HOW HOT IS SHE?

DISCLAIMER: I fully admit I think too much about inconsequential things :-)

I've never really been a fan of the "Rate This Girl on a Scale of 1 to 10" and not because I find it sexist or anything. I actually think such a scale could be a useful tool if we were all on the same page with it but we're not. I mean, it should be a Bell Curve, right? Most people should fall somewhere in the middle of this arbitrary scale and yet they do not. Have you ever heard someone get a 5 or 6 and not feel insulted? Any site dedicated to this type of rating system shows far too many people on the 7 and 8 end of the spectrum suggesting that the scale should just be "Rate This Girl on a Scale of 5 to 10" but then I'm left wondering if grade inflation would hit a scale reduced that way as well.


As worthless an endeavor as it sounds, I've actually given thought to this stupid scaling system and wondered if it could be made not more sensible, but more useful even though no matter how thoroughly such a scale might be presented, it will remain ultimately subjective. Its value might lie in being around like-minded people which could then permit helpful comparisons. And yes, if I actually believed for a moment that people would actually read the instructions beforehand, I would happily create a website devoted this scaling system.

UGH...

      I hate to admit it, but I probably need a roommate. Not for financial purposes mind you (though that does help quite a bit), but because I am clearly not as responsible a man as I once was. I guess having that feeling, whether real or imagined, that you're being judged helps keep you in line after all. I'm not cleaning as often as I used to. I used to come home and do the dishes like clockwork. Now I have two day's worth in my sink and that sink could really use a scrubbing...as does the countertop...and the floor...and the microwave...and the table could be wiped off too... I just don't want to do it. It's possible I'm just depressed and have been depressed for the past two months even if I haven't felt it as acutely as I did when Digby was around...I'm not just gonna toss that by the wayside unacknowledged...but I'm really thinking it's coming down to the fact that no one is watching me.

      How co-dependent sounding...

      It would probably help if I had regular...hell, even semi-regular visitations from guests but so far, all my visitations have been of both the anomalous kind and from my Mom or my close friends. I'm not doing my laundry until I absolutely have to...same thing with cleaning rooms. And it's not like I wanted to clean when living with roommates...I still had to set my mind to it while at work but the fact remains that it got done on a fairly timely schedule. I could blame the long length of the Opie and Anthony Show and their infrequent breaks (when they were on regular radio, it was much easier to take care of minor chores) but I know they would be replaced (most likely) by some page on the internet that could easily have waited another day. At least my apartment doesn't feel dirty or smell bad upon entry but still, I know I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

      I'm unshackled from any sense of responsibility. Maybe...hopefully, it's just a passing phase. My first real experience of being my own man on my own terms...I just need to get some pent up laziness out. There's a rationale for ya... :-/ And suddenly my eagerness to do things I like doing or have wanted to do put have put aside (in some cases for up to ten years)...that desire has returned for some things like creating Doom levels (always good to make level designs for a nearly 20 year old PC game), thinking about planets I created in high school...even thinking more about a language I tried creating among other, more internetty things which can easily fill an overnight. I wanna do WAY more than is possible for one human mind in one lifetime so it's not hard for me to understand why cleaning my stovetop of accumulated oil droplets and mopping the bathroom floor aren't exactly on the top of my list of things to do. It's weird that I have almost nothing to show for it, yet I haven't felt this productive in years. But for that positive, there's the negative that my housework has fallen behind and continues to do so.

       So I guess I do need a roommate...or a girlfriend*...to keep my apartment tidy on schedule. I need that low-level stressful feeling of fearing being judged if I don't keep a neat home.

______________________________________________________________
* preferably a girlfriend ;-)

AN ADMITTEDLY LAZY POST...

I've been hearing this song at work lately and only yesterday found out that my Mom actually introduced me to it last Christmas. This song isn't good, but for some reason I like it. Consider it a late-entry for the old serial post "I Actually Like This Shit."


"Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People

THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part VIII

      The MUZAK station at work was playing Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" the other night. Yeah, yeah, I know, the song sounds an awful lot like "Express Yourself" by Madonna, but that's not what I was thinking about as it played. The song is a gay anthem, the latest on what I am sure is a long list. But I got to thinking... doesn't the gay community have enough anthems from the pop music category? The gay community's rather accepted in the places that listen to Lady Gaga. The inroads they need to be making are in the mid-west and southern parts of this country. Wouldn't it be better to have Country/Western gay anthems in an effect to spread kindness and acceptance throughout the country instead of merely limiting it to the coastlines and cities? I dunno and then again, it's not like I can be helpful here and offer up just such a song with a strong likelihood of going mainstream (for Country/Western audiences at least). Whatever, enjoy some Lady Gaga...

THIS IS A JOB FOR PHILOSORAPTOR...

con·serv·a·tive/kənˈsərvətiv/ Adjective: Holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in politics or religion.
Noun: A person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in politics.


lib·er·al/ˈlib(ə)rəl/ Adjective: Open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
Noun: A person of liberal views.

      See now, I had this likely hackneyed thought yesterday. How is it the candidates proffered by the Republican Party all over the country can go around claiming to be conservatives and continue to claim that the Democratic Party is comprised of liberals? Based on the definitions above, it is the Republicans who are the liberals as they have been proposing changes, some rather radical, to the way things are being done in Washington. Even if they are considered old ideas, those are still not the ideas in current practice. It is the Republican Party which is "open to new behavior or opinions" and they are certainly "willing to discard traditional values" [or at least those traditional values that have now been the norm since the 1960s and in some cases the 1930s and even earlier since Theodore Roosevelt favored breaking up monopolies and the estate tax to prevent plutocracy and Lincoln, the party's first President, favored public education]. The Republicans want to uproot and radically alter things which have been considered normal and even expected of government for at least two generations now and THAT'S considered conservative??? I just don't get it.

       But the Democrats are just as disingenuous. They claim to be supportive of liberal values. And how exactly are they supportive of them? By promoting the status quo...by urging that the system is fine as is and with only minor tweaks and adjustments will continue to serve just fine. The Democratic Party, if anything, is certainly espousing traditional conservative values by remaining cautious and even opposed to changing the system which they (as liberals of yesteryear from both parties) are largely responsible for having set up in the first place. How can you consider yourself open to new ideas and behaviors if the whole role of your party's current incarnation is to preserve the system more-or-less as is?

       If you ask me [and I know you haven't], the Democrats are the true conservatives and for better or for worse, the Republicans are the liberals. I think the sooner both sides can be made to understand this, the better because I'm really sick of the mislabelling.

THESE THOUGHTS I HAVE...

      I had two immediate thoughts upon reading the news of the Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan which took the lives of 30 American soldiers and finding out that some of those who had died were from Navy Seal Team Six, the very same team which was responsible for assassinating Osama bin Laden on May 2nd of this year was just this feeling of being annoyed that these people we've been stuck fighting against for the past ten years can now rejoice for avenging bin Laden's killing. It annoys me that the story does not end with the United States successfully avenging the deaths of the 3000+ lives taken on September 11th (as well as those lives lost in previous al Qaeda attacks on the U.S.S. Cole and the U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya for instance). No, it ends with several of our rightfully declared heroes being killed in action by the very enemy whose head they had so recently cut off. But then I realized this has happened before many times over.

        The first one I thought of is perhaps the biggest one of all: the triumphant taking of Mt. Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. I would say up until the moon landing, the photo of the second flag raising taken by Joe Rosenthal was the most iconic American photograph ever taken. It would seem an ideal vignette to have put on the back of our paper money for the Bicentennial if they hadn't stopped at the quarter, half dollar, dollar coin, and $2 bill. I'd say the $50 only because President Grant was a formal general - military theme for military theme. But there's a sadness immediately inherent to that moment captured in time. Of the six flag raisers, three would be killed within a month of its raising on February 23, 1945.

     The statistics of that battle are horrifying (21,844 Japanese soldiers out of 22,060 were KIA or committed suicide and 6,800 American soldiers were killed out of the 26,000 who landed) and though I'm sure all six of those soldiers would never have claimed to be heroes, they very much were at the very least in terms of propaganda value. The three survivors were brought home to raise money for bond drives but didn't take to the adulation well, Ira Hayes least of all. He was the first of the survivors to die at age 32.

      I'm sure the members of Navy Seal Team Six also do not feel like heroes and probably also would not care much for the adulation of the American public, but I still can't help think they deserved at least some of that. I don't know the details of who died as of this writing - it's sad enough some of that team will not be able to return home triumphant, but it would seem especially sad if the one who killed bin Laden was among them...

I CAN ONLY HOPE I'M DOING THE RIGHT THING...

I know this sounds silly at some level, but I think my Best Friend and I need a divorce. I've always wondered how couples who were married for 20-30 years would just call it quits. My thinking was like, "Well, you've made it this far, why not just stick it out?" But I think I get it now.

I'm tired of being taken for granted...actually, it's worse than that because at some level I don't mind being taken for granted because, at some level, it's actually a good thing...it means the other person believes in me...that I'll be sticking around. It can obviously be taken too far, but I do kinda like it.

My Best Friend is just this well of negativity. I don't even know how to describe it well enough to do it justice. For years, I would deal with it because I knew she was depressed so I tried not to take it personally, but it's hard not to now. I don't know that she's actually done anything about her depression. Sure, she's been on medications, but in terms of behavioral therapy which I think she needs more than she does drugs, she's worse than she's ever been. I'm tempted to post all our recent text messages for examples, but I'll stick with just one recent one. This was her asking me about my daytrip to see Bronx the other week. This was her first text to me about it. Not, how was it or did you have a good time. No, she wrote me, "watd u think of Bronx's attractiveness? u like her? saw the pic...nice. ur are in the same league...an undeerattractive coupke...she shud go for u wtf lol" [sic] This is what I have to deal with. When I said that Bronx was pretty, because she is, both physically and mentally and because she's fun to be around and good company, Best Friend responds with, "pretty my ass....u crazyyyy. and Ukrainian isnt attractive. shes the type who needs makeup to fool people." [sic] It wasn't enough for her to put down my friend Bronx, but she had to toss in my other friend and insult her too - one who I went through some trouble to introduce to each other and who really likes my Best Friend. And Best Friend wonders why I get mad at her.

It's a ton of insecurity and jealousy. And when it's not that, I just feel used (which I guess would be what you call what happens when you cross the line dividing "being taken for granted"). Her problems are always my problems or that of whomever she called. I only recall her rarely taking the initiative to figure out her conundrums. But generally, she's happy to parasitically use another to get this shit done and god forbid if you don't want to help her or aren't helping her satisfactorily because at no point does she realize that I am not obligated to actually provide this help but oh will I get hell if I refuse. That selfishness. Me, me, me, me. And I hate complaining about it because I can't help but feel like I am becoming exactly the person I am railing against when doing so. It's so frustrating. And I think it generally bugs me because I'm never able to press the offensive because SOMETHING always comes up be it a break-up or this one time when her ex actually DIED or when she would get fired or when she was genuinely scared about something or other...I get stuck being unable to demand that she correct or at least work to correct her extremely negative character before it brings an end to our friendship. It gets put on hold and by the time I can get back to it, I would only look petty for bringing it up meaning I have to wait for the pot to boil over again. That's happening now, but oh wouldn't you know, her grandmother is on the verge of death so I have to be there for her when it happens. I don't resent this...it's what you do as a friend, but it does mean that it all gets put on hold...again...but maybe not this time. I wrote this and sent it to her as a message on Facebook. Regarding the bus part, she wants me to visit her but doesn't want to have to pick me up to do so which is fine, whatever. I don't expect these kinds of things so I looked it up and commented in the same message. I didn't want to use ellipses and have it thought that I am manipulating the message. I hope I'm doing the right thing...


We can talk about your grandmother, but that's it. I'll be there for you in that regard but otherwise I need a break from you again.

There are no direct buses to your street from here. I'd have to take two buses and coordinate with their schedules. If I'm lucky, it would be about an hour of travel time plus walking time. If one of the buses is late, then it could be two hours or more of travel time. And going home could end up meaning a lot of walking. But quite frankly, until you can figure out how not to nap at least when I'm over (or you're visiting me), I'm not interested in visiting you or having you visit. It's really a waste of our time together when you do that. And especially if I'm staying by you, get up when I get up. I don't like being awake for hours waiting for you to get up. It's rude.

As for hanging up on you, I don't like your dismissive attitude and I'm about full up on your negativity. It doesn't matter what your excuse is for it because it doesn't change the fact that you're a real drag to be around. You really need to work on that. You need to be openly appreciative of the people in your life too instead of this clingy, needy, jealous girl you've been for the past half-decade or so. I'm really tired of it. Speaking just for myself, I give and I give and I've given, but it's never enough. You really need to learn how to appreciate being alive and how to stop taking out your negativity on others. You have to stop putting down my friends, it's always uncalled for. You have to stop framing my life choices in terms of you. If you want me to learn how to drive, it should be because you truly and honestly believe that it would (have) improve(d) my life, not because it inconveniences you that I don't. Don't take me for granted. I thought I could handle it, but it turns out I can't. I have a limit and you're fast approaching it. Like I said, I'll be there for you regarding your grandmother, but I need a break from you and you really ought to evaluate yourself and your attitude and your path in life, especially if you expect me to remain there by your side throughout it. You're losing me as a friend because I really can't take you as you've been for the past several years anymore. If who you are now is who you will continue to be, then you will have to be this woman without me. I'm not interested in being friends with someone who's ashamed of me and embarrassed about what I do for a living. I need friends who love me, not ones who judge me by how I make them look to others.

I still have some faith left in the idea of there being an "us" so I'm not giving up on you just yet, but I need some time away from you and I sincerely hope you will use this time productively.

ADDENDUM: The response I got back was this [names changed to aliases, but otherwise sic]:

Where did all this come from? I didn't do anything to warrent this. You are overreacting again. And what about your freinds who put me down? That is OK right? You are such a hypocrite!!!!!!!
After this little tirade of yours I am really not sure I want to be your friend so don't worry too much. Again, I did nothing to you. And don't take your misery about not driving out on mr because everyone harps on it with you. You know other people...Mystic and Ukrainian....have made the same compliant. I've told you for yearssssss to drive for yourself to help your life but you won't listen. I refuse to have pity on a person who refuses to help himself. Other people don't like driving you around and won't like I have. And if the bus was so much of an issue, I said I would drive. I figured it would be one bus n easy since there are so many around here.
You are making a BIG DEAL out of me making a comment "it's a inconvience for me so if you could take a bus...." I was just asking you. If i have to tip toe around you with what I say when I'm not even saying anything wrong then I don't need a person like that as a friend anyway.
You not wanting to be my friend anymore after "this" whatever "this" is is absurb. I am the one who now has every right to be annoyed with you.
And WHere did this come from?
"I'm not interested in being friends with someone who's ashamed of me and embarrassed about what I do for a living. I need friends who love me, not ones who judge me by how I make them look to others"

----Fuck you! How DARE you accuse me of this??????????THis is BS! I'm Not!!!! Cry me a river, Best Friend is the bad guy! WHEN am I ashamed of you?WHAT have I done to even prove this? This is bullshit and not true, you just want to play VICTIM. Iv'e been wanting you to hang out with Ukrainian and Mystic and me all together. Iv'e mentioned it to both of them. If I'm so ashamed of you why would I want that? I am not ashamed of you, I know how you are by know and you are projecting your insecurites about yourself on to me. If OTHERS don't think your "good enough" and its it's now MY fault? Bacuse women aren't interested in you are blaming me and taking your anger out on me instead? That is what is going on an I doin't deserve that.
For ex..... I'm a bitch b/c I want a guy who graduted college(* but Ukrainian isn't?) You of course, take this as a direct insult b/c you haven't. In turn you hate me for expressing that. Turns out the rest of the world of women feels the same way, you realize it, then turn to hate me cuz you don't have the guts to say anything to anyone else.....and you shouldn't even be offended in the first place b/c not everything is about you but you are because you are an egomaniac, that's how you think.....
I thought before the email yesterday that I was wrong in thinking you were a real true friend and this only confirms it. Again, I did not do ANYTHING to you so knock off the victim routine.
Yes, Iv'e been depressed, yes I sleep a lot. That's about it. And I understand I should be awake when your over, so if that's the worst thing I did that you won't be my friend so be it.
I think you have to straighten yourself because acting the way you are is NOT normal.

She temporarily suspended her account after this but it is back up today and I am still on her Friends List. Make of this as you will but I can't help but feel my Best Friend has missed the point by a wide margin. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought my original message was being painted in broad strokes suggesting a pattern of behavior that I am in need of relief from whereas her response seems to indicate a far narrower approach as well as virtually no recognition of her role in this (and yes, it amuses me somewhat her lack of response to my accusing her of a dismissive attitude), strongly suggesting this is 100% my fault and she, the innocent. Her memory of others is long while for herself it is short. I might have to port some entries from previous blogs to here to further illustrate the scope of this problem. Until then, if you've known me, you'll know where they may still be found.

In the meantime, I am going to clarify to her that I did not mean to imply that I had wished to break off all contact. I am still willing to have a Facebook relationship with her, but I don't want phone, text, or visitation contact since those latter three are the greatest sources of my misery with her. I need all the positivity I can muster right now, especially considering my new online project...

A GEM IN A SEA OF GARBAGE...

      Check out this deleted introduction from the so-so movie Superman Returns released back in 2006. It shows Superman exploring what is left of his homeworld, Krypton. It was apparently cut because movie audiences can't be expected to watch an extended moment on film without dialogue. God forbid we let the images tell the story without being told what to think through music and dialogue...







      The scene is whatever to me. What stunned me was the truly alien design given to Kal'El's spacecraft. Nothing about it is familiar. It's a ship seemingly composed solely of crystal. There are no visible engines, buttons, or read-outs...nothing at all to suggest human engineering or anything humanity is currently capable of. The ship is beautiful. We don't know how it works, but we see it working. It heartens me to know that even though this scene was deleted, that there are still people in Hollywood capable of creating moments of awe-inspiring wonder.

      Who knew the Kryptonians were one of the First Ones? ;-)

ADDENDUM: I can't help but wonder if this film would have been better if the script introduced the movie-going audiences to a Superman villain they've never seen on the big screen before. With Kal-El going back to Krypton, it would seem the stage would be perfectly set for him to either encounter or accidentally awaken Brainiac who could have then either followed Kal-El back to Earth or downloaded onto his ship's computer surreptitiously as Kal-El explored Krypton's ruins. And why not? It's been either Lex Luthor or General Zod (and the Brainiac-like stand-in for the third film). Superman does have other villains Hollywood

WELL THAT WAS A WASTE OF FIVE MONTHS...

      A ways back, I got my hands on a gravity simulator program and I was really excited to use it. Y'see, when I was in school ensuring my status as an outcast and inspired by Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and even the old PC game Nova 9, I tried my hand at creating planetary systems. They were initially crude but I would refine them as I learned new things like how to properly calculate an orbital period*, how to properly calculate gravity at a defined surface**, among other things. But the one thing I could never know was if the orbits I assigned the planets and especially the orbits of the moons were stable. I could only hope.

      As I progressed, I created a cursory society along with an outline of its history on one of these worlds and part of that culture and history was dependent on this world having two moons. Now, in my blissful ignorance, I assigned these moons names, masses, and orbital periods. The orbital periods were supposed to have some cosmic importance to the people below forming the basis of a complicated lunar calendar which would later be replaced by a simpler solar calendar making one wonder why I was even bothering to figure this all out in the first place. My only justification is that it actually is fun to try to get things to work out and that lunar calendars were important to early man on Earth and still exist in Jewish and Muslim calendars. But I figured the lunar calendar would have cultural significance and produce an alien way of thinking about time which is important when you want to create societies that aren't merely humans whose only noticeable difference from Earth humans is that they are wearing different hats.

      Yes, they're humans because I guess like Star Wars which takes place in a different galaxy a long time ago...given enough star systems, it's bound to happen again, right? The world "my" humans live on has a slightly stronger gravity, slightly thinner air, and such so they would be adapted to that. See? They're different! ;-)

      Anyways, I originally gave the moons of this world a 3:2 orbital resonance which means that the inner moon makes three orbits for every two made by the outer moon. I did this because I read somewhere that resonances like these help stabilize orbits and they do exist. The Galilean satellites of Jupiter orbit like that with Io completing four orbits for every two by Europa and for every one by Ganymede. I didn't want to go with 2:1 because it seemed both "too perfect" and offered little dynamicism so I went with 3:2 even though I've read that 5:3 and 7:4 are also stable. I assumed the moons would regularly eclipse each other because unlike Earth's moon, they would have formed from the same cloud of material the homeworld formed from. Ideally I wanted the cycle to take three solar years to complete and seven total cycles to bring everything back to the beginning where the moons eclipse each other in the new phase and probably produces a solar eclipse too for added effect.

       With the gravity simulator program, I could see if my ideas held any water. Right away there were problems. The orbits of the moons immediately destabilized and either crashed into each other or the outer one would be ejected from the system. I played with the distances but those orbits too would destabilize. My thoughts were that the moons were too massive so I reduced their masses by making their original radius in miles, their new radius in kilometers and adjusting their masses accordingly. I even stumbled upon a ratio of distances that seemed to be working but I wanted the simulation to run for a minimum of ten million simulated years before even considering the arrangement and then working out a lunar calendar from it even though there would be no chance it would resemble what I had hoped for. At this point, a stable set of orbits is the goal. It really is amazing the subtle interactions each object has with each other over the simulated years. The planets are stable (If I leave out the moons, I can run the simulation really fast. Even after 100 million years, the system remains as is), but finding an acceptable solution to this three-body problem has been maddening because it will all really just come down to a lucky guess.

       I almost made it, but like some tease, the simulation failed somewhere between 9.8 and 9.9 million years. It took me five months of letting my computer calculate all day while I was doing my web surfing and while I slept. The outer moon got ejected from the system. Small instabilities had built up to a critical point. And the trouble is, even as the worlds you set up deviate from the paths you give them doesn't mean something is ultimately wrong. These simulators reveal grand cycles you could not have imagined...even with our own solar system. The orbit of the planet Mars is affected by both Jupiter and Earth causing it to go from nearly circular to a highly eccentric orbit and back again over tens of millions of years. The same thing happens to two of the worlds in this particular star system of mine. So I noticed variations in the orbits when I'd check in on them over time, but how was I to know if this was merely some variance or the slow build-up to escape velocity? I guess if I were a real astrophysicist, I probably would have seen it coming sooner. I guess the simulation failing at that point shows that I'm on to something but it is frustrating to have to start over. I'm gonna keep the reduced masses since that's produced better results than before. I'm gonna keep the inner moon where it is since its orbit is ridiculously stable.

       Back to the drawing board....

ADDENDUM: I tried moving them around but to no avail so I'm gonna reduce the moons' masses again on the assumption that, like last time, their respective gravities are too much for the system to handle stably. I wish me luck...

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* p² = ka³ where p is the orbital period in years; a is the average distance from the object orbited in astronomical units (92,956,000 mi. [149,566,000 km]) and k is a constant which is the [Mass of the Sun ÷ Mass of the Object] (in consistent units). The mass of the Sun is 1.9895 x 10³³g for this calculation.

** g = [GM] ÷ r² where g is the surface gravity in meters per second squared (Earth's gravity for comparison is 9.797 m/s²); r is the radius of the object in meters; M is the mass of the object in kilograms; and G is the gravitational constant valued at 6.6667 x 10^-11 m³/kg∙s².