LINE OF THE DAY, part XLI

(from wendigo, a commenter on Cracked.com)

The spiders had been acting odd.

As far as I was concerned, everything about the damned pests was strange. This was different, though. On the first morning, day one, they started emerging from their hiding spots and abandoned their webs.

Black Widows, Orb Weavers, they all exposed themselves to any number of would-be predators.

You could barely walk through your yard without entangling yourself in the near-invisible threads they'd cast out into the breeze. It was as if a thousand tiny, inverted fishermen had dropped their hooks into the sky.

The web (of course) lit up with chatter. It was happening anywhere you'd expect to find arachnids. Within minutes, all the "Ask" sites and insect expert message boards filled up with annoyed queries.

"What are they doing?"

"Is this happening to anyone else?"

"Is this happening everywhere?!"

The true shock was still to come, as the creatures simultaneously reeled themselves UP those threads. It was an Indian Rope Trick to stupefy entomologists the world over.

The consensus at that point? Well, at least they're gone.

Then the sky began to cloud over.

Some caught on quicker than others. A few folks in my neighborhood, not necessarily ignorant folks, looked upward and determined a storm had set in. Myself, I immediately recognized the wrongness of it all.

The sunlight was being blotted out, ever so slightly, by one tremendous dome of webbing.

A plane came down over the hills near my house, its engines clogged with soft gauze and mashed spiders.

Five days in, birds started disappearing. Their songs all but ceased, and the only sign of their existence was the stray tiny, hollow bone that would drop from high above.

Dark spots could be observed with the naked eye. Using powerful binoculars or a telescope showed the viewer a myriad of small, cocooned bodies floating motionless in a lofty, darkening haze. Sparrows, Crows, Hawks, and even Bats became entangled in the grim construction.

Flights were cancelled soon after the original rash of crashes. Pilots thought they could simply break through the paltry web-work of such insignificant beings. Nearly ten thousand dead passengers and crew said otherwise.

The last plane to be cleared for take-off was the rare exception. There was a roar, a violent shrieking of engine blades, and then it just stopped.

It hung there, diagonally, until the entire thing was cocooned above our heads.

The bones that fell to the ground after that did not belong to birds.

It was after a week that "Arachnocalypse", as a term, had been officially coined. Newspapers and television networks spat the phrase out at every opportunity, and it took its rightful place alongside "Snowmageddon", and the rest.

For what it's worth, I think we could've made do, as a species, without use of the sky. Even though the haze grew thicker and our world grew darker every day, there were rain storms and natural collapses to give us small breaks in construction.

The rain, by the way, would come through cloudy and slick. I didn't want to know why.

The real problem, the one we couldn't work around as easily, was the spiders that remained on land. The jumping spiders, the hunting spiders, the tarantulas, all of those who seemed to have evolved past web-weaving.

They could produce some silk, but beyond that they were at a loss. You could almost feel sorry for them, standing tall on leaves and branches, preparing for an ascent that was never coming.

I heard stories about scorpions doing the same thing, but I never saw any proof for myself.

It was almost as if they knew. It seemed to drive them mad. When they weren't stoically waiting for their strands to take root above, they attacked and bit without any sense of reason.

I lost my pet, a loyal and loving Bulldog. She came in one night covered in clinging spiders, bites all over her body. Within moments, before I could even think of who to call (Vet? Poison hotline?) she collapsed and stopped breathing.

Daddy Longlegs... I don't even know if they were in on the plan, whatever it was. They seemed to cluster in homes, crawling over people as they slept, creating vast hordes of staring, though seemingly eyeless little horrors positioned on faces and chests.

When the things weren't engaged in frightening us to death, they would simply gather on ceilings and randomly "squat" upward as if it were some elaborate spectacle the human brain couldn't comprehend.

On the thirty-second day, when the Governments finally began working on possible solutions, everything changed yet again.

The Widowers crawled out from places unseen.

A Widower, about the size and shape of a man, seemed to have no interest in joining the growing, breeding masses in the skies. The black, armor-plated arachnid creatures only displayed one common goal.

Ensnaring us.

Daytime, as dark as it had become, was the only time it was relatively safe to go out. At night, Widowers could be all around you... in the trees, in crevices... and you'd never suspect. The last thing you'd see was the red hourglass on their abdomens.

That, and not-quite-human hands scrambling for your hair, your loose clothing, anything within reach.

Abandoned buildings were just as bad as the outdoors. I was with a group... I want to say this was about two months along... and we all took shelter in an old doll factory when it grew dark and we couldn't walk any longer.

The dismembered baby dolls, with their dark streaks of venom and plastic flesh wounds should've turned us away. Still, the webs they levitated in seemed old and abandoned. We figured the Widowers had their run of the place and long since moved on.

I didn't wake up to screaming.

It's weird to say that.

I wish I had woken up to screaming.

Instead, I lazily opened my eyes around what I assume to be Midnight. I reached out for a bottle of water, only to draw back a hand covered in burning, dark yellow venom.

I don't know if you've ever seen a bug trapped in a spider's cocoon. All they can do is silently rock. Back and forth, back and forth, bending at the middle. Sometimes there'll be a single free limb or antenna that waves around, trying to feel out any sign of help.

It's the same with people.

I'll have to live out the rest of my days remembering that sight. I'll have to live with the fact I ran away and left them there. People who had pulled me out of a burning truck. People who fed and clothed me when I had nothing.

There was nothing I could do. Logically, I know that.

The red hourglasses were already descending around me, and no matter what form it takes, an hourglass means time is running out.

My time.

Everyone's time.

LITHIUM: THE SEEDS OF GALAXY FORMATION?

     There's a weird property of metals called "cold welding" whereby, in a vacuum, two pieces of the same metal will join together when they come into contact with each other. The description goes as follows:

The reason for this unexpected behavior is that when the atoms in contact are all of the same kind, there is no way for the atoms to “know” that they are in different pieces of copper. When there are other atoms, in the oxides and greases and more complicated thin surface layers of contaminants in between, the atoms “know” when they are not on the same part. (Richard Feynman)

    This got me wondering, one of the mysteries of the universe is how large-scale structures like galaxies came to be in the nearly uniform densities of matter produced in the Big Bang. Randomness surely played a role but I get the impression from my readings that such randomness would've been too slow for protogalactic cores to develop into the enormous superclusters of galaxies and voids present in the universe today over a mere 14 billion years.

     Dark matter is called into question as a possible attractor as the hypothesized material, while it has gravity, is only affected by gravity allowing the newly formed matter to gather around its mass whereas ordinary matter is affected by electricity, magnetism, radiation, and subject to gas properties like pressure, temperature, etc.
    The trouble is, while scientists are certain dark matter exists, no one knows what exactly it is making it kind of impossible to test this hypothesis.

     Now I have to believe something like this has been thought of before and discredited but nevertheless I'm putting it forth: what if something more mundane could've led to the creation of galaxies?

     In the first few minutes of the Big Bang, the temperatures and pressures were still sufficient to convert the newly created electrons, protons, and neutrons into the heavier nuclei of deuterium, helium, and a smidge of lithium.
     Of those three elements, lithium is a metal and when the universe became cool enough to allow the formation of atoms after 300,000 years, there would be lithium floating around amidst this ever decreasingly dense gas which I imagine would have formed vacuum-like conditions quite quickly.

     Now if like atoms of metal cold weld for the reason stated above, does it not stand to reason that even the tiny, tiny amount of lithium theorized to have formed during the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis would have, through random interactions, found one and other and welded together forming ever larger seeds to acts as attractants to the far more enormous amounts of hydrogen, deuterium, and helium out there?

     I would like to believe that over the millions of years between recombination and the first stars, there was plenty of time for atoms of lithium to make clumps of anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of atoms which would have collectively more concentrated gravity than the surrounding material which doesn't particularly enjoying interacting with one and other.
     Helium is famously unreactive and hydrogen is content once it finds a partner to bond with. Neither will naturally clump...but lithium would...and might that be enough to begin the slow process of gathering ever larger clouds of gas together to form the first stars and protogalaxies?

     I honestly don't know...but I like the idea.

THAT'S THE END OF THAT CHAPTER...

     Back around Christmastime in 2004, I bought a Whitman coin collecting board for Lincoln Cents. It is the second book in what is probably now a four book series covering the years 1941-1974.

     I started filling it with cents found from circulation wondering just how long it would take me to do. I was primarily interested in the 51 varieties of Wheat Cents of this book (1941-1958) over the later-date Memorial Cents (1959-2008), the latter of which I held to a higher collecting standard (they still had to have some mint luster).
     For the Wheat Cents, any find would do though I was not above replacing those found with better examples when they came along. For most of these coins, I did find at least two over the course of this experiment.

     My first coin was, found on December 26, 2004, was dated 1942 and on November 20, 2014, I was able to fill the last hole in that book with a 1955-S.

     Its condition was surprisingly new but then, perhaps I ought not have been so surprised. Reading over the years has told me that many people hoarded this particular cent as a memento of the closing San Francisco mint (a cost-cutting move back in 1955). The only other coin minted in San Francisco that year was the dime but cents are cheaper so they were the coin of choice for hoarding. Also there was a speculative craze going on at the time that manifested in collectors/dealers/speculators holding rolls of newly released coins in the hopes that their value would appreciate. I believe it got kicked off with the low-mintage 1950-D nickel of which about half the total production was believed to be hoarded in uncirculated condition.
     Authors of articles who lived during the time of this coin's release anecdotally relayed that they had never received one of these coins in their change, being forced to buy one at a substantial mark-up from a local dealer to fill the hole in their childhood collections.
     Now I am the holder of this recently "liberated" coin. I can only hope this find was more the result of an ungrateful heir/grandchild than that of a robbery because that happens too.

     I'm not used to seeing Wheat Cents with any, let alone all, of their original luster intact. I guess because they were never new for me. I always saw them toned. Indian Head Cents look weird to me too when uncirculated. I'm surprised I haven't seen more over the years since luster bearing Memorial Cents from even 1959 can still be found infrequently and commonly from the 1970s and '80s. Wheat Cents have just always been brown, even the mid-1980s when I first started collecting.

     But with that find, I can say now that it took just short of 9 years and 11 months to complete that set from circulation. From the outset I thought I would never see any of the 1943 steel cents; I was actually planning to overlook them and consider the set complete without them but then I found one in another person's till (1943-D) and so added them to the list. I thought they'd be the last ones I'd ever find but the steel cent set was finished in 2011 when I received a 1943-S in payment, and not from somebody who knew I was looking.
     I also discovered that if you check the magnet trap in a bank's coin counting machine, you can sometimes score a steel cent or two there as well but I didn't need to depend on this trick to get all three of the steel cents. Each one actually came from different customers over the years.

     Naturally the first full year, 2005, had the most finds. It broke down for the 51 date and mintmark combinations as follows and as you can see, it's the San Francisco dates overall which are the hardest to come by.
     San Francisco made coins have a certain allure with collectors as they were often the lowest mintage of any particular year:

2004: 4 [4, 47] - started off with 1942 on 12/26/04; 1944; 1953; and 1957-D
2005: 32 [36, 15] - highlight of this mess: got the 1943-D on 8/20/05
2006: 4 [40, 11] - 1941-D; 1942-D; 1944-D; 1944-S
2007: 3 [43, 8] - 1945-D; 1945-S; 1951-S
2008: 2 [45, 6] - got the 1943 on 2/28/08; the other find was 1952-S
2009: 0
2010: 3 [48, 3] - 1942-S; 1947-S; 1949-S
2011: 1 [49, 2] - got the 1943-S on 3/26/11
2012: 1 [50, 1] - this year's lone find was 1941-S
2013: 0
2014: 1 [51] - set completed with 1955-S on 11/20/14

     As of now, I have found every date and mintmark of the Lincoln Cent series from 1940 to present in circulation. I need only an example from 1915, 1931, and 1922-D to have completed a date set from circulation (i.e. one example from every year from any mint). That attempt has been ongoing since 2002.
     A twenty coin subset, 1934-1940 PDS, is what I am hoping to complete from circulation next. I need only seven more date and mintmark combinations to do so.
     The 1909-1933 subset I would say is impossible to complete from circulation anymore though I feel year representation is still achievable with enough time and coins to sort through. This is why it helps that I am a cashier...

     For other series, I need only two more coins to complete a set of Jefferson Nickels from circulation (1938-present), the 1939-D and 1944-S, and I have more than half the total set of silver Roosevelt Dimes (1946-1964) and Franklin Half-Dollars (1948-1963) as well.

      I wish me luck :-)

URINSOMNIA...

     Does the body know it's asleep? I had another pee dream last night and I find it weird that my dreams have to resort to symbolism like a sense of urgency, displays of flowing water, loss of control (like becoming suddenly clumsy or in a recent dream, cars riding the sidewalk keeping me from walking safely and confidently), etc. to get the point across that I need to wake up and empty my bladder.

     I found myself wondering, why doesn't some character in the dream just say flat out, "Vachon, you need to wake up so I can pee."? Or even more simply, why don't I just wake up? Why is it like I'm in a wussified Nightmare on Elm Street movie rather than something more simple?

     Thankfully I've never had an accident though I know it's come close, even in adulthood. I've actually urinated in my dreams and woke up ever-so-thankful that it was "just a dream".

     Seriously though, why can't we just wake up when we have to pee? I don't think the language center of the brain is shut down because I have dreams with speech in them. Does the sense of self shut down during sleep? I don't think so because I know it's me when I'm dreaming. I never feel outside of myself.
      The only thing I've noticed about dreams, aside from their inherent weirdness and internal inconsistencies, is that dreams only seem to work so long as I'm not concentrating on details. It's like dreams are great whooshes of generalities but I have memories of waking up from several dreams because I got suspicious and simply wouldn't just "go with it".

     I remember many years ago having a dream with the First One. Already curious that she would be visiting me at my father's house, I couldn't help but try and focus on her face because something about it wasn't quite right. It doesn't help that I can't remember faces that well at all so in my dream she may have had, for all I know, a mannequin face...featureless. I kept focusing on that detail; I wanted to see. My insistence on detail I think activated some part of my brain that was necessary for consciousness as I would wake up soon after.

     I don't know. I mean, c'mon! Just wake up. I gotta pee!!!

AHOY ME MATEYS...

     The last time I was at the dentist, I was thinking about all the blood from the cleaning. It was much more than usual. My gums had been bleeding frequently too when brushing my teeth. I joked about it with my hygienist but the more I thought about it, I couldn't think of any substantial sources of vitamin C in my diet.

      For years I would take a juice box with me for my lunch but starting maybe a year or so ago, I started buying styrofoam cups and filling them with water instead. The Hi-C fruit punches advertised a 100% daily supply of vitamin C, something I would thus get five times a week. Now I wasn't getting any. The vegetables I would eat with dinner would have some, but my diet could not give me 100% of that vitamin ever.

      I bought vitamin C supplements and just like that, the bleeding went away. I'm sure my next cleaning will be bloody again because that seems to be the norm now but in my daily life my gums are no longer swelling easily nor are they bleeding.

      I had scurvy, or at least its early stages. Imagine that. That's so 18th century :-)

AN UNPUBLISHED DRAFT NOW BEING PUBLISHED...

ADDENDUM: I wrote the following thoughts on December 17, 2013. I'm in no mood to make these drafts into coherent posts. These were just some free-form thoughts that I had intended to go back to no more than a few days later but never got back to. The momentum is gone, not only from this post but perhaps this blog itself. I don't know how it would've turned out otherwise, but here's a sample of how I think...

~~~~~~~~~

The wall separating our working lives from our private lives has become anywhere from translucent to transparent thanks to the internet. I find it strange that there has been no mass protest in this country to oppose the thinning of this separation. It has allowed employers to keep an unreasonable amount of tabs on their employees through direct spying and snitching.

We are told to live in a state of constant fear as a result. Do not post what you would not want your boss to find out they say. People, especially teachers, have been fired for behavior done prior to their professional lives and during their professional lives even though it was all engaged in during their free time.

The concept of free time seems to be fast becoming a "thing of the past" and this terrifies me. Imagine if the wall separating church and state were again made transparent and you had to join the state religion. To stand up for your beliefs would cost you your livelihood (at best) or even your life (at worst). Your only alternative choice is to defy yourself and what you feel is right. No one would stand for that anymore knowing their beliefs could one day become the "wrong" beliefs. It's why the government in the Constitution is forbidden from sponsoring a state church...but we allow employers to effectively sponsor employer-based churches (example related to ACA-Obamacare) whereby the employer's beliefs are imposed upon their (usually female) employees. This is decried, but the loss of Freedom of Speech ("controversial" opinion posts) and Right to Peaceably Assemble (photos from a bachelorette party let's say) is not.

We are told we are now always on the clock. Everything we say represents our company. No longer are we free citizens. Accepting a paycheck is tantamount to checking your U.S. citizen rights at the door. Accepting a paycheck also means being on the clock for 24 hours while only getting paid for 8.

Related things: why is e-mail considered a separate thing from mail? Does no one who is not a legislator or HR director think that e-mail is not deserving of the same privacy protection as paper envelopes? The same applies to calls made by cellphone versus those made by landline. Does anyone besides those two groups actually feel cellphone calls are okay to tap without a warrant. GPS also applies, as does EZ-Pass. Why have we tolerated the thinning of these walls?

Rage began from #12 unpodcast "Your Tweets Are Not Your Own"

Controversial speech and ideas are the ones which need the most protection but they are the first to get you fired...

Link back to prior posts about teachers/students getting in trouble and NRA-type group for 1st Amendment.

It opens up the possibility of a world whereby employees must belong to the same political party as their boss and vote their boss's way too. Employees should have the same religion and tastes as their employer. I'm curious, if a man working for Coca-Cola was spotted drinking a Pepsi at a party, is that grounds for his termination...or even being associated with Pepsi (assuming he's not drinking any)? An employee who is on the clock is a worker, but off the clock is a potential customer. An employer should want his employees to also be customers, but should that not be earned rather than assumed? Is an employee allowed to consume the products and services of a rival? Why is employee behavior both on and off the clock subject to the morality of his employer, or more generally (when snitching is involved) why is employee behavior subject to the capricious whims of the most conservative person in the room? Why are the most conservative people (or financially well off) the sole arbiters of what is right and wrong?

Yet strangely, none of this has provoked rioting.  The solution seems to be unionization and guilds (for professionals). Protection via a union and tenure may be the only way to protect the rights of U.S. citizens from being taken away by their unelected, non-governmental bosses. Because after all, one day your boss might be liberal and accepting and your next boss could be a stick-in-the-mud conservative. Is that any different than having a laissez-faire king who is tolerant of any religious expression being replaced upon his death by a new king demanding the citizenry now all be say Protestant? Is it fair? I don't know. But so long as earning money to make a living is not optional I don't see how threatening a person's livelihood for expressing their 1st Amendment rights (or any Constitutional rights) is any more fair or in any way American. Job retention should be determined solely by competence.

THIS IS WHY I ALWAYS READ THE COMMENTS SECTIONS

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer,
I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will be one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

--- original author unknown and you're welcome.

ARCHITECTURAL FANTASY...

     My dreams occasionally feature common themes across them. One theme that pops up frequently is that of hidden rooms in houses (and no, I have no idea what it means...can't say that I care really). Sometimes it's even to the effect of an entire house hidden within a house.

     How these things are not noticed from the outside is beyond me but upon waking, I find the concept most fascinating.

     A simple example would be one an unused door, say behind a swinging bookcase, reveals a narrow stairway between the outer wall of the house and the wall of the room. The stairway is just about as wide as a person so the fit is snug but atop it will be a small open room and a window looking outside. In one dream, the room, not much larger than the small bedroom of a two bedroom apartment, there was a chair, an endtable, and a television on top of some shelving with either books or a videogame console. Honestly I forget.
     The puzzle is how the furniture got up there since it would be too wide to carry up the stairs. It suggests, in this case, that it was brought there a piece at a time and assembled on the spot. There was another narrow staircase but I did not go up it to see where it led and a small door leading to what I felt was a toilet, but I did not check. I guess the idea was that this was a room where you got away from the house's remaining inhabitants for a while. But still, pretty cool.

     Other dreams featured what, upon reflection, must've been impossible architecture. The thing about my dreams is, so long as I don't think about what's going on too much, they'll continue. If I try figuring something out well, I guess that's too much brain activity to remain in a dream. Dreams like these I tend to "go with" because I'm in awe of what I've discovered.
     I remember one such dream where virtually an entire house was hidden within a house. Well, I shouldn't say "hidden" so much as, rooms would reveal seeming inaccessible places you could get at, but not through the known doors.
     Think of a videogame where you can see parts of a level you have not reached yet. The old first-person shooter Doom would do that a lot. It would also create "enemy only" areas which you could see but could not access without using the "no clipping" cheat.
      One example would be another stairway room like described in the previous dream, but it overlooks the kitchen this time instead of being wholly isolated. Or there'd be stairways leading up (or sometimes down) to rooms otherwise not attached to the house's "normal" rooms. In other words, a house within a house. And these rooms would be fully furnished too but in a style or with older appliances suggesting the current owners were unaware these rooms even existed.
      Some of these dreams suggest that these rooms were built and furnished first and then the rest of the house was built around them kind of like how banks are built around bank vaults.
      The hidden houses would be accessed through crawl spaces whose access could be found under a carpeted floor or by finding another such trap door in an attic and climbing down a laddered shaft to reach them. Another access would be a hidden half door or sliding wall inside an apartment closet leading to another closet which, when exited, reveals a mirror imaged version of the apartment but unlike the main apartment, there's no door leading to the outside...or is there? I seriously don't know. It's not like we get to continue our dreams the following night...

     Weird shit, but damn I want to live there or become rich and eccentric enough that I could have such a place built.

GOLDEN YEARS...

Not the image I saw originally, but this will do

     One of my Facebook friends reposted an image macro reminding us that ten years ago was no longer the 1990's in an effort to depress us. While I cannot speak for the rest, I can say that it did depress me. That FUUUUUUUUck revelation of time having passed, never to return. It reminds me again how the entirety of my twenties had been wasted...time I will never get back. That endless frustration...
     But it also reminded me of how I arbitrarily look at things.

A LAUNDRY ROOM STORY

     A crane fly distracted me from my usual laundry room reading this morning. Somehow four of its legs had become stuck on some heavy (for the bug anyway) lint making it difficult for the creature to fly. I took pity on the insect's exhausting struggle to extricate itself from what would almost certainly be a death sentence but figuring there was nothing I could do, I continued with my reading. In between paragraphs, the bug would fly with apparent difficulty back into view coming to rest on either the floor or the table edge or even hang from the central bar of a neighbor's bicycle making futile attempts to free its legs. Of all the ways insects can die, this way seemed particularly unfair. The problem was, how to help it without accidentally severing its legs?

No matter how nice you may think I am for desiring to help this insect, remember that I did take the time to get my camera from my apartment to document its suffering first

     I decided against ending the crane fly's misery on the off-chance fortune might smile upon the insect, freeing it from this trap and I have to admit, I wanted the bug to win in this particular struggle. But this outcome had not become reality as my laundry neared completion. I didn't want to leave having tried nothing and looking at my bookmark, I saw a possible solution to the fly's dilemma.

     The insect landed near me again and using the bookmark's edge as a kind of knife, I managed to (after a few attempts...I can't exactly blame the bug for trying to get away from me now can I?) cut away the heaviest parts of the fibers and not sever its legs while doing so. Hooray! A happy ending for the crane fly. Now all I had to do was encourage it to the door and it would be free to live or die in its proper environment. The insect, newly unburdened in flight and with apparent ease, flew near the ceiling of the room and I swear to you, the first place it landed...this happened.

Seriously?

     The venting pipe the crane fly had settled upon after its first taste of freedom, of all the places it could have landed, was the only place in the laundry room covered in the same sticky lint which had gotten it into trouble in the first place. One unburdened flight...that's all it got. I folded my laundry, turned out the light, closed the door, and never looked back.

     Fuck that crane fly!

FACEBOOK CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

     It's been a while since I've done a Rejected Facebook Statuses dump. So let's begin, shall we?

THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part XI

      I daydream and fantasize a lot. It is a very useful means for dealing with frustration, anger, sadness, anticipation, and other consuming emotions. The daydreams are very cathartic and occasionally that catharsis requires that I kill someone. The thing I find interesting from a psychological point of view is that I never touch the person I'm killing in my fantasies. It's always through the use of something else be it a proxy (i.e. allowing someone or something else to do the job for me); psychokinesis and/or telekinesis (think Sylar or Force Lightning), weapons (like whips, chains, arrows, and guns); supernatural stuff like finger spears (think Lust or the T-1000) or the substantiation of my shadow (think Pride); or any other awful thing I can think of that's usually inspired by something I saw on television or in the movies (pyrokinesis and cryokinesis). I wonder what that means...what it represents? What would represent the greater psychopathy? Making physical contact with the pretend victim or putting that barrier between them and me? I guess actually touching means I can't run away from the fact that I did it and not touching allows for denial later on. Whatever clothing I'm wearing in the fantasy usually has my hands looking as though they've turtled into the sleeves and when those hands are revealed, it almost always portends something terrible about to happen. What is it with the obsession with my hands?

Lust - Fullmetal Alchemist

WHAT HANDWRITING IS THIS

     I overkern my handwriting...sometimes to the point of no spacing at all between the letters in the words I'm writing in manuscript. I checked out The Complete Idiot's Guide to Handwriting Analysis to see what it meant. The booklet offers this explanation:

Letters crammed together reveal an impetuous person who rushes to judgment and overreacts. Impulsive and often confused about what she feels and what others feel, her need to fit in with a social group can push her to behaving inappropriately. She desperately wants acceptance, so she'll do anything she thinks will help her fit in. This is the type of person who will give in to either internal emotional pressures or external peer pressure.

Besides the suggestion that I may not have been the target audience of this booklet, I wonder what it says about me when the handwriting sample offered comes from the "killer mom" Susan Smith. Except for her letter Ws and Vs (which are pointy whereas mine tend to be rounded) and her Ys (which are pointy whereas mine are rounded), her handwriting is also very similar to mine. Very familiar looking though actually reading this booklet would be necessary to further analyze my handwriting. For example, what does it mean my obsessive need to connect letters in a word? I do this in an alphabet I created in school as well and it was never designed with cursive handwriting in mind.What do my excessive loops on my Gs mean or the fact that in my hurried writing, they look like Ss that dip below the line? Fun, grain-of-salt stuff :-)

      My narrow word-spacing also suggests that I have "an extreme need to surround herself with other people" and that "[l]ike a puppy always on the heels of whoever walks into the room, she needs constant attention and approval. She acts purely on instinct. Without continual reassurance from others she gets anxious, and the moment she's not getting attention, her self-esteem plunges." My line-spacing cannot be judged because I wrote my sample on ruled paper which is a no-no for overall handwriting analysis.

      Later in the booklet, they go back to Susan Smith's writing and describe it as having a "weak drive" and that her writing "just sits on the page, unsure and depressed" as opposed to the counterexample of Dean Koontz's "vigorous writing" revealing a "strong drive" and "stamina and enthusiasm for life".

      Caveat lector...

HEY! IT'S A CHRISTMAS-THEMED ENTRY...

      I think quite possibly the dumbest gift one could give to someone is a credit card sponsored gift card. Actually, I despise all gift cards as gifts for two main reasons. One, you're trading good money in for what amounts to irredeemable "fun money" and irredeemable in the sense that once your money has been transmuted into gift card form, it will not be returned...even trivial amounts like a few cents. Even on paper food stamps, you still got real money for any part of the change which was less than a dollar. And two...the sheer sad obligation it represents. It would seem better to receive nothing at all than to get what a gift card represents which is the gift-giver's admission that s/he knows not enough about you to buy you a gift with even the hint of the personal touch that a real gift carries. But whatever...one can rationalize store-sponsored gift cards somewhat, but I cannot rationalize the credit card sponsored ones for one simple reason:

      Activation fee. The $25, $50, and $100 gift cards come with a one-time $3.95 activation fee for the $25 card going up in one dollar increments for each successive version. The intention behind these gift cards is that "They can be used anywhere Visa/MasterCard/American Express are accepted." Yes, that's the lure...but you're paying money for money. How idiotic is that?

--- Hey honey! I just spent $28.95 on $25 for you!

--- Aw, you shouldn't have! No, really...you shouldn't have.

THOUGHT STARTER

      I've heard some weird things about the character Tom Bombadil from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and when I read this paragraph on the wiki page devoted to the story, I became quite intrigued by the possibilities to storywriting the highlighted line offers:

Other possibilities (compatible with the above theory) are that he is an abstract concept; possibly the embodiment of Arda itself, a veritable "Father Nature", or some kind of 'spirit' which, unlike the Maiar, was of a non-divine nature. Not only does the Ring have no effect on him, but Tom himself seems unable to affect the Ring in return. This shows that Tom was outside the divine plan and struggle and had no position in it. During the Council of Elrond it is suggested that the Free-Peoples entrust the Ring to Tom, but this is rejected due to the probability that he would lose it, because according to Gandalf, such things had no hold on his mind. It is also stated that if Sauron were to regain the Ring, Tom Bombadil would be the last to fall. It is also stated by Galdor that 'Power to defy our enemy is not in him, unless such power is in the earth itself. And yet we see that Sauron can torture and destroy the very hills.' implying that Bombadil is in some way connected with the very earth itself.

      What an interesting idea! I wonder how such a thing would play out in say, Christian mythology? Unless humanity itself could be considered "outside the divine plan" by virtue of having been given free will by God. If that's the case, then this idea is already boring. But I like this idea, perhaps crudely explored in the Matrix trilogy, that there's someone who simply is, but is not a result of our being. Sure, God created the world and all upon it, its inhabitants and life, many and varied...but not this one thing. A separate consciousness, if you will, that can explore and investigate the universe created around it, but which had no part in its creation or purpose. I don't know where I'm going with this. I feel it, but I can't describe what I'm feeling. Maybe you felt it too :-)

PROBABLY INDICATIVE OF SOMETHING...

      I have been watching Survivor since its inception, missing only Seasons 4 and 5. I might  have stayed away for good too, but Season 6 started with a gimmick whereby the men and women were separated and I wanted to check that out. Anyways...

      One of the continuing themes of the show  happens near the end after the tribes have merged. Originally it was just letters from home but as the show's popularity (and presumably budget) improved, it became videograms and in later seasons, actual visits by the family members. Actually, Nan was still alive when I first remember actual visitors (Johnny Fairplay's lie about his dead grandma to get sympathy points with his competitors) so Survivor's been doing this for eight years now at least.

      Every time this moment comes, everybody whether reading a letter, seeing a videogram, or actually seeing their family member in person after about 30 days away from them breaks down in tears. It's a very emotional moment for those involved and yet, since the show's inception, I have been mocking their tears not understanding how a mere thirty days away from the people they love could be such a heavy emotional moment for them.

     But then I realize I have no idea what it feels like to belong at such a level that thirty days apart would actually be emotionally traumatic. My second year of college was probably the closest I will ever come to that sense of belonging.

LONG TIME VEGAN SCHOOLS LIFELONG OMNIVORE, see comments section

      Over the years, I have had many fried foods and by fried, I mean breaded/battered filets in a layer of oil, not pan-frying or stir-frying. Fish filets, chicken breast filets, turkey breast filets, pork chops, even eggplant (filets?)...but never beef. I've wondered why that is. Is it just one of those things like where ketchup is a sensible condiment for french fries but not for mashed potatoes even though really, what's the difference? Or is there a real reason behind it?

       Tonight I will find out. I bought some beef filets (or their rough equivalent) and eggs...I haven't bought eggs for over a year...and fry them in oil. See how it turns out. Messy food preparation tonight, yay! I'll have to addendum this entry tomorrow.

ADDENDUM:  Turns out the beef I had bought was exactly the correct ones to buy for this experiment. As was brought to my attention in the comment section, the cuts were referred to as "chicken steaks." They came out rather well but I failed to season the beef before breading it so flavor-wise, they were a bit lacking. If I bother to make them again, I will have to marinate in teriyaki sauce or otherwise spice them a day before cooking. Oil frying is one of the last areas of cooking I have to perfect as I've been favoring baking and broiling over the years. I was worried they would be too tough and that would be the reason why I had not heard of fried beef. I guess instead, it's just regional cuisine.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!!!

       This is an actual profile that I am still reading on OKcupid. I had to break for a moment. My brain is hurting and I have no idea if this is for real or what but holy shit!

ADDENDUM: This profile actually shut down the overthinking, insists-on-categorizing-everything part of my brain for a time. I may have actually reached a higher meditative plane...if only I had some question in need of answering - I may have found it! I may have to remember this entry whenever I am in need of a mind-cleanse :-)

My self-summary

graduated from college at the age of 12 with a double masters in molecular biology, specializing in the effects of phakopsora pachyrhizi on asian soybeans in non-indigenous continental U.S. + northern renaissance art history, but opted out of scientific endeavors or antiquarian commentary in order to open up a light bulb manufacturing company (mostly halogen) in india at 19. though after wearing lehenga cholis grew tediously uninspiring, seeing as i'd given up touring (classical pianist child prodigy) years before, sought out a PhD in neo-classical composition (particularly the ever popular silent symphonies for dogs) as well as opened up a culinary school for wayward vegan orphans.

pretty fucking dull. huh.

RAINING LIKE, WELL...Y'KNOW

      Fairly dumb, but I think one of the reasons I like cats more than dogs is because I know what a cat fucking looks like. I know breeders have turned up some pretty strange-looking cats but the fact is, you really don't see them. The cats that turn up in shelters and which are showcased on TV tend to all be the same size and build. Their fur colors and patterns are a bit random, but it still looks like a fucking cat. They come in basically two varieties - shorthair and longhair - and I rarely see the longhairs. But they all have the same faces and eyes and approximate weight range.

      Quick! Picture a dog. If you were coming for a visit and I told you that I had a dog, until you've seen it, you will have no idea if it is a small yip-yip dog or a gigantic mastiff and anything in-between. You won't know anything about its temperament; its level of energy; etc. Dogs are mysteries. I thought cartoons might be of some help but even they depict breeds. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a generic dog. Dingos maybe? But what do dogs look like if they are free to breed? What is the standard dog build and size? Even people don't come in as many shapes and sizes as dogs do. I can't picture a dog in my head and I've seen several in my life. I draw a blank. I have no expectation of a dog whereas I have one for a cat.

      Even something like "generic dog", the Google results can't settle on an answer. I see a German shepherd, a beagle, and a golden retriever...and that's just dog breeds I very easily recognize. "Mutt" is all over the place too. But "generic cat" turns up pretty much the same basic body plan in all the image results.

      If I had a point to this entry, I have since lost it. Enjoy your fragment...

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.