I beat Chaser last night. The ending was basically Total Recall without the happy conclustion. It was the most disappointing end to a game I've ever seen. Depressing, to say nothing of monumentally stupid. I hereby drop the game rating to 4 bullets out of a possible 10. Dumb fucking game.
To combat the audio ejaculations springing forth from my nose-blowing, carrot-crunching officemate, I finally surrendered and brought in a collection of CDs and a set of headphones to hopefully drown her out, or at least muffle her.
Two problems. A of all, my headphone cord isn't long enough to reach from the back of the CPU to my ears. B of all, there's one audio jack for left and one for right, so my head phones would be in mono rather than stereo. Taken together, the situation was unacceptable.
The solution?
Here at IBM (motto: No Technology Is Too Old), they used to equip all PCs with external speakers because the PCs of yore apparently didn't have internal speakers. Of course, nowadays, most PCs DO have embedded speakers, so the old external speakers have become obsolete. However, being that it's IBM, they never really got around to throwing out the old external speakers.
So, I invaded a vacant office across the hall in search of a set of the defunct speakers. And I found some! In the original box and everything! To give you an idea how old these speakers are, they're Altec Lansing ACS52 models. The box touts them as Windows 95 compatible, for crying out loud. With Phantom Bass! Whatever the hell that is. They're big and clunky and they look like air purifiers.
But, they work!
I'm now listening to Vivaldi (yeah, yeah, I know), and once my officemate comes into work, I can plug my headphones into the speakers and hopefully drown out her nasal noise.
If not, at least I have surround sound.
"I don't get it. I love what I do. I enjoy singing and dancing but I'm pretty retarded. Just a big dork. Very silly."
BRITNEY SPEARS telling USA Today she doesn't understand the media's obsession with her.
Retarded. That's the word I was looking for.
Inspired by Joshua, who wrote a far more evocative post on the subject, I thought I'd dredge up an old (and I mean OLD) newspaper column I wrote about elementary school dodge ball. Read this if you want, but also be sure to read Joshua's post. It's a worthwhile read, particularly for elitist jackholes such as myself.
When Dodge Ball was Dodge Ball c. Ryan Rhodes, Oct. 24, 2001
This column is not about anthrax. While I sat and pondered the topic for this week, I dismissed anthrax both because it's tough to think up a good anthrax joke, and because you can find out everything you never wanted to know about anthrax pretty much everywhere else. I'm fairly certain I heard Barney the Dinosaur singing a little diddy about anthrax early last week: "Infect you. . . Infect me. . . Infect one more, so now there's three."
No, I decided to dedicate this column to the disturbing trend in America's schools to ban the time-honored grade school activity of dodge ball. Apparently, jittery school officials and parents of less-than-athletic children have managed to curb the dodge ball practice in several grade schools nationwide. This deeply saddens me. The reasoning, according to dodge ball detractors, is that the game instills violence in students and enforces the mentality of jocks versus nerds, with the jocks being those who hurl the balls, and the nerds being those struck by them.
Now, I'm a product of the dodge ball era. What's more, I'm a veteran of the era when dodge ball was dodge ball, when the game was played with debilitating rubber balls, not the Nerf contraptions of today. We used thick, rubber, half-inflated burgundy spheres that included a slightly raised star pattern, presumably for a better grip. Any face unfortunate enough to come in contact with a high velocity sphere would wear a painful star pattern for several hours. It was generally believed in school yard circles that these balls were originally created as top secret World War II weapons that mysteriously found their way into our classroom toy boxes.
I realize the absurdity of a 26-year-old male invoking the phrase "back in my day," but back in my day, dodge ball was the passion of the morning and afternoon school yard. Sides were quickly organized through the demeaning but necessary practice of team captains picking members. I can honestly and proudly say I was rarely the last one picked. In fact, I was often in the middle of the pack, which, oddly enough, is where I find myself today. Anyway, I attribute my dodge ball skill to my early realization that it stung like crazy to get hit by an oncoming projectile. Ducking and dodging came naturally after that.
I was also quite good at catching, which was a highly sought after skill because, if someone caught a ball, his or her team was able to reclaim one of its tagged out members, while at the same time disposing of the person who threw the ball. Therefore, I commonly heard the phrase, "We gotta get Rhodes out early." I hated that.
In addition to the use of rubber weapons of death, my school was chock full of farm kids and kids who developed physically way, way, way ahead of schedule. I knew I was in trouble when lunch boxes included Gillette razors so my buddies could shave at noon. In other words, there was some dangerous muscle behind roughly 80 percent of every hurled ball.
Each game started out tentatively, with no one really wanting to charge the line and throw their ball at a team consisting of well-armed opponents. So, we normally would huddle up and think up a strategy involving the sacrifice of a team member to draw the enemy fire. Usually, the sacrificial lamb would have a name like Erwin, a poor soul who wore taped glasses because he had been nominated for the same task several times before. Poor Erwin.
Once Erwin exited with a star pattern emblazoned on his face, the real fireworks ensued.
There was some real bravery exhibited on the dodge ball field. Team members would sacrifice themselves to save a good catcher, or to simply retrieve a ball bouncing uselessly in no-mans land. The sharp smack and howl of soldiers being tagged by rubber torture devices reverberated throughout the game, and games could last an entire hour if you had good catchers on your team.
I learned a lot by playing dodge ball, namely that I could be smacked in the groin by a ball thrown by someone who professed to be my friend just half an hour earlier. It was a school yard version of the corporate ladder, where you could trust no one.
In addition, after playing dodge ball for hundreds of mornings and afternoons, and getting hit countless times by speeding rubber projectiles, I'm really not that scared of anthrax.
UNRELATED UPDATE: Some pretty good points, if I do say so myself, and I do say so.
ANOTHER UNRELATED UPDATE: But, I thought we acted unilaterally.
AND YET ANOTHER UNRELATED UPDATE: Layne, your Mom is watching.
It's been awhile since I've indulged in toilet talk, like, several hours, so I figure I'm due.
So, I just took a crap a few minutes ago, and I became aware that my initial pooping position was just not what it should be. I think I suffer from premature squatting, or something. I mean, I'll sit down just fine and all, but I tend to shuffle too far up on the seat. There's no reason for this, because the toilet seat, and by extension the the hole through which the defecation falls, does not care if you use the whole seat, or just part of it. I may as well sit directly in the center, is what I'm saying.
Here's the problem with shuffling up too far on the toilet seat, and this is what I noticed just a short while ago on the crapper. As any veteran male pooper knows, when you clench off a fecal fragment, your wang twitches. Or, maybe it's just me, but whatever. The point is, when I flex the appropriate kegel muscles to pinch off a turdlett, my pecker does a little spasm dance that usually involves brief upward motion.
Obviously, when I'm hunkered down too close to the front of the bowl, rather than taking advantage of the generous amount of toilet seat afforded to me, when my wang bounces upward, it comes in contact with the front of the bowl, and it's not pleasant to think that my wang probably isn't the only wang that touches the front of the bowl during the course of a day. Plus, it's kind of cold. And usually wet.
The problem with rectifying the problem of sitting too close to the front is that moving around on the seat disturbs a very delicate balance. You see, when I sit down to perform a #2, I do a quick shift to the right and left. This act works to spread my butt cheeks just far enough apart to prevent smearing as the delivery makes its way out. Therefore, if I were to move backwards to keep from playing wang tag with the porcelain bowl, I'd upset my carefully spread cheeks. If they close together, even briefly, it would ensure a lengthier wiping process.
Thus was the conundrum I faced just a short while ago: whether to endure wang/bowl contact or poop/cheek smearing. Decisions, decisions.
I'll leave it up to you to decide which option I chose.
You know, provided nobody gets hurt, there's something deliciously funny about watching the horror on a motorist's face who is going the wrong direction on a one way street.
This morning, for example, on my way to work, I saw a female (who I wanted to have sex with) motorist signal, and then turn, onto the one way street on which I was driving. I saw it happening from a very long ways away, so I pulled over as far to the right as I could, just in case she overreacted and hit the gas and tried to make a run for it.
It was particularly funny watching the woman's car drive over the huge arrows that obviously, yet silently, state that traffic is supposed to go in one direction only, and the direction she was going was not that direction. It was at about that time that she realized her mistake, owing somewhat to the huge arrows pointing the other way, but primarily because of the 18 car horns blaring their discord at her mistake.
That's when the horror set in. As she drove by me, I could plainly make out, despite her animated hysterics, that she was saying "shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, fuck, fuck" over and over again, presumably speaking to her steering wheel. Because I didn't want to be left out of the fun, I gave the woman a tootle from my own horn and waved as she went by.
At that point, she left the road, by which I mean she pulled her vehicle over the curb and started driving in the grass. This, of course, amused me to no end.
The sight of a flustered motorist driving down the grassy median after unwittingly turning onto a one way street. Is there a better way to start the morning?
Well, sure, sex, but BESIDES that.
UPDATE: In unrelated news, I see that Plain Layne has disappeared. Again. This time, apparently, she's flustered about a Google search on her name, Layne. Permit me a little incredulity here, but if she didn't know about the results of such a search before this, she's not nearly as smart as her writing would indicate. Criminey, she appeared in MacLeans, for crying out loud. Or, maybe it was that comment left by Joshua just before her site went down? Hmmmmm. Don't mind me; just my ultra-suspicious mind at work here.
As a Generation X'er, one of my roles--as per the requirements set forth by professionals whose sole purpose in life is to label generations and ascribe personality traits to them--is that of cynical person unimpressed and unswayed by commercials and marketing ploys.
Or, as one Web page put it so eloquently, I'm "media savvy."
Well, as a media savvy Generation X'er, I believe I'm in a strong position to critique some of the more prevalent and pointless marketing attempts I see practically on a daily basis.
For example, I get irritated whenever a restaurant advertises "Fine Food." As opposed to what? Does the restaurant down the street feature "Dry Heave Inducing Garbage?" By what authority can a restaurant claim that its food is "Fine." And, really, don't you think they should have come up with a better adjective than "fine."
After all, whenever my girlfriend asks how she looks, and I say "fine," I think it's safe to say that she's almost insulted. If "fine" isn't good enough for sizing up my girlfriend's ensemble, then I'm just not that impressed when a restaurant touts "Fine Food."
And while I'm on the topic of restaurants, what the hell does it mean when an ethnic restaurant positions its food as "Authentic Chinese" or "Authentic Mexican" or "Authentic Kenyan?" I'm curious what kind of professional inspector is assigned to verify whether a type of food is "authentic." I'm imagining some guy with a monocle and a watch fob, impeccably dressed, with an outrageously exaggerated British accent.
FOOD AUTHENTICITY INSPECTOR: Oh, I say, this Hunan Beef is top of the line Chinese fare. Authentic to a T. Grade A, chaps! Grade A! Here's your certificate of authenticity. Take it with my blessings and post it proud and high. Truly, your Chinese food is a paradigm of excellence. All hail China One!
The other day, I was at a gas station. In addition to purchasing gas, I had to make my bladder gladder. On the way to the john, I noticed a sign overhead that proclaimed "Clean Bathrooms." Oh, well, that's good to know, I guess. I mean, that's better than seeing a sign warning "Shit-Smeared Walls" or "E-Coli Incubation Area."
Still, is it really necessary to tell patrons that your bathrooms are clean? Isn't that generally understood? It makes me wonder if the gas station had problems in the past with filthy commodes, so to reassure people they now advertise clean bathrooms. Whatever the case, it seems like an unnecessary bit of advertising to me.
