CGF Becomes Heifer International?

The Christian Goat Fund was a joke that Jody masterminded in college. (I have to wonder if the "2000: Year of the Goat" chalking is still visible on a column outside Litton-Reaves. It was when I graduated in 2002). Last week, I got a mailing for Heifer International. This is an actual organization that allows you to buy animals for people in poor countries, with the intention of making families self-sufficient rather than simply giving them food from day to day. There's even a YouTube video about it based on "The Llama Song" by Burton Earny. It even has a decent rating on Charity Navigator. So, if you've ever wanted to buy a llama but don't want the hassle of actually taking care of it, now is your chance! And if the llama is too expensive, you can always buy a duck instead.

And remember: Heifer International decreases World Suck.

Putting Things in Perspective

I am inclined to agree with the Ninja that Doesn't Matter is extremely dangerous. So when something makes me miserable, I'll just image myself being catapulted into the middle of Antarctica... and then curl up on the couch with a warm blanket.

What's the Plan?

Things have (amazingly) slowed down at work the last couple of weeks. I'm down to doing three things at once, none of which have hard and fast deadlines. I turned off my alarm clock last week and let my body settle into it's natural rhythm, giving my mind and body a chance to resync and enter some sense of routine. Between that, a good round of Sunday basketball, and the beginning of flag football season, I've had my first "normal" week in a very long time.

With things settling down, a coworker with less experience than me but a similar dislike of sitting idle has taken to calling me every day and asking a crucial question: what's the plan? I understand her frustration. I'm a planner. I like plans. They give me a sense of security. A sense of purpose. Even if the plan it to do nothing, I'm fine. So long as that's the plan. Otherwise, I get antsy because I feel like I'm missing something.

But now that my coworker has come to me several days in a row with this question, I feel like I need some more creative responses. I've already told her that one day, she's going to find an envelope on her desk. On it will be written "The Plan". Now I just need to think of what to put in the envelope. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Blank paper
A picture of FEMA's disaster plan
A copy of the Underpants Gnomes' plan
A copy of the Mayor's to-do list
A lengthy tax-form like document that says "burn after completing" on the last page.
A floorplan

See?! See what I'm doing? I'm planning a mockery of plans. It's ironic. Or sad. I forget which.

It's That Time Again!

Time to learn the day's lesson from the Wheel of Morality? Er, not exactly. It's the Christmas shopping season. You've kept your spending in check all year by avoiding shopping all together. But now you venture to the stores to get gifts for others.

While trying to think about what your friends and family would want, you see everything you'd forgotten you wanted. On sale. Sometimes, you can buy it for a friend with a mutual interest, thus fulfilling your need for a present and your need to buy what you want. You still won't have it (unless you find something else that's better for that person, then maybe you'll keep it ;)), but so far you've managed to use your impulse buying constructively.

However, the more time you spend in the store, the more things you see. Oooh! I want that! Oh, I didn't know that was out yet! Hey, this is the new one! I've heard good things...

You force yourself to step back. You look at your list again. One person down, and you have four things in your hand. You put the three that were for you back and take a deep breath. Wait until the season is over. There needs to be things left on your wish list by the end of this shopping trip so that other people will know what to get you. If you don't get it, well, buy it in February when you should have seen everyone who will get you something.

You manage to find gifts for several people on your list, then move on to the next store. Here, the temptation is more serious. You see something you've been meaning to buy - something you actually need and that no one will get for you for Christmas because no one knows you need it or it's the kind of thing you need to get a feel for before you know it meets your needs or the item is just a tad outside most people's present budget. You decide that if you don't get it now, you might not be able to find it when you go looking for it, so you gather it into your arms, then grab a random inexpensive present for someone who wasn't even on your list just to justify having come into the store in the first place.

At the end of day one, you've managed to get presents for only a few people and you do not look forward to facing temptation again. So you turn to online shopping. You can update your wish list with all the things you didn't buy that day and then get some more expensive presents at lower prices. But when you go to update your wish list, you see that something you've been waiting over a year to buy is on sale. You regretted not buying it the last time the price went that low, and it's been on your list for long enough that if someone was going to get it for you, they would have, so you click "add to cart" and go browsing for more presents.

But at the end of the day, there are still people on your list. Sure, you managed to knock a couple of more people off, but now you have to return something because you found a better price online, which means you have to venture to the brick-and-mortars again anyway, so you might as well make tomorrow round two.

You manage to return the item you found a better price for without making additional purchases at the store. But then you find a nice little non-chain store that you hadn't known about before that turns out to have lots of things you didn't even know you could buy anymore. Things you've been looking for for years. Things your friends already have but you don't. You grab one item, knowing perfectly well it's for you. They're low on something else, so you grab the last ones for friends. Your basket fills. Your list gets smaller.

At the end of day two, you're down to the peripherals of your list. One or two people that you usually get something small, plus a gift exchange party or two. The "small gift" people you might not see until after the holiday, so you decide to hold off until post-holiday sales. For the gift exchanges, you consider riffling through your DVD collection for stuff you don't watch anymore. You wonder if the duplicate magnetic poetry set you have is under the price floor. Finally, however, you decide to grab something while you're getting food to prepare for various holiday potlucks.

The grocery store doesn't exactly have the best selection of presents, so you grab a few random holiday items that add up to the price minimum and throw them in a stocking. Voila! Instant generic present. While you're at it, you buy some candy for yourself to eat, insisting that you'll share it a work. If you don't go through the whole bag tonight by yourself.

By the end of the week, your shopping is done. You refuse to add up the receipts because you want to live in denial just a little while longer, at least until after the New Year, when you'll resolve to spend less, eat less, and exercise more. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Chaser's War on Everything

Okay, so I kept hearing about this show in Australia called "The Chaser's War on Everything". These guys pull all kinds of stunts to prove a point and/or to get a laugh. Think "Daily Show" field reports, only with an increased chance of getting arrested and sometimes, it seems, on a bigger budget. So when I heard that some guy dressed as Osama Bin Laden had been arrested after breeching security at APEC (currently being held in Australia), I knew it had to be them. These guys are brazen, and frankly, I'm surprise they haven't been arrested more often. The upsell is pretty harmless (and hilarious), but as you can see, this isn't the first time they've dressed up "terrorists". Here's their treatment of airport security (no idea what the image in the first few seconds is about).

More:

Trojan Horse: Haven't we learned anything from history?
Gullibility test: Note that they are doing this outside a Scientology center
How Not to Hug the Prime Minister: There are some things you just shouldn't have in your hand when approaching a public official.
Open House: Another case of begging to get arrested.

Star Wars Simpson's Opening

If Star Wars were like the Simpsons, what would the opening credit sequence look like? This:

Doom, Destiny, and the Dangers of Being Easily Amused

Doom is a funny word. It has a very negative meaning, but its meaning is also so over the top (a horrible fate from which there is no escape) that it circles back around to being absurd. You rarely hear the word being used in a serious context. It is often used in epic stories (particularly fantasy stories) in which the fate of the world or the universe is at stake, so “doom” may actually be appropriate to the situation. Reporters sometimes employ the word to be extra dramatic, but all reporters sell these days is doom and gloom, so they have little credibility on the matter. The 24-hour news stations could save everyone a bunch of time by stating at the top of each hour “We’re all doomed. The world is doomed. Humanity is doomed. Society is doomed. You are doomed. To find out why and what you can’t do about it, stay tuned. Otherwise, go about your lives, blissfully ignorant of your horrible fate.”

In every day life, however, “doom” is filled with comedic possibility (see above satirical snippet). It can be added to any phrase to make it both frightening and hilarious. For example, a rainbow is not particularly threatening nor is it necessarily humorous. But a “rainbow of doom”, or better yet “Rainbow of Doom” confuses the brain and can result in spontaneous convulsions resembling laughter (unless you are Noah, in which case you might think of this). When amusing yourself or your easily amused friends, any mundane item can be given this treatment (see Invader Zim for liberal application of this idea).

In fact, the phrase “of doom” should be implied every time something mundane is mentioned in the news, in a television show, or in a movie. Obviously, if it’s being brought up, it’s actually something very important. Why is shampoo being mentioned on the nightly news? Because it’s Shampoo of Doom! Why were so many people on Battlestar Galactica obsessing over a song only a few of them could hear? Because it was a Song of Doom! (Not to be confused with the “Doom Song”) The stapler in Office Space? That’s right! Stapler of Doom!

But not everything fits the “doom” label. Sometimes, adding “of doom” can negatively change how an event or object is perceived. For instance, when the media reports on a routine space shuttle launch, adding “of doom” can be… well, bad. In these situations, adding “of destiny” can be more appropriate. Max’s bar code? Bar Code of Destiny! The stethoscope in Batman Begins? Stethoscope of Destiny!

(For the record, it’s the Red Pill of Destiny and the Blue Pill of Doom.)

So the next time you find yourself wondering why something random has received such prominent attention, just remember: if people are talking about it, it MUST be important. The “of doom” and/or “of destiny” are implied. You just have to figure out which one applies. Things will make more sense after that. Or you’ll be momentarily amused. That works too.

The Infinite Talker

I was reminded this evening of this Animaniacs sketch. Everyone, meet Pip.

The Scotty Complex

Many engineering projects seem to suffer from the Scotty Complex. On Star Trek, Kirk (management) would often steer the ship (the project) into situations that would make life difficult for poor Scotty (the engineers). For instance, they would enter a situation that would put a strain on the warp engines, but because Kirk refused to stock up on dilithium crystals on the last supply run due to budgetary constraints, they’re down to their last one. Scotty insists the engines can’t take it. Kirk insists that they must, the laws of time and space not withstanding. If something goes wrong as a result, Kirk expects Scotty to fix it in the time Kirk demands, no matter how long it should actually take (“That’ll take me at least 3 months, an entire research staff, and a considerably bigger budget, Cap’n.” “You have one hour, a yeoman, and the money currently in your own wallet.”) But Scotty, being a good little engineer, somehow manages to come through every time. And because of this, Kirk is spoiled into to thinking that Scotty can compensate for even the most uninformed and fool-hardy decisions he could ever make.

But what if Scotty were one of those people who hated to work or hated their boss (or both). “Scotty, the Captain’s trapped down on the planet. They’re about to execute him, and the transporters aren’t working!” “I was going to get to that after lunch.” “But, the Captain…” “Yeah, when’s the last time he gave me a promotion? I’ll be in the break room.” One or two captains later, Scotty would be promoted to his own command where Starfleet would hope he could do less damage. Either that, or Starfleet would place him on ships that they secretly dislike in the hopes that he would bring them down through sheer lack of will. “Scotty, the engines are down and we’ve got Klingons on our tail!” “Hold on, let me check my E-bay auctions real quick.”

Inappropriate Dinner Conversation

This post is rated PG-13 for adult content.

(She's doing adult content now? Next she'll be swearing and drinking!) Hush, you.

At a Super Secret Happy Hour in an undisclosed location (where I consumed copious amounts of Pepsi and a disagreeable taco), a truly baffling topic dominated the conversation for much of the evening. Apparently, earlier in the day, one of the attendees (whom, for the purposes of this post, we shall call Bacchus) had declared that, should he embark upon a trip to Alpha Centauri to build a new society, his minimal requirements would include, not female companionship (not even his wife), but a 4 GB RAM stick containing, shall we say, explicit material. Women, he posited further, would soon become obsolete. Technology would be able to fulfill all of man’s needs.

Robots would serve him food, pick out his clothes, balance his checkbook, and do everything else that the women in his life had thus far done for him. And the RAM stick would do what little the robots… couldn’t. Did I mention “inappropriate”? I did? Good. Moving right along. He would even have robots raise children, which would be incubated by a machine and generated from pre-existing zygotes. By the time he reached Alpha Centauri, he would have a whole team of young, healthy people who had been trained during the flight to build his new colony entirely populated by males.

But Bacchus’ woman-less world has many problems. In fact, his world is more apt to be male-less. First, if this were a female-only society rather than a male-only society, the technology to incubate a fetus for the needed amount of time would be unnecessary. You would, of course, still have the problem of eventually running out of the original zygotes, which would force you to turn to cloning to continue the species. But the female-only society once again has benefits over the male-only society here because the male-only society would not only have to have the technology to create the incubators but also an artificial egg to populate with the cloned DNA. A female-only society would have natural eggs ready to go, no new tech needed.

The other problem is the one I brought up here. I even specifically addressed this to Bacchus: Without women to motivate men to do something other than watch the content of the RAM stick, how could you possibly build a society? He paused, then said “You may have a point.” But that was not the end of it, no. His solution was not to reintroduce women to society but to use the RAM stick as a reward for constructive contribution to society. In other words, the RAM stick would replace women even in the capacity of denying men their pleasure when they haven’t done what they are supposed to.

But who controls the RAM sticks? Does the computer decide who’s been a productive citizen? You know someone would figure out how to hack into that. Do you put a person in charge? How do you decide who that person is? And wouldn’t that put an awful lot of power into the hands of one individual? Better to distribute that power among many. But those many would not be able to access the RAM stick without also giving permission to someone else to access the RAM stick. So, how exactly is this better than having women?

I’m still trying to figure out if having this conversation was better or worse than talking about work, which is what we usually do.

(As a side note, someone sitting beside Bacchus gets bonus points for asking “If the RAM stick dies, does it get 72 MB of unused memory?”, which was made even more hilarious by the fact that Bacchus didn’t get it.)

Chimps Attempting to Evolve

Chimps have been observed routinely making wood spears to catch prey. According to the article, the chimps are living in an environment similar to where humans first evolved. But it's mainly the female chimps who make and use the spears, which means they still haven't learned the skill that is key to civilization - manipulating the males. An anthropologist quoted in the article makes the point that the female chimps create the spears out of necessity: caring for children makes chasing food more difficult, so they've invented an easier method of catching food. But if they could convince the males to use the spears to catch food for them, they'd be one step closer to convincing them to settle down in a nice field, maybe build a shelter to protect themselves from the elements. Oh no! No one introduce those chimps to these monkeys. They might figure it out!