For the first time for the last time: an ode to the end.

As I sit here and face down the end of this monstrosity some call the year two thousand seven, I am faced with a dilemma. I could follow the path taken by so many of my compatriots and write lists of farewell for the craziness that has been this last year (I will urge you to read those at cracked.com, however, since their lists are legendary and might, MIGHT just make you pee your pants), or write about how impressed I am with all of the things that I have planned but will never actually accomplish in the next one. I could write slanderous messages about those who have wronged me or wax poetic about love lost. I could even write about how much I wish those around me understood about the changes that I have gone through to make this next year an awesome one.

Nope!

Instead all I am going to say about this year was that it had a few ups, several disastrous downs and many good friends. It had a huge amount of amazing music, some very, very good moments, lots of amazing food and one very drunken escapade through Europe;all of which covered up the one very hard and difficult betrayal.  I thank all of you who have been a part of it and made it definately one for the record books.

I will also say that I hope that all of you out there (yes, both of you) who read this have a wonderful and very safe New Year. As much as I hate to sound cliche (despite my seeming aptitude for it), please drink responsibly, don’t drive drunk, and for the love of god stay away from that midget. You know who you are.

See you in 2008, where the retardedness of our world will fill me with the fuel to point out exactly how silly our position on this third rock from the sun really is.

So close, but so very far.

This is what a friend of mine calls BUI, or blogging under the influence.  yup, I’ve been drinking.

As such, I almost went to vegas today. And by today I mean fifteen minutes ago.  Several of my friends are as of now gathering their belongings and rearing up for an epic drive to Vegas in order to spend the New Year with…well.. probably gamblers and hookers (this being my idea of who actually makes up the population majority in Vegas).  That being said, I commend those of you with the scratch to be able to take a whimsical trip to the city of sin on an impulse.  Had I the monetary reserves, I would be with you.

Godspeed, you wanderers of debauchery.

Wait, Driving Where?

So I’m sitting here packing my brain with useless information gleaned from the idiot box when I stumble upon a show about a man who built an armored car to drive into a tornado.

Into a tornado.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am planning at some point in my life to go storm chasing and follow thunderstorms around the midwest just to satisfy my own curiosity about what I see as the ultimate proof of Human insignifigance before nature. That being said, this guy actually drives into a swirling mass of windblown air, dirt, cows, barns, trees, tractor-trailers, houses, dogs and what-the-hell-ever the 250 mph wind scoops up from the ground simply to video tape what it is like.  I’m not really sure I can fathom the impulse to drive something into that. In fact, let me save you a pair of shorts, tornado man:

F*@&ing scary.  That is what it’s like.

There, I said it. Now you don’t have to kill yourself trying to figure that out.
Likewise, I don’t get the people who fund him. As someone who would love to have the money to fund scientific expeditions (or, you know, buy groceries), I can’t see myself saying “hey, you are going to go do something with my money that stands a real possibility to get you killed, so here, have at it” and showering him with not only ungodly amounts of cash, but a really expensive IMAX video camera.  I really can’t.

Who knows, maybe I’m just jealous that I’m not the dude getting paid to traipse all over the country side chasing clouds (I am).

Douchebaggery? perhaps.

I disagree with a few things on the following list, but mainly for my own spiteful and vindictive reasons. For one: None of the insane women that I have encountered this year are on it, the dismissal of the planet pluto as a freaking planet is not on it, and the UW Huskies are not on it; and if there is something more douch(e?)y than the Huskies (aside from Ryan Philipe, that is) I don’t know it. Wait, maybe, MAYBE that guy who tries to sell books claiming to help you find college money in the green suit with all of the black question marks all over it. THAT guy is a douchebag.

So there it is: Rosie and Microsoft, Chuck Norris, etc. I think that Britney Spears is not so much of a douchebag as a sad exlamation point on the saddest aspects of childhood stardom, but whatever. Also: my mac does not have the word douchebag in it’s dictionary.

lame.

Heres to you, Johannes.

Today his Kepler’s birthday. This is a pretty important thing in that many of the basic tenets of physics which we hold so dear, and against which the Catholic Church fought for so long are based upon math and observations made by this man.

According to Wikipedia:

“Before Kepler, planets‘ paths were computed by combinations of the circular motions of the celestial orbs. After Kepler, astronomers shifted their attention from orbs to orbits — paths that could be represented mathematically as an ellipse.^[1][2] Kepler’s laws also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation.

During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria, an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, the court mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II, a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. He also did fundamental work in the field of optics and helped to legitimize the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.”

So as you can see, much about the universe around us, while not entirely novel to Kepler, was thrust into the scientific limelight by him.

So from one astronomy geek to another: heres to you, Johannes.

Let it snow, but don’t let them drive.

...HEAVY SNOW WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM TO 6 PM PST THURSDAY
FOR THE LOWER COLUMBIA AND GREATER PORTLAND METRO AREA..

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PORTLAND HAS ISSUED A HEAVY SNOW
WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM TO 6 PM PST THURSDAY.

It is going to snow tomorrow. This occasion is something usually greeted with glee by area schoolchildren and some amount of trepidation by those that drive. For me, fitting into neither of these categories means that I face something even more sinister than those who don’t know how to drive in the snow: people who don’t know how to STOP.

See, I walk everywhere I go. Occasionally I get rides from people, generally when alcohol is in my future, but for school, errands and work, I am foot-bound (not to be confused with bound-feet, which is a totally different reason to hate snow). This poses a problem in that people who don’t know how to stop in snow magically transform their vehicles into 45 mile an hour torpedoes, blazing a trail of impending doom through the intersections which I have to navigate in order to make it to any destination.

Now, I hate to speak poorly of my fellow northwesterners. Indeed they are some of the best people I have yet to experience. That being said, their lack of ability in the snow freaks me out. How hard is it to realize that when 6 inches of wet, cold, slippery stuff blankets the ground/streets/freaking everything, something is different and a little more caution behind the wheel might be prudent? Maybe I’m weird, but for me this rings especially true in the area of “oh look, there is a person in the intersection, which I am traveling toward at a high rate of speed.”

Indeed, there are factors to be taken into account here. These people are probably talking on their cell phones, eating some Burgerville, cross-stitching, changing their lipstick and, hell, conjuring spirits… basically the sum of the things people do in their cars while ice is falling out of the sky. Still and all, they think “I’m going to slam on my brakes.” Granted, it’s been 11 years since drivers training (I think I just made myself sad), but I seem to remember the one thing they tell you not to do when the road is slippery is slam on the brakes. I don’t know, I could be wrong.

So my main problem, I guess, is that people can’t stop. They can’t. I could go into a long, arduous but probably funny diatribe about my loathing for the way people drive in general, and I probably will at some point, but truth be told I don’t have the energy for it right now. Most of it has been consumed trying to fathom the concept of not being able to stop my car when I need to.

Moral of the story: If I don’t update tomorrow and there are sirens around my store, I’m probably lying under the front bumper of a car, smooshed between the road and that gross black and gray slush/ice that accumulates under a car when it snows, some cross-stitching, demon conjuring, suduku puzzle doing elderly man bent over pleading his case that “It never snows here, I tried to stop!”

yup.

Thats what happens when people don’t know how to stop in the snow.

durn.

I was supposed to start here, but I didn’t, so there.

Hello Everybody

Hello all.

This is my first foray into the world of blogging, as such it is likely to not be as polished or refined as those one finds elsewhere. This is ok, though, because I am not necessarily as polished or refined person.

The basis of what I am going to do here is simple. I feel that there is much randomness in our world (go ahead and call it stupidity on behalf of the the population of our planet if you will, I often do). The things that we take for granted in every day life are so often either based on, directly connected to, or supported by silliness that I feel it is important for people to see them for what they are. In that vein, I am taking it upon myself to force upon you the way that I see the world. This might offend some of you occasionally, but that probably means that I am hitting a little too close to home. More often, though, I hope to either make you laugh and realize that one cannot take the world seriously if they are to survive, or simply expose myself for the total nerd that I am.

Now that I have laid the ground rules, keep in mind that I will very rarely be holding myself to them. I am a random person and the thoughts that come to me in my moments of clarity run the gamut from sports to science to politics to the plight of the Electronic Musician in the 21st century to sand. Yes, sand.

Please feel free to link from here, to here, around here. Leave comments. Flame me or agree with me or shake my hand with a little ascii picture you made on your commodore 64 (you nerd).  Active participation is encouraged.

One more thing; this might not be updated every single day, though I will make up for that by often posting more than once a day, so check back often.

This should be fun, and I hope that you think so too.