feeding and medicating the cats) realize I don’t have a lot of time to fix the door/window before class starts. But I work at it anyway. To do the actual repair requires me to leave the door open for quite a while as I need to completely dismantle it to get inside at the gizmos and doohickies. Leaving the door open leaves the dome light on. It never occurred to me this would be a problem because it was never a problem before. But my car is from 1997. Mi coche tiene diez años. And I realized later that my battery was also 10 years old. La pila de me coche tiene diez años también. A ten year old battery does not react well to a light being left on. So the battery died. Why did the battery die? Because of a bottle of water.

So I had to remove the old battery, take it down to the auto parts store, thankfully just down the street, and get a new one. But anyone who ever changed a battery can tell you they are heavy. They are heavy and they are filled with sulfuric acid. Thankfully, sulfuric acid doesn’t really enter this story other than anecdotally. It was a peaceful, uneventful exchange beyond the awed admiration of the sales clerk over the reality that my old battery lasted ten years. “Don’t have any false beliefs that this battery I am selling you is going to last ten years. Cause it’s not.” Ok. Thank you.

New battery is installed by me but by this point I am not just late for Spanish class. I have completely missed Spanish class. And I had missed class on Monday for reasons related to GI health. I told my teacher, with great confidence, I won’t miss another class. And here it was, four days later, and I am missing another class. Murphy is rather like gravity: harsh and unyielding.

As usual, this story doesn’t have enough bacon in it. So here is some bacon.

Spicy Spam

2007-09-16T22:57:00.001-04:00

So I work for a large university who apparently feels it is ok to sell my name to email lists. Prior to my current employment, I had never received email spam, ever. The first piece of email spam I found in my inbox was for some type of investment opportunity. As a person with no interest in or knowledge of investments, I immediately replied to the sender...

Dear Matthew so-and-so,

I believe you must have sent this in error to my address. I know nothing of these matters.

Thanks for you attention

Of course, at this point I opened the floodgates to more spam because the great they now knew my email address was alive and active.

But all of this is of trivial concern compared to the sublime email spam poetry I am now receiving on a regular basis in my inbox.

Here is a delicious example (received today September 16 complete with punctuation as it arrived in my inbox)

Absurdly, my eyes can only see the arc
Blurring the terrain,
Merely a mockery of spring
Yes. You'd want that said, (if you
This perfection, this absence.
Late February, and the air's so balmy
Never does any motion, sound, or light
Bronze the sky, with no
That neither the motionless farm couple trudging
Of too much truth to do much more than lie
shaded by live oaks and bottlebrush trees
Only a fox whose den I cannot find.
Stunned in their voiceless way to be alive
Deep in the fog that quenches every ray,
Out of the picture of life, as it were, out
But what I am looking at is hardened snow,
Columbuses or Gamas, ever pass,
Brush the lone giant in that somber pall.
Pallid waste where no radiant fathomers,

As you will see, some type of random word generator has found and removed bits of prose already in existence somewhere on the internets and then randomly strung them together into eloquent, albeit disjointed, poetry.

Now my mission is to take this and turn it into something funny, something that can make money. I know it is hard to improve on perfection, but we all have our burdens. And while this poetry is stylistic, it is not been bent to the will of making money. As an American, it is my right to make these words make money for me. Not just a right, but a duty.

Because if I don't make these words make money for me, then the terrorists have already won.

A Bad Beginning

2007-08-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

I am experiencing the title of the first book of a Series of Unfortunate Events: The BadBeginning. Today has started in a most foul way. Listen as Ed wakes up this morning...

Yawn. Stretch. Curse at the alarm. Snooze twice. I wonder how the new carpet faired last night with the cats...

"Let's go see what happened to the new carpet last night, Turtle!" I get up, watching out for Frodo biting my ankles to remind me that he ishungry. I put on clothes and head for the stairs. "Oh look! Someone had a case of the runs on the very first step of newcarpeting! I can't imagine this getting any worse!"Down the steps and around the corner to the right…"Oh look! Someone took a serious shit in the corner on the new carpet! I sure hope I can clean both of these things up. Funny how the carpet is less than 12 hours in the house and you guys shat on it twice! Have you ever made an $800 mistake, Turtle? Well it looks like Daddy has." I clean up the two fecal piles...

A short while later, drinking coffee, I look out the window...

Look at those recycle bins and garbage cans blowing around down the street.People really should take care to not leave those things out like that. It could cause an accident if someone tried to avoid hitting them with their car.

I step into the office for a couple minutes and turn on the computer.I take a shower. Running late for work...Going out to start the car I see my gate has blown open and notice the absence of my recyclebins and garbage cans from my back yard. They are all blowing around down two different streets and in three different yards! Retrieving cans and bins in sandaled feet through wet grass, I drive down and pick up last garbage can far down the street on my way to work. The trashcan is still in my hatch as I write this. That is how my day started. These are the events as they actually occurred.

Have a nice day!

Melancholy

2007-08-23T00:44:00.000-04:00

Driving home from closing up the Moritz Law Library at midnight, August 23, 2007, I turn on the radio and hear Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer. I am instantly transported to a carefree time 20 years ago. The scene comes alive in my mind. It is the summer of 1987. It is literally days before school is about to start, my senior year in high school. I am driving on a road through the park, I have just passed Squire’s Castle on the left. The sun is shining and a nice breeze is blowing. I pass several people on the left who are out flying kites. I am in my 1978 Ford Mustang, my first car, not yet killed by a Mazda RX-7. I have playing on my excellent car stereo (that I installed myself a new tape) Peter Gabriel’s So. I have it loud because I can and a part of me wants to show off how nice my car stereo is. I am, after all, only 17. At this moment, I haven’t a care in the world.

I don’t know yet the troubles I will go through for the next 20 years. I don’t know the relationship troubles I will have. The separation and divorce of my parents, The academic dismissal from (failing out of) college. The loss of all my friends from Cleveland. The addition and eventual loss of dozens of new friends in Columbus. The loss of my dad. The loss of my first pet where I had to be the responsible adult and be there at my friend’s end. My own (for lack of a better word) divorce, for living 10 years with a girl is common law in some states. The purchase of my first home. Literally countless untold other anxieties and depressions, joys and delights.

For a moment as I am driving, here in 2007, I almost wish I had the power to magically jump back in time to 1987 and fix up all the things I fucked up along the way. However I know my road would be forever changed doing even one thing differently. And the wiser part of me knows I need to stay on the road I am on now. I need to be here now. And as the song comes to an end and I pull into the driveway of my home, that melancholy almost feels like it brings a sadness to my eyes that will never go away.

Streams of serendipity

2007-08-14T13:52:00.000-04:00

Often in my life, I am struck crispy by the interconnected coincidences of a string of events. For example, today I had a gigantic box containing a 42 inch LCD television sitting in my living room waiting for the UPS man to come and take it away because it was broken. There were certain qualities and conditions of preparedness that were necessary for this box to go out into the world. One was a little tiny piece of paper that had a return authorization number on it—without that they would neither take the box nor refund back the $812.07 that had previously been charged to my credit card. The other was an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper with many numbers (order number, return authorization number, etc.) and my signature (required!!). At the moment my string of coincidences begins, this important sheet of paper is inside the box, however it is not signed. I might know this somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but at present, I am not aware of it. So I am standing at the window looking out searching for the UPS man who will take this away and clear up my living room when my back starts to itch. I ignore it for a second but the itch gets worse. So I walk over to the kitchen drawer where I keep my backscratcher. I own no less than three backscratchers—one resides in my desk drawer at work. It is very possible that I would have chosen the backscratcher that resides in my desk drawer in my office and just resigned myself to go sit down and try to reach Eric on googlechat one more time. However, this was not the case. I choose the one in the kitchen. I open the drawer, dig around through packing tape and scissors to reveal the bamboo length of abrasive sweet relief. While scratching away, I look pensively at the scissors and tape and a whole series of tumblers goes off in my head. I wonder if I forgot to sign that piece of paper that said “signature required!!!” So I place the backscratcher back in the drawer, grab scissors, tape and pen and head over to the box, fighting off the playful advances of both Mewbert and Turtle. I cut open the taped box and lo and behold, not signed after all! I sign the paper, tuck it nicely inside the box and put the supplies away thinking this would make an excellent initial blog entry into the way my mind works. If I had not signed that paper, the sons of bitches over at tigerdirect would have likely not taken that damaged TV nor refunded my money. Then we would have an angry blog entry. Now, we (you and me punkrock girl) await the happy blog about putting the freshly shipped unbroken TV up on the TV stand.

Hope you enjoy like me!

Primero Post

2007-08-08T13:37:00.000-04:00

First post! Leaping into the 2000's in late 2007 by bending technology to my will. Enjoy like me!