Surreptitious Opinionation

When browsing a gaming website, one of the banner ads was for ExploreFreedomUSA.org. The use of the keyword “freedom” as in “they hate us for our freedom”, and “freedom fries”, “freedom to starve” and related patriotism-justifies-anything bullshit, suggested to me probable republican ties. Curious as to the political leanings of my favorite how-to-craft-X-in-ffxi website, I checked it out. It has a one sentence thing about homeland security, saying that it’s everyone’s business. Report suspicious things. (Turn your neighbor in, if you’re a good party member you’ll do it).

But it also has extensive linkage on the first amendment. The only one I browsed was talking about overprotective hyperreaction to something that smacked school officials as vaguely collumbine-ish. Apparently a killed was expelled and spent 3 days in jail for something he’d drawn two years ago, that his brother unknowingly brought to school, and accidentally displayed. Hmmm, sounds a little more protecting free speech, not something I associate with republicanism these days (unless by “speech” you mean “campaign contributions”).

Then there was the get out the youth vote thing. Something I associate with thoroughly democratic strategies. *shrug* I have no idea what to make of it.

Let me tell you how I feel about grad school. If I find work I enjoy, where I feel like I’m useful, I will be happy to never finish my masters degree.

Well, I wasn’t a first-string offerree for the GAO, but I’m apparently on the alternate list. Enh. Something in an advocacy/education organization on energy policy, preferably renewables, particularly biofuels would probably be more along the lines of my exact interests.

Stick kids in an educational system where you only have to be “good enough”, and there’s no reward for going beyond that, in fact there’s no system, no challenge, no nothing for going beyond that. Now, assume that bar were set low. Whether it’s low or high is purely subjective of course. But if you spend 2/3 of the first 18 years of your life where your only goal is to be ‘good enough’, doing your best won’t come really natural. And when you run into less structured environments in life, your toolbox probably doesn’t fit.

Welcome to my life. Sadly, this pattern is still working out for me. B’s on the midsemester papers. B’s on the midsemester tests. It’s fucking grade inflation. I want a do-over on my life. I want sister dorothy gerlica (I only just now realized the potential pun value on that one) to shove her “wait for the rest of the class” attitude up her habit. I want mom and dad to support me getting a real goddamn education, including not deciding that “skipping a grade might stunt Stephen’s social life”. I want to have not internalized all these stupid “wait for it and good things will come” attitudes. Most especially that last one. The rest is incidental, and matters only as it leads into that.

Bitter, party of 1, your table is waiting.

Too late now, but I was thinking of UW Madison because they seemed to be less structured there, and it would have made me take more initiative, in theory. Hmmm. How to cultivate a habit of proactivity….

‘s recent post on living wills and what not, got me thinking….

I’d say that I haven’t done this yet, because deciding what to do with my body after my brain goes buhbye is up to the living, but really I think it’s mostly because I’m lazy. If there’s hope, keep me alive. Even if I come out retarded, I’m fine with that. Crippled and retarded, I’d adapt. If my speech centers go, if I am incapable of feeding myself or communicating, and there is no rational chance that that will be reversed, then pull the plug. Or spare the uncertainty and delay, pump me up with happyjuice til the meat can’t take it anymore.

I’ve often thought how odd it would be for me to die. Who would know who to contact to get the word out for my funeral? Would they call everyone in my cell phone? (that would result in some awkward conversations, I’m sure.) Would some friends of mine not find out for years? It’s dumb to say, but I’d feel kind of bad for them (I know, I wouldn’t be feeling anything, if my guess as to the afterlife is on target), more accurately, the thought of people missing it who’d want to be there makes me a little sad now. Everyone should have their time to grieve and get on with their lives together.

I signed up for organ donation with my last license. If my whim were the determinant of the fate of my remains, I’d say cremate the rest & use it to fertilize (is (human) ash useful as/in fertilizer?) a garden somewhere. Maybe a floral garden if people get weird cannibalism vibes. Though the idea of my body helping feed other people has a certain symbolic beauty to me.

struck a chord with a post he made. So, I respond here:

A few points here from someone hoping to become a professional in related matters.

1) There is an enormous demand to get to manhattan (and a bunch of the rest of NYC, but especially manhattan). There is a limit to the capacity that can feed into and through manhattan without making manhattan so overwhelmed with transportation systems as to do detract from the coolness of manhattan. Even ignoring the people such a system would bring in, if you broaden the roads, you’re going to have to take out sidewalks and/or buildings. And there’s only so many subways that can be built.

2) I’m betting buses don’t get [much] special right of way over cars. If they did, there’d be a never-ending shitstorm over it, and a bunch of people getting the fuck out of their cars, and onto buses (thereby taking up vastly less highway space).

3) The job of public transportation is to provide cheap movement for a person with limited baggage. I doubt it’s failing in that regard. It may not be doing it quickly, or efficiently, but if it were really not doing it’s job, nyc couldn’t exist as it currently does. The tidal volume of people into and out of manhattan is enormous, and presents an ungodly challenge.

4) Congestion will exist so long as road space is unpriced. They will soon be pricing a lane of HOV to allow SOV access to in Minneapolis. It goes up with congestion to maintain freeflowing speeds to a maximum of $8/trip, before it decides that it shouldn’t charge anymore, and kicks all the would-be payers out. It won’t even come close to paying for the upgrade to the system, let alone for the construction costs for the lane. When faced with the actual costs of a highway system, motorists don’t want to pay. (Of course, the only reason there are significant maintenance expenses on roads is because we use them for big heavy shipping things.)

5) Highway congestion will suck as long as public transit sucks. If public transit sucks, nobody’s going to get on it, they’ll get on the highway instead, voila, congestion. Until it gets so fucking congested, that people who might otherwise drive start taking public transit. If you make public transit so that it’s almost as good as an uncongested highway, you’ll have uncongested highways.

Jesus, I wish I could write like this when I had papers due.

Warning, commentary on capitalism ahead: this is from the 80’s, and it’s just so … perfect

I did a back handspring with no spotter today, a couple times. Whee! So much easier than front handsprings and front tucks. Must feed the hunger.

Last ditch procrastination effort.

So, after my interview with the GAO, and subsequently beating myself up, I came to an important realization that I number of you probably think is so overwhelmingly obvious, I might as well talk about the color of grass. I’m pretty clear that a number of people have identified it as my most annoying trait, and I’m starting to see how it regularly fucks me up. the chip on my shoulder

So, for Saturday, I think, and some of Sunday, I was messing around with ffxi, and managed to convert that 100k gil into about 10 points in alchemy, and 30-40k gil of stuff sitting in my auction house. More expensive than originally planned, sadly. FFXI may well run up against my impatience at some point. Also went for a bit of a walk with and watched a movie late in the evening with Joe. Something about a bisexual Irish immigrant worker in NYC being screwed over by his uncle, and messing his life up. Bleak, not recommended, sadly I’ve forgotten the name, so I can’t properly disrecommend it.

For “Zombie Jesus Day” as called it, I can’t remember what I did in the morning, but our table went away with its rightful owner. In the afternoon, I went with to le chateau de and . They played all flesh must be eaten, while I introduced myself to WoW with a truly hideous undead warlock chick. It was fun. I can’t wonder how much my visual impressedness with the game was due to superior programming and how much was due to the gargantuan size of the flat panel. Still not getting it until I finish the semester.

My finances are indeed fucked (rice and potatoes level fucked), but today I mailed the check from mom to the bank, so perhaps things will be better soon. This reminds me that I need to make the time to post about my most recent self-improvement personality project.