tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-293162532024-03-07T18:33:31.681-05:00QUICK! ALERT THE INTERNET!Ha ha, you have a blog.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.comBlogger126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-76981269063629340132010-01-15T23:04:00.009-05:002010-01-15T23:57:06.056-05:00I plugged in my pen tablet yesterdayHere's where I work:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI0YWJK0uAakddvpwdL7yONm9bz1DASuuuLZwkDlxp3n7AFiV9ixhPHZuIQTHP8JJdIhiDb5ZltEJEXeREFhgQPfjta4WsJ_aMjA3K-vpuyf4XKR4WJZZfc6vqKAW2Yc79qTdL/s1600-h/whereiwork.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 284px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI0YWJK0uAakddvpwdL7yONm9bz1DASuuuLZwkDlxp3n7AFiV9ixhPHZuIQTHP8JJdIhiDb5ZltEJEXeREFhgQPfjta4WsJ_aMjA3K-vpuyf4XKR4WJZZfc6vqKAW2Yc79qTdL/s320/whereiwork.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427185942771862002" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />This is what I've been doing:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOJMoxkuWgkGRZ8wqXC2ET2H46yFXSBlNGsnd9VhIz7vY98oLecexgZ3MHh3-g0sxqO0CDFCdyJRl1cdKM4IHKQ4N6DfZh4WJ9HTCM1_fDZA-AREsY9ASvjRLa3yL3eQL1ajSd/s1600-h/aronjohnson.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 292px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOJMoxkuWgkGRZ8wqXC2ET2H46yFXSBlNGsnd9VhIz7vY98oLecexgZ3MHh3-g0sxqO0CDFCdyJRl1cdKM4IHKQ4N6DfZh4WJ9HTCM1_fDZA-AREsY9ASvjRLa3yL3eQL1ajSd/s320/aronjohnson.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427187075597191586" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTaXNpXJKT5sqidbScIyiRd040mODnEw1FEbtY_SZU1vf57gXbQ9OWSSYsRqDoNZBTOpSu-en04fk9MKwjLQzqURhuxLyeloHLhMuh-bSbFI3KLXQjBc3lD5eMmpfH0-lh0U-k/s1600-h/jerkwcat.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 289px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTaXNpXJKT5sqidbScIyiRd040mODnEw1FEbtY_SZU1vf57gXbQ9OWSSYsRqDoNZBTOpSu-en04fk9MKwjLQzqURhuxLyeloHLhMuh-bSbFI3KLXQjBc3lD5eMmpfH0-lh0U-k/s320/jerkwcat.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427188200737226450" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwXDoHi4MIzR2F3lXvs68rVuNuvo-cH3QmcvVBT4Zg8eGvoSp6pImKiWFo4C-UgJ9f3IYgTNpr5KB68Vy_42cl-OdDkD9-OygFw8NjWjQ6Yjb0LsZXpr8TL-HOuimbrma452O/s1600-h/notme.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 306px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwXDoHi4MIzR2F3lXvs68rVuNuvo-cH3QmcvVBT4Zg8eGvoSp6pImKiWFo4C-UgJ9f3IYgTNpr5KB68Vy_42cl-OdDkD9-OygFw8NjWjQ6Yjb0LsZXpr8TL-HOuimbrma452O/s320/notme.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427189976873524578" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwXDoHi4MIzR2F3lXvs68rVuNuvo-cH3QmcvVBT4Zg8eGvoSp6pImKiWFo4C-UgJ9f3IYgTNpr5KB68Vy_42cl-OdDkD9-OygFw8NjWjQ6Yjb0LsZXpr8TL-HOuimbrma452O/s1600-h/notme.gif"><br /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwXDoHi4MIzR2F3lXvs68rVuNuvo-cH3QmcvVBT4Zg8eGvoSp6pImKiWFo4C-UgJ9f3IYgTNpr5KB68Vy_42cl-OdDkD9-OygFw8NjWjQ6Yjb0LsZXpr8TL-HOuimbrma452O/s1600-h/notme.gif"><br /></a>Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-89150216620815491122009-12-03T02:16:00.004-05:002009-12-03T02:28:16.452-05:00A batch of songsAfter a several year hiatus, I have begun writing lots of songs again. The songs posted below were written and recorded in the last several weeks. I play all the instruments, sing all the vocals, and program all the drums (I throw in a bit of hand percussion, but it's difficult to record drums in an apartment.) These are the <span style="font-style: italic;">almost</span> final drafts, I've been making mental notes of the minor corrections I'll need to do before finishing the album.<br /><br />I'm not sure how to describe them, so how about downloading them, giving them a listen, and doing it for me in the comments section.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrMW5ZillhOUaZz3kyOM-VpmOaZ_knVYX7s7UP5XOhQyEa7H_fRb8psPUogwVi1MNye7B88JCuGwP7BUawuygaJf3n9PmKd_HCXieaJtAJ4q-Qam0aNFB67arDLccrEcwmdUE/s1600-h/skullheadsolid.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 264px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrMW5ZillhOUaZz3kyOM-VpmOaZ_knVYX7s7UP5XOhQyEa7H_fRb8psPUogwVi1MNye7B88JCuGwP7BUawuygaJf3n9PmKd_HCXieaJtAJ4q-Qam0aNFB67arDLccrEcwmdUE/s320/skullheadsolid.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410906932095334930" border="0" /></a><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/knuckles%20and%20noodles.mp3">Knuckles and Noodles</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/i%20think%20you%27re%20pretty.mp3">I think you're pretty</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/headshrinkers.mp3">Headshrinkers</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/rob%20a%20bank.mp3">Rob a Bank</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/killapede.mp3">Killapede</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/scraggle%20mountain.mp3">Scraggle Mountain</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/nice%20outside.mp3">Nice Outside</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/balloon%20boy%20saves%20the%20day.mp3">Balloon Boy Saves the Day</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://theassbutts.com/newassbutts.zip">All 8 songs in a 30.2 MB zip file</a></p>Also, many thank yous to my brother, for buying me <a href="http://theassbutts.com">theassbutts.com</a>. There's not much there now, but I'm hoping I can keep writing songs and putting them on the internet. I'd like to do a blog sort of thing, except releasing full or partial albums, or maybe even individual songs, with each post.<br /><br />Anyway, enjoy the tunes, and please let me know what you think, even if you think it's crap.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-60740282227700660662009-07-02T21:38:00.002-04:002009-12-08T18:23:46.575-05:00In memory.<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><div class="youtube-video"><object width="425" height="355"><param value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gnoj-3mIlVw" name="movie"> <param value="transparent" name="wmode"> <embed wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gnoj-3mIlVw" width="425" height="355"></embed><a class="qukqzudklyfdrdmvtllz" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/gnoj-3mIlVw"></a> </object></div><br /><br />This is one of my favorite comedians, Neil Hamburger, sharing a few jokes on the late Michael Jackson. I saw this on DVD a few years ago. One of the dudes I watched it with kept yelling, "What the fuck? What the fuck is this fucking shit? This isn't funny! What's his fucking thing with Michael Jackson? What the fuck?" I guess he saw it later, though, and thought it was hilarious.<br /><br /></div>Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-74112764817181496122009-02-01T16:48:00.001-05:002009-02-01T16:48:53.084-05:00Today is the big game!I'm so excited about the big game today.<br><br>I put together some wontons, they're ready to drop in the deep fryer when we want them. My girl made some kind of delicious Jell-O treat. We have people on the way bringing chips and beverages and other assorted goodies.<br> <br>Yeah, it's going to be fucking sweet.<br><br>We've got a 4th level Dragonborn wizard, a 3rd level Dragonbord warlock, a 3rd level Tiefling fighter, and a 2nd level Dwarf warlord. I'm the dungeon master, and i've got some sweet tricks up my sleeves. Last time the party got jumped by a bunch of kobolds on their way out of the town they were fleeing on account of various horrid scandals, of the dead and sexy variety, and of the robbing an entire tavern variety.<br> <br>I'm pretty excited. Today's game is going to be rad.<br><br>I heard there was some kind of sporting even on TV today, too, but I'm not into sports.<br> Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-12961751025346418632008-08-04T12:40:00.011-04:002008-12-10T03:53:10.729-05:00Cheap Sci-Fi<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwZXfn_q0RC43Paw_Ch5XH5tFtsrPp-Cqa9ljUws971iC3j_vbx9IVk9DIgQVVwdFFTtaZzl5OMQ3h9GBhndPmGxSJ2wedRUxBb94Ar3hDinwnqDtYZLJIXOLNIhpXJYfLK1Df/s1600-h/Photo+291.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwZXfn_q0RC43Paw_Ch5XH5tFtsrPp-Cqa9ljUws971iC3j_vbx9IVk9DIgQVVwdFFTtaZzl5OMQ3h9GBhndPmGxSJ2wedRUxBb94Ar3hDinwnqDtYZLJIXOLNIhpXJYfLK1Df/s200/Photo+291.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230704534883405810" border="0" /></a>I really dig science fiction. Specifically, I like cheap, used science fiction paperbacks. I love combing thrift stores for sci-fi. I think it's sweet scoring a bunch of <a href="http://cheapscifi.blogspot.com/">cheap sci-fi</a> at garage sales. Fifty-cent book racks outside of bookstores make me happy, and actually going inside a used bookstore with a good science fiction section makes my head spin with awesomeness. If the pickings are scarce, as in the case of thrift stores and the like, I tend to just grab any sci-fi paperbacks that are older than I am and not terribly long (my attention span is short; I'm unlikely to ever read a single <span style="font-style: italic;">Dune</span> novel); if there is sci-fi aplenty, I tend to pick by length first, cover second, and price third. The most expensive books I buy are still just a few bucks, about half of what a new mass-market paperback book costs.<br /><br />I love cheap sci-fi for a bunch of reasons. I love the price, because by my calculations I'm paying mere pennies per hour of entertainment. I love the smell the smell of old books. I love discovering things long forgotten and out of print, and I love finding classics from big names for next to nothing. And I'm a <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/nerdism">nerd</a> who <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/scifi">likes science fiction</a>.<br /><br />I like hard science fiction, rooted in actual science, and I love fantastic, completely unrealistic science fiction. Indeed, part of the appeal of some cheap sci-fi is its shlockiness. I tend to lean towards rockets and spacemen sci-fi rather than sword and sorcery fantasy, but I've always had a fondness for speculative fiction in general, and I sometimes use sci-fi as a blanket term for the whole gamut of genres encompassed.<br /><br />There are so many books that I've read and forgotten. There are so many fragments of sci-fi books in my head, unattached to any title, author, or even storyline. There are so many good books with stories that I remember quite well, even though I have no recollection of what those books were called or who wrote them. There are great books that I can't recall the names of, but I can recall the authors. What the hell is that Harry Harrison book, the first part of a trilogy, that's a lot like <span style="font-style: italic;">1984</span>, with a dude, aided by a network of underground conspirators, running from a corrupt government and their massive web of oppressive lies? 'Cause that one was kickass!<br /><br />To help myself remember the books I read, and to share my geeky passion with the interwebs, I started a blog called <a href="http://cheapscifi.blogspot.com/">Cheap Sci-Fi</a>. You can check it out at <a href="http://cheapscifi.blogspot.com/">http://cheapscifi.blogspot.com</a> . Should you feel the need to purchase one of the books I've read, there are links to buy the books, but you really should just go find your own. There is an overwhelming abundance of cheap sci-fi out there for the finding. I'm not one for having a bunch of stuff, so if you know me in real life I'll give you any of the books I've already read if I still have them.<br /><br />Should you find yourself in a used bookstore, checking out their sci-fi section and being unsu<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh41OTyrtSA6O5fQj8h14lJVvJdPnK-kkv6JXv3tAo5ECml1iU8UC8xN6g1tc5DhpmkQa0GVryA9k7z-y4wfrupB7rO0uxch1RA2c3ke1EdxZbUiwGk6fBXUEnRoXSK45d0Tq6v/s1600-h/Photo+291.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh41OTyrtSA6O5fQj8h14lJVvJdPnK-kkv6JXv3tAo5ECml1iU8UC8xN6g1tc5DhpmkQa0GVryA9k7z-y4wfrupB7rO0uxch1RA2c3ke1EdxZbUiwGk6fBXUEnRoXSK45d0Tq6v/s200/Photo+291.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230725982056223842" border="0" /></a>re of what to buy, I've got two words for you: Ace Doubles. Bigger stores have sections of them, and smaller stores have them mixed in with the rest of the books. They're easy to spot, though. Just look for the books with the blue and red spines. The stories tend to be great, and the books themselves are super rad: each one is two books stuck together, so you read one and then flip it over and read the other one starting from the other side. The covers are sweet, too, and you get two of them. They're really expensive compared to some of the other stuff I buy, but that just means they cost a few bucks. A store in a heavy foot traffic area will charge more than one on a less-traveled street, but I still only ever pay around three dollars for them.<br /><br />Also in the category of cheap sci-fi is the science fiction magazine. When <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/work">I had a </a><a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/work">shitty </a><a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/work">d</a><a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/work">es</a><a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/work">k job</a>, these things really helped fill the hours. The fact that they're full of short stories made them perfect for my short attention span and the, uh, "downtime". My desk was full of them. <a href="http://soundclick.com/share?songid=4257533">I even</a><a href="http://soundclick.com/share?songid=4257533"> wrote a song about them</a>. Seriously, if you sit at a desk all day, you should get subscriptions to both <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAnalog-Science-Fiction-Fact%2Fdp%2FB00005N7VP%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmagazines%26qid%3D1217875198%26sr%3D1-1&tag=chescifi-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Analog</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chescifi-20&l=ur2&o=1" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" />and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAsimovs-Science-Fiction%2Fdp%2FB00005N7VQ%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmagazines%26qid%3D1217875198%26sr%3D1-3&tag=chescifi-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Asimov</a>. They're a little more expensive than old, used paperbacks, but they're still pretty damn cheap, and still super awesome. I also really like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWeird-Tales-Pa%2Fdp%2FB00006L1T0%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmagazines%26qid%3D1217875634%26sr%3D1-1&tag=chescifi-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Weird Tales</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chescifi-20&l=ur2&o=1" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" />and the horror rag <a href="http://www.cemeterydance.com/page/CDP/PROD/_cdsub">Cemetery Dance</a>, though they're relatively expensive.<br /><br />I've read a lot of books and a lot of stories. I've read all kinds of shit, but I always come back to the science fiction. I guess maybe I've just always been a nerd, but I've always loved the stuff. And I love it even more when it's cheap. <a href="http://cheapscifi.blogspot.com/">Cheap sci-fi rules</a>.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-75558766293941229542008-05-11T06:31:00.004-04:002008-05-11T06:35:34.443-04:00Rocknroll Massacre.Here's another attempt at some stop motion animation. I'm just figuring it out as I go, so I think I'm doing alright. Modeling clay on tin-foil frames. It gets a bit jumbled and confusing, but the whole thing tells the story of a guitar-playing monster who finds a golden skull and then gets attacked by a giant leech and a giant spider. He drills the spider's heart with a carrot drill, but soon has his arm ripped off by a lizard monster, who is then killed by a fly monster. Thanks to Melissa and Deb for the help.<br><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VIfBQ4_-kCg&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VIfBQ4_-kCg&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-22674527362848090822008-05-09T20:46:00.002-04:002008-05-09T21:13:09.903-04:00In the world of the future.This sweet program called <a href="http://lifehacker.com/386824/framebyframe-makes-stop+motion-videos-a-breeze">FrameByFrame</a> popped into my tubes the other day, and then today I had a terrifying vision of the future, as seen in the video below.<br><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2HfztMASq_E&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2HfztMASq_E&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-52915602263974129072008-04-09T00:01:00.002-04:002008-04-09T00:06:15.581-04:00Scamming grandma.Yesterday, my brother called my grandma. He told her about how he was stuck in Canada because he had been in a car accident, and something about insurance fucking him over, and how he's going to need $10,000 wired to him so he can get back home. She had her Alzheimer's-ridden husband drive her around all day, first trying to get the money (the bank apparently gave her some shit about trying to access her own goddamn money), and then trying to figure out how to wire it to him. She went to Wal-Mart, but the employees were inept and didn't know how to handle that much money.<br /> <br />My grandma only has a land line and doesn't have caller ID, so she called my mom to get my brother's phone number. She didn't mention that she was trying to wire him money, because my mom wasn't supposed to know about how he wrecked his car and got stranded in Canada.<br /> <br />When she called my brother back to tell him about her trouble wiring the money, she found out that my brother wasn't in Canada. He hadn't even wrecked his car. The guy she had been talking to earlier wasn't even my brother at all.<br /> <br />She called the cops, who came to her house and asked her if she had lost any identification recently, and then told her that there wasn't anything they could do because no fraud actually occurred. It's apparently legal to trick somebody into wasting their day and trying to send you $10,000, as long as they don't actually send you $10,000.<br /><br />One of the creepy parts of the story is when my fake brother asked her if she had the money and if she'd be home later. When I heard that, it creeped me the hell out because this creep I sort of knew, a friend of a friend of a friend, is currently awaiting trial for strangling an old man to death in his home during a robbery. He probably just asked if she'd be home because that was the only place he could reach her, though, not because he was planning on strangling her and her husband. The other creepy part is when my grandma said it sounded exactly like my brother. Even after she talked to the real guy, she thought they sounded the same. That could be because the crook knows my brother, but I prefer to think it was because she's old and losing touch. It's also possible that somebody targeted my grandma specifically, because people where she lives know who my grandpa was, and think the family has money.<br /><br />People are creeps.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-8633151506496058002008-03-28T17:30:00.002-04:002008-03-28T17:33:42.119-04:00Television: crap for jerks.I don't watch much TV. When I lived in a house with cable TV, I didn't watch it much, because it seemed like the only thing that was ever on was terrible shows for idiots, advertisements, and advertisements disguised as terrible shows for idiots. I liked The Daily Show and the Colbert Report and a handful of cartoons, but for the most part I found almost everything else completely intolerable. When I moved into a house without even a regular antenna on any of the TVs, I didn't miss the tard-tube at all. Being a bit of a nerd helped, because I was able to get any of the shows I liked via the internet, often without having to see any ads at all. I set up my computer to automatically download whatever shows anybody in my house wanted to see to a shared folder that anybody could access over our WiFi network. I did this until I started running really low on hard drive space, and then phased it out. It was no big deal, as we had Netflix and TV shows on the internet were getting more and more accessible to non-geeks. I watched some TV over the internet at work, both to stick it to The Man and to entertain myself, but after <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2007/07/im-not-doing-any-more-work.html">I quit my job</a> in July, I pretty much stopped watching any TV at all.<br /><br />That is, until recently.<br /><br />I don't know if TV has gotten stupider, or if I had just forgotten how stupid it was. It seems like almost everything is insultingly patronizing, treating the viewer like they absolutely must be a complete fucking idiot. Just turning on the TV makes me lose a little more faith in humanity. Are people so stupid that they're suckered in by the advertisements? Do people genuinely enjoy watching programming that not only doesn't require you to think, but actively requires you <i>not</i> to? Sadly, the answer to both questions appears to be yes, otherwise it wouldn't be the shit filling up the airwaves 24-hours a day. What can be said of a culture where the average person <a href="http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html">spends four hours a day</a> sitting in front of a screen where the most intelligent thing they can watch is a cartoon about <a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com/">foul-mouthed children who do a lot of on-screen pooping</a>?<br /><br />Much has been said about the offensiveness of South Park, but I honestly believe it is one of the <i>least</i> offensive shows on TV. Below is just a brief catalog of some of the outrageously ridiculous shit I've seen during my recent adventures back into the world of television viewing.<br /><br /><b>The Jerry Springer Show / The Steve Wilkos Show</b><br />I had a professor in college who was a very active communist. He encouraged us to come to rallies and demonstrations, and he made a communist newspaper available for free to any students who were interested. He was a firm believer in overthrowing the government, and would talk about the rise of fascism ("It's just capitalism with the gloves off," he would tell us). One of the main signs of impending fascism, he told us, was a "culture of dehumanization." Each time he'd mention this, he'd cite <i>The Jerry Springer Show</i> as an example. Poor people go on TV, fight and cry and make fools of themselves, and we laugh at them because they are subhuman trailer dwellers, and we are better than them. Their misery is our entertainment. I remember finding the show mildly entertaining in high school, but always thinking, <i>Jesus Christ, what a fucking circus!</i><br /><br />I hadn't watched it in years, and when I finally did, I was shocked. They somehow managed to make it even more of a fucking circus. They now have sideshow freaks moving randomly around the set while the poor people fight and cry and make fools of themselves. They used to have a segment towards the end of the show where audience members could verbally abuse the guests, generally making fun of them for being poor and/or unattractive. They still have it, only now chicks in the audience randomly show their boobs, often taking the stage for this activity, in exchange for Mardi Gras beads.<br /><br />Even more shocking was the revelation that one of the bouncers from the show, Steve, who I remember the audience chanting for in the old days, has actually been given his own show. I wondered how this could have happened, as it certainly wasn't because he's an articulate guy who can carry a show with his wit. I watched, fascinated, trying to figure it out, when it hit me: it's got the poor people for us to feel better than, AND it has a physically intimidating guy who throws chairs, denies guests the privilege of sitting down, and then yells in their face. Awesome.<br /><br /><b>Crazy knife-hunting guy</b><br />There's a network on cable that seems to be devoted exclusively to hunting and fishing shows. It seems like this would be a niche market, and the cable companies would opt to sell it as part of a fancy package with a million channels, but around here it comes with your standard basic crap cable that doesn't have any of the channels that have anything worth watching (Comedy Central and Cartoon Network). I didn't catch the guy's name, but one show was about a guy who was going to hunt a pig. With a knife. Viewers were treated to footage of the guy training by running around in the woods, stabbing a fake pig, and ranting about what it means to be a man. Very early in the show, he gave a speech that went basically like this: "Never before in history has there been a time when more men were acting like women and more women were acting like men. I'm not trying to attack you personally, but men are not doing man things. That's why I'm going to hunt a pig. With a knife." He told us that the last time he went on a hunting-a-pig-with-a-knife trip, four of his dogs ended up getting killed. I may have missed it, but I don't think he said whether or not he ended up killing a pig that time, which leads me to believe he didn't. It seems worth it, though, four dogs for one pig. Or no pig. Whatever, as long as he's a man. He said that "anti-dog" groups were against hunting with dogs, but I don't see how that could be true. If I hated dogs enough to join a group devoted to hating them, I'd wish jerks always went hunting pigs (with knives) with their dogs. He also ranted about how people don't like his show, because it's too brutal, but that's just how nature is, so it's OK. He cited the fact that wolves were, at that moment, tearing apart a deer as a reason why hunting a pig with a knife is alright, taking care to avoid mentioning that around the globe, animals are also eating their own feces and the feces of other animals. And then he stabbed a pig.<br /><br /><b>Public access</b><br />Holy crap, why did I only now start watching public access? Public access cable channels are a source of real, honest to god, genuine fucking <i>comedy</i>. Where else can you go for crap like this?<br /><ul><li>A lone hippy on the screen with the colors all mixed up, noodling aimlessly on his guitar in a boring, masturbatory jam that goes on for half an hour.</li><li>A talentless jackass reading terrible poetry for a room full of jerks so pretentious that they don't laugh him off the stage, even when he fills the gaps between his "poems" by playing "music" on one guitar string tied to some posts and hooked up to a string of distortion pedals.</li> <li>A "performance art" piece where a young woman rambles almost incoherently, yells at some invisible, nameless person, and then wraps herself in cellophane while continuing the crazy talk. Again, for a room of pretentious jerks who find value in her art.</li> <li>A show called <i>Forbidden Knowledge</i> where a paranoid conspiracy theorist speaks without details about the cops trying to shut him down for spreading "forbidden knowledge," and then answers phone calls where people ask questions like, "Where can I find a kit that turns a regular bike into a gas or electric bike?" and the he gives answers like, "I don't know, exactly, but you should look on the internet."</li> <li>An ultra-feminist college professor giving a presentation on sexism in advertising, and finding extreme oppression of women in the most innocuous of things. "In this ad, the shot of the woman is cut off at the feet, so they're trying to say that women shouldn't be allowed to move around, like men, who have feet. In this ad, the women appear playful and happy, which means that all women are stupid idiots who have fun."<br /></li><li>More than half an hour of a ridiculously-dressed girl walking very, very slowly, outlining her foot with chalk after each step, and being followed by a jerk who erases her chalk lines. That's fucking ART, man!</li> </ul>Yes, indeed, public access is the best thing that comes with basic shitty motel-cable.<br /><br /><b>Cops 2.0 / G4</b><br />Ah, G4, the network for dweebs: people who are socially retarded and desperately want to be nerds, but simply aren't very smart. The programming that is exclusive to this network relies heavily on average-looking chicks pretending to like video games (average looking chicks + appreciation for video games = really super hot chick), and caters to viewers who like to imagine they're tech savvy, but who don't really know how to use the internet. Seriously, any time I've watched <i>Attack of the Show!</i>, it's just a rehash of what I read and saw on the internet the day before (although sometimes I find myself transfixed; if the <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=olivia+munn">female co-host</a> had a show about making toast, I'd probably tune in occasionally).<br /><br />Another show on G4, Cops 2.0, is clearly geared towards dweebs. It's exactly like Cops, except a good third of the screen is taken up by a box that makes the screen look like a website. It has tabs that look like you'd be able to click on them if it were the internet, but since it's TV, you wait for them to click themselves. The box lists random factoids of little to no value, and quizzes about what you've seen within the last 30 seconds. One of the tabs, when it reaches its rotation, displays a question like "What would you do if you got attacked with a knife?" followed by a scrolling list of answers entered by dweebs who bothered to log on to the website to answer it. They're always very bad attempts at being funny. I'm entirely convinced that the big stupid box on the bottom of the screen appeals exclusively to these jerks, because it excites them to see their internet handle displayed on a TV. Yeah, HaLo_n1nJa14, you're a famous fucking awesome guy now.<br /><br /><b>Late night TV preachers who give away free stuff</b><br />I really dig the late night TV preachers who give out free stuff. It's never particularly <i>good</i> stuff, and the preachers themselves are clearly unscrupulous douchebags praying upon the stupid (unlike anybody else who advertises on TV), but still, it's <i>free stuff</i>, and it's weird, creepy voodoo stuff. I got a green prosperity cloth that came with very specific instructions on how to put it in my wallet, FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY!!!, in all caps with exclamation points so I knew it was serious business, and then send it back to the preacher with my monetary seed that will surely grow. When I didn't send it back, I started getting phone calls from the pre-recorded preacher saying, in a very concerned tone, "I sent you the green prosperity cloth, and I haven't received it back from you. Are you OK?" He ended up sending me another one, this one cut into a weird hand shape instead of a square like the previous piece of felt. I also got a sample of holy water from none other than <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU">Leroy Jenkins</a>. It came in a little plastic packet that looked like a sample of sexual lubricant, and also had the name "Leroy Jenkins" written on it. Awesome.<br /><br /><b>Late night TV preachers who don't give away free stuff (specifically, Jack Van Impe)</b><br /><a href="http://www.jvim.com/">Jack Van Impe</a> is a crazy televangelist who preaches about the coming end times, repeatedly saying things like "As seen on the history channel" when giving specific end time dates. He's crazy as hell, and entertaining on his own, but the real draw of the show is his wife: Rexella.<br /><br />Rexella wears a look of constant surprise on her face, reacts with great concern to everything Jack says, and is also in charge of delivering world news. The news bits are the best part of the show. They simply display different articles, both from the web and print, and Rexella reads the headline of each without any context at all and sort of connects them with a few words in between. If you watch closely you can see how the dates of the articles are all over the place, and what she is saying doesn't make any fucking sense at all. It's something that really needs to be seen to be believed, so it's fortunate that you can catch the most recent episode at <a href="http://www.jvim.com/">their web site</a>.<br /><br /><b>Infomercials</b><br />I know that airtime in the middle of the night when people are asleep is the cheapest, but I always have to wonder if people get stupider during these hours. Regular commercials are bad enough, but it seems like only the stupidest of stupids would buy the crap they're peddling. It's always some basic item that has been around forever and is available everywhere, like a blender, minus much of the functionality of the original product, but plus one extra function that you will use 3 times before realizing you're a fucking idiot and you wasted your money on a grossly overpriced product, shoddily crafted from only the cheapest of shitty materials. I think they rely on people being half asleep, because they make outrageous claims that nobody in their right mind would fall for. "Are you worried this knife won't be sharp enough to filet a fish? Well watch what it does to a tomato!" Last night, I saw one that claimed you should buy from them, rather than from a store, because stores <i>pay for advertising</i>, and therefore have a higher overhead and have to charge you more. They always ask how much you'd pay for an item, and then have somebody give a grossly inflated price that absolutely nobody would ever consider even thinking about paying, and then they tell you it's much less than that, so it is clearly a deal. <br /><br />I saw one infomercial that claimed you would pay "less than a fraction" of the original price they give. I briefly thought that nobody would ever fall for that, but after thinking about all the other shit on TV, I'm guessing that the average television viewer thinks "less than a fraction" actually means something.<br /><br />So there you go, folks, a big wad of anecdotal evidence that TV is crap. For jerks. Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-3495014801569182702008-03-05T11:34:00.002-05:002008-03-05T11:40:17.628-05:00Gary Gygax made all my friends for me.I got up early yesterday morning and checked the mail. There was nothing there, so I went back to sleep for an hour. When I woke up, I checked the mail again, and then went back to sleep for a while. When I got up again, I checked the mail, and then played guitar for a while, occasionally going out to check the mail. I didn't end up getting what I was waiting for, which was a <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mr-lame-loves-jesus-hates-nerds.html" target="_blank">Dungeons and Dragons</a> Player's Handbook. (I realize that the fourth edition comes out in a few months, which will render this edition of The Player's Handbook obsolete, but I couldn't wait. I only spent a few bucks, buying it used over the internet.)<br /><br />When I finally got around to going online and seeing what was coming through the tubes, I immediately learned that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gygax" target="_blank">Gary Gygax</a> <a href="http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3443526" target="_blank">had passed away</a> just hours earlier. For those of you of less inclined towards <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/search/label/nerdism">nerdism</a>, Gary Gygax was the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, and considered by many to be the father of role playing gaming. He was the only reason I had any friends at all in middle school.<br /><br />I first discovered a shelf of Dungeons and Dragons books at a bookstore when I was in third grade. I was familiar with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfif5DiGMYc">the cartoon</a>, but didn't know what the game was. All the thick, hardcover books filled with charts and tables and illustrations of monsters fascinated me, though. I immediately asked my mom, "Can we get Dungeons and Dragons?"<br /><br />"What's that?" she asked.<br /><br />"It's a computer game," I told her, oblivious to what it really was. I couldn't imagine it could have been anything else, especially with all the tables full of numbers.<br /><br />"We'll see," she said.<br /><br />One of my fourth grade teachers was an avid gamer, and he explained to me how Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games (RPGs) work. It's basically story-telling, with each of the players controlling a single character in the story, except for one player, who controls the world the story takes place in and all of the minor characters. Dice are thrown to determine the outcome of events, like whether or not your character is able to <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/10/why-dont-you-draw-me-picture.html">slash an orc with a sword</a>, and how much damage is done if you succeed. Dungeons and Dragons was even cooler than I imagined. I quickly became an RPG enthusiast, buying the first complete game I could find and was able to afford, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Heroes">D.C. Heroes</a>. (I wanted D&D, but it required the purchase of several expensive hardcover books and a set of dice. D.C. Heroes was self-contained in one box.)<br /><br />I wasn't yet playing Dungeons and Dragons, but my teacher taught me all kinds of cool things about the D&D universe. I had always been a monster enthusiast, and I suddenly found myself being more and more fascinated by the denizens of fantasy worlds like the ones created by J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. I traded a couple of action figures for a Dungeons and Dragons book full of monster statistics, and then began drawing my own monsters and making up statistics for them. Since I didn't have the D&D rule books, I made up my own rules for using the statistics in my own role playing game.<br /><br />My class in fourth grade was less than 10 kids. We were in a windowless room, once a storage room attached to the library, in a middle school. We were secluded from the rest of the students because we all had behavior problems too severe for them to let us interact with the normals. Because of this, my friends were probably just my friends because they were the only kids I could have been friends with, and they were only friends with me for the same reason. Still, we played D.C. Heroes and the games I would invent to go with the monster statistics I made up.<br /><br />In fifth grade, my aunt gave me a $20 gift certificate from a comic book store. When I went to the store, I saw that they had a role playing game section. I found the only self-contained RPG I could afford, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Cthulhu_%28role-playing_game%29">Call of Cthulhu</a>, and bought it, thus beginning my lifelong appreciation for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.P._Lovecraft">H.P. Lovecraft</a>, whose stories I had never even read before.<br /><br />In fifth grade, they started bussing me for the first half of the day to the local elementary school, where I was put into the smart kid class. I didn't really have any friends. One kid, Brett, tried to befriend me on the first day. I ended up following him around for a couple weeks before I realized he didn't really want to be my friend. I didn't want to play sports with him and all the other kids, because they laughed at me when I pathetically tried to kick or throw a ball. Brett thought D&D was stupid because it involved too many dice. I began spending recess alone on the swings, occasionally talking to kids but never really hanging out.<br /><br />I was relieved every day when I went back to the <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/06/marty-and-contraband.html">crazy kid</a> class, where I had friends. They had nobody else to be friends with, so we played Call of Cthulhu. As a reward for good behavior, my teacher bought me the Dungeons and Dragons Rules Cyclopedia, so we were able to play D&D, too.<br /><br />In 6th grade, I was almost fully integrated into normal kid school. I got to spend one cherished study hall period per week in my sanctuary of spazzes and miscreants. The rest of the time, I was an outcast, and walked to class alone, where I sat and waited silently for class to start, my head buried in a D&D book most of the time. I would try to act cool, but mostly only succeeded in feeling awkward. I wanted to be funny, but nobody laughed at my jokes or antics. I resigned myself to authoring adventures nobody would ever play, full of monsters nobody would ever fight and treasures nobody would ever find.<br /><br />It seemed like forever before I made a friend. When it happened, it happened suddenly. A kid in my science class, Mike, saw my D&D Rules Cyclopedia on top of my schoolbooks one day.<br /><br />"I don't get Dungeons and Dragons," he said.<br /><br />"You should come over to my house, and I'll teach you," I told him. He agreed.<br /><br />It was a big deal to my parents for me to have a friend from the world of normal kids. It had been years since I had had a friend over who I didn't meet in one of my social-retard programs. I had been in "special" schools and classrooms since second grade. My parents seemed to do everything they could to impress Mike and his parents so that he would keep coming over. He did, and we kept playing Dungeons and Dragons.<br /><br />It was a good thing that Mike noticed the book when he did. When my science teacher, who was very popular with all the cool kids, discovered my love of fantasy worlds of monsters and wizards, <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mr-lame-loves-jesus-hates-nerds.html">he disliked me even more than he previously had</a>. He told me not to bring Dungeons and Dragons or any other fantasy books to class. I later found out that he was among the many idiots who believe that <a href="http://www.exposingsatanism.org/dnd.htm">D&D is all about Satan worshiping</a>.<br /><br />The next friend I made was Gordon, who I had always admired. He was sort of a class clown, and I often tried to emulate him, but failed miserably. People liked him. They didn't like me.<br /><br />"Oh, no, not one of <i>those</i> books again!" he said, pointing at my Rules Cyclopedia on top of my English books. It turned out that Gordon had received some Dungeons and Dragons books for Christmas. Once again, I had made a new friend just by having a D&D book in my possession. Being friends with Gordon made people like me more, and I was able to talk to more people and make a few friends through him, though I was still a nerd. Through Gordon, I met Eric, who told me, "We used to see you walking around by yourself wearing your jacket all the time. We didn't know what your deal was."<br /><br />The oddest friendship I forged in 6th grade was this stoner kid, Tim. He was a badass and a thief and popular with all the tough, stupid kids. Tim made almost all F's on his report card, with a D in gym class. Tim was friends with an even more popular tough, stupid kid, a stoner named Alex.<br /><br />To get a good spot in the lunch line, I went straight to the cafeteria after class without stopping at my locker. There was a shelf in there where I could stick my books. One day, after lunch, my binder was missing. My schoolbooks were there, but my binder, which was a black vinyl thing that was popular at the time, was gone. I went to study hall, pissed, and noticed Alex sitting in the corner with the same kind of binder that I had just lost. He was drawing all over it with white out, and kept turning around to look at me. <br /><br />I immediately knew the binder was mine, and knew how to prove it, assuming he didn't throw away my folders. Inside the binders were some folders that I had decorated with collages made from cut up comic books, and then laminated. My name and address was printed on a label inside of each one. I asked around and somebody told me that they had seen folders like the ones I described. I told the principal, who made Alex give my binder back. He had written all sorts of stupid, nonsensical shit like "TRIPPLE XXX" all over it, and ripped my labels out of my folders.<br /><br />The day after I got my binder back, I was at my locker with my books on the floor, fishing out a book for the next class. Tim, Alex's friend, came up and grabbed my binder off the floor. He was about to walk away when he saw my D&D Rules Cyclopedia.<br /><br />"Whoa! You play Dungeons and Dragons?"<br /><br />He handed my binder back and I had a new friend and an in with the tough, stupid kids who did drugs and stole stuff. People liked them because they were badasses. Suddenly, the badasses accepted me. Some even liked me.<br /><br />I used to look at the cool, popular kids standing in circles talking between classes. I always thought they were doing drug deals. One day, I found myself standing in one of these circles. <i>Holy shit!</i> I thought, <i>I'm standing in a cool circle!</i> It turned out that nobody was dealing drugs, they were just talking about boring bullshit, but they were fucking <i>cool</i>.<br /><br />Dungeons and Dragons earned me a few friends in 6th grade, and with those connections I was able to make more friends, though my core group was always the D&D nerd group. I don't think I had a single close friend in 6th or 7th grade that wasn't a gamer nerd.<br /><br />In 8th grade I went to a new school. I was ready to make friends with nerds, but somebody recognized me as the kid who cussed out Mrs. Norris in fourth grade and got permanently removed from school on the first day of class. I was instantly popular and friends with the tough, stupid kids. I carried around my Rules Cyclopedia for a couple weeks before one of my best friends shamed me into being less of a nerd and more of a jerk.<br /><br />"Dungeons and Dragons: Nerd Encyclopedia!" he said, and then, just to clarify, "That's what it is, you know. It's just for nerds. The nerd encyclopedia."<br /><br />I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons again for years.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-64054382454776119782008-02-14T11:13:00.002-05:002008-02-14T11:16:35.985-05:00Mr. Roberts: Sadistic, overgrown jock.In second grade, my gym teacher used to terrify kids by <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-still-hate-my-second-grade-teacher.html">pretending to punch them in the face</a>. In fifth grade, my gym teacher used to issue daily threats to students, claiming he was going to kick them so hard in the face or ass that his shoe would become lodged in their nose, mouth, or anus. And in seventh grade, my gym teacher taught me a very valuable lesson: violence is wrong, except when it is a grown man hitting a defenseless child with a weapon.<br /><br />Our class had been broken up into two teams, and each team broken into neat little rows to designate who would serve the ball next. We were playing volleyball. Somebody would serve the ball, and when it hit the ground, everybody would move forward in their row, and the person who served the ball would move to the back. I began the game in front of John, a guy that I didn't get along with. He was a Star Trek nerd, while my friends and I were <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mr-lame-loves-jesus-hates-nerds.html">Dungeons and Dragons nerds</a>. We made fun of him constantly, and he would respond by attacking our choice of nerd-vice, which we found amusing, because he clearly had no understanding of what Dungeons and Dragons even was.<br /><br />After the first game was over, we were instructed to switch sides, but to maintain the order in which people served the ball. The game had progressed for a few minutes before I realized John had somehow moved in front of me in line. I attempted to remedy the situation by moving ahead of him, where I belonged. John shoved me. He towered over me, but I shoved him back.<br /><br />"Hey!" Mr. Roberts yelled. We both stopped and looked at him. "There's no fighting in my class! Get in my office!"<br /><br />Mr. Roberts stared us down as we walked silently to his office. We sat waiting until gym class was over. Mr. Roberts came in.<br /><br />"There's no fighting in my class," he said, reaching for a drawer in his desk. He pulled the drawer out, and then pulled a large, wooden paddle from the drawer. He dropped it on the desk. It was heavy and loud. "The penalty for fighting is a swat. Go take your showers and then wait on the bleachers."<br /><br />We went and showered with everyone else, and then came out of the locker room to wait on the bleachers with everyone else. When the bell rang, everybody left except us.<br /><br />Mr. Roberts appeared at the door of the gym, bringing one of the shop teachers, Mr. Hummel, with him. "Paul, you're first," he said, gesturing me to follow him into his office. I did, and he closed the door behind me.<br /><br />"Mr. Hummel is here as a witness," he said. Mr. Hummel was another sadistic asshole. He would later threaten to give me swats for not paying attention to Disney's <i>Aladdin</i> on the last day of school when there was no work to do and no tests to take. He was a piece of shit, and was probably just there because he liked seeing kids getting hit. He probably made the paddle himself.<br /><br />"I called your mom and got authorization. Now, I'm a pretty good golfer and I've got a really nice swing. I swing pretty hard, but you're a little guy, so I'm only going to give you a half swat. Bend over and grab your knees."<br /><br />I did, and then he hit me. I crumpled to the floor, the pain radiating through my ass and into the rest of my body. My eyes teared up and I clenched my teeth, both in pain and rage. The pain didn't make me feel like I shouldn't have shoved John back, it made me feel like beating John, Mr. Roberts, and Mr. Hummel to death with the paddle.<br /><br />Seconds after swatting me, while I was still on the floor, crying, Mr. Roberts flung the door open. "Get to class," he said. I hobbled out, wondering what a full swat felt like if that was really only half a swat. The halls were empty, and I was late to class, but a tardy seemed better than being embarrassed by my tears.<br /><br />Years later, my friend told me he heard Mr. Roberts was getting fired for threatening to beat up a 10 year old, among other things. I looked up the school on the internet recently, and was dismayed to see that he still worked there.<br /><br />I mentioned the incident to my mom recently, and she told me she never would have given anybody permission to give me any swats.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-37722662075470875072008-02-13T18:25:00.002-05:002008-02-13T18:26:27.883-05:00You guys talking about systems?Ninth grade was the last year that I had gym class, as it was the last year that it was mandatory. Once a week, after doing our daily calisthenics that we wouldn't actually do if the teacher wasn't watching, we'd go to the weight room for "weight training". We got to pick out our own workout routines, so for my friends and I, this meant grabbing the smallest free-weights, finding an isolated spot to sit, and only pretending to lift the weights when the teacher was looking or yelling at us.<br /><br />One day in the weight room, we were sitting around, not lifting weights, and discussing the merits of various pen-and-paper <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game">role playing game systems</a>.<br /><br />"I think the to-hit-armor-class-zero system <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mr-lame-loves-jesus-hates-nerds.html">Dungeons and Dragons</a> uses works so perfectly," I said, "it's not needlessly complex, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Heroes">DC Heroes</a> or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palladium_Fantasy_Role-Playing_Game">Palladium</a> system."<br /><br />"Yeah, THAC0 is good," Sean said, "I prefer it over the Palladium system, but Palladium does put out great content for their games. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts_%28role-playing_game%29">Rifts</a> is great. I like using Palladium setting ideas, but with the Dungeons and Dragons system."<br /><br />"You guys talking about systems?" a voice suddenly interjected. It was Danny Pitarms. He was an alright guy who we talked to occasionally, but he wasn't part of our nerd circle.<br /><br />"Uh, yeah," I said, "RPG systems."<br /><br />"My buddy has an awesome system in his car," he told us, "The subwoofer can throw a quarter 25 feet!"<br /><br />"Um, cool?"<br /><br />Danny seemed to be able to tell that we weren't particularly impressed. He wandered away and we quietly made fun of him briefly before continuing our conversation. We were better than him, because we were nerds, and he was just a dork.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-63554670555989208162008-02-12T16:19:00.002-05:002008-08-04T14:33:59.524-04:00Sheena is NOT a punk rocker, nor does she appreciate the implication that she may be.I was on my lunch break, sitting at a table in one of the quieter lobbies where I worked. I had already eaten, and was using the rest of my free time to read some comic books that I had just picked up.<br /><br />"Can I sit here?"<br /><br />I looked up. It was my boss's daughter, Sheena, holding a plastic container with food in it. It was lunch break time for her, too, though I was never sure why she was ever there. As far as I knew, she was either a teacher or becoming one, but I would see her around quite frequently.<br /><br />"Sure," I said. There were plenty of free tables, and I felt like I would prefer to just read my comic books, but I thought she was cute and didn't really mind a chance to sit and talk to her for a while. I had never had a chance to talk to her without her mom, my boss, being there.<br /><br />She sat down and we started talking. She was happy and friendly, and didn't immediately bore me to tears like most people, though I may have found her purple eyes more interesting than anything she had to say. The conversation was upbeat for the first few minutes, but then I asked the wrong question.<br /><br />"Do you like The Ramones?" I asked.<br /><br />"Well," she said, "I <i>am</i> a child of the 80's, so... yes."<br /><br />"Have you ever heard '<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ9kOamgaU0">Sheena is a punk rocker</a>'?"<br /><br />Her smile immediately disappeared. The happy look on her face was immediately replaced by a cold stare. She looked like I had just asked her if she had ever heard a song called "Sheena is a huge filthy whore who stinks."<br /><br />"No," she said flatly, "No, I haven't."<br /><br />"Well," I said, "you should check it out. It's a fucking great song! I think of it every time I hear your name."<br /><br />She seemed to sense from my tone of voice that perhaps "punk rocker" didn't mean "huge filthy whore who stinks", and the conversation once again became upbeat. It was too late, though, because I had decided in the previous few seconds that I didn't want to talk to her anymore. I made small talk for a few minutes before I told her I had to go back to work.<br /><br />"Oh, OK. I'll see you later. It was nice talking to you," she said.<br /><br />I found a quiet spot and went back to reading my comic books until it actually was time to go back to work.<br /><a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"></a>Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-21448696431850310962008-02-08T20:16:00.001-05:002008-02-08T20:18:03.401-05:00Jury duty."Do you live in the city proper or one of the townships?" the girl asked me when I handed her the jury duty notice I had received in the mail. She had noticed the forwarding label from my old address to my new one. The town wasn't even the same, so I hoped I would be able to go home and get back to sleep. I was sick as hell, and 8:30 in the morning is only a couple of hours after I normally go to bed, so I was tired on top of feeling weak and snotty and coughing my lungs out. I told her what township I lived in, and she punched out a jury duty tag for me to pin to my shirt and handed me an official-looking certificate to hang on my wall to let people know I had done my civic duty. I sat down on one of the benches and settled in to spend the day there. I immediately realized I should have brought something to read.<br /><br />I couldn't get comfortable. My body temperature was all fucked up from having a cold, and I was either too hot or too cold. I kept taking off my sweatshirt and putting it back on. The second time I pulled it back on, I realized the ends of my sleeves were crusty with my snot, and for the rest of the morning I would twist my sleeves around to try to conceal the gross looking patches.<br /><br />Shortly after arriving, the lights were dimmed and we were shown a video about jury duty. I was surprised to learn that people were randomly selected from the pool of people who have drivers licenses, which surprised me, because I had thought that jury duty was a penalty for voting. After the video, the girl who had given everyone their civic duty certificates explained a little bit more about the process, and then told us to wait for it to start.<br /><br />The old guy to my left was quiet and never said anything, for which I was grateful. The lady to my left was engaged in conversation with the guy on the opposite side of her. I tuned them out as they talked about school and crime. I hoped she wouldn't talk to me.<br /><br />A guy with a big mustache and a Harley Davidson sweatshirt kept walking around the room, loudly talking to anybody who would listen about his Harley.<br /><br />"Yeah, I ride a Harley! My friends ride Harleys, too!"<br /><br />He was really intent on making sure absolutely everybody, even those who weren't at all interested, knew what kind of motorcycle he rode. It was hard to tune him out, because he was <i>very</i> loud. I avoided making eye contact, because I knew he would take that as an invitation to come tell me about his Harley, and make a hilarious joke that only he would laugh loudly about.<br /><br />"No, man, I don't ride a horse. I've got a Harley!" I heard him say before letting out a big laugh to let everyone in the room know that it had been some kind of joke. Later, I heard him say, "He said vegetarian pizza, I said, what's the point?" before letting out another huge guffaw. He seemed like any number of redneck jackasses I had gone to high school with, and I imagined telling him I was gay if he tried to talk to me so he would leave me the hell alone.<br /><br />I had been waiting silently for an hour or two before the lady on my left said anything to me.<br /><br />"So what do you do?" she asked me suddenly.<br /><br />"I'm currently unemployed," I told her.<br /><br />"What did you do?"<br /><br />"I filed medical records at the university."<br /><br />"Oh, did you get laid off because they're switching to digital records?"<br /><br />"No," I told her, "I quit."<br /><br />She asked me if I knew the big boss of the medical records operation. "She used to be a therapist, like me," she said.<br /><br />"Yeah," I said, "She should be fired, along with every other level of their grossly incompetent and bloated management."<br /><br />"Really, why?"<br /><br />"There's absolutely no quality control, and nobody cares. All but the smallest records have other peoples' information in them, and nobody does anything at all about it. It's pretty disgusting."<br /><br />"Yes, that <i>is</i> disgusting," she said, her face reflecting her actual disgust, which made me happy, not because I wanted to disgust her, but because I think it's important that people know their sensitive health information is being grossly mishandled.<br /><br />She stopped talking to me, and I hoped she wouldn't start again. She seemed nice enough, but I felt like shit and wished I could go to sleep. I ate some Dayquil that I had in my pocket and continued to wait silently for the jury selection process to begin.<br /><br />It was only after several hours of waiting that the judge made his first appearance. He seemed like a jovial character, but I imagined he was probably actually a huge douchebag, like any of the popular "nice" teachers in high school. He told us that they were able to do plea bargains for most of the cases, but they still had some work to do before they might select juries. He had us vote on whether or not we wanted to break for lunch. I voted against it, because it would have meant staying longer, and I didn't have a car to go anywhere if we did break, anyway. Fortunately, most of the people seemed to be in favor of a shorter stay, so we got to continue sitting around, waiting, instead of breaking for lunch.<br /><br />"So, what do you do if you don't work?" the lady on my left asked me.<br /><br />"I play a lot of music and video games," I said.<br /><br />"You sound like a college student."<br /><br />"Yeah, it's a sweet life," I replied, "I hope to live like this forever."<br /><br />"Do you think that's what people do?" she asked, "Do you think people are just hippies their whole lives?"<br /><br />"Well, obviously not everyone," I said, "but if I can get away with it, I don't see why I shouldn't do what makes me happy and avoid what makes me unhappy."<br /><br />She thought about what I said for a minute before asking, "What do you <i>want</i> to do? What do you <i>like</i> doing?"<br /><br />"Well, playing music and video games," I said. "There's not a lot of money in it, but it's really a blast."<br /><br />"I knew when I was 8 years old that I wanted to be a therapist," she told me, "I'm a hand therapist now. I solve problems for people. With their hands. I really enjoy it."<br /><br />"It must be nice doing something you enjoy," I told her.<br /><br />"What kind of music do you play?" she asked, changing the subject.<br /><br />"<a href="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.showvids&friendID=130617242&n=130617242&MyToken=01379055-7a18-47c0-b6cf-18472c2ca4ef">Reggae</a>," I said.<br /><br />"<a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/06/ray-gay-is-not-musical-genre.html">What's reggae?</a>" she asked. I immediately knew I should have said something else.<br /><br />"Well," I said, "Um, it started in Jamaica. It's really mellow." I wanted to tell her the emphasis was on the off-beat, but figured it would be a waste of time.<br /><br />"Who is a reggae artist I might know?"<br /><br />"Well, Bob Marley isn't really one of my favorites, but he's the one that most people have heard of."<br /><br />"I see. Who else is there?"<br /><br />"Well, if you don't know Bob Marley, there really isn't anybody else I can name that you would know."<br /><br />"Is it kind of rock and roll?" she asked.<br /><br />"Um, yeah," I said, "It's rock and roll." It was accurate because reggae is another blues-based form of music. The blues, rock and roll, and reggae all rely heavily on the same three chords.<br /><br />"Okay..." she said, "Is it bluesy?"<br /><br />"Yeah, I'd say it was bluesy," I responded. It was the same goddamn question to me.<br /><br />"So... reggae is like a bluesy sort of rock music?"<br /><br />"Yeah," I said, satisfied enough.<br /><br />"That sounds interesting," she said.<br /><br />"Yeah," I said, "<a href="http://www.myspace.com/theassbutts">Reggae is good stuff</a>." I made a mental note just to say "rock and roll" to begin with if I thought someone didn't know what reggae was (unless I thought they might come to an <a href="http://soundclick.com/theassbutts">Assbutts</a> show, in which case I might try to explain, or just tell them to come see).<br /><br />The judge came out and told us that they had managed to do plea bargains for all of the cases, and that we could go home. Everybody applauded and then began shuffling out. We had been there for about four hours.<br /><br />"See you next year!" the lady who was sitting next to me said.<br /><br />"Yeah, see you," I replied.<br /><br />I went outside to the locker where I had to lock my cel phone, and then called my ride. The guy who had been sitting on the opposite side of the lady next to me heard me on the phone and offered me a ride, since he had heard where I lived when I was talking to the lady. He gave me a ride, and then I immediately went back to sleep when I got home.<br /><br />I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to experience the actual jury selection process. It certainly would have been more interesting than just sitting around for four hours.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-90886949292023139132008-02-07T21:08:00.001-05:002008-02-07T21:09:48.964-05:00I'm pretty sure she made me touch her butt.I never really socialized much at work. I didn't really even leave my desk except when I had to, and when I did, I would do what I needed to do as quickly and efficiently as possible so I could get back to <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/shared/07814952813479855628">monitoring the tubes</a>, reading <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/11/dont-believe-in-science-fiction.html">science fiction</a> magazines, and playing with my Nintendo DS. Sometimes I would wear headphones when I left my desk so I could pretend I didn't hear anybody and avoid talking to them. When I was forced to talk to people, I didn't say much, and would immediately go back to my desk when I was done doing what I was supposed to do, regardless of whether or not it seemed like somebody was done talking to me. I just didn't see any need to make friends with the people I worked with, and I didn't want to waste my time talking about the weather, sports, Jesus, TV shows, or any other inane bullshit people seemed interested in. My disinterest in talking to people stemmed less from a specific dislike for the people I worked with than from a general distaste for people.<br /><br />There were, however, exceptions to this rule.<br /><br />Some of the people I worked with I found truly disagreeable. Among them was a morbidly obese black woman who dressed very loudly and caked her face with many layers of clown/whore makeup every day. Her appearance was not the only loud thing about her, and I would often be forced to listen to her having long conversations with her friends in their normal indoor voices, which were the screams, yells, and cackles you would expect from people at a loud concert rather than a quiet office building. At least once, I turned my headphones up painfully loud, but was still unable to drown out the sound of her and another woman practicing their gospel singing at full volume.<br /><br />The woman was somewhat crazy, and I had once heard from a girl my age about an altercation she had had with the woman. The girl was swearing, talking to her friend, when the woman put her face inches from the girl's face and engaged her in a yelling argument over her apparent lack of respect for herself. The girl asserted that she was "a grown-ass woman" who could talk however the hell she wanted to, which only served to make the woman louder and angrier.<br /><br />I was, unfortunately, too friendly to be actively disliked. Despite my unwillingness to socialize with my coworkers, I would always help people with their <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/09/im-not-really-computer-guy-but-you.html">retarded-person computer problems</a> if they asked for my help. I would have preferred it if people thought I was an asshole and never tried to talk to me, but I gained a reputation as a quiet but friendly guy who was willing to help people when they were too goddamn inept to do incredibly basic tasks by themselves.<br /><br />On several occasions, the loud woman came to my desk asking for computer help. Each time, she wanted me to go back down to her desk to help her. She was very slow-moving because of her girth, so I would be forced to endure extra moments of her talking to me. She would tell me about her teenage son's incredible musical skill, and how he played for a large number of incredibly famous acts, and how all kinds of guys really want her because she's so sexy. I never believed her. When we got to her desk, her problem would invariably be something so fucking stupid that it would shock me that somebody would give her a job sitting at a computer much of the day. I would save her file, or maximize her window, or whatever other stupid shit she needed, and then immediately go back to my desk.<br /><br />I tried to avoid interacting with her more than I tried to avoid interaction with anybody else. When she did say something to me, it was often uncomfortable shit like, "You get more and more handsome every day", or trying to get me to come to her birthday party. I tried to be polite, but I was always very short and in a hurry to get back to my desk.<br /><br />One day, I went downstairs to pick up my batch of work that should have been printing out at that moment, as it did every evening. The morbidly obese lady was standing near the printer with two other coworkers.<br /><br />"They're not coming yet," she said.<br /><br />"Oh," I replied, ready to go back upstairs.<br /><br />She grabbed my hand. "Here," she said in her deep, manly voice, "let me show you."<br /><br />I didn't need to be shown, and I sure as hell didn't need to have my hand held to walk 3 feet to the printer. My hand was limp as she clasped it and began waddling towards the printer.<br /><br />And then my hand touched her butt.<br /><br />"See?" she asked, gesturing at the empty printer with her free hand.<br /><br />"Uh, yeah," I said, pulling my hand free. "I guess I'll check later," I said, and went back to my desk, wondering what the fuck just happened. <i>Did she just pull my fucking hand into her butt?</i> I asked myself.<br /><br />It has been hypothesized that perhaps pulling my hand into her butt was just an unfortunate consequence of her being so fat that her butt took up so much space. That makes me wonder, how often do morbidly obese people "accidentally" touch their own butts? I will never know whether or not she intentionally made me touch her butt, but either way, she had no goddamn business grabbing my hand in the first place.<br /><br />On my last day of working at that place, she stopped me as I was walking to my boss's desk, trying to bitch at me about <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2007/07/im-not-doing-any-more-work.html">doing too much work</a> and raising the ludicrously low standards, which meant she actually had to do some work.<br /><br />"You do all them boxes, and now Chris thinks we can all do that much. I can't. You need to..."<br /><br />"This is my letter of resignation," I said, cutting her off and showing her the paper in my hand. "I don't have to take any shit at all from anybody here <i>ever again</i>."<br /><br />She was clearly taken aback. "Oh," she said, "well, I was thinking I might have to do the same thing if things don't change around here."<br /><br />"Yeah," I said, not trying to hide the contempt in my voice, "You do that." I walked away.<br /><br />I'm so happy that I'll never have to see her again.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-43554663335778523692008-02-05T20:10:00.003-05:002008-03-18T23:02:58.395-04:00We don't have Flubber, but we have Blubber.I used to go to the library regularly in fourth and fifth grade, mostly to browse the <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/11/dont-believe-in-science-fiction.html">science fiction</a> section. The library was a tiny, one-room building crammed with books. The head librarian, the only person there most of the time, was a very old, wrinkled, hunched-over lady who moved and spoke slowly.<br /><br />One day, while I was perusing the scifi shelf, a girl who was roughly my age came in with her mom. Clearly unfamiliar with both card catalogs and the "alphabetical by author" system of shelving fiction, she immediately went to the librarian and asked if the library had a copy of <i>Forever</i>.<br /><br />"Well, I know we have Blubber," she said, shuffling over to the young adult section, "but I don't know if we have Flubber."<br /><br />"Forever," the girl said, following the librarian.<br /><br />"Yes, yes, I know we have Blubber, but I don't know about Flubber," she replied, leaning close to the shelf and eyeballing books.<br /><br />"Forever," the girl said again, "not Flubber."<br /><br />"I don't know if we have that. I know we definitely have Blubber, though. Do you know who it's by?"<br /><br />"<i>Forever</i>," she said again, clearly frustrated by this point, "by Judy Blume."<br /><br />"Ah, yes," the librarian said, pulling down a copy of <i>Blubber</i>, also by Judy Blume, off of the shelf for the girl. "We have this one, Blubber, I don't see Flubber here, though."<br /><br />"I'm not looking for <i>Blubber</i> or <i>Flubber</i>," the girl told the librarian. "I'm looking for <i>Forever</i>."<br /><br />The librarian finally understood what she was saying. "Oh," she said, suddenly much less enthusiastic. "We got rid of that because it had some overnight stuff," she said in what sounded like a disgusted tone as she shelved the book. The girl stormed out without saying another word, and her mom thanked the librarian for her help before following.<br /><br />I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that the book is still unavailable in that backwards little town.<br /><a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"></a>Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-11812604026369650552008-02-04T21:03:00.008-05:002010-01-16T15:10:14.580-05:00Simon's $50 pound of weed.<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >This is, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >by far</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >, my post popular post, receiving a bunch of views every day, but nobody has ever left a comment. You can do it anonymously. You should leave one. What is it you're looking for that brought you here? Did the title lead you to believe somebody had a pound of weed for sale, over the internet, for $50? Were you trying to figure out what a pound of weed is worth? (ProTip: Try <a href="http://hightimes.com/tags/thmq">THMQ</a>.) Are you doing research for school? I can't, for the life of me, think of what else might be bringing so many clicks this way. Why don't you leave a comment and help end the mystery?</span><br /><br />I first met Simon in 5th grade. He was a couple years older than me, several times my size, and a <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/06/compulsive-liars.html">compulsive liar</a>. On the bus, he would brag to me about how he had so much body hair that he had to shampoo his chest, pubes, and armpits, and how his flacid penis was the size of a full roll of paper-towels. Simon was clearly black, but would vehemently deny it, claiming to be a Mexican/Native American hybrid, despite looking like neither. He referred to black people as "colored people."<br /><br />I considered Simon a friend, though this didn't prevent me from occasionally setting off his violent temper just for kicks. I learned that simply stating "I am God" would infuriate the religious kid, so it became something I enjoyed saying. Both of us were classified as "emotionally handicapped" and stuck in a classroom of other <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/06/marty-and-contraband.html">fire-starting crazies</a>, and on several occasions, I witnessed the full power of his explosive rage, with screaming, book-throwing, and eventual restraint by all the adults in the room.<br /><br />In 8th grade, I lost my "emotionally handicapped" label and stopped riding the short bus into the neighboring school district. I started going to the school I was supposed to, and Simon followed me the next year. I had no classes with him, but would sometimes talk to him in the hallway.<br /><br />One day, Simon pulled me off to the side of the hall. He looked around suspiciously, and then leaned in close to my ear.<br /><br />"I'm looking for a pound," he whispered.<br /><br />"A pound of weed?" I asked in my normal voice.<br /><br />"Shhhh! Yeah. Can you help me out?"<br /><br />"Yeah, I'll see what I can do," I told him, and walked away.<br /><br />As luck would have it, I had a friend in Spanish class who was a known pot dealer that had recently been busted by his mom. She had opened the trunk of his car to find it full of weed that he had grown in the woods. She was furious, and wanted him to get rid of it all immediately. For this reason, he had actually offered me a pound of weed at the crazy discount price of $100 just days before Simon's request. I declined, as I didn't smoke or have $100. When Simon asked for the pound, though, lights starting going off in my head. I didn't tell him about the offer, because I figured I'd pretend I was looking around, and then make some money brokering a deal for him. Even at the time, so many years ago, you could consider yourself well-connected to even get an <i>ounce</i> for $100, so anybody actually looking to make some money would have no problem dropping a few bills for a whole pound.<br /><br />"Hey, Simon," I called out in the hallway a couple days later. He walked over to me.<br /><br />"Yeah?"<br /><br />"I found that pound you wanted," I told him.<br /><br />"How much?" he asked.<br /><br />"Three hundred bucks."<br /><br />Simon rolled his eyes. "I already found one for fifty!" he said, walking away.<br /><br />I told my friend in Spanish class about the failed transaction. We both agreed that Simon was completely full of shit.<br /><br />The last time I saw Simon was one day when he showed up at school when I was in 12th grade. He spoke in a very soft voice and told me he was now a missionary. I didn't know whether or not to believe him, because nothing he ever said seemed to be true. I didn't really care, though. That guy was a jackass.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-78674704980582810722008-01-21T20:26:00.001-05:002008-01-21T20:29:46.556-05:00Don't tease the animals.I went to a zoo a few months ago when it was still warm out. I'm opposed to zoos in a general sense, because it seems kind of douchebaggy to lock up a bunch of animals, many of them relatively intelligent, for the amusement of a bunch of mouth-breathing members of the general public. For this reason, I haven't been to a zoo in years. That, and I really don't like the general public, and tend to hate being surrounded by people who are almost inevitably a bunch of intolerable idiots.<br /><br />For most of our walk around the zoo, I was pleasantly surprised. There were things that pissed me off, like assholes in the butterfly room touching the butterflies (it damages their fragile wings), and the small enclosures for animals smart enough to hate being locked up, but I enjoyed being able to see all sorts of critters up close. I was particularly fond of the reptiles, because they're too stupid to really hate their lack of freedom so much, and they're just completely awesome, like scaly science fiction monsters, here to devour your face clean off of your skull.<br /><br />Everything was going relatively well, until we got to the tiger enclosure. That's when I got really pissed off.<br /><br />We were watching the tigers going about their business when a family strolled up to the fence near where we were standing. The morbidly overweight matriarch of the clan began clapping and yelling at a tiger who was sitting down, facing away from us.<br /><br />"Hey!" she yelled, clapping her hands. "Hey! Hey, tiger!"<br /><br />I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to say, "Hey, you ugly bitch, this beautiful creature could and would eat your whole goddamn family if it wasn't imprisoned for your amusement." I wanted to tell her how disgusted I was with her. I wanted to lock her up in a cage and make her do tricks to entertain me.<br /><br />I wanted to push her into the fucking cage and watch her get eaten in front of her horrified family.<br /><br />I generally like animals, but I very often dislike people. Seeing an amazing animal trapped in a small space while a free-roaming, slack-jawed jackass yelled at it was an ugly contrast. For the rest of the day, I was in a pissy mood, thinking about how what I had witnessed happens all day long, every single day that the zoo is open. It seemed so totally unnecessary. What good is served by locking up a tiger so some assholes can look at it? Most of those jerks would be just as happy sitting at home eating McDonald's while watching TV commercials and rooting for their favorite American Idol contestant.<br /><br />When I heard recently that some dickheads got <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/18/tiger.attack.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories">attacked by a tiger for taunting it at a zoo</a>, I can't say I had any sympathy for them at all. In fact, I wished that all three had been killed by the tiger instead of just one of them. They euthanized the tiger, so if you're keeping track of kills at home, the score is 1-1; everybody loses. At least she was able to maul the two that she didn't kill.<br /><br />I imagine a scant few of the loudmouthed cretins who taunt animals at zoos would dare taunt a human prisoner safely locked behind correctional bars, even though any tiger can kill a person more quickly than all but the most powerful of humans. Perhaps it is the fact that these animals are locked up specifically for human amusement that emboldens people to act like <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/08/going-ape-shit.html">shit-flinging monkeys</a>.<br /><br />There are currently more tigers in captivity in the United States than there are tigers in the wild. Sadly, this means that zoos might play a crucial role in their survival at all. For this reason I support the occasional eating of human visitors by zoo animals. If people realize the penalty for taunting a creature might be death or a severe mauling, people might be more hesitant to behave like the kind of assholes who deserve to be killed by tigers. The tiger who escaped apparently could have escaped at any time, but never felt the need to go attack people until it reached its breaking point. If there's any lesson at all to be learned from this brutal attack, it's that tiger enclosures should all be like the one at the San Francisco zoo: inescapable until the tigers have had enough of you and your fucking bullshit.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-62087695349535538532008-01-20T19:22:00.001-05:002008-01-20T19:24:06.646-05:00The greenhouse effect.In class one day in fourth grade, my teacher asked if any of us knew what the greenhouse effect was. I raised my hand. Nobody else raised theirs, so my teacher called on me.<br /><br />"It's when they mix the old food with the fresh food at Chinese food restaurants, so the fresh food isn't any good because it's full of old food that keeps getting older," I said.<br /><br />"No," my teacher said, shaking his head and looking amused. "No, that's not it at all."<br /><br />The reason I believed this was because a few years earlier, a Chinese food restaurant opened next to a video store we frequented. One day as we were driving away, my parents were expressing their sympathy for the owners of the restaurant, because it seemed like nobody ever ate there.<br /><br />"Why don't we eat there, then?" I asked. I thought it would be nice to give them some business. My dad, however, explained to me that if nobody was eating there, they would just keep mixing the fresh food with the old food, and it would just keeping getting worse and worse. He said that this was called the greenhouse effect, and it was the reason why we weren't going to eat there.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-63558784036069731282007-07-16T20:38:00.001-04:002007-07-16T22:50:22.825-04:00I'm not doing any more work.Today, when I got to work I sat at my desk and played on the internet for a while. A couple hours later, some of my coworkers were congregated downstairs, having a conversation in their normal indoor voices, which are screams loud enough that I can make out their entire inane conversation every single time. I was already in a bad mood and wanted nothing more than to loudly swear at them and tell them how fucking obnoxious they are, so I left before I got myself in trouble. When I came back, I sat down and continued playing on the internet. A few minutes later, one of my bosses, the only one I really see on a regular basis, appeared at the door.<br /><br />"Paul," he said, "can you come downstairs?"<br /><br />I went downstairs, where he was sitting at his desk, looking serious.<br /><br />"Have you started anything today?"<br /><br />"Nope," I said.<br /><br />"You need to start working when you get here."<br /><br />"It doesn't matter when I start," I told him, "I'm still going to do the same amount of work."<br /><br />"How long are we here? Eight hours," he told me, "We work for eight hours."<br /><br />"No," I said, "I'm going to do the same amount of work no matter how long I'm here."<br /><br />"Why?" he asked.<br /><br />"Because I already do a disproportionate amount of work. I'm not doing any more, and I'm not going to pretend I'm busy when I'm not. There are other people here who barely do anything. You can't hold people to different standards. It's stupid," I said.<br /><br />"Yes, it is stupid," he said. "You should ask Chris for more money."<br /><br />He started laughing. It's funny because I'm a permanent temp. More money is actually a pretty fucking hilarious joke.<br /><br />"Well, more money is the only way I'd even consider doing any more work," I said.<br /><br />He asked me to help him work on something, but I told him I was eating and would help when I was done. He said he thought I was done eating, presumably because I had just returned from not being there for a while. Why should I waste my lunch break eating, though? That's the sort of thing that can be done on the clock.<br /><br />I really should just quit.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-78102501321496909132007-07-02T17:24:00.001-04:002007-07-02T17:52:32.583-04:00Can you put the seat up?My desk chair at work is pretty nice. Pretty much everything about it is adjustable, and I adjust it to my liking every day upon arrival. I am an efficient sloucher, so I generally drop the seat all the way down. When I come in the next day, the seat is usually all the way back up, but it's no big deal, because it's easy to adjust, and I understand the concept of a shared workspace.<br /><br />"Hey, I have a request for you," the midnight lady said when she got in the other night. She sits at the desk next to mine.<br /><br />"Yeah?" I asked, "What's that?"<br /><br />"The day girl wants you to put the seat back up when you leave at night."<br /><br />"Sure," I said.<br /><br />"She's really short," she told me.<br /><br />"Yeah, I know," I said.<br /><br />I sat there for a second, and then asked, "Hey, can you do me a favor?"<br /><br />"Sure, what?"<br /><br />"When the day girl gets in tomorrow morning, can you ask her to put the seat all the way down when she's done?"Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-89411829510965480412007-04-23T19:31:00.000-04:002008-12-10T03:53:11.383-05:00Goodbye, cat.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKuq3ci-s-0qB3RHFDl3kW0UX-6khoyAVS4NsX9B531uZL31or-UDmQGorS1f4K2crr5wivJcSFopUZJRMzFEWXq75OKT28_7faD0nnNPulENOxmASTEgnhykWw-O65by2hINf/s1600-h/meandcassie.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKuq3ci-s-0qB3RHFDl3kW0UX-6khoyAVS4NsX9B531uZL31or-UDmQGorS1f4K2crr5wivJcSFopUZJRMzFEWXq75OKT28_7faD0nnNPulENOxmASTEgnhykWw-O65by2hINf/s320/meandcassie.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5056770607123528962" border="0" /></a><br />Shortly after I moved into the house where I live now, one of my roommates brought home a kitten. At first, he told me her name was Cassie, so I called her that. I work late and keep an odd schedule, so I don't see my roommates very often. When I saw my roommate again, and referred to the cat as Cassie, he laughed and said people just called it whatever they wanted to. I started calling her Lathie, which was short for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyarlathotep">Nyarlathotep</a>, the Crawling Chaos. The name sort of stuck, as I heard people repeat it a few times. Mostly, though, we just called her cat.<br /><br />Cat disappeared about a week ago. We'd been thinking, or maybe just hoping, that she was out getting laid, and would eventually return. Chomsky, one of the dogs at the house, chased a cat out of one of the barns, and we figured maybe they ran off somewhere else for some privacy.<br /><br />I just got a text message from one of my roommates. It read as follows:<br /><blockquote>Rest in peace, cat.<br />10/06 - 4/23/07</blockquote>Goodbye, cat.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipDdQsxbylmbKWSQ_f2-TrgvEGTN7sJYg-Ww8kCeR_RL7_fYNhZTz5kbQ3IGBP7JUJL5sEVztMNg3hMyNJGucQMBf_l3Aw_CeSIORT9hhdGCi6bLNj5w3egPPIN6Rnoj2YD90y/s1600-h/catanddog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipDdQsxbylmbKWSQ_f2-TrgvEGTN7sJYg-Ww8kCeR_RL7_fYNhZTz5kbQ3IGBP7JUJL5sEVztMNg3hMyNJGucQMBf_l3Aw_CeSIORT9hhdGCi6bLNj5w3egPPIN6Rnoj2YD90y/s320/catanddog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5056773562061028626" border="0" /></a>Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-55155569607870613602007-04-19T23:48:00.001-04:002007-04-19T23:50:13.873-04:00Crack Hedger's dog.I was in 10th grade when I met Crack Hedger. It was the first day of school, and he was one of the incoming 7th graders riding my bus for the first time. My friend John and I were trying to talk to the new kids, and giving a couple of them new names. Most of the kids were obnoxious smartasses, but Crack seemed like a cool guy. His name was Joe, but we decided it would be Crack. Our logic was that Joe was white, and crack was white, and crack was also hilarious, so it was a good name.<br /><br />I turned 16 that year, and my grandpa gave me my first car, a beat-up 1988 Dodge Colt, nicknamed the Chudmobile. The car was white, chud was white, and chud was also hilarious, so it was a good name. Crack offered to fix up my car stereo, for free, so I started going over to his house and letting him work on it. He put a new tape deck in, and installed an amp and some big speakers. He even built me a big speaker box to sit in the back of the car so I could drive around, bassing people out with a deep, low-end sound that made all the loose bits in my car rattle. All the parts came from a junkyard down the road from where he lived, and he said the guy who owned all the junk cars there told him he could take whatever he wanted.<br /><br />Crack lived a few minutes away from me, in a house along a gravel road, with no other houses nearby. His place had an old bomb shelter and a lot of animals. As we started hanging out more, I got used to his dogs chasing my car as I drove away. I was scared of hitting them at first, but Crack told me just to drive and they would get out of the way. With time, my fear of running over one of his dogs subsided.<br /><br />One summer afternoon, my friends and I decided to take a trip to the mall. There wasn't really any reason for it, but it was something to do. Living out in the middle of nowhere, the mall was a 40 minute drive away. I picked up John, and then went to go pick up Crack, the plan being to pick up my friend Sean next.<br /><br />As we pulled away from Crack's house, his dogs started chasing my car, as they usually did. Like always, I just drove as if they weren't there, <span style="font-style: italic;">knowing</span> they would get out of the way.<br /><br />And then one of Crack's dogs ran right in front of my car.<br /><br />"Fuck! No!" I yelled as my car drove over the dog. There were two sickening thumps as each tire on the passenger side squished the dog.<br /><br />We stopped the car and got out. The dog lay in a heap, twisted and whimpering.<br /><br />"Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, man," I said. As an animal-loving vegetarian kid, I was a bit freaked-the-fuck out.<br /><br />"It's alright, man," Crack told me. He calmly scooped up the dog, a decently-sized Australian Shepard, and got back in the car. As we drove back to his house, the dog bit him and then puked on him.<br /><br />We got back to his house and got out of the car. His dad and his grandpa came out of the house as Crack set the dog on the ground. I saw that it was dead, and started crying.<br /><br />"It's alright, man," he told me. He didn't seem to care at all.<br /><br />"I killed your fucking dog, man!" I said, wiping tears from my face.<br /><br />"Shhh!" he whispered, not wanting the adults to hear me say "fuck."<br /><br />His grandpa grabbed a shovel, and started walking out somewhere to dig a hole to bury the dog in. As he walked, a poodle started yapping at him and following close behind.<br /><br />"Shut up, you son of a bitch!" the old man yelled, causing me to stop crying and start laughing.<br /><br />Crack's sister came outside and saw my wet face.<br /><br />"Are you alright?" she asked.<br /><br />"Yeah."<br /><br />"I've never seen a punk cry," she said.<br /><br />We left again, picked up Sean, and went to the mall. I didn't really feel like going anymore, but we went, anyway.<br /><br />I felt like shit for a week or so. My dad told me to get Crack a new dog, so I offered to do so. Crack declined, saying, "Don't worry about it, man. That dog was stupid as hell, anyway. Nobody cares."<br /><br />Crack Hedger died <a href="http://douglasjedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/rest-in-peace.html">four years ago today</a> in a car crash. He was 19 years old.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-36058320116690993052007-04-05T23:45:00.001-04:002007-04-05T23:47:01.878-04:00I was a teenage hax0r d00dz!!!!11My family gained internet access via AOL in 1994, when I was in 8th grade. At first, my internet usage was monitored pretty strictly, and I got to fart around only occasionally and only for brief periods. Having seen a story on the news about the evils of the internet, I knew that there were instructions for various nefarious deeds readily available online, and when my parents weren't home, I would print out instructions on how to blow things up. My classmates and I found these tutorials endlessly fascinating, though we never actually made the effort or took the risk of blowing off our fingers. At some point, some careless student got a stack of printouts confiscated, my parents were contacted, and my internet access was cut off. My parents canceled AOL.<br /><br />In 9th grade, I regained internet access, this time through a local phone company. The same company ran a dialup <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bbs">BBS</a> that several of my friends had been accessing for some time, but I had never been able to enjoy due to it being outside of my local calling area. Now, I was able to connect to the BBS via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telnet">telnet</a>. I created a free account and began using it to email my friends, chat with locals (mostly making fun of them anonymously), and hack monsters to bits on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-User_Dungeon"> MUD</a> (multi-user dungeon) they had.<br /><br />I read an article in a book about how to send email from a fake address. It was a simple matter of connecting to a certain port of basically any server and then manually typing in the commands that an email program would normally do for you. You told the computer you were somebody else, and then you got to send an email as whoever you wanted to be. I sent my friends a bunch of emails from people I wasn't, and I was thrilled by the power it gave me. I wanted more internet power.<br /><br />I started poking my nose in places it didn't belong. I'd use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ftp">FTP</a> to connect to anything I could and just look around at what files were there. I connected to my internet service provider's domain and was able to download their password file. I didn't know exactly what to do with it, but a simple internet search taught me that I could run it through some software to pick out passwords. I did, and though it was slow going and I didn't let the program run all the way through, I still found a handful of passwords. A group of people had chosen 12345 for their password, and another had chosen 54321. Clever. I compiled my own word list file to check against the password file, using only words relevant to our area, like school mascots. The program ran through much more quickly this time, and brought me more passwords.<br /><br />I didn't do anything with the passwords I found, but I wanted more, anyway. I decided to give brute force attacks a shot. In other words, I was going to try guessing passwords. I logged in to the BBS and started looking through people's public profiles. One kid was a Mortal Kombat fanatic, so I correctly guessed that his password was mk. I logged in, changed his password, and started playing around. He had paid for his account, so he had more access to things on the BBS than I did. I ended up reverting his password when his brother logged in and started talking to me. They actually weren't mad about it, and the kid whose password I stole told me he'd be smarter about making up passwords in the future.<br /><br />Still unsatisfied, I decided to get sneakier. I made another free account on the BBS and named it PW-DATA. Then, I picked random people on the BBS and sent them an email that purported to be from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysop"> sysop</a> (the "system operator" of the BBS).<br /><br /><div style="margin-left: 40px;">Dear BBS user,<br /><br />We've been experiencing some problems with our password database, and because of this, your account may be in danger of becoming inaccessible. Please send a message to PW-DATA containing only your password.<br /><br />We apologize for the inconvenience.<br /><br />Dwayne, the sysop<br /></div><br />Within hours of beginning this, I had more passwords. I was surprised that less than half of the people who I sent messages to actually sent their passwords. Still, I was proud of myself.<br /><br />One of people who sent me their password was a guy who I hated anyway, due to his being an obnoxious internet douche bag. When I got his password, I went through all of his emails. He had a lot of messages talking about the drugs he had and the drugs he was going to get. I also found a receipt from when he paid for his account. I took down his credit card information and used it to buy my own account. I sent him an email saying, "Don't fuck with me, I know things about you."<br /><br />The account activation wasn't automated, and when I paid using his credit card, I didn't gain access to all of the things I was supposed to. I emailed the sysop, who activated my ill-gotten account. I finally had a paid account of my own.<br /><br />A couple days later, I found that the account had been canceled, and the password for the guy's other paid account had been changed.<br /><br />My password phishing account was still active, so I continued sending people email from the sysop asking for their passwords, and I continued getting passwords. For the most part, I didn't even log in to anybody's account, but I liked knowing that I could. <br /><br />I sent my fake message to the kids from my school who used the BBS. They were, for some reason or another, all dirty, unpopular, and poor kids rumored to be inbred. I've never been able to understand why this was so. They came from different families, so it wasn't because they shared a computer. I knew very few people who were online at this point, but the poorest kids were among them. They were all too clever to fall for my ruse, though.<br /><br />One of the kids, <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2007/03/smiths.html">Aaron Smith</a>, overheard me talking with a friend in gym class about my phishing endeavors. He told me that he was friends with the sysop, and that he knew it was me.<br /><br />"It's fraud," he told me, "and it's a felony!"<br /><br />I stopped phishing for passwords when Aaron told me the sysop was on to me. I never knew if the sysop actually knew, or if he only knew because Aaron overheard me and then told him it was me. I came home a few days after Aaron told me it was a felony, and my dad told me I wasn't allowed on the internet anymore. I guess Dwayne, the sysop, had called him. I was disappointed to have my internet access taken away, but relieved that I wasn't having charges pressed against me.<br /><br />For the most part, I lost interest in such things after that. In 10th grade, I fooled around on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSH">MUSHes</a> (sort of like MUDs without fighting), and figured out how to give myself complete God power over everything through a combination of social engineering and code manipulation. Other than that, the draw of secret knowledge and forbidden power was never strong enough to combat the fear of losing my internet access again.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29316253.post-41564122232409878572007-03-29T23:00:00.001-04:002007-04-02T23:02:45.031-04:00A jar full of salamanders.I was playing in my front yard in second grade. We lived in a city, so our yard wasn't so much a yard as it was a bit of dirt, grass, and rocks in some concrete next to the stoop. Nevertheless, I overturned some stones and was surprised to find some salamanders under them. My mom helped me poke some holes in a jar lid, and I put a bunch of salamanders in the jar, along with some small bugs to eat and some water so they didn't dry out. She told me I could bring them to school and show my class, and I imagined myself being sort of a hero for bringing such awesome creepy crawlies to school. The teacher would love it because animals are educational, and the kids would love it because they're slimy.<br /><br />When I got on the bus in the morning and showed the kids what I had found, their reactions were not at all what I expected.<br /><br />"Ooooooh! You're going to get in <span style="font-style: italic;">trouble</span>!" they told me.<br /><br />When I walked into school, I held my arm carrying the jar inside my coat so nobody would see it. I tried to stealthily slip it into my desk when I sat down, but <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-still-hate-my-second-grade-teacher.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> my teacher</a> saw me.<br /><br />"What is that?" she asked.<br /><br />"Salamanders," I sighed, pulling them out of the desk to show her. I was fucked.<br /><br />"Those are really cool," she said. My heart lifted a little. "But you can't bring animals to school." My heart sank again.<br /><br />She brought me to the vice principal's office. The vice principal thought the salamanders were cool, too, but she also told me that animals weren't allowed in school, unless the animals in question were her ugly little toy poodles, of course. She told me that she would hold on to the salamanders until the end of the day, and then I could come to her office and get them.<br /><br />All day, I thought about how I couldn't wait to be reunited with my jar of amphibians. Those suckers were awesome.<br /><br />At the end of the day, I went to the vice principal's office. She handed me a brown paper bag.<br /><br />"There was a little problem," she told me in a soft voice. Her eyes looked like she was trying to act sad.<br /><br />I reached into the bag and pulled out my jar of salamanders. When I had given her the jar, there was a little bit of water in the bottom. Now, the jar was full to the brim. Floating at the top were all the salamanders, dead.<br /><br />"They were trying to climb out of the water," she told me, "so I thought they needed more water."<br /><br />I started crying. I put the jar back in the bag, and put the bag in my backpack.<br /><br />"I'm sorry," she said as I left.<br /><br />When I got home, I went to my parents.<br /><br />"How'd school go?" my dad asked.<br /><br />I burst into tears, threw my backpack at the wall, and yelled something unintelligible. They told me to calm down and tell them what happened, so I did my best to be coherent, and sobbed my story to them. My mom hugged me and picked up my backpack, which was now drenched with dead salamander water.<br /><br />My dad told me that I could use the opportunity as a learning experience, and dissect one of the salamanders. My parents had bought me a science kit that contained, among lots of other things, a preserved frog in a jar and the tools to cut it up with. I used the tools, and cut up a salamander, but I didn't learn anything. It was stiffer than the frog was, and much smaller. It was too hard to cut, and too small to see its insides.<br /><br />I've wondered for years if the vice principal was just being malicious. It's hard for me to believe anybody could be that stupid. They were climbing <span style="font-style: italic;">out</span> of the water, so they needed <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> water? I guess it's likely that she actually was that stupid, but all the adults at that school <a href="http://gogmogog.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-still-hate-my-second-grade-teacher.html"> left me with horrible impressions</a>, like the sort of people who would kill a child's jar of salamanders just to teach them not to bring animals to school.Paulohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05411367281573682781noreply@blogger.com7