Disks in Rotation:
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CD Carousel
• Guns 'n Roses - Appetite for Destruction
• Metallica - S&M
• Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
• Metallica - Justice for All

Books Lying Open
• Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grim

Soul-Devouring Worry
• They know. They all know!

When I Grow Up:
• Metaphors vs. similes.  Connotation vs. denotation.  The wars will continue.

Daily Blog
Worked Friday night, and it was uneventful. There are some interesting people I work with each night (well, they work in the same vending stand as me, I wouldn't say I exactly "work with" them, aside from them getting me more poison to sell and taking my money) but I don't have anything clever to write about them as of yet.  Keeping in mind my own work history this year (being fired in April for bullshit reasons), and the lesson that Dooce teaches (she was fired for writing funny/mean stuff about people she worked with) I would obviously have to refrain from ripping anyone a new orifice, or even doing much of anything that could be at all controversial.  Given that I was fired (and then unfired after having the Union file a grievance) due to a minor customer complaint, with the official reason being "conduct detrimental to the company" it seems likely that they (the company) can use just about any lame excuse to can someone.  Especially an evil repeat offender like my bad self.

So writing anything at all about work other than in the most general sense is probably a bad idea.  But I would still like to do some personality profiles of people, as there are some amusing people.  The most interesting is a girl (young woman?) who works in my stand most nights.  She's Asian and about 20, and wacky.  Somewhat like a character on a sitcom, yelling about things, talking really fast, hitting people in good-natured fashion.  Virtually everyone else working there is male, and she's cute, in a manic sort of way, so most of the other guys are definitely sniffing after her, though she's so quick and wily that they are intimidated, in my evaluation.

Also, all of the guys in the stand are white, while the guys you see talking to her are Asian, usually young vendors, though she says often that she has no boyfriend, and none of them seem to make any progress in moving on her.

I find her interesting for her energy and wackiness, but I'm not attracted to her in any relationship or sexual way, which makes me impervious to her main weapons.  So I can just joke with her and at her and about her, and make my usual outrageous comments w/o fear of reprisal or hostility, since it's not like I'm trying to make her love me.  This is probably a great advantage if I were actually trying to wear her down to get a date, since it's what the "bad boy" type of guy does, though usually it's all unconscious; they are just assholes and their rough edges and not pursing makes them seem mysterious and alluring to the women that "nice guys" can't get anything off of.

That was OT.  What I find interesting about her, or what I'd write about here, is not anything to do with my relationship with her, (not that we have one) but how she acts with other people, and how she acts in general.  It's just wacky, up and down, frantic one minute, mellow the next, etc.  I don't think she does it in any sort of intentionally manipulative or scheming way, she's just bubbly and crazy all the time, to everyone.  I'd like to figure out what makes her tick; at least figure that well enough to think I knew, and write about it as a sort of psychological profile.

There are some other weird people at work also, that I think I could evaluate pretty well at this point, since they're less manic and unpredictable than the girl.  (I'm intentionally not naming any names, so bear with my pronoun use.)  But none of them are especially interesting, and any involved discussion of them would have to include all sorts of info that would definitely qualify as "conduct detrimental to the company" both by me and by others.  No one at work knows I do this site, or anything at all about me in real life, other than that I do some website work.  I don't plan on ever telling anyone there about it, since I'd prefer to compartmentalize my life in this area.

I don't like my job, I'm borderline ashamed of my job (mostly the fact that I need to do it to earn money, given that I have the gifts/skills/whatever to engage in many other types of work, all of them with far greater earning potential), my job wrecks my health (sore legs and back), and I'm about 9 years older than the average co-worker.  So my RL job is occasionally interesting to talk about here, and I don't really see anyone reading this having any impact on me at my job, but the vice versa is exactly opposite.

I suppose that if I keep doing this and it keeps growing in traffic, and I talk about my job at all, word will eventually get out.  Which is why I'm watching my goddamn mouth on what I say about work here, to some extent.

Now that I've explained why all updates about my RL job will suck, let's continue.

TV Guide has named their 50 worst shows of all time, after they announced their 50 best some months ago.  The worst show ever, according to them, is The Jerry Springer show, and I'd have a hard time arguing that.  I certainly would never watch it, and the fact that those sorts of human bear-baiting programs are televised, much less watched, just depresses me.

The full list can be seen in this article on Yahoo, and looking at the list, I can't recall ever watching any show on it more than maybe once, other than the Howard Stern E show, which I see very occasionally. (I don't get E here, with my basic cable, or I'd probably watch it once a week.)  I've not heard of most of them at all, which I imagine is to my good fortune. 

I've not heard of most of them, fortunately.  Hogan's Heroes is at #5, which I think is dubious.  I mean sure it was stupid, sort of a live action cartoon with writing of the Scooby Doo level, and no doubt insulting to anyone who actually had any interaction with Nazis in WWII, but aren't there 4 or 5 sitcoms every season that are even worse?  I speculate that TV Guide just wanted to have at least one show that was on for a while and people would remember.

I don't watch much TV, but a couple of exclusions leaped immediately to mind.  The Morton Downey Jr. show for one, I used to see parts of that when it was on late night, and I can't imagine that Jerry Springer was worse.  I mean the whole point of the Morton Downey show was that the host was a complete asshole and would just find guests to scream at, trying to provoke them to fight him or each other.   His main schtick was to blow smoke into people's faces and be an aggressively annoying asshole smoker.  The fact that he recently died of cancer is strong evidence for karma and/or a just god, but I'm still not convinced.

The Rush Limbaugh show was another one I think they would have listed but for fear of appearing liberal, as the media lives in constant fear of being labeled.  The show got zero ratings and was gone in about a year, despite Rush supposedly being this huge radio sensation at the time.  Even if you liked the guy and agreed with his PoV, the show as death.  He just sat at a desk and bloviated, just like on the radio, beating the same few horses into a slurry goo.  The Howard Stern TV show is taken from his radio show, but there's a useful visual element, what with strippers or celebrities or pranks or video of Stuttering John interviewing some dimwitted celebrity.  Rush's show was just a rehash of his radio show, in a TV studio, with a live audience.  So it was the hot water bottle-faced Limbaugh lecturing a bunch of grimly-clapping acolytes, with no guests, no jokes, nothing you couldn't hear on the radio already.  I found it totally pointless, and the studio audience was the creepiest in the history of TV.  Even worse than when Arsenio used to have those hordes of Beach Mtv rejects doing that woofing thing.  Rush's audience always looked like a focus group from an accounting convention; lots of poorly/formally-dressed plump white people, who did nothing but sit and stare, until Rush said something brilliant and witty like "Hillary is a bitch." at which time they'd all break into wild applause while staring as their leader with the furious intensity of true believers.  It was actively scary.

The facts that 1) Rush Limbaugh lost 50 pounds and looks worse than he did fat, and 2) that he's gone stone deaf and can't hear his own show, are even stronger evidence of a working karma system on earth.  I still don't buy it though.

Some other weird news.

• I posted about Iverson's misbehavior yesterday with some scorn of the whole topic.  And yet I felt compelled to read this article, bashing him and the behavior of his team.  It's worth a look, and has a few good quotes.

Welcome to the jock culture, where missing practice gets you an organization's scorn but felony charges get you complete, unconditional solidarity.

This I can't even begin to figure out.  Officials at a Japanese judo tournament banned six teens from competing after they plucked some of their eyebrows.

Kyodo news agency, quoting organizers Saturday, said the six had been disqualified from a judo tournament in Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, on the grounds that the current Japanese teenage fad gave them an unfair advantage.

"We have banned thin eyebrows because they are intimidating to opponents and cause displeasure," Tatsuo Kakizaki, an tournament organizer, was quoted as saying.

• If you're intimidated by the shape of someone's eyebrows, Judo probably isn't the sport for you.  And if it's a current fad, doesn't that mean that like every other kid has it?  How could they have already added rules against something that's a new fad?  Japanese (in Japan) are wacky.

• So the US deficit is growing again, and faster than expected.  Ironic that after 8 years of a so-called "tax and spend liberal" in the white house, during which time the deficit shrank dramatically, there's now a Conservative in there to cut social program spending, and the deficit skyrockets.  It's largely growing due to the new military expenses and the collapse of the stock market/corporate profits/tax revenues from them, and of course the Administration is acting totally shocked.  This is after all tax cuts and corporate bail outs from the last two years were based on extremely rosy financial projections, since after all, we'd had several years of a booming economy, and there was no way to anticipate a downturn; it's not as if every economy on earth has done that repeatedly over all recorded history.

Some unintentional hilarity from an Adminstration spokesman:

White House budget chief Mitchell Daniels said the recession and the war were the chief culprits. In particular, he cited a sudden drop in revenue from taxes on capital gains, mutual fund distributions and stock options, a reversal of the unexpected receipts the government collected as stock markets soared in the late 1990s.

"No one saw this coming," he said.

Daniels also said the revival of red ink spotlights the need to clamp down on federal spending. The administration is currently involved in a bitter fight with lawmakers of both parties over the price tag of a roughly $30 billion anti-terrorism bill.

"This president doesn't intend to spend a single taxpayers' dollar unnecessary," Daniels said. "Right now, every dollar does count."

So the budget deficit shrank in the late 90's under Clinton due to unexpected corporate revenues, which were entirely fueled by irrationally overpriced stocks.  This was something of a miracle, and totally unexpected.  As soon as it persisted for more than a year, politicians adopted it as the new standard, and based their budgets and spending on the jackpot continuing to roll over, and now that it's not, they are simply shocked and amazed.  Nice level of foresight and objective analysis and prudent planning there, eh?

• The "no shit" research info of the day:

TV commercials that depict idealized images of rail-thin feminine beauty can send young female viewers--particularly those who place great importance on their appearance--into an immediate tailspin of increased anger and body dissatisfaction, Australian researchers say.

Yeah, and TV shows with rich, young, muscular guys piss me off and make me think I'll never get laid again.  They also encourage me to work out, make more money, and care about my appearance.  Welcome to the 2nd deadly sin, it motivates most human behavior, you'll find.

• Mac Users are smarter, better educated, have more money, and just generally roxor, compared the to illiterate, sweaty-palmed, SW-worshiping, comic book-reading, burger-flipping, basement dwelling horde of losers using PCs.  I personally suspect the constant crashing of Windows (every version) causes lost IQ points. The funniest quote of recent memory is found in this article:

"Apple customers may be educated, but our customers are smart enough to have chosen Gateway, which offers the best value," said Brad Williams, a spokesman for the PC maker.

Finding this funny requires you to know that Gateway computers are overpriced crap targeted entirely at computer newbies, but I'll assume you are all up to speed on that one and not mention it.  I looked for a quote in the article from someone with AOL talking about how experienced Internet users were dropping their broadband ISPs and joining up with AOL due to it being so much faster and having much better Hello Kitty chat rooms, but maybe it was cut for space considerations.

I post weird search strings that resulted in a click on a link to this site from time to time. Just one new one is showing today (since I can't see the actual search that the 140ish google/yahoo referrals today used) and it's an easy one. "Ashcroft is insane".  I probably hit for that one 3 or 4 times, from various news items about his wackiness and my commentary thereon. I just tried that search on google and one of the links pointed to this video of Ashcroft singing at a press conference.  I'd seen it earlier this year when it was new, but I had to watch it again, and it's just as unbelievable as it was five months ago.  I find myself staring in utter amazement, which turns to a sort of giddy hysteria when he breaks into the scat portion.

Aside from the searches, the referrals are interesting.  These are links here, posted on various other sites, that were clicked.  When you come to this site (or any site) your browser tells the host server where you came from, if you clicked a link.  If you are on ESPN.com and you click your bookmark or type in the URL of this site, my stats show nothing but a direct entry count, which is by far the most common entry method. You have to actually click a link on that other site.

• www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26145.html -- 4 hits from this.  The Register is a UK newspaper that seems to be about a half step above tabloid quality.  I read articles on there from time to time, though they tend towards the outrageous.  So how did I get 4 hits from them?  I have no idea, you can look at that link, it's some news story and clearly has nothing to do with this site, and equally-clearly has no link here whatsoever.  Weird referrals from nowhere show up each month; this one (www.cbsnews.com/images/2002/06/10/image511670l.jpg) counted for 4 referrals last month; and it's not even a webpage, just a picture from a news article.  I don't see how it's possible to get a referral from that.

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