Gadhra dot Com

You get errors if you don’t log for a few days. I’ll be back tomorrow with my Thanksgiving hijinks.

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Sorry, Emma, I’m going to have to point out one of the stories you pointed out on your vastly-more-popular-than-mine website.

It’s The True Danger of Your Child Reading the Harry Potter Books.

I’d like to draw your attention to acclaimed director Bill Schnoebelen’s four hour movie about how Harry Potter is evil, “presented in a dynamic, town hall forum-type format.” Bill was apparently involved in “Witchcraft and Satanism” and is thus an expert on the subject, in much the same way I know exactly what it’s like to be black and try to catch a taxi at 3am in midtown Manhattan because I know Cardell Kerr. If you have the sanity, read the book reviews. Here’s some snippets.

“As we noted above, Rowling consistently depicts people who do not practice Witchcraft in most obnoxious terms. They are depicted as being really, really dumb, boring, and living a life not worth living…” [Ed note: That's definitely true of the Christian Coalition]

AND

“No person who considers themselves Christian can read this book without partaking of Satan’s cup; therefore, he deceives himself mightily who thinks that, after reading Harry Potter, he will be accepted by the Lord at His table. Trying to do this will only “provoke the Lord to jealousy”, moving Him to act against us.” [Ed note: The Lord is jealous? I thought He was above petty human concerns...]

And, of course, the watchword of all Christian assholes everywhere:
“What would Jesus have you do?”

God willing, Jesus would have me be an informed human being and not listen to the vitriolic ramblings of a depraved and fucked-up individual like Bill Schnoebelen. But, then you wouldn’t get your $24.95 plus shipping and handling, would you?

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This morning, work started by me meeting a woman – let’s call her Ms. X – out in the parking lot who was in the throes of a nervous breakdown. She’s on her way to the hospital now; she told me she was going “over the edge” because of this dump we work in – she feels mistreated and taken advantage of. I know her and her job, and she’s not wrong; her bosses treat her like shit and get her to do extra work for them. Then they fuck her on her review and rob her of the dignity she allows them to bestow upon her.

When did we all start living like this? When did work become this way? The industrial revolution? The “invention” of offices in the fifties? Are things better or worse then they used to be? To quote Tyler Durden “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don’t need.” I wish I could be all high and mighty, all Henry David Thoreau about this whole thing, but I can’t seem to do it. I’m stuck just like the rest of us.

I was talking with the husband of Anastasia’s cousin one day, and he confided in me how much he made. He is the sole provider for his wife and three children. He pays monthly child support for a daughter from a previous marriage. When he told me what he made, I almost fell over; it was so little in comparison to what I make. I felt a rush of shame – how can this dude support a family of four with a salary so low?

It’s because of my perspective. Because I’m out buying shit I don’t need constantly; things I “can’t live without.” What happened to the person who was able to live on fifty bucks a week in college? Was that person the “right” person, or am I the “right” person, with all this stuff I think I need around me? Why do I never seem to have enough money?

L. Dennis Kozlowski is on trial for looting $600 million from Tyco International. God knows what he was worth before the robbery. Is it ever enough?

I already know the answer – no. Money begets itself. It’s a ravenous beast that is never sated; it consumes everything – you, the things you own, the person you are – everything. It’s the reason why, despite being in the hospital right now dumping her guts out to a therapist, despite holding on to sanity by what she feels is the thinnest of threads, Ms. X will be in tomorrow to answer those phones.

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I heard about this on 2600 last night, but I didn’t believe it until I verified it just now. I goddamn love the Japanese.

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It’s the BEST

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I think that the traffic in New Jersey is the worst in the whole fucking world, bar none. I would rather be riding a burro through the streets of a bombed out Rihad then continue to commute on the Garden State Parkway one more second.

Door to door, my commute is supposed to be 36.34 miles. Of those, I spend 17.34 miles on the Garden State Parkway. Today it took me 105 minutes total to get to work, of which 70 of those minutes were spent on the Garden State Parkway, for an average of 14.86 miles per hour. I’m planning on petitioning the governor to change the name from the Garden State Parkway to Garden State Road.

I went online to find some place to complain, and I came across this site. It was at this point that I lost my mind. They even have a membership section. Sorry, assholes, I’m already a fucking member – you know, BECAUSE I SPEND HALF MY LIFE ON YOUR GODDAMN ROADS!

I can’t wait to not pay taxes in New Jersey. I can’t wait to not pay for “construction” on roads that are always congested, cops that are always assholes, and “environmental regulation” for the industrial waste dumps off of exit 13. It’s going to be so sweet; I’m planning on eating nothing but roughage for the last week that I’m here, and saving it all up for one final, ground-breaking poop that I’m going to leave on the border.

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I’m afraid you’re going to have to bear with me for a few moments while I go on a rant.

Why are people so afraid of math, for the love of all that’s holy? Our mortgage person, who I swear to sweet merciful Christ might be one of the stupidest people to draw breath in the entire history of mankind, is fearful because we moved some money over from a credit card to make a down-payment on our house. This, for some reason, “throws her off.”

OK, I understand. The amount you owe is increased by x dollars, and the amount you are able to put down is also increased by x dollars. Can’t you just…do the fucking MATH?! I mean, is this so hard? Add one, subtract the other, place into handy-made mortgage formulae, analyze results. Isn’t this what you do all goddamn day?

I was reminded of when I did archaeology. We had this thing called a “transit,” which was basically a tripod you could use to sight both distance and angles. We used to cut areas we were digging into a grid of 5′ by 5′ squares; we would put a nail in at 5 feet from the transit (for example), the put another nail on the same line at 10 feet, another at 15, etc. These clowns would do a run of about 100 feet, then they would pick up the transit, move it 5 feet to the left, put it down, recalibrate it, then do another run.

Recalibrating this machine was a gigantic pain in the ass, so I suggested that, next time, we measure the hypotenuse of these squares we were making and put a nail 45 degrees away, 7.07 feet away – that way, we don’t have to move the transit as much.

They thought I had grown another horribly misshapen head.

“That’ll never work!” they said. The fucking theorum of the hypotenuse is at least 2500 years old; arguably, you could go back to the goddamn Babylonians (and if you think that’s too obscure… these were supposed to be archaeologists I was working with). I can accept that you might not remember how to calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle. But to insist that it won’t work, like we were working in some sort of mystical Bermuda Triangle in Trenton, NJ, where the laws of terrestial physics and math no longer apply? I found myself wishing that Pythogoras had been there to start hitting people with a shovel. I had to argue for close to an hour to allow them to even let me try my “hare-brained theory.”

Guess what? It worked. Assholes.

I can’t remember where I read it, but someone once said that people should be ashamed of saying they’re “not so good at math.” I know you’ve seen them – people passing the bill down the table to the person at the end, shrugging their shoulders and saying “I can’t add very well.” That’s like passing the menu to someone else and saying “I don’t know how to read. Can you order me a Fishamajig?”

Mathematics is the language of the universe; it’ll always be unambiguous and it’ll never lie. An answer is what it is, like it or not. Math is one of the gifts to Mankind (which, in my opinion, include Language, Writing, and Music). Math is one of the things that makes us human. If you don’t “know math,” please – pick up a book and learn. I promise you you’ll be a better person for it.

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Wowie zowie. Got a lot of responses from people about what reviews to do; I’ll post some of these gems at some point this week so I can begin planning. There’s even going to be an Australian Theme; the movie is supposed to be an independent film but may instead be Crocodile Dundee, the epic drama of this guy who’s Australian and stuff.

I went up to the motherland for a bit this weekend to visit the famileeee. I indulged in the pleasures of watching football, which I haven’t done in many moons. My father and I found ourselves yelling and cursing during the closing minutes of the Auburn v. Ole Miss game. This kid named Obomanu had put Ole Miss in scoring position with an incredible run. They passed to him on third and goal, and the ball hit him square in the chest and bounced away; Ole Miss lost.

My cousin Brook was supposed to get tickets to the Rutgers v. UConn game, but it was sold out (surprisingly enough). As usual, Rutgers lost with a heartbreaking fumble at their 6 yard line with a 1:19 left to play. I think Rutgers went 6 and 6 my first year there, and have gotten steadily worse ever since. They may end up with a .500 record this year, but I doubt it.

I need a vacation so badly. I’ve decided I’m going to Guam as soon as I figure out where it is.

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as trying so hard to blog every day this week. I’m a…a…failure.

*sniff*

I took the day off from work yesterday to do some house crap. I only mention this because work is where I do my blogging during the time when I should be working. It’s a nice deal I have with work. I take ten minutes or so to blog, and they piss me off until I want to rip my own heart out of my chest and eat it.

I’ve decided to do thematic reviews, since I’m combining many different topics. Here are the rules of my reviews:
1) I will do a movie/book/drink/music review, all wrapped up in one
2) The minimum number of drinks I will have will be six, so that I might really get a feel for whether or not the drink is any good.
3) I will drink while I watch the movie. I will listen to music while I read the book.
4) I will publish these things all as one, like this:

PIRATES
movie: Pirates of the Carribean
drink: The Captain’s Jewel
music: The Crimson Pirates
books: O’Brien’s Master and Commander

SAMURAIS
movie: Ghost Dog, Way of the Samurai
drink: Warm sake
music: Some Japanese stuff
books: The Hagakure

then with reviews.

Anyway, Pirates and Samurais are all I have. I need some suggestions. Feel free to punish me, like “Review the dungeons and dragons movie, drink car bombs, read something by Jane Austen, and listen to country music” and I’ll promptly ignore you.

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First of all, I missed the special sneak-preview of Matrix Revolutions at an undisclosed location last night. Thanks, mother-in-law! Your gifts to me just keep on giving.

Second, I just wanted to show you people this picture. This is the picture that massive penis-licker sent me because of my email from yesterday. Here’s his note:

Sorry for the jargon. I have attached a little schematic diagram of how to record and avoid or minimize the distortion caused by bursts of air across the microphone. Another way to help with positioning is to monitor your production with a headphone pugged into the recorder as you are recording. If you can produce a lot of words beginning with P like “peter Piper picked….” without hearing the distortion at the beginning of each word, then the positioning is OK. Avoid putting the microphone directly in front of your mouth. Thanks.

Oh, I’ve got some P for you, bitch. How about “I’m gonna punch your pug til I puncture that pustule you call a brain, mother pucking punk.” And I’ve got some pictures for you, bitchass. How about this? Or this?

Seriously – anyone hiring out in the upstate NY area? Here’s where I’m going to be living. I’m willing to commute up to fifty minutes (with traffic) from my house. If you can guarantee that I’ll be able to actually program or do networking and NOT have to fucking look at pictures from retards, drop me a line

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