Bit of a silly rant here, and I know I have probably posted about this before, but as a friendly reminder I would like every to know that Facebook is stupid. It will be in the history books as one of the causes of global stupidity a la Idiocracy: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/. It is like a shortcut to personality. Telling everyone in your friends list something at the same time robs you of the storytelling craft, and the human interaction that makes you who you are. Also, I am sure there are people in your friends list that do not need to know or care what you have done. I would also go a step further and claim that there are people in your friends list that are not even really your friend. There are probably even people who have completely exchanged human interaction and the art of storytelling with simple facebook entries, but hey, at least they have over 200 "friends".

Facebook is free. What? No, of course it is not really free. There are all types of ads on there, that of course, Facebook gets tons of cash for. Facebook gets it, not you, even though you are the one viewing the ads. Recent articles have shown Facebook to be worth 50 billion dollars. How much of that money do you get for being a member? Exactly none. Seems like a bit of a rip off to me.

They also have awesome games like some kinda farm shit, some kinda vampire shit, and some kinda mafia shit. Games where you have to keep playing to stay ahead of your friends (all the while showing you more ads), and if you ever stop playing, you probably feel bad about it. Great, now Facebook is having a negative impact on you.

Here is a small sample of some things I found on Facebook in less than 10 seconds:

"Jeff is now friends with Alex" - Great, two people I don't know are now fucking friends. Maybe they can queer off together and go ride a merry-go-round.

"thank god it's fridayyy :)" - Clearly the world's next Shakespeare.

"God damn. I LOOOOOVVVVEEEE TO COOK!" - Good, go fucking do it and shut up.

"wishing i was in a dead sleeep." - I wish you were just dead.

But hey, at least you can "poke" your "friends". GREAT! Tell you what, next time you are about to poke someone on Facebook, invite me over and I will poke you right in the eye, and we will both have something interesting to share with our friends.

I do also get the irony of posting this in an article format for the world to read at the same time, but this is not something that I haven't told everyone I know already. Also, I can assure you there was 10 times more thought put into this rant than ANYTHING you have EVER posted on Facebook. I would challenge you to go back to 6 weeks ago and assess maybe three things you posted on Facebook, and see if you feel they have any redeeming value. ...See, now you feel like some kind of asshole.

The other day I was driving to work and I saw a lady walking down the sidewalk. She had about 4 dogs with her, all on separate leashes. The dogs seemed a little unruly, but nothing she couldn't handle. Then all of a sudden, I see a guy with a single dog, also on a leash going the other direction, towards her. Just about the time I got even with where they were going to cross paths, the man's dog lashed out at the multiple dogs, causing the lady to yank the leashes and leap out into the street. I was going about 45 miles per hour, but I was able to slam on my breaks and swerve to avoid killing her and all her dogs. Not a huge deal, crisis averted, everyone and all animals were OK, and everyone went on their merry way. This could very easily have gone the other way.

It made me think about some of the tragic stories you see on the news almost every day. It was literally a matter of inches, great luck, quality driving, and good timing. If I had left the house maybe 1 second earlier and was 1 second farther down the road, I would wager there is a good chance that lady would be a dead person. Some people aren't so lucky.

This was not a life changing event, but it does make one stop and ponder how close you could be to death each and every day, or perhaps close to being involved in something where someone else gets hurt, or potentially killed. It makes one think about how many times on earth each day something like that happens, and how many of those times, it ends badly. It just takes a single split second in time to be the difference between a miss and a near miss, and there is a good chance you could have no idea this was even happening. My hero George Carlin once said, "...here's one they just made up. "Near miss". When two planes almost collide they call it a near miss. IT'S A NEAR HIT!! A collision... is a near miss. BOOM! "Look, they nearly missed!" "Yeah, but not quite!".

What is my point to all this? What lesson can we learn here? Probably none in terms of avoidance, you don't get to control that type of fate, but you can certainly take stock in what you have and what you do and who you are, and make sure you attempt to live life to the fullest, because some dickweed in a boogie van might run over you tomorrow.

....and we're back. 2011, Weird. I sort of fell off the grid for a while there. I went to Vegas, then hit Shreveport a couple of weeks later, then there was Christmas and New Years, its all a blur.

So I spent Christmas weekend in Shreveport gambling. Had a free room and free buffets and whatnot, so I said what the heck. I was only 2 weeks back from Vegas, but I figured that didn't matter, a good time is a good time, who says you can't have two good times in any given time frame. Anyway, I noticed something interesting when I was there. In case you don't recall my heartfelt opposition to cell phone companies, and their craft, you can reread the post as a refresher here: CELL PHONE ASS RAPE.

So there I was, in Eastern Louisiana, sitting at a Lord of the Rings slot machine next to a lady who had to be every bit of 75 years old. I heard a strange noise, and this lady proceeded to pull out her iPhone4, and start texting, and using apps and whatnot. Wait a sec. Did I miss something? Has that type of technology reached the elderly at this point? I must say that at first I felt sorta bad. Here I am a thirty-something white guy who has made technology a career. I should have the iPhone, and she should have my shitty low end Motorola RAZRv3. I felt like the old person in the scene. "Why do I need all that fancy new stuff, why would I wanna pay the cell phone company a thousand dollars a year when I don't need to", and so on. Someone could have given her the phone as a gift I suppose, or perhaps someone else could pay her bill for her, or maybe she could be rich beyond her wildest dreams, there could have been lots of variables, but I suspect in this case, things were just as they appeared.

Then the thought mostly faded when I realized that for the amount of money she spent on her phone and her service plan, I could go to that very casino probably 5 or 6 times annually. She is also bound to a 2 year contract, which could quite literally be the rest of her life. She got suckered into their scam, not me. I suppose this falls into my overall plan to balance 'having' and 'being'. She can have her iPhone, and I can be on vacation more. Is she better off than me? I think not. Cosmically, would someone rather listen to her story about her iPhone being awesome, or my story about the old lady with the iPhone, who thought her iPhone was awesome.

I realize this anecdote is weak, but it was one of those sort of whoa moments for me, when I realized a whole bunch of crap at the same time, so I felt the need to document it for posterity.

Awesome, exactly 0 posts in November! It may be a new record. Why you ask? I have no idea. I have plenty of time, so I guess I just have nothing important to transmit? That cannot be right. I have been maintaining a fairly low profile, going to work, going to hockey, and that's about it.

So I was analyzing the old blogarooney here, and saw that there were 92 posts in 2007, that averages out to one every 3.96 days, and it wasn't all fluff, it was not just empty filler, it was quality. Then in 2008 the count dropped down to 49, or average of one post every 7.4 days. Then 2009 brought only 30, or 1 every 12.1 days. Counting this post, only 19 in 2010 thus far. So, every year the count roughly gets halved. Weird.

I read back over tons of posts from the last few years and I think I understand why I started this in the first place, and also why it has dwindled. Does this mean a complete renaissance of the blog? I am not sure yet. Does it mean an increased post count? probably.

I am pretty sure that I don't have less to say than I used to, and I am not completely lazy. I think that I sort of got a form of writer's block. It has not just happened here, I mostly stopped writing pieces for my book, short stories, and all kinds of other things I was working on. I am even having a hard time writing articles for a gaming site that I write articles for sometimes. My biggest issue is that I over analyze and criticize my own work. This applies to almost every aspect of my life. I over analyze every purchase I make, I over analyze every food I cook, I pre and post analyze conversations I have with people. I have done this for most of my life.

I cannot help it, I am a analytical type of dude I guess. Also, I understand that there is not anything wrong with that. It allows me to become better, and make wiser decisions. The downside in my mind is that it may be interfering with my ability to just... be.

I was watching an episode of CSI last night, and Ray Langston was talking to Nick Stokes about Erich Fromm's philosophy on "having" versus "being". It was strangely quite moving. The episode revolved around a hoarder, so Langston was explaining the difference between a having type of personality and a being type personality and the potential pitfalls and that sometimes people go to extremes either way. So the hoarder just took her 'having' personality to a strange level.

A while back I read the book "Yes Man" by Danny Wallace and it changed my entire lifestyle. I realized that I was a having type and not a being type, but I always wanted to be being. After that I strived to at least become half having, half being. Hence, the 'awesome summer' was born, along with many other unscheduled and unplanned outings. I have gotten away from that, and I realize it now, thanks to Ray Langston. I have trained myself not to be 'having' so much. I have paid off credit cards debts, and I really don't buy anything anymore, unless I absolutely need it. I don't buy a fancy new TV just because I can. Some people might stop me there and say part of being is just not worrying about money and buying things as I see fit. True, however, buying useless things, to replace perfectly good things, leans more towards having than being. Being, would be going to the store and looking at the TV's versus buying one. The adventure could be the reward more so than the possession.

So a renewed effort begins to just say "fuck it", and be, and invariably, that will result in more writing.

So the other day I was in traffic sitting at a red light. I look to my left and I see a fat white lady, probably 20-25 years old. She was driving a really shitty Sunfire or some other low-rent type car. She had her windows down and was jamming to the sweet tunes coming out of her radio. In the front passenger seat was a small black child, I would estimate to be 3-4 years old. No seat belts in use in the car. The light turns green, and this lady slams on her gas pedal, squealing the tires as much as her puny Sunfire or whatever kind of crappy car it was could muster. Then she pulled into a parking lot like 200 feet past the intersection. Play that through in your head a few times. What the hell?

Shame on you lady. 1. You have a shitty car. 2. You are fat. 3. You have a small unsecured child in your car. 4. You radio is way too loud. 5. You don't need to spin out to go 200 feet to McDonalds.

I should have declared a fuckin' citizen's arrest and had this lady put in the slammer. I also have been around all kinds of people in my life, and I would bet you a month's salary this lady had some form of illegal drugs on her personal self or in her car. What a mess this bitch was. And you know what really bugs me about the whole scenario. That lady was probably as happy as a pig in shit. She appeared to be doing just fine and not have a care in the world. I guess ignorance really is bliss.

So, I am not sure why I made this link in my head, because what I am about to say in completely unrelated, but... In Texas you can make a LEFT on red. Most people are aware you can make a right on red, but in ANY scenario where you can make a right on red, you can also legally make a left on red. When you pull up to a red light in the right lane and you are turning right from a one way street onto another, its all golden, but people listen up, the same shit applies for pulling up to a red light in the left hand lane, turning onto another one way street. I am not talking about crossing traffic lanes or anything, just turning left directly onto another one way road. I am fully aware that this scenario is not possible near as much as it is in the right handed configuration, but it does happen. Do not be afraid. You will make traffic flow smoother. If you have the ability to make a left on red and you do not do so, you, are a complete asshole. The stinky brown part.

If you need proof of this it is Texas Transportation Code Chapter 544, article 007, subsection d.2.

For lazy people like Elixir, here is a handy link:http://law.onecle.com/texas/transportation/544.007.00.html

or you can visit the Texas statutes page here:
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/

I did not do the full water boil test on the Brutus 10 clone. I did begin my research for creating two new beer recipes though, so at least I achieved something. My shitty job has got me back into zombie mode, where I live a nocturnal existence and sleep all day. This makes doing anything sorta difficult. I have paid off my credit card debt though, and I have been studying up for a technical interview. The credit card thing is an important milestone, because without the load of having to make huge monthly payments to get out of debt, I can consider some short contract type employment if necessary. Studying for a tech interview is handy as well, because in my line of work, the behavioral and psychological questions are the easy part. At any rate, today's post is not about any of that. So to change the subject completely...

When I was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, I heard some rednecks talking about Terry Fator, who is a ventriloquist who won a million dollars winning the America's Got Talent TV show. He later signed a whopping 200 million dollar Vegas deal. They did not believe that the guy really got a million dollars, much less the 200 million dollar deal at the Mirage, and they also did not believe that he was doing all the voices himself. They thought that the voices were basically on tape, and he was just acting like a ventriloquist. Then I started thinking... hey, these dumb shits have a conspiracy theory about a fucking ventriloquist. They cannot believe some guy puts his hand in a puppet and throws his voice.

It made me wonder if, or by how much, conspiracy theorists' theories vary by race, class, age, and so on. The thought that a ventriloquist could be faking has never, ever, not a single time, leapt into my brain. I wonder what made these people think that? It seemed sort of below me to wonder or worry about something as irrelevant as that. It isn't, it just seemed like it at the time.

Do black people have conspiracy theories that white people do not take into consideration? I am sure there are some related to Hurricane Katrina, particularly if you ask Kanye West. I am sure white people are more prone to consider 9-11 a conspiracy than black people. Old people probably have theories about Pearl Harbor or JFK that young people never think about, and young people probably think Biggie and Tupac were both slain at the command of Suge Knight, which I am sure old people have never heard of at all.

I have always been intrigued by conspiracy theory/ists. I don't have any particular ones that I subscribe to, and any time I hear one, I can usually discount it fairly quickly, so I am more focused on the theorist, rather than the theory.

It would be interesting to do a study on conspiracy theories, and categorize which various groups believe in which theories, and lay it our in some kind of chart. Am I going to do it? Hell no, that sounds like an awful lot of work to me.

But I bet that's what you want to happen. You want me to do the study and make the chart, because the more time I spend on it, the more you keep me locked up and working, and the more time I work, the less time I go to K-mart and buy water hoses. And the less time I spend buying water hoses, the less time I spend watering the yard, which means it doesn't grow as much, which means I am trying to put illegal immigrant out of work, which means I must be pro border fence, because the government needs to build a border fence to keep Americans employed. They need Americans employed to pay into the ponzi scheme that is social security, so those government fat cats can retire on our money, and then not care if it goes away later, because they will all be dead. Dead and buried taking up valuable real estate, taking up more and more land, and eventually forcing the Native Americans to seek shelter on the moon, which means they will advance in space travel, which will anger the North Koreans, which will then incite a new world war. So you hate Mexicans and want to see Indians on the moon, but I am not falling for it, do your own study.

I am going to do the full water test on the Brutus 10 clone on Monday! Yay. If all goes well, I will make a few beer recipes, buy the ingredients, and kick Fall off right.

I am not sure why I feel the way I do about the next subject, but here goes. Last night, I was getting my equipments together to go play hockey. I hear some chiming type polution outside. It kept growing louder and louder, and then I heard some people chattering. Once the racket was loud enough and close enough to be clear, it was unmistakable.

An ice cream truck!

Now... it is two thousand fucking ten. We do not need ice cream trucks anymore. The first thing that pops into my head is wow, some guy wants to rape children. What kind of person chooses voluntarily, to purchase an entire ice cream truck, then go on to purchase an inventory of said ice cream, with the intention of driving around neighborhoods peddling it to children? How does that thought even go into your head? Perhaps if you had just listened to Van Halen's "Ice Cream Man" you might ponder what would be involved with becoming an ice cream man, but you certainly don't act on it. Even then, the ice cream man in David Lee Roth's lyrics was a perv.

Ok, so rape and murder is a little harsh, I guess the guy is only selling top quality drugs... Hashish, ludes, reds, uppers, downers, booger sugar, angel dust, cheese, the dreaded lysergic, horse tranquilizers, dyno-pure, chucks, and so on. All the fun stuff you want your kids around. Great. I'll take two please.

Ok ok ok, I should give the guy a little credit. Maybe he doesn't really want to hurt anyone. He just wants to shit and piss and fart and sneeze and god knows what all over the ice cream, and get his jollies off knowing that people are going to eat it. There ya go, one hell of a guy.

Can you really justify in your brain someone being an ice cream man in 2010? Good I can't either. Just the though of an ice cream truck, creeps me out.

Brutus 10 clone progress report: I am at the point where I need to do a full boil water test, to make sure the burners and pump are all working and up to par for brewing beer. Unfortunately the excesses of the Texas daytime summer heat have stifled my motivation for performing such a test. Heat indices reaching ~120 make is miserable outside during the day.

So, instead, I will present to you a loose string of random thoughts.

The other day I had mowed the yard and become parched. It was shortly after that that I enjoyed one of life's little gifts that people take for granted: A nice tall cold glass of ice water is nearly impossible to beat. A glass of water so cold that beads of sweat glisten off its surface, eventually growing so large that gravity wins, resulting in a small puddle of condensation on your coaster. The kind of refreshment that you feel all the way to your core, and instantly you know that water, as slang would deem, is the shit.

When you are a small child, perhaps sometimes even into middle school years, you really are blissfully unaware of the behind the scenes magic that happens to produce an end result. I remember when I was very small and travelling with my dad and we arrived at stop light, he would say "Hey, watch this", and then he would snap his fingers and make the light change to green. I was always blown away by it. It was the late 70s, and I was 4 or 5 years old, I didn't really understand how he did it. This thought crossed my mind the other day when I cooked some pork shoulder. I smoked the meat all night and the next day. Between the prep the day before and the cooking process, I spent a solid 17 hours on it. That seems excessive when you consider it only takes maybe 20 minutes to eat it. When I go to a restaurant and eat a pulled pork sandwich, that means that someone spent in the neighborhood of 17 hours making it, and I suppose I have never thought about that while eating such an item, but I plan to. I may even go out of my way to do it, just so I can have those thoughts.

I was applying my deodorant this morning and noticed that is was called Right Guard 3D. THREE FUCKING D! It seems that 3D is the new thing the kids are into these days, why not spray it into your armpit as well. All I can say is I'm damn happy thing the latest fad aint peanut butter.