Pbbtthhh...

Work yesterday was tough; after a frighteningly slow spell last week, it seems as though disease itself had come back from vacation, willing to roll up its sleeves and dive right back into work. We responded as best we could, though an ER doctor yelled at me for not being psychic. We received blood on her patient, didn't have orders to run any tests, and stored it as we always do in that situation. Most of the time, someone puts in test orders, we run the tests, and the doctors get the results and react... however they do. From time to time, the twenty-year-old computer system we're running (MS-DOS didn't know the meaning of the phrase "blue screen of death") doesn't get the results to the doctor right away, so they call us, and we tell them. In this instance, as often happens, the computer failed to magically predict what the doctor was going to order, so the doctor decided to take it out on me. Lots of people take out their frustrations on me over the phone; ER doctors just take out their frustrations on me a lot more.

So I came home to an empty apartment. A few hours of blessed solitude, and then the roommates came home from what turned out to be a girl's night out. They felt it would be a little inappropriate to ask me to get out of the apartment right as I came home from work, so they decided to vacate to parts unknown. I am simply baffled by this decision. It is certainly not in keeping with what I've come to learn about them over the past few months. Had you asked me yesterday how they would behave in such a situation, I would promptly have replied that they would not only kick me out of the apartment, but lock and chain the door behind me, and expect me to be grateful for the opportunity to have been viewed by their real friends at all. This acknowledgement of my existence, to say nothing of my humanity, is suspicious. I can't say for certain what they're up to, but I have bought a special eye-peeler in order to keep my eyes peeled.

Will teach for food.

A perennial complaint among students at a certain local college is how much the president of the university makes (about $300,000 per annum, plus such perks as a house and a plane). This wouldn't normally bother anyone, except that they feel the money has to come from somewhere, and recent cutbacks in things such as the maintainence budget have left people feeling a little irritated. I can only imagine how certain world events will go over on campus.

Myself, I wouldn't mind a sweet gig as a university president. Big business, like running a university, looks really easy from outside. If you make decisions purely at random, and your team does well, you get to take credit. If you make decisions purely at random, and your team does poorly, the other guys "just wanted it more". And as near as I can tell, making decisions according to some grand scheme doesn't tend to yield any better results than pure chaos.

As I've often told people, my long term career goals include becoming a professor; which may be an even easier proposition today than ten years ago. Who knows? Maybe I can podcast lectures as many people currently podcast random things. Maybe universities will become obsolete, with higher education available to anyone with the will to learn. Maybe one day I, too, can run a major university like my own personal piggy bank. And maybe not. But hey, predicting the future is one of those things you can do with no "success" requirement. Awesome.

Education.

I learned some valuable lessons this morning. I tried to find out what kind of biochem degree the local private college has to offer, and the answer is "none". What's more, they do not cater to non-traditional students, a group I hadn't thought included me until a phone call to the college corrected me. Anyway, the college can't give me a degree because I'm too old and well-educated. Damn. I might be able to pull of young, but I've never been good at stupid.

So it looks like I will have to go for the local state college, which entails throwing myself at the mercy of an ungodly bureaucracy, the likes of which Hermes Conrad himself could never conceive. Seriously. I spent damn near three semesters as a freshman at the hands of these people, followed by two weeks of sophomorehood. Three more semesters of junior "year", and two of senior, and I was out. Free! Free of my surly bonds! Free of the maddening, groin-kickingly awful maze of their forms and lost instructions! If I return to that situation, have I learned nothing? Isn't my degree proof that I was smart enough, if not to beat the system, then at least to leave it? If I go back, is my first degree worthless? Well, it's in philosophy, so it's pretty useless anyway. So, yeah, I may well head back, but I still have months to consider the matter. And with my degree, I can consider it like nothing you've ever seen... or have you? Now there's a taste of some real philosophy, not like some amateur hacks seem to produce.

Truth..?

So, I was watching the Colbert Report, when a commercial came on for Truth. The commercial consisted of people doing nice things, and then using bullhorns to advertise the fact. Their point was that a tobacco company once did something nice (gave $125,000 to feed the poor), and then advertised the fact (to the tune of $20,000,000). My problems with this ad are as follows:

1. Without smokers, those poor would be out $125,000 worth of food. I don't have $125,000 in small change in the couch. You don't either. Between the two of us, we're looking at four, maybe five dollars, tops. (Okay, it's a bad point, but the next one is better. Trust me.)

2. The Truth people are ragging on tobacco companies for advertising... IN AN ADVERTISEMENT! They tell you about one incident of charity, and then state the advertising budget for the company. I don't technically know this to be true, but I don't know it not to refrain from being false, either. Hooray for triple negatives! Eat that, Truth!

On another note, my dad once told me never to say anything I wouldn't want on the front page of the paper. This is advice that seems to grow more and more useful as communication technology and software improve. I watched this commercial, formed an opinion, fired up the computer, and published to the world in the space of about four minutes. Most of that was firing up the computer. Again, in the interests of honesty, only about three people are reading this. In fact, I'm not sure why I went to all the trouble to link to them; they all know about each others' blogs. Still, I hope they appreciate the effort.

Still, the point holds: everything you say and do is subject to monitoring (both overt and clandestine), and anything you may do that could possibly be embarrassing may actually end up in front of thousands of your closest friends and family. Or it would, if you were more popular. This is, incidentally, the reason stand-up comedians have such lousy love lives, which leads to such rich experience, which leads to such great material, which leads to such glamorous careers. So the system works.

My job isn't like yours.

Quite a few businesses have "casual Fridays", in order to ease the tension among coworkers and allow for a more relaxed atmosphere. Today, we had a "poke your boss with a sharp pointy needle Tuesday".

To be fair, it wasn't an official day or anything. It's just that a few new hires hadn't been trained on how to do a tuberculosis test, which involves an injection of some solution or other directly into the skin. So my boss, who has more generosity than I can imagine, offered up her forearms to let them poke her with a saline solution. From the look on her face as it happened, these kids need a little more practice.

I wanted to include a link up there, where it says "look on her face", to Eric making a "horror" face, but the URL is the same for all faces, so I'll let you explore on your own. If you bother to follow the link, then look through the list on the left hand, then click on "horror", you'll see what I'm talking about. Otherwise, you will be missing out on a truly great experience, you lazy prostitute.

As it happens, I was talking with my boss about my roommates during my break. She suggested that I simply move my furniture around the apartment without their consent or knowledge, something that strikes me as a little passive-aggressive. But hey, it's not like they're above moving my stuff around the apartment without my consent or knowledge, so if I do the same to them, it's just fair play, right?

Why is it that "fair play" always seems to describe some activity that is neither truly fair, nor particularly playful?

Still, since it's me moving my stuff around my apartment, instead of me moving someone else's stuff around my apartment, it is slightly less immoral. Only slightly, because they still end up being affected by it, but hell, it's worth a shot. And frankly, I would rather be happy than unhappy, and I'm feeling like living on my own will make me happy by a greater amount than screwing over my roommates will make me unhappy, if it comes to that.

On the subject of screwing people over, I'm wondering if I should take advantage of my hospital's generous offer to pay my tuition in a way I'm not sure they've dealt with before. There is, in this town, a private university which is (as private universities often are) quite expensive. If I go back to school and use my employer's money, I may well be able to get into this private school; I'm just not sure how happy HR will be about paying out private school tuition. But it's something I can clear up with them beforehand, since the handbook says nothing about which college I attend. It's not a deal on which I would stand to make a dishonest (or even enviable) amount of money, which is why I think it could work.

My hospital would make money off of me, because I would adhere to their "your classes must make you a better employee or we won't pay" clause by studying biochem or somesuch, and the college would make money off of me because I would be purchasing their good or service. Having a Bachelor's degree under my belt already means that I wouldn't have to pay out of pocket for (too m)any gen ed courses, and being a student means not paying back student loans for a little while. It seems like a very workable plan that benefits everyone involved, which is why I think it might not work. Cynicism is great; it cuts down on the unpleasant surprises.

Cramped & Silent.

So yeah, I'm feeling cramped. I talked with my roommates about moving my bulky excersize machine out of my bedroom, and they pointed out that there may not be room for it in the apartment. I feel that, if they had not filled it with their own furniture, there would be at least enough room for one piece of furniture, but I said nothing about that. I must be a fucking gentleman. Realistically, I feel that I am by far the better person, since I consulted with other people about a decision that might affect them before I made it. I don't remember being asked if we wanted to replace one couch with two, but that didn't stop them.

I am also still bitter about being told to keep silent during last week's The L Word, while my roommates jabbered on during the whole episode. This, I feel, is a wonderful metaphor for my relationship with them; they will have a conversation, right there in front of me, having asked me specifically not to join in. The word of the day: stifle.

It turns out, one of my roommates tripped over my guitar the other night. It seems that they moved it out of the living room and into the hall (leaning it against my door) so that it wouldn't get damaged while they moved things about in the living room. When she tripped over it while it was in the hall, she moved it into my bedroom. I'm not sure how to feel about that. On one hand, there was absolutely no malicious or even selfish intent in the sequence of events; they felt they were acting in my own best interests. On the other hand, this paragraph wouldn't exist if they had simply asked me to put the instrument out of the way so that it wouldn't get hurt. Back to wonderful metaphor.

Anyway, they seem to have no problem with having my cello and guitar out in the living room, once they've moved all of their excess boxes of random stuff out of the way. That they feel they have a say in the matter is at once darling and obnoxious. Those instruments being moved out of my room is a Band-Aid; having the excersize machine in the living room is life-saving surgery. They have a week to figure out how they want things, and then they will learn the meaning of the word accomodate.

I bet you thought I was going to say "pain". Well, I didn't. So there. Have I stopped being the better person yet?

Blog for the sake of blog.

I'm often reminded of the line from Dickenson: "Much madness is the finest sense/ to a discerning eye". Just thought you should know.

I had a great idea for a blog entry earlier today, but it's gone now, so I'm just typing because I can.

I'm watching X-Men, and Bishop and Cable are duking it out because they are from different times. Bishop is trying to save millions of people from his (earlier) future, and Cable is trying to do the same for his (later) future. Thing is, neither future is very pleasant, so why they're trying to save them is beyond me.

Anyway, all I can think of is Red vs. Blue, and the episode where one guy kept going back in time, trying to fix the past. Eventually, he made a whole huge group of chrono-clones of himself, and they sat down to figure out why nothing worked.

Cable seems to have a device which allows him to teleport, and he just used a payphone to teleport into a building. Apparently, the future of teleportation technology is dial-up.

Okay, that's all for the midnight blogger what blogs at midnight. A parting thought: who would win in a fight between the Tick and the Crimson Chin?

Lies, damn lies, and...

I can't stand it when people misuse statistics. Not just from a moral outrage point of view, but from a perspective of family pride, as well. And now, the government is scrounging around for statistics to misuse. Who cares how many searches for porn Google has had? Unless the government can show a) that any portion of those searches were from children, and b) that those searches actually yielded offensive material, the actual number of such searches is irrelevant. And even if those two conditions are met, why didn't the parents password protect their computer? My cable box has a lockout feature on it, so that I can use a simple four-digit passnumber to lock any show from being viewed on that box. Why isn't the government going after porn on premium channels? Do kids have less access to television than the internet?

Parents today are getting let off the hook too easily. I remember well being a kid. Outsmarting my parents was possible, but not for anything serious. I am the middle of five kids, and my folks still managed to keep an eye on me, even though they both worked. Why can't these idiotic, single-income-2.4-kid families keep it together? Or don't the parents of today love their kids anymore?

That must be it. 87.4% of all parents who are involved in these lawsuits hate their kids. They don't want to protect them; that's just a smokescreen for the sick thrills they get out of punishing kids under the guise of protecting them. Also, a third of those children, the ones these parents SAY they're trying to protect, will be cooked and fed to their siblings to fatten them up. See? I can do it too! Where's my cushy government job?

Mad science.

I have always wanted to be a mad scientist. When I got my first chemistry set, I was a little disappointed when I found out I couldn't use it to make anything blow up. But now, mad science is so specialized, I don't know what I want to go into. Mad communication science has been getting headlines lately, but only for government contracts. Frankly, science just isn't mad enough when you've got the Man ordering you around.

Mad physics is always a classic, but we can't really dissociate a mad field of science with its non-mad twin, and regular physics doesn't seem to have anything cool cooking these days. Mad biology is at the other end of the spectrum; bio-evil doesn't appeal to me. I want to be a mad scientist, not a bad scientist.

I think what works best for me is mad chemistry. I would develop new and exciting substances, to be used for insane purposes. Think Flubber, but slightly more destructive. I suppose I'll need a doctorate to get that far, but that shouldn't be a problem. Sleep well... for now. Mwa-ha-ha-haaa!

Morning.

My roommates woke me up this morning by making loud kitchen noises. I came out, and they were watching the weather channel, a feat I thought impossible for anyone who hadn't yet retired.

I looked out the window, saw that it was snowing, remembered that it had been snowing for ten straight hours, that we live in Michigan, and that it's January. Me, I could've made a reasonable guess that wearing shorts and flip-flops would not have been the best move to make; I guess my roommates wanted to know.

I should probably stop blogging so much about how annoying my current roommates are, but there are three fundamental facts that prohibit such restraint:

1. My current roommates are REALLY annoying.
2. My last roommates were the most awesomest roommates in the whole world, and I include the Playboy Mansion in that. Given the choice, my old roommates... would understand, which is how awesome they are; I don't imagine the Bunnies to be so forgiving.
3. One of my roommates has an ex, if whom neither she nor her girlfriend is particularly fond. This ex is going to pick up the last of the stuff she left in the apartment this week, so my roommates are in especially foul moods. My New Year's resolution is not to murder anyone in their sleep. Waking hours only!

God, I need coffee.

Blech.

Long day at work today. We were swamped, but fortunately, I had a shift that was an hour earlier than usual, so I got to head off before the late-night doldrums set in. Also good: I got to watch the entire episode of The Tick that was on tonight, and it was the one with Tick's snot-clone. Good times.

My roommates have a cat which emits odors 12-year-old boys are incapable of, either on command or at socially crippling times.

I might have to start learning yoga. My back is generating pain because I am sitting, and it will switch to an entirely different flavor of pain once I stand up. Laying down is fine, but not very practical for most everyday tasks.

Well, so that this post doesn't leave you wholly depressed, I leave you with this celebration of human achievement. Have a good day, all.

Perhaps...

I will change my blog address in the near future. I'm happy with Blogger's ease of hyperlink use, but i don't like the default font, and I'm not sure how to change it as a default. Arial is what I love, but I don't want to have to select it for every blog entry. Also, I just wrote a post, but it looks like it's taking a little while to actually appear on the site. Also also, I like to keep things in the family. And now that I think of it, the hyperlink function could be a little easier to use. Is it hypocritical of me to bash Blogger on my Blogger account? Discuss amongst yourselves. Next time on Coffee Talk: Henry Kissinger and John Cleese in a fight to the death.

Okay, I got a little away from myself. Sorry.

Anyway, in case anyone wants to think about my birthday, it's in six months. Hey, if all my readers pool together, I... will have to buy it myself. Let's see if that last link actually works...

Legs tired.

I just got home from work, which was exhausting. Today, I was running specimens from the front of the lab, where they are labeled and tagged into the computer system, to the back of the lab, where they are actually tested. It's only about a 50 ft. trip each way, but when you make it 15-20 times an hour, it takes a lot out of you. My legs and ass feel like crap.

Okay, time to experiment with hyperlinks. I feel confident that I now can navigate Blogger's hyperlink system. Sort of.

Now that that's under my belt, I wish to hawk my various brothers' wares.

My roommates have a coffee table, which is very nice, except that it is unstable and delicate. It consists entirely of a glass pane laying unsecured on a central stone column, so it is easily scratched and may tip over at any moment. I feel that a coffee table's primary function is to support whatever is placed on it, such as feet, coffee table books, and if absolutely necessary, coffee mugs. My roommates are of the opinion that this item of furniture is, first and foremost, a decorative object; something to sit in the room and be pretty. I'm not sure, but I strongly suspect that they feel that way about me, too. Well I've shown them- I'm utterly failing at being pretty. Ha ha!

Okay, I would not feel complete without a shout-out to my friends and honorary family. As a favor to you guys, I promise never to use the phrase "shout-out" in your presence again.

Interesting.

I just tried to let Blogger know what I do for a living. It wouldn't let me. What I do, specifically, is obtain and process blood samples to be tested at a hospital. I suck blood for a living. Anyway, the following options were not available for use as "Occupation": Medicine, Healthcare, Hospital, Phlebotomy, Mosquito. I would have taken any of them, but the closest I could get was "Biotech", which I felt would send the wrong message.

Hrmm...

I made a new blog today. I do that from time to time. My other one is at Livejournal. I have the same username. I like making simple, declarative statements. You may as well get used to this now.

You should check out Powered by Caffeine. Kim is very cool, and you should read about her life.