Anarchy in Colarado

To occupy the idle time spent riding the PATH and MTA trains this summer, I read the book Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. This 1000+ page epic took me the entire summer to finish, it is still in my house as I write. Anyways, one of the more dominant motifs in the book was the ideology of Anarchism. And most of these Anarchists in Colarado (where the main characters were from) were obsessed with blowing things (people, tracks, places) up with dynamite. It was just a crazy scene.

With the Democratic National Convention in Denver during this week, the massive activity of all the protesters reminded me of the book. Though the relative magnitude of protesting was described as “mild”, one could imagine what is really going on there. Protesters of all kinds present in one area, liberals and conservatives, abortion advocates and denouncers, anti-war and pro-war, “Loose Change” conspiracy theorists, jingoist Americans, the whole shebang.

Another thing that I picked up that related the book to the current events is the concept of Iceland spar in the book. Iceland spar is a crystal that will project two images when you look through it, like 3D glasses. And this split projection is like how these conflicting protesters are all out there in Denver, in the same area, but split completely on idealisms and beliefs.

Out of Stock

After some inactivity on Amazon, I manage to sell three books I had lying around for about $130. The work involved in maintaining a storefront for Amazon is quite a lot of work. The constant fixing of the price is like a constant game. I was constantly lowering the price of a textbook (80 to 57) because a large Amazon store kept competing with me. I’m glad I wasn’t “in need” to keep my price at 80, a situation similar to faced by small, local stores driven out by large chain stores.

Blog Blows

I run a rather unsuccessful blog here on WordPress or Facebook. While the lack of popularity in my blog isn’t a big concern to me, I have pinpointed some of the rather obvious reasons as to why my blog sucks.

1. The Lack of Pictures – The key to the success of some blogs is the reliance of graphical images to either clarify or to enhance the words. Maybe some funny but nonsensical images would help as well.

2. The Lack of Depth – Most of my posts do not dig deep enough into the subject I am talking about. Its like telling a story and stopping it entirely halfway through.

3. Relative Unimportance – Writing about an important issue is rare for me. Though I may try this much more often, I feel that talking about current events is played out.

4. Vague References – I definitely picked this up from reading too much Pynchon. I will occasionally mention something that not many people understand and assume that it is alright.

5. Boring – I do not go on vacation or drug-induced trips very often, so its just me talking. So it is very boring if its just me talking.

I may try to incorporate some of these things in order to make the blog better. Most likely 1 and 2.

In other news, Garfield Minus Garfield is pretty funny IMO.

The Real Thing

While watching the Olympics the past few days, I was mostly troubled to watch the gymnastics for some odd reason. It is true that I dislike sporting events that are “graded” by judges, but the main reason is because of the kids that are passing as adults. This was highlighted by some of the girls on the Chinese gymnastics team. This article goes through the whole thing that many viewers, myself included, believed. Some of those girls running out there performing those wonderful acrobatic feats were mere prepubescents not 16 years of age.

Though the true age of these athletes may never actually be revealed to the public for many years, this age shifting process is not new at all. This all reeks of Danny Almonte and Miguel Tejada.

Infestation

When life doesn’t seem it could get worse it does.

I opened a box of Rice-a-Roni to eat an hour ago and discovered many small brown bugs crawling all over the place, accompanied by younger larvae. At first, I picked out most of the bugs and threw them into the kitchen sink, flushing them down with water every so often. This process took very long and I was stupid to not think of an alternative method for most of the time. Then I decided to let the aggregate sit in boiling water. Most of the remaining critters floated on the hot water, dead. I drained them out and alternated cold and hot water into the aggregate and drained repeatedly till nothing “visible” remained. I isolated the two remaining boxes of Rice-a-Roni in a bag and put them in the freezer to kill whats inside those boxes.

Needless to say, this was something I don’t want to do ever again. Turns out this is a common thing (I checked online) and they were grain weevils. Grain weevils can go fuck themselves.

#4

While I am enjoying a 12oz blue raspberry Slush Puppie slurpie after a few intense hours of outdoor work, I will talk about the saga of #4, Brett Favre.

Brett Favre is a household name in America, one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game. He garnered fans not only in Packer Wisconsin, but in all the states. I remember as a kid, I knew kids who were just fans of Favre because he was just that good. The man was a demigod, an epic figure of greatness.

After the Packers were defeated last season in the playoffs by the juggernaut New York Giants, Favre was set to retire for the second time, the last time. The Packers were about to move on too, with backup Aaron Rodgers set to take over full time QB duty. And so, Brett Favre was retired for good and people missed him a lot. Even cornfields were designed for him.

Then the drama. Brett Favre suddenly wanted to play again, complicating things for everyone. The Packers even wanted to pay him $20 million just to go home. When all was said and done, Favre is now playing for the New York Jets. As a Jets fan, this appears to be exciting news. Though Chad Pennington is likely gone and Kellen Clemens is likely backup, we have a contender playing for us. I honestly never saw this coming.

Damn Kids

When I was young, whenever a teacher or authoritative figure yelled at us in anger, I always felt as if it was a very grave situation, as if we did something really bad. And I always felt sorry for us, the people of younger innocence. But as I get older and older, I now know that the kids are mostly at fault and deserve to get yelled at.

Yesterday I was at a Jersey City library, waiting to print something at the computer, when the children’s section was getting vociferous. The man in charge (a librarian) says something very loudly to the kids along the lines of, “this is not how a library sounds like.” Immediately silence enveloped the library, and order was restored temporarily. The man is right, libraries are suppose to be quiet.

About 1.5 hours ago, I was at 103rd St and Lexington in NY, and I was about to go into the train station. I was halfway down the stairs when something hits me in the head. It did not hurt at all, but I was still very upset. I was enraged and grabbed the jettisoned Pikachu plastic toy and looked back into the street. I did not see the culprit. I did not want to throw it back at a random target and strike an innocent person or vehicle. After some muttered profanity, I ran back to the street and spiked the Pikachu onto the ground in anger and went back to the train station. I just caught the train.

But the take home message here is don’t feel sorry for kids when they do something wrong. It was their fault.