This is my 3rd attempt at posting from my new Droid... if you don't count the hour or so I spent screwing around "pinching" the browser screen and trying to navigate Joomla's "submit article" interface.
Surfing lowers IQ... oh, and a giant fireball thing.
Sunday, 18 April 2010 00:42
I only keep my Hotmail account so I can use it to sign up for online accounts - that way, when they sell my email address, all the spam goes to one place. The downside is that I have to go clean it out every month, but it gives me the opportunity for one of those little Interwebs guilty pleasures: clicking on the gossip links on MSN.
Today was a lot like most months - lots of advice on how to be a better breeding member of society - a whole special section on increasing sperm production and how to get your wife pregnant faster (seriously... this isn't one of those "wine and Barry White" as punchline jokes) - naked celebrity updates (I fail to see how Kim Kardashian posing nude is NEWS...), and why Britney Spears is "brave" for releasing the untouched versions of her heavily photoshopped magazine cover photos (seriously... brave. No mention, BTW, RE: ethics and retouching in the first place...).
So I eventually bored of the banal (10 minutes), and I clicked on a link about a guy who found a fragment of a meteor in his yard in Wisconsin and lent it to a university for two hours. They confirmed that it's probably real. Seriously... like... that was the ENTIRE article! It went something like "John Beeblefutzer found a peanut-sized piece of the Wisconsin meteor in his yard and lent it to a local university for two hours. Reaserchers say, since it's covered in burnt crap, it's probably real, you know, 'cause most meteors are covered in burnt crap. lolz." This from the Chicago Sun Times. Really.
I had to read it twice - thus wasting another 10 seconds of my day. And I found myself wanting more information about this meteorite (I don't watch much news), so I went to Youtube. If figured if anyone had a video, it would be there. The whole time, I had this gnawing sensation in the back of my brain about why that article even existed, and what 3-7 year old demographic might actually find it interesting or informative.
I found the following video on youtube:
Pretty cool. Green light... but it just hangs there! Then the video loops and all my questions were answered: The little red circle told me that I should have been watching the spectacularly bright, freakishly weird green light streaking across the sky - the other one is a street lamp. Silly me.
Seriously? Is this the state of journalism in 2010? We have to publish stories written at a third grade level about guys who lend burnt-peanuts to researchers who say things like "yep, looks like a meteor." And when showing truly jaw-dropping footage of a meteor streaking across the sky above a quiet neighborhood, we have to put a little red circle around it so (presumably) the same readers of the first article can actually identify what they're supposed to focus on?
I feel like I actually got dumber as a result of all this.
Jacques, fat and slovenly, sits on the couch. "This is the year. I'm going to get in shape this summer." He groans and winces as he gets off the couch, "and I'm going to write more in my blog." He stretches his back and totters off to the kitchen, wondering why his hips feel like his legs had been put on backwards.
[/Flashback]
Present day, and I'm sitting on my couch. Summer is almost over and the dream of being in-shape, svelte, cut or even mildly thinner seems a distant memory. I'm fatter now than I was then, I hurt more and in more places, I totter more pronouncedly (if that's a word) and my hips feel like a giant 3-year-old twisted them around a few more times.
So, my better 3/4 and I are Netflix people. (I was going to say "subscribers," but it's really more of a way of life for us...) We don't watch much television, don't have cable, and lack much of a life in which to actually spend time on such diversions. Sad, really. So, we get our T.V. fix through renting seasons of televisions through our film pushers.
Recently, she suggested that we take up watching Veronica Mars - admittedly an older series, but it has a couple of things going for it: First, it's over, so there are a finite amount of episodes. Second, all the episodes are out on DVD, so weekend television benders are possible if we stack up our queue.
I was skeptical, but it's not a bad show - Kristen Bell (who was really good in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, by the way) is good in the role, and the supporting cast is convincing. Sure, the plots of the episodes are a LITTLE far-fetched at times (a 17 year old who is as competent as sleuthing as her ex-cop cum P.I. father? Doubtful, but hey... willing suspension of disbelief and all that).
It would probably surprise a lot of people I knew in my youth if I told them that I'm not a very social person anymore. I was pretty gregarious as a youngster - I made friends easily, hung out with friends a lot and was socially well-adjusted.
Good times...
For the last few years (more like about 15), I have actively avoided social stuff - an all encompassing term that includes "hanging out" "socializing" and generally being socially well-adjusted. The particular psychological idiosyncrasies that facilitated that particular personality quirk are probably numerous, no doubt serious and likely something I should see a therapist about, but as it isn't really causing me any distress and I can't afford a therapist, I'll settle with blogging and vague resolutions to "get out more."
I did see a movie last month. Granted, it was with my wife and we went right home after...
This is my 3rd attempt at posting from my new Droid... if you don't count the hour or so I spent screwing around "pinching" the browser screen and trying to navigate Joomla's "submit article" interface.
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It would probably surprise a lot of people I knew in my youth if I told them that I'm not a very social person anymore. I was pretty gregarious as a youngster - I made friends easily, hung out with friends a lot and was socially well-adjusted. 
