People have probably thought that about most places they live.
I'll focus on America, because that's the only country I'm aware of existing.
"No one should live" in New Orleans because it's basically in a giant bowl that collects water. That's probably true of most low-lying coastal land.
"No one should live" in the places that hurricanes hit year after year, except for the years that they don't. So that takes the eastern sea board right out of the picture.
I'm getting tired of typic quotes for emphasis so pretend they're still there. This was starting to look like a chain letter.
If it gets so fucking hot that people die every summer, don't live there either. That nixes anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line that hasn't already been exempted by hurricanes and flooding.
But don't forget about the Dust Bowl - even though tornadoes can hit most places there's a pretty big concentration of them in that part of the country. It basically runs from Texas up through North Dakota. So you can fuck right off if you want to live there. 'Cause of the tornadoes.
West Coast: You're out. Earthquakes. You understand. Probably Washington can stay.
The stupid, empty desert states are already out because it regularly climbs up to a hundred and hell but I feel like I really need to emphasize that point.
Wildfires are generally tied to drought and high temperatures so that's like a bunch of extra strikes against California. And Texas. Also they happen in Colorado but not with the alarming regularity of other states. Colorado stays.
Do blizzards count? According to a page I just skimmed, blizzards have killed upwards of 100 people a year, depending on how bad they are. I kind of feel like a blizzard carries the same "will kill you" factor as a heat wave if you're not prepared... so that takes off the entire American northeast.
Maybe Washington and Idaho? Just not the Washington coast.
So everyone should go ahead and pack up for beautiful Idaho. Except, then the dysentary starts.
I guess the solution is to acknowledge the bad shit that's statistically likely to happen where you live and do what you can to mitigate the risk.
How is it that all of these posts start out with a glib observation and then if I type enough shit I come up with a really reasonable, level-headed conclusion? That sucks.
had better watch out.
16 August 2012
14 August 2012
Post-Labor World
Schools do a stupid job of preparing us for life.
I mean, clearly they do a good job of preparing us for standardized testing - which is super important when you're an accountant or middle manager or whatever - but they don't do much for anything else.
When you hit college you might be lucky enough to receive training specific to your field (hi, pre-Pharm!) but as countless others have doubtless observed before me, college teaches you to learn. It increases your capacity to figure stuff out and type things into Wikipedia and Google. That's a good skill to have when you're trying to figure out how to put together a mail merge in Word. You have to google that shit.
Unfortunately, this "teaching to learn" thing leaves people (me) totally floundering in other areas. I'm sure eliminating Shop from high school was an awesome thing that cut the number of severed fingers received on campus in half (joke![?]). But now there's a big knowledge-void in my life.
Sometimes, you find that you aren't at work. This might be on a weekend, or a weekday evening. Sometimes it's even a week day but that's such a rare event as to hardly bear mention.
Anyway you're there, not at work, and not needing to use Excel or Powerpoint for anything. Not even electively.
Surprise! There's a list of other things that you're supposed to do and suddenly you're adrift. I have to broom the floor? With what? Why does this sweeping thing look so much like a mop? Now your kitchen (or wherever you keep your non-porous floors) is sitting under a quarter inch of soapy standing water and your mop is jammed in the toilet. There's probably also blood everywhere. No one survives.
Where's the mopping class? Or the "keep your house clean enough that the bugs don't take over" class? How about "don't cook that chicken, stupid, because it's three inches thick and will take four hours to become edible." By the way, if you have an 8 oz. chicken breast you should butterfly that shit 'cause it'll cook up in like six minutes flat.
Don't vaccuum up that string of pearls! It'll wreck your shit. If you hold the hammer that way, you're gonna end up like that guy in Casino who gets his hand smashed with a hammer! Just wear some fucking safety goggles because one of those rabbits you hit with the mower is going to come out fast and in bits!
No one teaches us these things. So you spend half of your time learning trial-by-fire style. Did you almost just now lose an eye because you made a rookie error with a drill press? Lesson learned! Or perhaps you're momentarily gifted with foresight. You think, "I don't actually know what all of these cleaners under the sink do..." And then you have to go online! You are using this blessed knowledge of learning to Google (or Bing, if you're a dick) "how to clean a sink". And it turns out you were doing it wrong and at no point does it involve one of those gimp masks with the toilet brush attachment.
Pause.
I fully understand the concept of subserviance and the like, dom/sub thing that's implicit with those masks... But I think it takes a very, very specific set of people to
The day I pick up a toilet brush and think "this is hot" is the day that I need to check into some kind of asylum, Final Destination 2 style.
Resume.
I guess when I say that school has done a shitty job of preparing us (me) for life I may have been overstating my point a bit. They don't teach you how to chop a mortise and tenon with a chisel because they know you can "pick up a book" (internet) and learn how. And they don't teach you how to bake a cake (Protip: remove eggs from their shells first for best results) because they figure you'll either fuck it up once and learn from it or read up on it beforehand.
But it still seems a little dismal. If the point was just to be able to research stuff then we'd get a business card with "Google" on the front and "Fuckin', Google" on the back when we turn five and that would be that. We're tought physics and grammar n' shit so we can kind of get a head start on useful skills that may take a long time to perfect. Or even do passably.
So maybe something like a head start on "living life outside of academia and work" or "feeding yourself and others" might still be worth it.
A final thought:
Recess is gone. Now if someone wants to get good at throwing handfuls of gravel at little children they're going to have to look it up online. Or learn by doing (throw straight, not up in the air! bigger handfuls! learn the pattern of the teacher's gaze!) I grew up in the 15 minute recess era and posters around my neighborhood all speak to how well I am able to throw gravel at little children to this very day.
I think I just wish I had a class that would have tought me how to hammer a nail without constantly bending that shit.
- enjoy wearing the mask and using it
- enjoy watching someone wear the mask and use it.
The day I pick up a toilet brush and think "this is hot" is the day that I need to check into some kind of asylum, Final Destination 2 style.
09 August 2012
Know Your Wood
Good furniture is not hard to find, but it is expensive.
Actually I don't know if it's easy to find or expensive; I don't have any good furniture (half true).
I do have shitty furniture in various grades (but also a few good pieces gifted to me by a now dead aquaintance). Here's a handy list to help you pick out your shitty furniture. They're listed roughly in order of how quickly they will fail and fall apart.
If you have furniture already and you don't know if it sucks or not, pick a joint and just wail on it with a hammer. Go to town. If it's a table you might try WWE-style falls from a ladder onto the table top. What you're looking for is smashing it really good so you can get a look at what's inside.
Particle Board
This is a two part entry, because there's this one thing that's particle board and another thing that isn't, but people kind of use them interchangeably.
The top image is particle board. It's that fucking garbage that IKEA makes all of their furniture out of unless it's a plastic chair or a metal desk lamp. I don't know the particulars of how it's assembled although I'm guessing it's kind of self evident. It probably involves a lot of particles and some glue. Particle board is cherished for its ability to swell up and fall apart like rotting fruit when it gets wet, and for the ease with which fasteners will just straight tear out of it.
The bottom image is Oriented Strand Board - OSB. People call it particle board because it's made out of particles of wood. But it's not particle board. It's larger pieces of wood that are layered with the grain running all whichaways (which resists warping) and it's all laminated and shit. OSB is handy for nailing over broken windows and possibly other things. The major drawback to OSB is that you will never get a very smooth surface without $50 of wood filler and hours and hours of sanding. It's strong, but very utilitarian (read: ugly). Good for building shit in your garage.
MDF
I don't know what the deal is with this. It's "Medium Density Fiberboard". I'm guessing it's Particle Board but it uses even finer particles, which is probably desirable in some way. Here it is:
It's heavier than an equivalent thickness of not-MDF. It's also got a ton of binder (glue?) in it which makes it harder on saw blades and makes the sawdust that much worse to suck down into your lungs. What's nice is that it's engineered to within an inch of its life and is basically ready for painting (or not) right out of the box. On account of there's no grain or any distinguishing features.
I think MDF sucks because it's all they ever build anything out of on Trading Spaces. Or that other show... with the surprise room makeover while the spouse is out of town? TLC? Nothing?
Anyway you were pretty much guaranteed a "new couch" made out of an MDF box with a piece of foam on top. That sucks. MDF sucks. I'm going to let my blind ignorance get in the way of professional carpenters making choices on a tight schedule for a TV show.
MDF also really drinks up paint if you do decide to finish it. It's available in pretty much any length and most thickness because, again, it's a completely engineered product. It's also quite strong. And heavy. I already said heavy but it bears mentioning again.
Plywood
Apparently plywood is kind of a big deal. Here's a picture of some now:
Plywood is actually not cheap. Good plywood - depending on thickness and quality - can cost close to $100 or more for a 4'x8' sheet. But here's the thing. Wood apparently has a bunch of annoying quirks that people have spent like thousands of years trying to combat. It has a grain, and it will split along that grain. It will expand and contract with temperature and humidity and that can do all kinds of awful shit to things that you built out of wood, like break them.
Also while you could conceivably get a piece of wood that ran the length of an entire tree, you're kind of limited on how wide it is by the width of the tree. And then of course the thickness and width of the board you've cut is going to have all kinds of other implications like more splitting and warping and all of the things you don't want it to do.
Enter plywood. Each layer alternates the grain of the wood. It comes in great big sheets and can be manufactured to a variety of consistent thicknesses. Thin sheets can be bent and thick sheets can be made into industrial strength countertops for movie theaters. Plywood can be used for big expanses of wood with little fear of warping or buckling. And it's usually got a finished side that's ready for paint or stain. That's handy too, since it would take a while to sand 32 square feet of wood.
If your furniture is made out of or contains plywood, don't hate it. It's okay. Leave it alone.
Conclusion
If you don't like engineered lumber then here's your alternative, you fucking vultures:
You get a loaf of wood that's roughly log shaped. Wonderful for you to have the time to get out your planes and jointers and build a solid oak conference table for $7,000. Also: Balls to IKEA for making me think at one point that it was well designed, well-made furniture sold cheaply. It's just well-designed furniture made and sold cheaply.
Remember - that crazy looking wood-sheet stuff you see at construction sites is OSB. The guts of your IKEA bookshelf when the screw tears out and you get little bits of wooden confetti everywhere; that's particle board and it sucks.
Plywood is good.
Actually I don't know if it's easy to find or expensive; I don't have any good furniture (half true).
I do have shitty furniture in various grades (but also a few good pieces gifted to me by a now dead aquaintance). Here's a handy list to help you pick out your shitty furniture. They're listed roughly in order of how quickly they will fail and fall apart.
If you have furniture already and you don't know if it sucks or not, pick a joint and just wail on it with a hammer. Go to town. If it's a table you might try WWE-style falls from a ladder onto the table top. What you're looking for is smashing it really good so you can get a look at what's inside.
Particle Board
This is a two part entry, because there's this one thing that's particle board and another thing that isn't, but people kind of use them interchangeably.
The bottom image is Oriented Strand Board - OSB. People call it particle board because it's made out of particles of wood. But it's not particle board. It's larger pieces of wood that are layered with the grain running all whichaways (which resists warping) and it's all laminated and shit. OSB is handy for nailing over broken windows and possibly other things. The major drawback to OSB is that you will never get a very smooth surface without $50 of wood filler and hours and hours of sanding. It's strong, but very utilitarian (read: ugly). Good for building shit in your garage.
MDF
I don't know what the deal is with this. It's "Medium Density Fiberboard". I'm guessing it's Particle Board but it uses even finer particles, which is probably desirable in some way. Here it is:
It's heavier than an equivalent thickness of not-MDF. It's also got a ton of binder (glue?) in it which makes it harder on saw blades and makes the sawdust that much worse to suck down into your lungs. What's nice is that it's engineered to within an inch of its life and is basically ready for painting (or not) right out of the box. On account of there's no grain or any distinguishing features.
I think MDF sucks because it's all they ever build anything out of on Trading Spaces. Or that other show... with the surprise room makeover while the spouse is out of town? TLC? Nothing?
Anyway you were pretty much guaranteed a "new couch" made out of an MDF box with a piece of foam on top. That sucks. MDF sucks. I'm going to let my blind ignorance get in the way of professional carpenters making choices on a tight schedule for a TV show.
MDF also really drinks up paint if you do decide to finish it. It's available in pretty much any length and most thickness because, again, it's a completely engineered product. It's also quite strong. And heavy. I already said heavy but it bears mentioning again.
Plywood
Apparently plywood is kind of a big deal. Here's a picture of some now:
Plywood is actually not cheap. Good plywood - depending on thickness and quality - can cost close to $100 or more for a 4'x8' sheet. But here's the thing. Wood apparently has a bunch of annoying quirks that people have spent like thousands of years trying to combat. It has a grain, and it will split along that grain. It will expand and contract with temperature and humidity and that can do all kinds of awful shit to things that you built out of wood, like break them.
Also while you could conceivably get a piece of wood that ran the length of an entire tree, you're kind of limited on how wide it is by the width of the tree. And then of course the thickness and width of the board you've cut is going to have all kinds of other implications like more splitting and warping and all of the things you don't want it to do.
Enter plywood. Each layer alternates the grain of the wood. It comes in great big sheets and can be manufactured to a variety of consistent thicknesses. Thin sheets can be bent and thick sheets can be made into industrial strength countertops for movie theaters. Plywood can be used for big expanses of wood with little fear of warping or buckling. And it's usually got a finished side that's ready for paint or stain. That's handy too, since it would take a while to sand 32 square feet of wood.
If your furniture is made out of or contains plywood, don't hate it. It's okay. Leave it alone.
Conclusion
If you don't like engineered lumber then here's your alternative, you fucking vultures:
You get a loaf of wood that's roughly log shaped. Wonderful for you to have the time to get out your planes and jointers and build a solid oak conference table for $7,000. Also: Balls to IKEA for making me think at one point that it was well designed, well-made furniture sold cheaply. It's just well-designed furniture made and sold cheaply.
Remember - that crazy looking wood-sheet stuff you see at construction sites is OSB. The guts of your IKEA bookshelf when the screw tears out and you get little bits of wooden confetti everywhere; that's particle board and it sucks.
Plywood is good.
07 August 2012
Dude, You Gotta Drink
If I went to college (I did) I would have been the guy in the teen comedy who is a nerd and wears glasses. And that nerd never got to play Beer Pong.
Do teen comedies take place in college? That feels inaccurate.
Let's just say in college, I wore glasses.
That means that in addition to the star quarterback dumping my lunch tray on my head and getting stuffed into lockers, I also had run-ins with the cool stoners who just didn't give a fuck but all the girls loved them anyway. And then when I got together with my friends (the fat one, the skinny one, and the one who hangs out with us for no discernible reason) we played video games and talked about Dungeons and Dragons and never got to play Flip Cup.
I'm getting side-tracked, that's still high school movies.
The glasses: real. Also though I never really had occasion to play drinking games. I mean, none of the standards. I played like "Make a giant gin and tonic and drink it" or "split a quarter of a fifth (1/20 of a gallon for those keeping track at home) of Jack with a friend for $10" or later, "drink a bottle of Thunderbird".
All of those games lack the strong social aspect (peer pressure) that a good drinking games possesses. Drinking games - good ones - have rules. They're complicated enough to require "learning" but not so complicated that you can't remember them if you're drunk.
Drinking games also have consequences. Drinking is both the reward and the punishment, which is some kind of alco-sado-masochistic trip that I don't feel like digging any deeper into. Other than the obvious thing is that people just want to drink, whether they follow the rules (are good) or break the rules (are bad).
And it works!
A good drinking game will end up with everyone drunk whether they've flipped the thing into the party cup or balanced the thing on their nose for a full thirty seconds or whether all three throwing hatchets found their target.
Drinking to get plastered (alone) can be kind of boring so it helps to feel like you have a purpose and there's a framework in place to get you to you goal. Your goal is "too fuckin' drunk" and the framework is "do something with this red party cup" and the purpose is "don't be such a pussy, dude!"
That's the one though. It's the purpose that gets people into trouble. Drinking games must have a social component. If no one else is around then you're not taking a shot every time Marv gets technically killed in Home Alone. You're just getting drunk by yourself and thinking about how much Goddamn Christmas is on TV.
When there are people around, there are "rules". And to play the game and have the fun and get the drunk you have to adhere to the rules, otherwise you lose the game! And everyone will remember the one Friday (Tuesday) where you were totally supposed to take a shot because Harry had a toolbox fall on his balls and you totally didn't take a shot. And that's when you kind of cross a threshold.
You realize you're drinking far too much to really appreciate the labyrinthine twists and turns of Kevin's deadly machinations. Micro Machines on the floor! He'll be crippled from the waist down! You close your eyes and the room is spinning - but the situation dictates that you continue to follow the rules because otherwise, like, party foul.
Then, darkness.
It's a system, man. It all exists to get two or more people really fucking drunk. Drunk enough to do something and not even worry about it until oh my God what did I do last night and I think I pissed in the trash can and where are my pants? Better still, a lot of games have a smart-munition component, wherein someone [the girl] can be prejudicially targeted to drink so they'll [she'll] be more pliable. So in addition to the literal darkness you may experience as consciousness slips away there may be a deeper, figurative darkness lurking in your boning-decision making center that's waiting to make some terrible choices for you. Depressing!
The entire fabric of the drinking game tapestry is held together by the complex weft and warp of peer pressure. And I'm like some kind of word poet with metaphors.
All it takes is someone to say "I'm drunk enough I think - I acknowledge that Marv and Harry just drank a fatal amount of shellac (and I should technically drink twice because it's two kills) but I'm not drinking any more fucking Keystone because if I do it's all coming back up."
But then what happens? Everyone else is also too drunk and will not remember you not drinking and you can save all of your regrets for the results pages of your increasingly abstract conceptual porn searches.
But also if you're just lining up drinking games to score with the honeys (asleep, high five!) your soul may have actually died at some point and you might want to get an MRI or PET scan or whatever they use to check for the presence of humanity. Also you might be a date rapist.
Do teen comedies take place in college? That feels inaccurate.
Let's just say in college, I wore glasses.
That means that in addition to the star quarterback dumping my lunch tray on my head and getting stuffed into lockers, I also had run-ins with the cool stoners who just didn't give a fuck but all the girls loved them anyway. And then when I got together with my friends (the fat one, the skinny one, and the one who hangs out with us for no discernible reason) we played video games and talked about Dungeons and Dragons and never got to play Flip Cup.
I'm getting side-tracked, that's still high school movies.
The glasses: real. Also though I never really had occasion to play drinking games. I mean, none of the standards. I played like "Make a giant gin and tonic and drink it" or "split a quarter of a fifth (1/20 of a gallon for those keeping track at home) of Jack with a friend for $10" or later, "drink a bottle of Thunderbird".
All of those games lack the strong social aspect (peer pressure) that a good drinking games possesses. Drinking games - good ones - have rules. They're complicated enough to require "learning" but not so complicated that you can't remember them if you're drunk.
Drinking games also have consequences. Drinking is both the reward and the punishment, which is some kind of alco-sado-masochistic trip that I don't feel like digging any deeper into. Other than the obvious thing is that people just want to drink, whether they follow the rules (are good) or break the rules (are bad).
And it works!
A good drinking game will end up with everyone drunk whether they've flipped the thing into the party cup or balanced the thing on their nose for a full thirty seconds or whether all three throwing hatchets found their target.
Drinking to get plastered (alone) can be kind of boring so it helps to feel like you have a purpose and there's a framework in place to get you to you goal. Your goal is "too fuckin' drunk" and the framework is "do something with this red party cup" and the purpose is "don't be such a pussy, dude!"
That's the one though. It's the purpose that gets people into trouble. Drinking games must have a social component. If no one else is around then you're not taking a shot every time Marv gets technically killed in Home Alone. You're just getting drunk by yourself and thinking about how much Goddamn Christmas is on TV.
When there are people around, there are "rules". And to play the game and have the fun and get the drunk you have to adhere to the rules, otherwise you lose the game! And everyone will remember the one Friday (Tuesday) where you were totally supposed to take a shot because Harry had a toolbox fall on his balls and you totally didn't take a shot. And that's when you kind of cross a threshold.
You realize you're drinking far too much to really appreciate the labyrinthine twists and turns of Kevin's deadly machinations. Micro Machines on the floor! He'll be crippled from the waist down! You close your eyes and the room is spinning - but the situation dictates that you continue to follow the rules because otherwise, like, party foul.
Then, darkness.
It's a system, man. It all exists to get two or more people really fucking drunk. Drunk enough to do something and not even worry about it until oh my God what did I do last night and I think I pissed in the trash can and where are my pants? Better still, a lot of games have a smart-munition component, wherein someone [the girl] can be prejudicially targeted to drink so they'll [she'll] be more pliable. So in addition to the literal darkness you may experience as consciousness slips away there may be a deeper, figurative darkness lurking in your boning-decision making center that's waiting to make some terrible choices for you. Depressing!
The entire fabric of the drinking game tapestry is held together by the complex weft and warp of peer pressure. And I'm like some kind of word poet with metaphors.
All it takes is someone to say "I'm drunk enough I think - I acknowledge that Marv and Harry just drank a fatal amount of shellac (and I should technically drink twice because it's two kills) but I'm not drinking any more fucking Keystone because if I do it's all coming back up."
But then what happens? Everyone else is also too drunk and will not remember you not drinking and you can save all of your regrets for the results pages of your increasingly abstract conceptual porn searches.
But also if you're just lining up drinking games to score with the honeys (asleep, high five!) your soul may have actually died at some point and you might want to get an MRI or PET scan or whatever they use to check for the presence of humanity. Also you might be a date rapist.
06 August 2012
The Majesty of Space
So I looked up this morning at the moon and I thought, "Wow. There's dudes walking around up there right now."
And then I realized that I was confusing the moon with Mars, and astronauts with a robot.
It was very early in the morning.
And then I realized that I was confusing the moon with Mars, and astronauts with a robot.
It was very early in the morning.
03 August 2012
Bane's Workout Guide
I think any high-calorie, low-rep lifting plan would give you the "World's Strongest Man" look that Christopher Nolan's Bane has achieved.
Almost certainly no shrugs. Just squats and deadlifts.
And if you restrict your calories too much you'll end up looking really cut like Tom Hardy in The Warrior instead of looking like an all-around asskicker like Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises.
Full disclosure: Even thought I know this I still spent the three days after seeing TDKR looking desperately for the magic thing Tom Hardy did to put on 30 pounds.
Then my senses got the better of me and I remembered it was probably a secret combination of diet and exercise. Kind of like when any actor puts on muscle for any role ever.
Or when anyone gets in shape over a period of time anywhere. Diet and exercise.
I'm not really sure what I was expecting to find.
Almost certainly no shrugs. Just squats and deadlifts.
And if you restrict your calories too much you'll end up looking really cut like Tom Hardy in The Warrior instead of looking like an all-around asskicker like Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises.
Full disclosure: Even thought I know this I still spent the three days after seeing TDKR looking desperately for the magic thing Tom Hardy did to put on 30 pounds.
Then my senses got the better of me and I remembered it was probably a secret combination of diet and exercise. Kind of like when any actor puts on muscle for any role ever.
Or when anyone gets in shape over a period of time anywhere. Diet and exercise.
I'm not really sure what I was expecting to find.
The End of the Internet
I haven't updated in... a while.
I think it's because I've already made all of the humorous observations that exist to be made.
If something funny happens, look for it here first - as this will always be the fertile crescent of funny things that happen.
I think it's because I've already made all of the humorous observations that exist to be made.
If something funny happens, look for it here first - as this will always be the fertile crescent of funny things that happen.
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