I Guess This Is It

I just realized that I had not blogged since last week, and then it was a pretty lame post. I started this blog at a time that my life was going to shit, and I needed a place I could bitch where no one that I knew was going to read it. Things have changed. First off, I find myself pulling my punches because people that I know have found this blog. Second, I've made some pretty drastic changes over the last six months and I don't have near enough bitching in me these days to make an interesting blog (assuming it ever was).

So in short, I won't be updating this anymore. Those who know me know where to find me. Those who don't, thanks for listening.

Some More Housekeeping

Over the last week I have been removing a great number of blogs that are either inactive or that I have simply lost interest in, as well as 20 or so web sites that I either don't use or refer to anymore, or that I rarely visit and can easily find either from memory (Amazon.com) or via Google. I'm sure neither of my readers care, but I hate a cluttered website.

Two-fer from Fred

Everyone (meaning both of you) probably get sick of me pimping Fred Reed's columns, but I'm going to do it anyway, so get over it.

First, Fred questions how someone can govern others when he has no fucking clue what normal people live with every day. The closest I ever came to riding in a chauffeured limousine was riding in the back of one that my cousin was driving to the car wash. Can someone, anyone, please explain how someone who has known nothing but, has the slightest clue how to run my life? Read Fred's column, then think about the last ten bills Congress has passed. Explains a lot, doesn't it? Now imagine you are a 17-year-old inner city kid listening to some dumb-fuck that just showed up in a limo with half the city police department as an escort, telling you he "feels your pain" while wearing more money than you will make in your entire life, surrounded by 50 body guards, with a helicopter flying close support. He may as well be a fucking alien. "Feels my pain" my ass. Not unless I can get close enough to loosen up his front teeth with my fist.

In the most current column, Fred takes a few swings at one of his favorite punching bags; affirmative action. My view is much in line with Fred's. I've worked with some extremely talented women and minorities. I've also had my fill of affirmative action hires. Now in case anyone thinks Fred or myself harsh when discussing these parasites, let me assure you that we are gentle as kittens compared to how qualified blacks and women view them. The reason is simple. When my former employer hired a black female for a systems analysis position that was too stupid to learn how to even log onto the network after six months, she just made me look all that much smarter. The other black females in the department correctly viewed her as a liability and made short work of getting rid of her and were none too gentle about how they went about it. One day Miss Black Moron is striding around the office threatening lawsuits; the next, she was just gone without a trace.

Women and minorities may be "making strides" but I'm not convinced the price is worth it. Personally, they can fucking have it. I sat in a grey box for 20 years. Now I fix leaky faucets and snake out plugged toilets for $6.75/hour and enjoy my work more now than I have in a long time. Some dumb broad wants to drive 90 minutes each way to sit in my cube for 9 or 10 hours, then get home only to have her pager go off at 7pm, 11pm, and 3am, and call that success, be my guest.

The reason women outnumber men in college is because college has become hostile to males. If we are lucky, the women will completely take over our university system, eliminate the athletic departments, hard science, math, and everything else that women can't do, or can only do poorly when compared to men. The men will all leave for Mexico or other unenlightened countries around the Pacific Rim that still admit that society works better if everyone accepts that women are women and men are men. Then in three months or 3,000 miles, every mechanical device will seize up because there won't be anyone around to change the oil.

(shrug)

The Chinese don't give a shit about political correctness. They give a lot of shit about kicking our ass economically by any means needed, even if that means that the math departments in their universities have more men than women.

Bu-Bye Flickr

It's been fun. OK, it really hasn't been much of anything since August, so I just ditched the whole thing. My Flickr ID is no more. Good idea for someone that would actually use it, but it's just one more damn thing to me.

John Brunner Nails It

I love reading John Brunner (Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, complete list of novels here) and his view of the future as one fucked up distopia. The Arcosanti library has a couple of his shorter novels from the late 1970's and early 1980's. I just finished Manshape and it had the best prediction/description of the current state of child psychiatry I have ever seen. The following conversation is taking place between a 17-year-old girl (Nefret) and a middle-aged man (Thorkild) institutionalized after a mental breakdown.

"You can't cure someone who isn't sick," Thorkild offered.

"It's sick to be different," Nefret said....

"I'm soft," she said eventually, "I can feel the cure going on inside me now. Like hands shaping wet clay. One day soon I'll be made over entirely. I won't be me any more. This is the third time, so I remember, you see. I'm too soft to fight the changes. All it needs is for me not to notice when they puff my medicine into the air, and there it is, right inside me, like my own breath, and it turns into a new me and I start to behave the way they want, the way they think is right....

"How come you're here for the third time, Nefret?" Thorkild said....

"For being different."

"How are you different?"

Because I don't want to be the same as everybody. I don't want to be made to think I'm happy. If I'm going to be happy I want to be happy. Otherwise I'd rather stay the way I am."

But my dear Nefret, you don't have a say. Just shut up and take your Prozac/Zoloft/Elavil because our omniscient medical industry knows that you don't want to be you; knows that you would rather spend the rest of your life high on drugs and feeling false happiness, rather than actually feeling genuine emotions and dealing with life.

Feh.

Another New Year

Can't say I'm sorry to see 2006 gone, but the one good thing I can say about the last year is that I managed to accomplish pretty much all my resolutions. I'm out of my stupid fucking job and the cubicle hell that went with it, and out of the shitty Michigan weather. Today it was 60 degrees and sunny. Not a bad way to spend the New Year.

We'll see what 2007 brings. As of now, this is the Year of Arcosanti unless they boot me out of here before then. I seem to change my mind every day whether I'll be staying past the end of the year. There are still a lot of places that I want to live in (Mexico and St. Kitts for starters) so I don't want to be stuck here for too long. But a year goes by fairly quick, so maybe it will be two or three.

Life is a long way from perfect, but it is one hell of a lot better than it was a year ago.

Also, to kick off the New Year, I've significantly shortened up link list by eliminating all the web sites I hadn't bothered to visit in the last year, and those that hadn't been updated in the last year. I also think I'm going to dump Flickr. I haven't used it nearly as much as I thought I would, so I will be eliminating the few photos that are up there, un-contacting my contact list, un-joining the few groups I belong to. It's a great idea, but I just don't have the time for it that I thought I would.

My key resolution for 2007, other that sticking it out at Arcosanti, is simplify, simplify, simplify. Made a great start in 2006, but there is still a long way to go. I'm still working on making all my worldly possessions fit into a suitcase and a plastic tote. I'll get there one way or the other.

Shit and Cellphones

I know there are people out there that don't like their cell phone companies, but this one was over the top. We've been having a run of plugged toilets lately. It must be the food the cafe is serving or something. In any case, the toilet in the public bathroom plugged up earlier this week. One of the maintenance guys gave it a good snaking, and all seemed well, until it plugged up again the next day. This time the snake was hitting something solid, which meant either someone had literally shit a brick, or we had a FOIT (foreign object in toilet). The toilet was drained and removed from the floor flange. Sure as shit (in this case, literally). There was a cellphone wedged into the S-trap.

As funny as that was, the epilogue to the story is even funnier. Or maybe tragic. When we were in the cafe and mentioned that we had just dug a cell phone out of the men's room toilet, some bright person piped up with "Oh yea; some kid dropped his cell phone in the toilet Tuesday." The entire maintenance department responded in unison, "And you didn't think to tell us that little tidbit either time the toilet plugged up?!?!" Did I mention this person is the head of one of the departments here? Sweet Jesus. No wonder these people have been at it for 30 years and have almost nothing to show for it.

Back On-Line

Sorry for the gap in posting, but this time, I can blame someone else. The Arcosanti network has been down for a week. I tried using the free wi-fi at the local gas station, but it was non-functional as well.

Things are settling into a routine here. I go to work, spend most of my day looking around for shit that someone else used and didn't put back, accomplish little or nothing, eat, bitch, and sleep. Pretty much like life anywhere else, only I don't have to spend 3 hours a day in a steel coffin with a couple million other pissed off people crammed into their steel coffins.

Truer Words Were Never Said

"Let's face it. We're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn."

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins

IQ Again

Jerry Pournelle is once again pointing out the obvious. Like I've said before, we've had a good run and the barbarians won't likely storm the gates until I'm long dead. If things fall apart a little earlier, at least I'm far enough from other people to get a decent head start.