No Use For A Title

If I had a nickel for every time I found out some personality trait of mine (or personality in and of itself, but that's a story for another day) turned out to possibly be the result of some abnormality in my neurospinal structure as opposed to some more elaborate cause to which I had previously attributed it, well, I'd have at least another quarter.

To be fair, it is possible that such abnormalities are not causes in and of themselves, but are also caused by the things that cause the traits in the first place. That should make sense. Read it again. Yeah. There you go.

The other day at work I realized how being American has made me mildly xenophobic. Well, I don't know if that is the right word for what it is, so I suppose I'll elaborate further.

*takes a moment to recover from the previous statement, and continues*

First, a little background. The company I'm currently working for has offices around the world. I got a call the other day from a guy in one of the international offices who wasn't able to access our records, and we weren't able to access his. In my initial analyzation of the situation, I couldn't seem to understand why there would be any need for this, until it was explained to me that this other country's laws may actually, you know, differ from our own on key issues relating to the products we sell. It wasn't so much xenophobia, or even the willful naivete one would need to assume that no other country has laws - or, at least, that those laws matter - as it was taking for granted the "fact" that these laws would not conflict with our own.

Or maybe it's just because I'm a narcissistic* asshole. That would explain it too.

*Yes, I meant for a double meaning there. Or triple, if you can see it. Anything more than that and you're just grasping at straws.

hmm, haven't posted in a while...that means I should probably make this a "real" update.

If you know me at all, you know that means the chance of that is slim and none.

I could talk about my summer job, which has three weeks left, or my new computer, which is working well except for the DVD drive, but instead I will use this sentence to mention a strange bruise I incurred on my hip. I call it strange because it is one of the few visible injuries I have that was caused directly toward me.

If that doesn't make any sense, good.

5-22-05 never forget

hmm. I haven't posted in a while, and I can't think of too much to say, so I'll go into a mini-rant about something random (A thing I'm sure no one is used to seeing from me).

Far be it from me to mock someone for a characteristic of themselves that they have little to no control over*, but there is one thing I've noticed over the course of my job. A lot of people talk funny. By funny, I mean they have funny accents. I have talked to people from every region in the hemisphere***, and I'm getting pretty good at telling what state a person is from just by the way they sound. The southern states as a whole are a little trickier, but I'm about 50% accurate at this point. The easiest states to tell are New York and Massachusetts. Almost everyone from New York sounds like they have a throat condition^, and people from Massachusetts seem uncomfortable putting an "r" after an "a", which is a bunch of gahbage if you ask me. "New England accent" my ahss, people from Maine don't sound like that. Do they?



*not guaranteed to be wholly accurate**

**actually, it was pure satire. I could have put a single asterisk there, but that would confuse some people.

***By "hemisphere" I mean "Anglo America", because, let's be honest, that's all that really matters.****

****comma filled mess*****

*****too many asterisks

^Maybe it's all the pollution. But if that's the case, why don't people from LA sound like that?^^

^^Why didn't I use a different symbol sooner? *****.

Yesterday I did some volunteer community service through my job. Thanks to my selfless and certainly-not-motivated-by-personal-gain* actions, I have a three day weekend next...er...weekend.

Not to say that the whole day was sunshine and butterflies. ...actually, it was, and that's the problem, seeing as the Sun and I have a rivalry dating back to when it was a rebellious teenage star. Of course, the event coordinators gave me a job that put me outside in the sun for hours like some unfavored slave. But that's ok, in retaliation I flooded the shit out of the area. *big happy smile* I actually tanned instead of burning, something that would be seen as shameful to some.

Oh, something else I keep forgetting to mention. Blogger no longer shows this blog as having 18 posts, for whatever reason. Now it has almost 140, if I was reading correctly.


*counts as an adjective

I feel physically sick. I'm used to the other kinds, but not this one. It's not a backlash-level sickness, but it's enough for me to notice, which is what makes it noteworthy.

Well, maybe a little more nuance is in order. (too inside to explain) I don't really feel sick at this point, I just don't feel good. Though I rarely feel good, so I suppose it's better to say that I feel bad. Though "bad" has other connotations which I don't intend to convey, it's the word I'm going to go with. I guess I'm too used to being intentionally ambiguous to avoid it.

oh well. Seeing as neither of Them were able to stop it, I suppose I should just live* with it for now.

Maybe* it's the geek in me, but I recently was involved in an argument over the D&D alignments of real-world individuals. I decided that I could only be accurately portrayed with two alignments, Neutral Good and Lawful Evil. The former because I am willing to ignore the rules to further that which I consider good and the latter because I am adept at twisting the rules to my own favor. In this way, I'm like* a bastardized cross between Gandhi and that guy who almost killed that other guy that one time.

[Note for any real or self-styled English majors who may be reading: I realize that a case could be made for* the redundancy of "bastardized" as used above. Having said that, I do not care. I like the word.]

*Word or phrase* used almost* entirely for diplomacy and/or obfuscation (isn't "obfuscation" obfuscation?)

I meant to post on the 4th.

Then, I meant to post on the 5th.

After that, I meant to post on the 7th.

And here I am, on the...*checks*...8th.

I think all is well, but I haven't really checked yet.

Probably not going to, either.

Oh well.

The blasting noises outside today don't quite sound like gunshots.

Not that I know what gunshots sound like up close; I'm a decent, upstanding citizen who has never created nor been in a line of fire.*

See, the 4th of July is a day when otherwise indifferent Americans suddenly feel the need to show the patriotism they were saving up all year in the process of blowing shit up.

Why are there tons of such explosions tonight?

Well, to make a long story short, some people are idiots. And the idiots generally have the most appealing - in a sensory sense** - forms of weaponry.

Think it's a stretch to call fireworks weaponry? Well I say anything and everything is weaponry. You can kill people with fluffy, feather-filled pillows if so inclined.****




*Not guaranteed to be wholly accurate

**Guaranteed to be neither a pun nor an attempt at a pun***

***Not actually a guarantee

****Is not indicative of a murder-based mindset*****

*****Used "****" instead of "***" because the note was added later. Fuck you humans and your "chronologically-based" bullshit. As long as I can understand it******, that's all I give a shit about.*

******Not that I always do, but hey, one cannot win them all, can one?