The Station

Inside Out

When I was in fifth grade or so, I unknowingly went to school one morning with my uniform shirt on inside out. At about mid-morning someone noticed and of course the whole class got a huge laugh. I remember feeling very embarrassed. Things like that were a big deal to me back then. Nowadays, something like that wouldn't bother me at all. I'd just laugh with everyone else. Why didn't I act that way as a kid? By not enjoying the humor of the situation, I just distanced myself more from my peers. How unproductive! Why didn't anyone teach me to see things differently? Maybe God wanted me to be bothered by stuff like that so I wouldn't grow up to be so sure of myself.
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Illinois Embassy

California needs to let me create an Illinois Embassy. I'll need about twenty square miles. I'll definitely have a few good places to get real pizza. Also, I'll have a Cracker Barrel restaurant, Portillos, and Jimmy John's. I'll have some Frank Loyd Wright homes and other great structures of architectural significance. I'll even have weather machines to create snow, start the fall colors, and even send out the occasional tornado to ravage the farmland.
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Phone Books Atrocity

Phone book advertising is ridiculous. No, I'm not talking about the ads in the phone book, I'm referring to ads for a particular phone book. Has anyone else noticed what appears to be an exponential increase in the number of such ads in recent years?

Each publisher claims vast superiority over their competitors, yet I am compelled to ask, "who really cares?" When people need a number, they just grab the nearest book from the pile of 582,668 of them that showed up on the doorstep just this past week alone. There's no need to distinguish between them. They all have a yellow cover, contain lots of phone numbers, and, compared to the internet, are about as efficient at locating a number as a blind and senile grandmother with arthritis. So why do they even exist, to question nothing of the reason for their relentless barrage of horrible ads?

Ah, yes, I must mention something of the quality of the ads. I consider myself a merciful, if not benevolently tolerant consumer. Even if a product or service does not strike my fancy, I will put up with their ads if it seems they've made a decent effort to be clever. This is not the case with the phone book. No, the people that create phone book ads should be forced to eat an entire phone book page by page until they explode or die from ink poisoning. Preferably both.

I could go on for days about the evils of phone books, but I refuse to have my time mastered by such a vile topic. However, to the publishers of phone books, consider yourself warned.
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The Weakest Link

While mountain biking at Palos Verdes the other day, I actually broke my chain on a climb. I was just crankin' up this hill and BOOM!!! Since I was already near the top, I just dowhilled it back to the car with the satisfaction of knowing I'm a muscular beast of a man.
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Technopoly

A couple weeks ago, I found myself arguing for the existence of a technology monopoly. That is, I wanted all the companies associated with a certain technology to merge into one entity. Since monopolies are usually not highly regarded, I had to stop and think of why my intuition called for one.

All monopolies are good because they pool all available resources to advance technology as rapidly as possible. Granted, some innovation is lost since there would be no need to avoid patent infringement. That reminds me, there would be less bureaucracy if there were no patent process needed.

Now, monopolies are bad because of non-competitive costs, but being the idealist that I am, I thought the monopoly would not be greedy and provide reasonable prices. The scientific community is in fact intended to be a monopoly - free sharing of information to advance mankind's understanding. It'd be great if we could put aside our greed and competitiveness and just focus on advancing technology together. It won't happen though, because the people that push all the buttons don't think like that.

I am going to take their buttons away.
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Echo Memorization

The Station doesn't usually feature entries like this, but I'm doing it since I had Lauren fill one out for me. Might be interesting.

If you comment...

1. I'll respond with something random I like about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll name something we should do together.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me (or just me).
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you, or I will include an icon just for you in my reply.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, I encourage you to post this on your journal so you can do the same for other people.

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Love This Life

It's the people...
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