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| | Absurdity, Allegory, Wisdom, and Poetry | |
Absurdity
"Don't you think it's a little dangerous to be handing out guns at a bank?"
-Michael Moore, "Bowling for Columbine"
Allegory
I'm getting ready to invade the Jones' house down the block, because I think Mr. Jones is going to attack me with illegal weapons. I know he has these illegal weapons because I sold them to him just a few years ago. I mean, I gave him the weapons so he could use them against the Ruperts next door to him. He killed lots of them nasty Ruperts, thank goodness. (I wonder if anyone thinks I might be partly to blame for the deaths of about half a million Rupert children. Nah, probably not.) Back then, Mr. Jones seemed really really evil, but not as evil as the Ruperts, so I made friends with him.
Anyhow, now my sister says she heard a rumor that he still has those weapons (though I haven't really seen them since I gave them to him). The cops checked his house and didn't find anything, but hey, the cops are obstructing justice by not doing exactly what I tell them to do. And don't forget, a robber invaded my home not so long ago. You never know, that Mr. Jones might be planning something with the robber's friends, even though he and those guys have never been on good terms. I know Mr. Jones hasn't done anything lately, but he's probably up to something. I guess that whole robber thing has me a bit freaked out and I have to do something.
In any case, by wiping out Mr. Jones, while trying not to kill his children (though I expect quite a few to die in the invasion), I'll certainly be making my house safer. My idiot neighbors all pretty much think this is a bad idea for some reason though, but I've convinced about half my family and a few of my neighbors' heads of household that it's a good plan, and that's good enough for me.
The bonus is, Mr. Jones has lots of food in his house. Our house doesn't have much food, but we eat like there's no tomorrow! His has a lot more food than mine. Some people actually say this home invasion is about food! But I assure you it's not. I told him he'd better not destroy any of his food while I invade though. I mean I DO WANT the food. Me and most of my buddies actually have a lot invested in the food business, so we'd certainly benefit from that food. But it's not the main reason.
Anyhow, I'm sure the whole neighborhood will be safer with people like me going around killing the neighbors we think might attack us some day.
Then again, thank goodness not everyone in the neighborhood takes the initiative to invade the homes of those who it feels threatened by! I mean, the Kareeyans up on North Street actually think I might attack them! Well, I did put them in a list of evil neighbors, the same list as the Jones' in fact. They want to talk to me about it, but I ain't interested in talkin'. I just don't like them. I know they have some serious badass weaponry in that house though. Let's hope that by not talking to them, and carrying through with my attack on the Jones', they'll get the message.
Wisdom
"What is wrong is that we have invented the technology to eliminate scarcity, but we are deliberately throwing it away to benefit those who profit from scarcity. We now have the means to duplicate any kind of information that can be compactly represented in digital media. We can replicate it worldwide, to billions of people, for very low costs, affordable by individuals. We are working hard on technologies that will permit other sorts of resources to be duplicated this easily, including arbitrary physical objects....The progress of science, technology, and free markets have produced an end to many kinds of scarcity. A hundred years ago, more than 99% of Americans were still using outhouses, and one out of every ten children died in infancy. Now even the poorest Americans have cars, television, telephones, heat, clean water, sanitary sewers -- things that the richest millionaires of 1900 could not buy. These technologies promise an end to physical want in the near future.
"We should be rejoicing in mutually creating a heaven on earth! Instead, those crabbed souls who make their living from perpetuating scarcity are sneaking around, convincing co-conspirators to chain our cheap duplication technology so that it won't make copies -- at least not of the kind of goods they want to sell us. This is the worst sort of economic protectionism -- beggaring your own society for the benefit of an inefficient local industry. The record and movie distribution companies are careful not to point this out to us, but that is what is happening.
"If by 2030 we have invented a matter duplicator that's as cheap as copying a CD today, will we outlaw it and drive it underground? So that farmers can make a living keeping food expensive, so that furniture makers can make a living preventing people from having beds and chairs that would cost a dollar to duplicate, so that builders won't be reduced to poverty because a comfortable house can be duplicated for a few hundred dollars? Yes, such developments would cause economic dislocations for sure. But should we drive them underground and keep the world impoverished to save these peoples' jobs? And would they really stay underground, or would the natural advantages of the technology cause the 'underground' to rapidly overtake the rest of society?"
-Excerpted from "What's Wrong With Copy Protection," by John Gilmore of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Poetry
The Road Less Traveled
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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Journal Entries
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| Welcome to this Researcher's Journal. If you'd like to comment on anything they have written here, just click the relevant 'Discuss this Entry' button. (6/14/03) Damn w*rk...
Jun 15, 2003
In the last 48 hours, I was at work for 27 and a half hours, plus (a total of) 5 hours of commuting. This has got to stop.
(6/12/03) Excuses, excuses...
Jun 13, 2003
So I haven't executed my Checkout Girl plan yet. This week I saw her on Tuesday and Wednesday, and neither day was really a good day for it.
On Tuesday, I went through her line, and asked her when she got off work. I think she said 8pm or 9pm, but there was a pretty long line behind me. In any case, I ended with, "See you next time," which seemed fine with her.
On Wednesday, I stood in her line for about 5 seconds, and decided to go to the shorter one a few aisles down. She looked kind of busy, and I didn't want to add to her workload too much. The interesting thing is that when I was leaving the store, I happened to pass by her counter and she gave me a big  . I mean, a so big and bright that it made me a bit happier the rest of the day. I felt like I was smiling the entire way home.
Once again, I have to examine this forwards and backwards. Was she just being nice, or was she trying to make me feel more welcome? Did I give the impression that I'm not so enamoured with her that I'll wait for twice as long to leave, just to go through her line? Did her smile indicate that I should move forward? Is she seeing anyone at the moment? Does she want to? So much uncertainty...
(6/4/03) Eeeeeeeeeeeexcelllllllllent...
Jun 5, 2003
All right, here's the plan for Checkout Girl:
-I'm going to make it part of our usual conversation to ask how long she has to work that day. That gets her to tell me when she gets off work every time.
-If I happen to like that time, I'll then ask her whether she has plans afterward.
-If she gives a "no," and I've got time to hang out, I'll say to her, "Well, I'd like to have coffee with you tonight. I'll be at that coffee shop next door at (her quitting time plus one hour) and if you want to show up and hang out, that's cool. If you don't want to, that's cool too."
-And like I said, if she shows up, it'll be cool. If not, that's cool too; I'll keep going back to her line as if nothing happened.
-I've got to get myself to the point where I genuinely don't care whether she shows up or not. Usually after a hard day's work, I'm tired enough that I don't care about anything. Only thing is that usually I have to get up at 4am the next morning for work, so I can't plan on doing this on any day that I have to work the following day.
Pitfalls:
-She doesn't show up: Covered above.
-She has a boyfriend: Well, that's the whole point of having coffee with her: to find out vital information about her, including whether she has a boyfriend, where does she live, what is her phone number, whether she's a psycho, etc.
-She's seen the movie "Office Space": The "...that's cool too" line is word for word from that movie. In it, the hero gets hypnotized into being completely relaxed, so he rolls into a girl's place of employment (a restaurant, in this case) and asks her out to lunch at the place next door without any nervousness or concern. But then, he also tells her that he's going to quit his job, stop paying bills and rent, and that his job was to add the extra 2 digits to the date in bank software for Y2K, and she still is interested in him. Since I don't live in a movie, I don't know if I could do quite so well with the same sort of information. Anyway, if she's seen that movie, either she'll think I'm unoriginal, I use that line all the time, or I'm that much cooler for having seen the movie. I think she probably hasn't seen it.
-She's a psycho stalker who will attach on to me: I've never had this problem.
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(5/23/03) A message in a (electronic) bottle...
May 23, 2003
Up till today, I haven't heard from either Heather in a while. Checkout Girl hasn't been around during her usual swing shift. I think that she's probably a university student who does school in the day and work at night, and I think that the term just ended and she's either not working, on vacation, or working the day shift now. I'll try showing up at random times during the day (before work, during lunch, etc.) and see if I can run into her.
As for the other Heather, I know she's been busy with exams, job interviews, etc. Every so often I'll message her on IM with a " " just to make her a little happier; her life isn't the easiest right now. There's been no response till this morning, when she sent me an email. Here's the last line of the email:
"But I did want to drop you a note to say hi, I'm still alive, and I'm thinking about you.
"Talk to you later, Heather"
I had assumed that with all that was going on, I would be pushed out of her mind till things cleared up, but perhaps that's not true. It's always nice to know that someone is thinking about you, something that I usually assume is not true.
Sometimes I wonder if it's really ethical to be trying to get Checkout Girl's attention while I've got this little arrangement with Heather. The unspoken promise is that when Heather has gotten a stable career and living situation away from her parents, then we'll be together. In my opinion, though, I've given Heather plenty of chances to stake an official claim to me, and she hasn't really taken me up on them, preferring to leave things as they are until she's done with what she's doing. And given my astounding record of successes with women, I don't think that pursuing Checkout Girl will result in a serious relationship. It'll probably be a nice friendship at best, a nodding familiarity at worst.
(5/22/03) Must be a tough question...
May 22, 2003
At the time of this writing, there are 2,463 posts to the "Where can I find some nice friendly girls?" thread in "Ask H2G2," and to my knowledge the question still hasn't been answered.
Of course, I know the answer to that question, but it doesn't help much. You can find lots of nice, friendly girls at any medium to large sized university that has a reasonably sized agriculture, business, or liberal arts department. The university I went to had all three, and I never appreciated how many women I met there that I would not have otherwise encountered in real life. The problem arises when you're not a student currently attending said university, or any university for that matter. Then you become that pervert who keeps hanging around trying to pick up coeds.
I've been to the supermarket three times since I've introduced myself to Checkout Girl, and I haven't run into her yet. She's pretty slippery; I used to know what hours she worked, but for some reason her hours keep changing around these days.
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Last posted: Jan 23, 2004
