Thursday 27 March 2008 at 12:52 am
Take a "self-made" millionaire and wage-slave worker; strip them to their skivvies. Drop them each alone on his own island. Wait a decade and stop in for visits. Will the former millionaire once again be filthy rich?
Nope. He'll be every bit the pauper as any fellow on the next island: he needed others to become a millionaire in the first place. We need each other, it's not a one-way street, economically or otherwise. That goes for any partnership; both partners need to be able to speak their minds freely, defend their reasoning, admit when they're wrong, and in the process learn from each other. We grow together or we don't grow much at all.
Monday 24 March 2008 at 09:24 am
Some days, watching my cats trying in vain to socialize is funny to watch...
some days. Most of the time it merely reminds me how very difficult it is for autism spectrum humans to do the same. Were I neurotypical, no doubt every day watching my cats' poor socialization would be "funny", rather than evocative and enlightening.
Saturday 22 March 2008 at 02:55 am
There are some days when my disappointment with humanity, my fellow Americans in particular, becomes so profound that I simply can't string together a coherent expression of it. After watching Bill Moyer's Journal last night and seeing promos for Body of War and hearing Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro talk about it, this is one of those days.
You have to see this film, when it is released next month.
This film also illustrates why NO ONE should be allowed to serve more than one term. Only rarely do we get a Byrd or a Kennedy; the rest of the time we get a Frist... and fucked. Yes, Frist-fucked.
Saturday 22 March 2008 at 02:36 am
Listen up, kids: Grandpa Geek is gonna share with you tech support's Dirty Little (Windows) Secret. Here it is:
The interactions between software and hardware have become so complex over the last decade or more that, not only are even the giants of the software industry unable to ship bug-free software, not even the best tech support gurus can identify and solve any but the very simplest and most obvious of problems. For all but those simplest of problems, their routine "solution" will resemble the human equivalent of replacing limbs and major organs, including cutting open the skull and dropping in a fresh new pristine brain, courtesy of some hapless clone.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Geek Squad have any real clue what they are doing; they don't. At this point, especially with regards to Microsoft Windows environments, nobody has a real clue any longer.
Saturday 08 March 2008 at 11:55 pm
I just awoke from one of my recurring nightmares of my father physically threatening and abusing me. This time he was trying to remove shoe laces from shoes to use as the weapon of choice, and I was trying to keep him from getting hold of them when the adrenaline rush drove me awake. The adrenaline has thankfully waned and my pulse has calmed in the moments it took to get to this form. I wonder if this will stop when he dies? The perversion of it is that I had a normal, pleasant conversation with the man just this morning about computers and DVDs. The schizophrenia would be hard to explain. I certainly don't love him, never have. There'd be no point in mentioning it, he'd completely deny any culpability for the nasty tricks my mind is playing on me now. There is at least one death that I know will end the cycle, but I don't know if I can wait that long.
Sunday 02 March 2008 at 08:32 am
Recently I've watched Bill Maher's HBO special "The Decider". Now, I love Bill Maher... really, I do; I was even in the Politically Correct studio audience once. But there's one thing - one person - he assaults with brutal humor and completely misses the mark: President George W. Bush. Maher is fond of repeatedly hammering home - much like some of his sexual humor - the old joke about George being stupid, dumber than a pet rock.
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