The More I Know, The Stupider I Feel

First of all, let's get this out of the way.  "Stupider" is a word because I just looked it up in the dictionary, so for all of you spelling fanatics out there, just back off my shit.

Okay, now I'll start ... As I begin to near the point in life where I can only jokingly consider myself middle-aged, I'll admit there are times when I think I'm a pretty darned smart guy.  After all, I graduated public school and went to college; and while there managed to pass a few English classes, a handful of history courses and even one law class.  The fact that I did miserably in my chosen major of business doesn't matter anymore because my business career ended about 10 years ago and anything I do now is just for the money and not for the stupid notion of "job satisfaction" as some crazy people would have you believe.

I also think I'm smart because I'm still alive, even after that incident at the dog food plant where I mistakenly put my foot in the trash compactor they called "The Pulveriser" and it started to eat me and it was only dumb luck that I was able to pull my foot out of my boot and haul myself out of it's terrible maw. But even then I was smart because I was able to walk around the rest of the day with only one boot on and managed to fashion a shoe out of a cardboard box that nobody noticed except two people who asked me why I was wearing a cardboard box on my foot.

But, as often happens, just when I'm feeling really smart, something comes out of left field and makes me feel really stupid.  This happens a lot when I'm reading or watching television.  Several years ago, I started to see the phrase "Deux ex machina" pop up a lot in book and movie reviews.  My usual reaction when I see something like this is to take two seconds to reason it out, right or wrong, and move on.  In the case of this particular phrase, I just told myself that it was some sort of French/Italian pig latin that meant "two former machines".  And even though this made no real sense, it was more important that I finish the article than to fuck around finding out what it really meant.

Finally, I saw it so many times, that I looked it up.  "Deux ex machina:  A narrative ending in which an improbable event is used to resolve all problematic situations and bring the story to a generally happy ending."


Huh?  What the hell does that mean?  I couldn't wrap my mind around it, and it wasn't until I watched the movie "Dodgeball", that it made any sense.  In the movie, Vince Vaughn's character is going to lose his gym to Ben Stiller's evil character until a crate full of cash labeled Deux ex machina is wheeled out and Vince is able to pay off his mortgage, foiling Ben.

Having solved that nasty little mystery, I went on my merry way until several months later when I was watching the movie "Contact", which by the way would have been a pretty good picture if they had just left the first and last parts out.  Kind of like "Apocalypse Now" would have been pretty good if they had just cut out that last part with the Colonel Kurtz horseshit.

Anyway, in the movie, James Woods is asking Tatum O'Neal's lookalike (I can never remember her name) if she's ever heard of "Occam's Razor".  And again, just wanting to watch the rest of the film and not be bothered, I reasoned that Occam's Razor must be some kind of shaving device made out of a clam shell.  And I was happy ... until I saw the damned term again.

So I looked it up and sure enough, it was some fucking Latin phrase just like Deux ex machina.  Is it any surprise that Latin is a dead language?  I doubt the Latin's even understood it.  No wonder they switched to Spanish.  "Occam's Razor:  The simplest explanation of a theory is usually the one that makes the fewest assumptions".

Huh?  It's been months now, and I still haven't figured this one out.  This reminds me of my freshman year in high school when I mistakenly thought that math was not my enemy until the first day of Algebra class and I realized what the term "brain dead" truly meant.  I ended up transferring out of that and taking "General Math I and II", effectively keeping me from attending Princeton and having to settle for Southwest Missouri State College, where they still wouldn't let me in until I passed the math entrance exam which consisted of counting the number of pyramids on a line.  I aced that baby though.

Anyway, I still don't know what fucking Occam's Razor really means. There's an off-chance that if I watch "Dodgeball" again, there may be visual aid that helps me there also.

And Algebra ... maybe one for Algebra too.

Saturday Night Blues

As an easily irritated person, there's nothing quite as irritating as facing a rainy Saturday night without something decent to watch on television.  Ordinarily, we save this night to watch a new movie that comes in from Netflix on a regular basis.  However, on Thursday night, I discovered that my pick from last week was still laying on a table in the living room where I had placed it after viewing last Saturday night.  Not really wanting to watch "Coroline" for a second time, I threw it in the mail on Friday and resigned myself to being new-movie-less tonight.

We walked past a "Redbox" machine while we were grocery shopping this afternoon, but I wasn't in the mood to take the several minutes it would take to figure out how to use it.  I suppose I miss out on a lot of new experiences this way, but that's just the way it is.

So, I've scoped out a few oldies from my DVD library for tonight and have to figure out which one of these to settle on.  I haven't watched "Collateral" more than once or twice, but I've developed an aversion to Tom Cruise after watching "Valkyrie".  Besides, what's really better than the combination of John Woo in his prime, Nic Cage before he started to make bad role choices and an evil John Travolta?  "Face/Off" it is!

Put the popcorn on the stove Sadie ... 

Nothing To Say On Facebook

I have an account on facebook.  I don't know exactly when I started it but I do remember my best friend writing me with an invitation, and rather than be rude to her, I signed up, and for the longest time only had her as a "friend".  Then somehow, I made three other "friends", but that's been about it.

For a while, I was posting stuff every day, but after a time, I realized that three of the four friends knew what I was doing all the time anyway from e-mails and phone calls; and the fourth one didn't give a flying fuck what I did.  Then I started looking back at my posts and realized how pathetic and stupid I appeared, so I erased everything.  So, after two years, I have a total of one page.  This page is mostly my friends wishing me a happy birthday over two months ago.

I suppose I should make new friends, but when I sit down to think of who to invite, I remember that I'm basically anti-social and don't have any friends.  Facebook reminds me from time to time that my "friends" have lots more friends than I do and suggests friends that I can invite. These are in three categories:  the first are people that my "friends" are "friends" with, but I don't know them and am sure they would think I was some slimy creep if I contacted them.  The second group are people I went to high school with and this is out of the question because I still have horrible memories of high school and don't want to be reminded of them by contacting people who probably remember me as "that strange guy".  The third group are people I went to college with, but when I look at their names, I'm reminded that even though I did like college a lot, I don't know any of the people who facebook suggests, and again, I would look like "that strange guy".

So, fuck you facebook for taunting me about the fact that I don't have any friends and then suggesting people who are just going to turn down my invitations.

However, the other night I was staring at my facebook page and thinking that I ought to write something down, so I set my brain to whirring, but could only come up with "had a hamburger and potato chips for dinner ... yum!"  This was immediately removed.  Then I saw the "like" button, and thought there must be something I like, shouldn't there?

So I thought and thought.  And then I thought some more.  And from the deep regions of my brain, I remembered that I had kind of liked the Palms Hotel when when were in Las Vegas for one night last summer. We actually stayed at some dive down the street, but we did spend part of the evening there.  And for those of you who don't believe me, I have a picture ...

The Palms Is Out Of The Picture On The Right

Wait a minute, I must have a better picture than that. Here's one of Jan in front of the Palms billboard.  At least I think it's Jan, I had my glasses off ...

Is That You Dear?

Anyway, I hit the "like" button for the Palms on my facebook page, and now I have something besides my birthday greetings.  And besides it looks kind of cool and maybe people will think it's cool too because the Palms has a Playboy Club and Paris Hilton hangs out there snorting coke when she's not getting thrown out of the Wynn Hotel for snorting coke there.

But ... hold on.  Isn't the Playboy Club kind of lame now? And isn't Paris Hilton kind of "Paris Who?" anymore? Maybe my "like" button will make me look lame too. Oh shit, now I've done it.  I just tried erasing my "like" button and it won't erase.

Crap!  Now my facebook page makes me look like a loser!  I'll never get anymore "friends"...

Fuck you facebook.

I Have To Work On My Social Skills

Even though it's Thursday, this morning I was able to put on my "Overly Casual Friday" clothes, because today was the Divisional Company picnic at work.  And even though I'm only a contractor, I was pretty sure I was invited.  All week, people had been coming into my cube and asking me if I was going to the picnic, and I said would, even though I didn't believe it.

But, at about 12:30 this afternoon, with my stomach growling at me because I hadn't made a lunch to bring in, I decided to trek over to the appointed spot on the massive grounds of Giant Pharmaceutical House and see what was going on.

This is actually a new development for me, as I've always been painfully shy, and have made it a practice to avoid any type of awkward gatherings of unfamiliar people throughout my life.

So I drifted towards the crowd, got in the food line and selected a cold hamburger, cold bun and warm, runny cole slaw to put on my plate.

Then I mingled.

I spied the Filipino guy in my department, waved at him at started to walk over ... when he abruptly turned on his heels and walked the other direction.  Strike one.

Then I walked up to the dynamic trio of "Steroid Man, Silent Cubs Fan and Aging Frat Boy" and said "Hi!"  This was met with stony silence.  Strike Two.

I made eye contact with a woman who works near me and approached her.  And she immediately pulled out her cell phone and started punching buttons.  Strike Three.

Then an errant horseshoe whizzed by my head.

I stood there, munching on my cold burger and suddenly muttered to myself "Fuck this shit".  So I strode over to the freebies table, where they were giving out free t-shirts (I was low on t-shirts), brazenly collected two of them and went back to my office.

So, perhaps I do need to work on my social technique. Or maybe I just need to say "Fuck this shit" more often.

I kind of like the latter.

Maybe It Wasn't Such A Good Idea

Once in a while, I like to go back over some of my posts, ostensibly to see if my writing has improved any (it hasn't), but mostly to look up some people I have written about and to Google them to see if anything new has happened in their lives.

One of those people stood out, for obvious reasons.  At the time I first wrote about her, Sheyla Hershey had achieved the distinction of holding the record for the world's largest breasts.  Through a series of cosmetic procedures, doctors in South America (no one in the US would touch her) had managed to cram a full one gallon of silicone into each or her hooters.

Looking at her pictures, I wondered how the surgeon had managed to close her up, and imagined a scene much like in the movies where a person hurriedly tries to cram a full closet of clothes into a suitcase, invariably resorting to sitting on it while another person frantically tries to drive the latches home.  And maybe this was how it was done in the operating room.

Being me, my first thought on looking at her was "where the hell does she buy clothes to contain those things? Target?  The Gap?"  Also, they looked they would be very uncomfortable to lug around.

Maybe Lane Bryant?

But Ms Hershey seemed to enjoy her notoriety, and indeed, there are many places on the web that one can go to ogle her or find out about her latest activities.  She even has a page or two on facebook, along with a couple of imposters.

However, through reading updates, I learned that things hadn't been going so well for her recently.  It seems that this past July, she developed a very serious case of staph infection in each of her ta-ta's. Following her last surgery, where she achieved the world record breaking size of 38 KK, the incisions holding her together didn't hold, creating a condition called dehiscence, allowing the silicone bags to peek through and allowing infection to set in.

Doctors feared they would have to perform a mastectomy on Ms Hershey to save her, but through the wonders of medical science, they managed to get the gallon bags out of her and stem her infection. Interviewed by the local Fox News (fair and balanced) station, Sheyla expressed regrets at having been so vain as to endanger her health just to have the world's biggest boobs.  She said that even her son had pleaded with her to go back to a normal size.

This got me thinking ... According to her website, she's about 30 years old, which would put her son at 10 ... tops. Can you imagine the grief this poor kid got at school? Man, believe it or not, I used to be that age, and 9 and 10 year olds can be brutal when it comes to things of this nature.

Anyway, after almost dying from her boob size, you would think that Ms Hershey would have retired her crown and gone on with her smaller boobed life.

But as I think they say, champions are made and not born.  After her full recovery, Ms Hershey has decided to renew her assault on the world record by attempting to surpass her own record in the near future.  I, for one wish her luck in her effort.  Having checked out the competition, mainly by Googling "ENORMOUS BOOBS" with the child protection filter turned off, I'd say she has her work cut out for her.