Getting out of my car to go into the bookstore I saw a mom and a middle school child in a minivan - they had pulled over after she picked him up from school and she was comforting him as he appeared to be starting to cry.
This scene was very sad, heart-stoppingly so, but I found myself indentifying with the mom more than the child. What do you say? After living through whatever torment that he is experiencing, what do you tell them?
06:24 PM part of personalThere are different versions of me. Depending on who you are you will see me at different angles, in different lights, differently. Part of this is you, but mainly it is my reaction to you.
With you, I am all-knowing and serious. I get the job done and am aware of all that goes on around me. I am constantly learning and ahead of the curve.
With you, I am bitter, quick to anger, annoyed constantly, on the verge of physical violence often.
With you, I am young and inexperienced, feeling my way around without knowing what is going on; looking for advice but never asking for it.
With you, I am smart and funny. Healthy and relaxed in a nice sort of way. I am closest to my version of myself, what I am like when I am alone, when I am with you. But maybe this version with you is a little better than when I am alone, because of you. I like this version of myself best, and that is why I like the version of you that I see so much.
12:57 PM part of personal[2 people on horses ride off into the sunset after an amazing adventure]
"Wow, what an amazing adventure."
"Yes, I must say that was something special. I hope that our next one is that good."
"Any idea where that one might be?"
"Well, that's where we are riding right now. Another one is always around the corner if you are looking."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah, go ahead."
"Why in the hell are we riding at night? I mean, the sun is going to set in like 5 minutes and then we won't be able to see where we are going. Couldn't we have just stayed in town another day?"
"Oh, just ride along and shut up."
"And if we can find adventure anywhere then why can't we just stay in town and wait for it? Do we really have to seek it out?"
"Do you really want to go back there? Everybody knows us back there and they saw what we can do. There are no suprises, we would just be sitting around doing nothing back there? Is that what you want, a whole life of nothing?"
"Well, I'm just saying that we could stay in a warm bed and get some more whiskey."
"Get some more whiskey, warm bed? What is wrong with you? What happened to adventure? You want to live a life of sitting around doing the same stuff?"
"No, not really, but I'm just saying.."
"Just shut up. Here, let's set up camp here for the night, it's getting too dark to keep riding."
10:08 AM part of storiesName a situation in which the odds were against you and you prevailed?
Well when I was working at my last job we had a very important project that required me to put in at least 80 hours a weeks for long stretches of months. We successfully shipped the product and I was commended on my hard work, with the CEO saying that they couldn't have done it without me.
[Well when I was working at my last job I was widely considered to be a drooling idiot. Despite all the negative press if you will, I still willed myself out of bed every morning, got in my car and drove towards a sort of slow mental suicide in which I willingly had the spirit sucked out of me like some sort of self-for-money swapping program.]
So would you say is your biggest weakness?
Well, I have been known to work too hard sometimes, losing awareness of those around me and falling into what can easily be described as a 'genius trance' wherein all problems and their solutions are seen swirling around in my cup of coffee. During this time I am sometimes rude to my coworkers, since I feel my time when I am in this state is better spent solving problems than talking to dickwads such as them.
[I can't concentrate and I hate myself. Well maybe that is a bit too extreme. I don't hate myself, I hate the person that I am at work and my life in general sometimes. I think that my greatest weakness is that my job sucks the life out of me like juice out of a slurpie - leaving only the cold, colorless, tastless, waste of a full but empty cup which is discarded and forgotten.]
How did you find out about us?
Well, I have a very good friend who has a friend who worked here and said that it was great. I have also seen your products in action.
[As I mentioned a moment ago, my life is effectively over. I would enjoy being clothed and fed while I rot slowly, twitching in vain while I await death. This is why I am here giving you a psychological blowjob - because I need this job like a I need a working toilet.]
Are you a team player?
Oh yes, I have worked on many successful and unsuccessful projects with a wide variety of people where I learned how to work with others in an effective and stress-free way to get the job done right the first time.
[Well, of course I am you little fuck. Who told you that I wasn't? Was it that little shit Martinez! I shoulda cut that prick down when I had the chance.
I am very good at working with others. Here is the way it usually pans out: I don't know what I am doing, so I hang around with people who do until I am comfortable to contribute a little. When I do get any criticism I curl up like a little girl and cry myself to sleep in my cubicle over lunch. So rest assured that I am quite the team player - much in the same way that the team mascot is.]
What do you feel is your greatest strengh?
I am a genius who is very creative and good at seeing the big picture.
[The other day I was looking at the big picture and it seems to break down something like this: I hate you, I hate myself, and I would rather die in a blaze of glory than rot in a windowless cubicle - a mythical shoebox on this enormous wasted shell of a planet. I would rather throw this cup of coffee in your face, flip over your desk and run out past security, who would shoot me down in my tracks a few feet from the door to the outside promise of an interesting life.]
When can you start?
Today.
[Today.]
03:38 PM part of personalAs I walk towards the intersection I see a figure in one of the inlets where a shop door is a few feet off the street. He looks like the homeless man that spoke to me earlier. I am uncomfortable, and try to look not so as I walk quickly past. I turn my eyes to him as I pass and realize that there are four of them. They are having a bible study and discussing 1 Timothy.
06:30 PM part of personal1
Driving down the highway in the rain at night I am at the front of a dense pack of cars. We are in a construction zone and I am looking at a sign off to the side of the road. My eye catches the sight of a dog running across the highway.
He is across the road before I can even step on the brakes.
He gets halfway across our lane and then stops.
We hit him, killing him instantly and sending our car off into the median.
We swerve to miss him and hit a truck to the right of us, sending him spinning and us off to the ramp on the right.
We don't hit the brakes and slam into the dog at full speed. The noise is horrible and we drag his body for about a hundred yards before the main piece falls off the front of the car. I spend nearly three hours getting all the hair out of the grill and our insurance goes up slightly after paying for new headlights on the right side.
Right before we hit him he reels back a little, just enough to change the angle of impact so that he comes over the hood and through the windshield at us.
2
Our neighbor is a police officer with a K-9 partner. He keeps the dog at home and it is very friendly with us; a large purebred German Shepherd that knows very little about sheep. He is a sweet dog and spends most of his off-duty time doing normal dog things such as sitting on the porch overlooking the parking lot while chewing on a plastic toy or playing with their other dog, a civilian black lab.
We told our neighbor that we were suprised at how normal the dog acts given that it is trained to bring down and nearly kill very strong, desperate people. He said that the dog is trained to act differently when wearing his police collar.
One day when bringing in some groceries the dog made a slight noise and I looked up to find him looking down at me, the chew toy discarded from his mouth. Something I said or did, or the way I was holding whatever it was that I was holding, had triggered something in him and he stared down at me for a moment in complete silence, its hair slightly up, its ears a little more at attention than normal, it eyes and breathing calm and patient. After a few seconds it made up its mind lacking further information and moved back to its little blanket and grabbed the toy in its mouth.
I wonder if I will ever have to put my collar on to deal with you, and if I do, if I can ever really take it off.
05:56 PM part of storiesDid you mean: movable type spell check?
07:20 PM part of a balanced breakfastUnsolicited email, or spam, is simply email that you don't want. It is becoming an increasing nuisance for most people, but you can take simple steps to avoid wasting too much time managing spam.
Basics
Spammers are marketing services that send out advertising emails to millions of people at once. Their customers are a wide variety of businesses that wish to sell their products to a wide variety of people. A spammer's business consists of having the technology to send bulk emails and a good list of addresses to send them to.
Email addresses are bought and sold between spammers, with some businesses specializing in the acquisition, or harvesting as it is frequently called, of email addresses. Email addresses are not all equal in this business, with some being out of date and others having people that have bought products from unsolicited email marketing in the past.
In many ways spammers are very similar to junk mailers. Traditional bulk mailers send out flyers to thousands of people at their physical addresses advertising some product or service. Since it is expensive to send out mail even at bulk third-class business rates junk mail is usually targeted to you in some way. A recent purchase of a car, home, or major appliance may lead to someone selling your address to marketers. I received mail advertising other magazines after subscribing to Newsweek. (I later found out that my address had actually been sold after I unsubscribed to Newsweek)
Junk mail is not sent unless there is money in it. For example, political candidates send out mail asking for money during a campaign to registered members of their political party only because they can justify the expense ("we spent $600,000 sending out those flyers but we made $700,000 in contributions and spread the word about our candidacy") If an advertisement cannot be justified in this way then junk mailers will not send it out because they will lose money.
Junk mailers have a very low 'hit rate', or the number of people who will respond (usually meaning buy something) in some way to the advertisement. Typical hit rates are 2 or 3 percent.
Spammers work the same way but on a much larger scale. Given that the cost of sending out a million emails and sending out three million is almost the same, bulk emailers can tolerate very, very low hit rates. This is why my wife receives email advertising male organ enlargement; their is no need for bulk marketers to spend money targeting advertisements when the cost of sending to bad candidates is so low.
So spamming will not go away until the hit rates get low enough that it simply isn't good business. Until then there are some simple steps that you can take to prevent being flooded with spam.
Don't let people have your email address
Don't kid yourself, your email address is very valuable. After all, you are a real live person with money attached to it. You should protect your email address and only give it out when you have to.
1. Don't give out your address to websites during registration.
The number one way that spammers get your email address is from companies that sell them after they receive them voluntarily from users. Many websites currently require you to register to download a program or use services. Before giving out your email address to anyone you should look around the website to see if it is really required and if they have a privacy policy.
Typically your email address is not really required unless they are going to use it immediately to send you a confirmation code or your initial password. For example, to download a popular program such as the Acrobat Reader plugin for Internet Explorer, the website asks for your email address but does not require it to download the software. Don't give it to them.
In fact, in some cases I will provide a false email address when I feel as if the site is being unfair with me. Many times I have felt that the site required my email address when I saw no need for them to have it to provide their services. This is why at most sites such as the New York Times that require registration to read a simple articles the user yeah@right.com is already taken.
When you do have to provide a working email address be careful with what you are signing up for. Many registration forms will have there default options set so that you are giving them permission to send you email. If you do not uncheck these options then you have asked for emails and the messages you will later receive on a regular basis are solicited and therefore not technically spam. To you they will be quite annoying and you will have to unsubscribe.
Which brings us to privacy policies. Although there is no regulation of privacy on the Internet at this time, most websites have adopted simple policies to prevent regulation. Read the privacy policies on websites. Don't assume that since a website has a privacy policy that this means that they are looking out for you like you would expect. I have read many privacy policies that say simply that they will sell your email address, web browsing history, preferences, etc. to the highest bidder at once, after you unsubscribe (similar to Newsweek's policy), or if you don't explicitly tell them not to.
2. Don't put your email on websites. (fake one or temp one)
Spammers are beginning to notice that there are a lot of email addresses on the web in mailing list archives, people's personal sites, company directories, etc. Given that it is suprisingly easy to write a program that simply reads webpages and searches for email addresses, many spammers are writing these 'bots' and sending them lose on the web. I have written one of these just to see how difficult it is and it simply isn't. While telling if something is an email address is hard, there are simple heuristics that you can use to get a lot of good ones very easily.
If you have a personal site or are active in a mailing list that archives its content on the web somewhere, you should make an effort to hide your email address from these programs. Simple examples:
david at domain.com
d a v i d [at] this domain dot com
There are even programs that will use JavaScript to write out your email address in a format that a web browser understands but at the same time makes it very hard to scrap it off a page. An example is Enkoder.
3. Don't ever respond to spam emails, even to unsubscribe.
Responding to spam is admitting that you are alive and check your email. This makes the value of your address go up and increases that amount of spam you get. Most spam even has an 'unsubscribe' link on it somewhere. These are false and are a way to trick you into admitting that you are a good email address. Don't fall for it.
4. Don't forward stuff. (Bcc)
Although that cute little story about the guy who walks into a bar is neat, don't foward four copies of it everyday to everyone you know. Not only will this annoy your friends at some point, you are giving them and everyone they forward it to your email address. Although I like forwards sometimes I have asked some of my friends to not forward me things or to Bcc me if they do. Bcc means 'Blind Carbon Copy' and is a term left over from the days of physical letters (remeber those?). It means that you send an email to many people but to each of them it looks like it is just to them.
01:38 PM part of techI put down the Borges collection to go watch American Idol.
After it is over I take an aptitude test but find that I can't answer any of the questions. Am I artistic or technical - do I prefer working with people, setting goals, working alone, being creative. Do I like blue or red? Am I independent, do I like being left alone, am I sociable? Do I like working? Am I an immature little shit? These don't seem like fair questions to me. Do I like aptitude tests? Would I enjoy giving career advice to lost souls? Am I judgemental? Not as much as you are. Do I like to solve problems? If I were to have a guaranteed 50K a year for the rest of my life in a job that I sort of hated (didn't love), would I take it? How do I deal with the knowledge that if I were attacked by monkeys I would yell at them to stop but if I were attacked by birds I wouldn't? Do I enjoy long walks on the beach and slow dancing in the rain? Am I determined, how much stick-to-it-ness do I have? Am I aware that the aptitude test takes 4 hours?
Do I enjoy IQ tests? Am I aware of the fact that this IQ test (that you have just finished taking in just under an hour) is graded in large part based on the time it took you, an idiot who does not read directions, to finish? Are you aware that the average time it takes to finish the test is 12 minutes? Are you aware that your personality type is chameleon? Are you haunted by the life not lived in the first person? Well, are you? Then come to beautiful Jamaica and fell alright.
08:45 PM part of personalRight off a road that I travel often there is a corner in the middle of a very large black neighborhood, the blackest in the city. By 'blackest' I mean the number of people who live in this neighborhood that are black is very close to 100 percent, not that they possess qualities that are somehow 'black'.
At this corner is a Church's Chicken fast food restaurant. Across the street from this there is a KFC and a Bojangles, both chicken fast food places. There is a small shopping center with a bus stop in front of it and two chinese restarants, a barber shop (All haircuts $5), and a check-cashing place. Down the street is a Rentway and a Food Lion, General Dollar, and gas station.
Everytime I drive through I wonder why there are so many fucking chicken places. It almost makes me mad that the stereotype of black people liking chicken is being confirmed by thousands of white people driving past this corner everyday on their way downtown. It seems to me to be a disgrace in some way.
But here's the thing, do these restaurants exist outside of my mind? Do they confirm stereotypes to other people or am I noticing them only because I am aware of or somehow believe these stereotypes? Do people really think that blacks are chicken-eaters, or is this supposed widely-held stereotype simple a stereotype itself?
Did the management of KFC base their planning on this? Do they target black communities? Do I simply notice them more when they are in black communities?
07:31 AM part of personalEveryone around me is sick, throwing up, sleeping all day, screaming in pain when air hits their hair. I am immune somehow to it so far and am planning to go for a walk later today, hoping to get this feeling of superiority off of my skin with some fresh air.
08:11 AM part of personal1. Intelligence
Not the book smarts, or the street smarts, the general intelligence that is both. The ability to learn from mistakes, to recognize and avoid mistakes seen outside of your own life. To constantly be learning, but more importantly to be open to learning from anyone, anything, anytime.
2. Hard work
A good work ethic in the sense that something is important and that it should be done right, to the best of your ability. This is not blind ambition or the belief that with enough long hours you could paint the moon, but that some things are worth the effort. There are bounds, you do not sacrifice yourself, those that you love, the truly important things, for most goals.
3. Creativity
Never stop thinking. Try to create something new everyday, whether it be an idea or a viewpoint, or a change within yourself. Explore other people, what makes them tick, but explore yourself as much or more. Never create boundries for how you think, don't pigeonhole yourself and what you can do.
4. Attitude
Not the cheerleader mentality with no rational backing, but recognize the fact that believing in something means you are more likely to do it. View yourself, the world, and your place in it realistically, but with a slant towards optimistic views of change and of your ability to create. Disasters are challenges and opportunities to learn after all, and they are when you really discover.
I don't want to be gone. I don't want quality time, or on the weekends when I am not working. I want to be a fixture, a part of the background, an equal team member. I don't want to never be home enough that you notice when I am.
I want to be there so often that you don't even think, that they are bored with me being around, that they are so used to my presence that they want to grow out of it later. Because me sacrificing, me working, is not worth the cost.
03:22 PM part of personalI heard three ideas, quotes that I like today:
-Creativity is a greater predictor of success than intelligence.
-To change is to improve, to change often is to succeed.
-Critics are like eunuchs in whorehouses, they see how it is done, they know how to do it, they just can't do it.
03:13 PM part of inspirationI am haunted this morning by the memory of a passion in a dream. It was a girl, looking very familiar, and I was talking to her and laughing, everything was great. No sex or the option of, just conversation, me trying to impress, her playing the game and impressing me.
I wondered off and came back and met her boyfriend. They started to leave and I continued talking to her, asking questions like where are you in school, etc. I asked her what she was studying, what she wanted to be, to achieve, and she told me again; I realized that I had already asked her this before, and I was embarassed and didn't listen while she told me again, too ashamed, I had messed it all up.
Then they left and I went back inside, taking a long slow drink from my glass.
02:35 PM part of personalThe other day I was watching the Blind Date show and had a mildly life-changing experience.
But first let me say that watching a show about people going on a blind date is a very sad thing. It is sort of like watching someone play video golf: you are so many layers away from actual activity that it doesn't even resemble the core properties of the activity. For example, watching someone go on a blind date is nothing like a date, relationships, or love - and watching someone play video golf is nothing like sports, golf, or movement outside in general.
Anyway, this girl was a little guarded and anti-male, anti-intimacy. She was very cynical and kept insulting the guy as a defense mechanism (or something, my mail-order pyschology degree should arrive any day now). Anyway, they are actually sort of comfortable with each other and he finally says something to her after she is done making fun of herself and the situation:
"Why are you such a grouch? I mean, what is wrong anyway, why be so cynical about everything anyway?"
To which she responds:
"Well, because that is just me, that is how I work. It just works for me to be down and cynical".
But the thing is, that it just doesn't work.
07:00 PM part of personalWhat you don't understand is that nobody believes it. Most people that you meet are able to see through your little game. Some still like you, sure, there are plenty of types of people in this world.
But given enough time most types will hate you. Give enough hours of forced conversation with you, of small little insults from you, of you choosing 'being funny' over 'being nice', of you talking about yourself all the fucking time.
Most don't care how you got your little complex - god complex - but they know that it just doesn't add up. You simply aren't that smart, aren't that good-looking, aren't that nice, aren't that likeable to justify it. And if you were, you probably wouldn't act like it, right?
But maybe this is how it happened. You grew up in a small place, a rural place, but with natural intelligence and a little money. You were just smart enough to think that you were smarter than everybody - the teachers, the parents, the friends.
So when you went out into the big bad world you thought you were a big deal. Turns out that you aren't. But this wasn't going to stop you, after all, you are pretty smart, and so you developed mechanisms to maintain your image. There are ways to appear to be wickedly smart without actually using whatever you have for anything - to make people happy, for example - or to have success. Don't go to class, insult others, know a little about everything, talk a lot about stuff that you do know, you look at people like they are idiots when they say something that you don't understand (they must be wrong, right?), hang out with people who are non-academic and shy, etc.
Then move back into your small world and spend the rest of your life there. By this point it is so ingrained that you can't be corrected, it is almost physically painful for you to experience new things, to learn new things after you have been found lacking. You seek out the familiar, the comfortable. You do a lot of little things.
But here's the problem. In your small little world, you miss the real lessons, the real experience that occurs outside it. Most of life is lived when you aren't in charge, when you don't look good, when you don't anticipate, when you aren't looking out for yourself. When you aren't you. When you live in a world without criticism, without input from the outside, you don't grow.
And one day you will realize this. But for now you irritate, you drive away, and you add to the hate in this world.
05:49 PM part of personal