Disks in Rotation:
DVD • Gladiator
CD-ROM • D2X
CD Carousel
• Soundgarden - Bad Motor Finger
• Fat Boy Slim - From the Gutter to the Stars
• System of a Down
• Skinny Puppy - Rabies
• The Prodigy - Fat of the Land

Books Lying Open
• Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (selected by) Joyce Carol Oates
• Annotated Lovecraft, S. T. Joshi
• Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grim
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
• Dreams of Terror and Death, H. P. Lovecraft
• Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre H. P. Lovecraft

What's For Lunch?
• Ballpark peanuts. D

Soul-Devouring Worry
• Yes, this is my life.

When I Grow Up:
• I won't be such a goddamn hit whore. 

Daily Blog
Tuesday, and I work tonight at the stadium.  That'll be somewhat odd, seeing the bosses who tried to fire me two weeks ago.  Actually they did fire me, but due to there being a Union, I was able to file a grievance they reduced termination to a suspension, for my heinous sin of being angry (at another employee screwing me over by breaking company rules) and hitting a wall.  Anyway, I usually have all sorts of glib and witty remarks tripping off my tongue at work, but not sure what I'll say to my immediate boss, who seemed to be the pointman on my firing effort. 

I've talked about it with a few friends since they relented on firing me, and I think that probably the company had this planned in advance.  Not the whole thing, of course, but deciding to fire me such a minor infraction.  They probably figured that I'd file a Union grievance, so they thought if they just suspended me for 3 or 5 days, I'd grievance that and they'd have to reduce or eliminate the punishment.  So by firing me, and dragging their feet on notification, it's a week by the time the Union is involved, and then they can relent on the frivolous firing, and it seems like I'm getting a break and pulled my head off the chopping block. So I'm grateful just to have my job, and won't think of filing a grievance for the lost pay.

I did think of that, but the Union advised against it, since I'd apparently have had to stay away from work for possibly 4-6 weeks until a hearing with a professional mediator could be scheduled.  So I'd possibly win that and get all the lost pay back, and go back to work, or I'd only get partial pay, or only get reinstated, and lose the weeks of pay between now and then.

So their scheming seems to have worked as planned.  *grinds teeth*

Cut to the chase...

• So they found a mouse baked into the bottom of a roll of Ritz crackers.  This troubles me, since those are like the only type of cracker I ever eat.  I have from time to time kissed a rat, but that doesn't mean I want to consume mouse crap, hair, pee, etc, in my crackers.  And obviously if they've found an entire whole baked mouse, there are all of the above listed mouse contributions on a much more regular basis.

The funny part of the article I thought was the following:

Mr. Williams called the Kraft Foods consumer affairs toll-free number and reported the incident. The Williams were offered a reimbursement, but they said they were not interested. Kraft told the Williams they would send a messenger to pick up the package for lab tests. However, the Williams said they called an attorney and he advised them to keep the package wrapped in the freezer and not to turn it over to Kraft.

“It’s not a big financial thing,” Mr. Williams said. “It’s the point that my daughter was in the school when this happened. I think it’s more of the humiliation of my daughter.”

Okay, so it's the humiliation, not the money.  Which is why instead of settling quietly, they contact the media, and get their name and address in news coast to coast.  That will certainly help her get over the humiliation, having everyone in your town asking, "You're the girl who got the Ratz cracker!?"

Companies in these sorts of circumstances are always held up for a small fortune, and I'm not sure why that's allowed.  Are they legally liable for an error in manufacturing?  Does the box say, "Rodent-free, or we'll pay you a million dollars." Sort of a variation on the old Domino's Pizza "30 minutes of it's free" guarantee.  If you ate dinner at a friend's house and there was a bug in the food, would you sue them for all the owned?  You could say the company wants to keep it quiet to avoid any bad publicity, but it's a bit late for that now.  So will they sue Kraft Foods and say that the daughter was humiliated in school, and for that they deserve three million dollars?  She's in sixth grade; find a day where some child of that age isn't horrified and traumatized by a zit or a dressing faux pas.  Can you sue for a million over those?

It's been noted (frequently) that there is no personal responsibility anymore.  People who make mistakes constantly expect to be able to sue for a million any time any company or business makes an error that causes them a slight inconvenience.  In the old days people used to get angry and take their business elsewhere.  Lawyers took care of that notion.  At the same time, law suits are really the only way people can try to get companies to change dangerous practices, and the majority of consumer protections added over the last 30 or 40 years are a direct result of one lawsuit or another.

• Weird story about a woman who is suffering from psychosomatic illnesses, but still was awarded over $100,000 in her lawsuit.

Lynette Mary Sant, 55, complained of a variety of symptoms after a bottle of phenol, a highly toxic chemical, leaked in her brother's car. She had no direct contact with the spilled fluid, only later inhaling vapours from items that had come into contact with it.

...while she exhibited symptoms when exposed to phenol, she also exhibited symptoms when exposed to distilled water.

The article later describes her total lack of contact with the stuff, and her speculations that she got sick from smelling the fumes in her brother's new car, where the PPM might have been 1 in a billion. And as they admit, she shows symptoms the same if it's phenol or distilled water.

Her imagined illness isn't unusual; millions of people make themselves sick every year, by worrying or stress or hearing about some illness and then deciding they have it.  Gulf War Syndrome and the women who blamed virtually any imaginable (literally) illness on their silicon gel breast implants are two well known hypochondriac outbreaks.  In both cases there were some people who really did get sick, and thousands of others who read about it, thought they might be sick, and got to worrying so much about it that they made themselves sick.  As well as others who just pretended, seeing a potential pay day.

And lots of those people won big in lawsuits, so I guess it's not unusual this woman won 100k either, come to think of it.

• German Couple Terrified of Mysterious Cuddle Toy.  The title of the article pretty well says it all.  It's funny, ah yup.

• Fascinating bit of news about bacteria somehow communicating through the air with each other, and preventing death from antibiotics if they can do so, but not if they are sealed away in plastic.  The scientists have no real idea how they do it.  This lovely quote is found in the article:

Bacteria reproduce by dividing. This can happen every 15 minutes. In a day and a half, with sufficient food, one microbe's progeny could outweigh the Earth.

• Tale of relatively grotesque abuse to animals by some sick guy and his friends.  It's not mentioned in the article, but this is such a serial killer training plan, it's ridiculous.  If there was a mention of bed wetting or his parents abusing him, I'd say start checking the area for missing whores.

• News item about a house that was rented for a year through a legit agency referral.  People who rented it turned out to be pot growers, and the owner of the house only found out when the check for the next year bounced.  He went and found the door open, and the house empty and wrecked.  Turns out the people who were there were growing pot the whole time, and in addition to destroying the house in the process, they had bypassed the electric meter to hide their enormous electric bills. So now the home owner is on the hook for $26,000 (Canadian) electric bill, as well as the enormous house repairs.  It's fun being a landlord.

Credit to Rotten.com/news, ForteanTimes.com, and Yahoo Most Popular for most of these items.  Those three sites are where I get much of my news, both to read and to write about here.

oul mates.  Real or not?

I've long thought the whole "soul mate" concept was a crock.  Yes, me cynical and heretical, what a surprise.  I shall elaborate.

First off, what's a "soul"?  It's some magical, spiritual, ghostly thing inside you, that's not physically tangible or measurable. Humans have them, animals don't, and depending on your religion, it's either some sort of eternal life force that gets recycled in a new body every now and then, or else a new one pops out like a gumball from a vending machine every time a baby is born, and god sticks it into them then, or at conception, depending on who you believe. And I'm sure there are about 500 other definitions of "soul", depending on who you ask.

So a soul is entirely indemonstrable.  People weigh no less when they die and the soul has supposedly left the body, there's no way to measure or quantify a soul, no way to prove it exists. People just like to believe in that sort of thing, for the same reason they like to believe in Guardian Angels and Gods and Heavens; they are comforting.  Believing we're all just meat is no fun.

Sorry, I'm getting off track.  My point is that to accept the whole "soul mate" concept you must first accept the existence of a "soul", which is a very dubious proposition, and subject to extremely vague definitions from one culture to another.

So we'll just leave that issue for now, and look at soul mates.

As I understand the term, and as it's defined in this article, which is the genesis of this little essay, a soul mate is another person, one who you feel is perfectly compatible with you.  Hence your relationship goes beyond like, love, or lust, but takes on a spiritual dimension, and you feel you were "made" for each other.  Literally or figuratively.

Scientific survey says... it's all wishful thinking.

New research suggests that even if there is no such as thing as a perfect "soul mate," we can still believe we've found one.

Men and women can develop a sense that their partners are essentially mirror images of themselves, allowing them to perceive similarities that aren't there at all, according to the authors of the new study.

The article also states:

"Assimilating a partner to the self gives intimates the sense that they have found a kindred spirit, someone who is just like them and, thus, knows and understands them for who they really are," writes Sandra L. Murray, of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and colleagues.

This sort of self-delusion isn't necessarily a bad thing for the relationship though.

In a world of complex relationships, the researchers assert, such "egocentrism" can be beneficial by instilling the feeling that one's partner is indeed a "soul mate."

Lastly, 

...in romantic relationships, they argue, "satisfaction seems to require leaving some assumptions about similarity untested and unquestioned."

That is very true, in my experience.  I've never been in a long term relationship, one that had either me or she fooling ourselves with soul mate stuff.  And one reason is that I've always been too objective, and evaluated things logically.  Which perhaps kept me from getting in deeper in a relationship that would have died in a few months or a year, but has also kept me from enjoying that few months or a year before it did.

I've never been in "love", romantically, so I find the very notion somewhat suspect.  It's a type of self delusion, much like the soul mate thing, just to a lesser extent, IMHO.  Certainly a pleasant experience for the participants, but the people in it are generally seeing more than is really there.

This is very easy to notice in others; everyone knows some couple who seem to have nothing in common, but who think they do through their love goggles.  But very hard to notice in your own relationships, or even the short term infatuations.

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