anyone want to do my taxes? cause i dont.

over the weekend i arrived at several conclusions to a variety of topics:

1. Michael Jackson: he is definitely just as wierd and horrible as everyone thinks. still. for some reason we forget this every few years and are completely astonished when something new comes out.

2. Astronauts: i want to be one. aside from national political office (supreme court judge, senator, or president .... not the house), astronauts are the ultimate trump card in the resume department.

3. Jason Varitek's Captain Patch: i hate it. it looks stupid, and makes him look like a jackass.

4. David Wells: he is still fat.

5. New York City: i will continue to resent people who brag about living there. its not because of the yankees, but rather the yankees fans who make me hate the city and its team. its also not because i refuse to accept that it is big. i know it is big. that is what i like least about it. all this bullshit about how it is so cool and cultured and all that. fuck em. they can keep their trash hole of a city. if you cant leave your house unlocked and keys in your car, i dont want to live there.

6. Chopsticks: why do people use them still? in the interest of pragmatism, they should be abandoned. the chinese figured a lot of stuff out, cant argue with that, but they blew it when it came to utensils. anyone who says they are faster is a liar. i can easily eat any amount of any kind of food faster with conventional silverware than anyone can with chopsticks.

7. Other sports: except football and baseball i used to not care. this year i started watching college hoops not during march madness, and yesterday i watched more golf than i had previous in my life. however, girls sports (except tennis) and autoracing remain on my hatelist.

8. Movie reviews: no one is to be trusted.

in the game Civilization, the technology Guerilla Warfare is a prerequisite for the technology Labor Union. the other prerequisite is, of course, Mass Production.

im getting murdered with work this week. on the brightside, it should be my biggest 1-week paycheck of all-time. i am the king.

if i had money, ill tell you what i wouldnt do: go downtown and buy a mercury or two. in fact, its hard to imagine the circumstances where i would in fact go downtown and buy a mercury or two.

long day of work today. left at 630, ill prolly get back 815. mmm hmmm. bitch.

"the pope was catholic, right?"

-ben

if i was in possession of, say, 450 well conditioned athletic male slaves, i would build so much stuff. naturally i would also need no more than 10 well conditioned athletic female slaves. you dont want too many female slaves. when girls hang around with each other a lot their cycles get in sync with each other. that fact makes me afraid. definitely hafta separate them. otherwise id be crushed under a wave of horrible, destructive, smelly estrogen. i would first build a giant hexagonal complex, which i would call The Hexagon. id need a helicopter pad, perhaps a small airstrip would do. extensive underground bunkers and passageways would need to be prepared before the surface-side portion of the campus. after the slaves finished the construction, im sure i would hire them for a variety of positions. gardners, pool men, those guys who wave the colored batons on the runway, and security personel. and janitors. although it would be tough trusting a slave with your security. seems to be begging of a mutiny. maybe id have to hire the security guys from specta guard or something. maybe i could pay them with slave-mined gravel. ill think of something.

for those who dont know, the following people/groups will be coming to our spring weekend: Moby, Less Than Jake, Mos Def, and ...... MR BELDING. i guess hes gonna give a lecture or something. should be amusing.

20002

Free Will

this is a topic which i havent thought much about, and i came across an article about it which made me do just that. so here goes: do we have free will? or do we merely think that we do? many religions preach that we do not (Gods master plan, destiny, fate, etc.) while at the same time science has also cast a shadow on free will with genetics and environment research. the basic theory is that if you have the same genes, and are raised in identical environments, then you will be the same. however as environments are incredibly complex (im not talking about nature and shit, but rather the people around you and in society) it is impossible to test the hypothesis without creating coditions no one naturally encounters (i.e. completely quarantined with all contact with the world filtered and controlled, sorta like the truman show). however, it has always been my understanding that free will exists. in fact, for me, it has to. its not that i dont believe in god, or the science behind genetics. rather it is entirely too depressing to think that free will is an illusion. what would be the point of trying to achieve anything if it didnt make a difference. if it was destined to happen, then why should i trouble myself with doing it. somebody else will. who cares. i cant think of a more reasonable reason for suicide. if nothing i do matters, fuck it, im out.

this raises an interesting point. if nothing i do matters, then i can essentially live without consequence. no "bad" or "evil" actions will damage the overall integrity of the world because it is all preordained. obviously, consequences for actions are inevitable, both positive and negative. thus, one can surmise that the only goal in life is to limit your own negative consequences, and promote the positive consequences. or simply, live the best life you can.

my feeling is, that we need atleast the impression of free will. mankind needs goals. every innovation (and indeed every action) has been for a purpose, no matter how mundane or seemingly meaningless. without goals, we would waste our lives away, economies would crash and civilization would crumble. people would have no reason to exist. we need purpose. we yearn for it. this is how all afterlife existence was introduced. naturally, no one knows what happens post-death, so we created a variety of afterlives in which we were either rewarded or penalized for our earthly lives. with no one able to dispute the existence or nonexistence of an afterlife, the ultimate goal had been set. be a good person, lead a good life, and you will spend eternity in heaven (or reincarnated as something really cool, like a hawk or something).

religions were created, and yes, they were created, to solve the simplest (or atleast shortest) question of alltime: Why?. each has a basic set of rules that must be abided by to ensure a trip to the afterlife, be it heaven, reincarnation, or total enlightenment. while i kind of wandered from the subject of free will, i will continue on with this religious ramble. atleast for a sentence or two. ok now im done. just kidding. anyway, my personal beliefs do not fall into any of the major categories for religion but rather encorporate portions of many different ones. even though i think that the site is atleast partially made to be comical, i find that their articles of faith are remarkably succinct and inline with my own thinkings. i speak of course of The Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic.

oh yeah, and here is the post about free will that spawned this long and probably nonsensical entry.

DUCKS. i took this from jakes profile. he has a pet duck.

these are the kind of people who join the army. likely welcomed with open arms.

through a combination of our cable inexplicably not working and my own lack of attentiveness of Red Sox news, the Kim trade escaped me until moments ago. when i learned that that asshole, byung-yung kim, had been sent to the rockies, i literally stood up and cheered at my desk. i received some dirty looks. however, when i explained they joined in. we are having an impromtu party to celebrate later this afternoon.

days like today im glad to be at work. wait, actually no im not.

Long live Paul Revere and the Raiders

you know what i havent heard much about lately? steroids. or barry bonds for that matter. i cant imagine anyone is fed up with steroids yet. who cares about highlights, sportscenter should be all steroids, all the time.


through intercompany email invitations to meetings can be rejected or accepted and the meeting is automatically added to your calendar. when you turn down an invitation, an email is sent to the invitor with a very comical thumbs down picture. when you accept the picture is a lame handshake or something. i make a point of turning them all down.