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31.12.08
Well, that was fast. I haven’t felt like doing much of anything this week. I did get some stuff done on some side projects, and I think I wrapped my last Christmas gift today. I still haven’t given them all out though, darn snow. All this year-end stuff seems kind of arbitrary. A date changes on the calendar and people use it as an excuse to party, or get depressed, or make sweeping life changes. I resolve nothing, and I intend to stick to it.
21.12.08
The Jehovah's Witnesses came back again; a brief check-in. I got to fill them in on my new job, actively pushing the pro-evolution agenda upon the schools and public of this city, backed in part by government money. Essentially: “I’m using your money to teach your children evolution, thanks!” That was fun.
They were visiting to inform me that the economic collapse was yet another sign of the coming apocalypse. And to use the downfall of economics to illustrate how long-running systems administrated by so-called experts are not absolved from being wrong. By extrapolation, they applied this to (surprise, surprise) evolution.
You really don’t need me to explain that that economics is not a science. Economics analyzes a system made up by humans that is predicated on greed and fear. It ignores the natural world in favour of a fallacy that constant growth is both sustainable and desirable. It is a house of cards requiring constant shoring up to prevent exactly what we’re seeing now. It is not objective, it rests on arbitrary principles, and every time anyone in a position to do so makes a prediction, the prediction then affects the system.
So instead of being a harbinger of doom, or confusing good science with pseudoscience, I think the point they got across was something we all knew anyway: humanity is kind of stupid.
Things I don’t like: crowds, commercialism, and waiting. You can imagine how I felt when I went Christmas shopping on the weekend. It got pretty ugly. I walked into a store with pretty things in pretty bottles where any single male wandering alone is a cry for help. I was a pretty easy target for the lovely saleswomen: determined to buy something, not particularly concerned about what, and ready to get the hell out of there. They showed me two things, I bought the more expensive one, and then later I came back and bought the other one too. Lines were de rigeur everywhere, there’s nothing quite like being kept waiting for someone to take your money.
I was eyeing a picture frame advertised at a really good price at a card store, however on closer inspection it seemed that price was only available if you also bought two cards. This brought the total price up to or above the regular price of the frame, and the selection of cards was a combination of bad designs, cliché statements, and pre-packaged sentimentality. After re-canvassing the mall for alternatives, I bought the frame at regular price.
In the end, the majority of it was done, and I was grateful for the small acts of kindness that could still be found; the people who held open doors for me and I waddled through with my excessive packages, salespeople who managed to maintain a level of personal interaction and courtesy, the cars that let me merge into ridiculous traffic. Christmas shopping is a seasonal tour of the best and worst of human nature.
I’m in the midst of the usual Christmas Chaos, wrapped and waiting-to-be-wrapped gifts litter the floor, cards and broken bits of candy are splayed across the desk, lists abound. I was writing increasingly bitter and anti-festive messages before stopping myself from writing any more Christmas cards today. Maybe I’m disappointed that I’ve been snowed out of two sessions of merrymaking so far, or maybe it’s that moment when you wake up from the madness, look up and go: “Why?”
04.12.08
So the sore throat morphed into a loud and hacking cough. I’m rather glad actually, the throat was painful enough to keep me up at night, and when you’re lying wide awake between 3 and 5am playing out nightmare scenarios of what’s wrong with your body, any change is good. So I’m still sick, I’m just back in familiar territory.
Thus: one more page of Asia pictures.
02.12.08
As I logged out of my neglected hotmail account, the auto-redirect to msn.com informs me that I have been “selected to try out our [their] new homepage”. Well golly gee, I feel special. Let’s see, over forty links in the first two inches of your webpage, an image promoting the “sexiest music video of 2008”, an ad I automatically blocked out, and the weather for the wrong city; compelling. Let me know when you start selling discount Viagra.
I loaded up my USB stick with some files I needed to do some work at home. At work my shiny computer has the USB ports in the back of the monitor, conveniently out of sight (and some in the keyboard, but those are in use). So after loading the files, I did a few more things and shut down the computer and headed home, leaving the stick in the back of the monitor.
And I have a sore throat that feels like a live sea urchin is lodged in my pharynx. One that gets angry when I swallow.
Dang.
What the? It's December?
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