The suburbs.

There's something about the suburbs that always unnerved me. And I think, as I write this, I'm just figuring out what it is.

The city, like humanity as a whole, is mixed. It's diverse. Not just in ethnic makeup, but in terms of zoning, more simply, where things are.

Housing, business, residence, industry, commerce. All together, in varying degrees. To get home, you pass the little store on the corner, the laundromat, the lawyer's offices, a strictly residential building, duplexes, houses, gas stations. All these things can exist on a single block. And to go from home to school as a child, and home to work as an adult, you must, on the most basic level, pass them, if not interact with them on a personal level.

But the suburbs are completely different. In one part, you have houses. No little stores, no barbers, no things linking families to the businesses. In the next part, you have strip malls. In these strip malls, you have your shops. Built en masse, 15 stores move in at once. Chains, mostly. Then next to this strip mall, you have your other strip mall. And down the block, another strip mall.

And the exurbs are even more defined. It's not just residential and commerical. It's subdivisions looking at other sub divisions from across the street, or down the block. Park Oak Glens sits across from Shady Pines Vista and every person has their own prefabricated house which looks exactly like the other 64 houses in the subdivision. And strip malls are secondary to the big box stores like the Wal-Marts and Home Depots, and flank them in their own strip mall complexes, and you can even do away with some of the more popular small chains for the homogeneity of the "Every Day Low Prices™" of a single store.


The further out you go, the more physical space you may be able to afford in terms of acreage and square footage, but the less it's actually yours. Obviously you physically own it, but it's exactly like your neighbors. And his neighbors. And the other 62 people with the exact same house in your subdivision. And the fewer stores or restaurants around you, the less you actually choose what you can consume/buy. And if there's the chain strip mall/big box stores, you're really limited in the kinds of products you buy, as are all your neighbors. And independence of how much you can wall yourself off becomes greater, but the amount you interact with humanity as the whole becomes less.


But really, it's just a personal preference. Maybe it'd be different if I had kids. Or if I wanted to buy a nice big house and drive an SUV, and care about things like golf. But I really don't. Regardless of how much money I have or don't have, I don't think I need a 5 bedroom house with a family room, sitting room, dining room, and finished basement for all the kids' toys because they just couldn't possibly fit into a regular sized room. But really, I'll take a city any day of the week.

On hold.

I wonder how many more people Comcast has working the "payment" and "upgrade" departments of their phone system, as opposed to the "cancellation/downgrade" department.

Took me 2 minutes to get an operator for "change of service." But when they find out "change of service" means "downgrade," I've been on hold 10 minutes so far.

I mean, from a business standpoint, it makes sense. People paying less or nothing are worth less in operator time than people making payments or those who will be paying more in the future. But that doesn't mean it annoys me any less.

Deep thought.

Confidence and flattery will get you everywhere.

Seriously?

20% is a fucking lot.

Poor taste.

I was looking for some music on Soulseek. On this particular program, you can see the directory name you're downloading from.

From user SF, the title of the folder I downloaded from was "Really, I have shitloads of better music than this."

I literally laughed out loud. Until I realised that I was downloading from that folder.

CTA.

This is a pretty interesting artcile. I had no idea the CTA needed so much of its revenue to be from ridership.

No wonder they're always broke. Given the amount of buses that are packed ass to crotch on a daily basis during rush hours, I don't really see any possible way they could meet that funding requirement.

Barbaro.

I wonder what makes us think of someone, randomly, who were haven't seen or heard of in a long time.

I was wondering today what Barbaro is up to these days. For those of you who don't know him, which is everyone, let me tell you the kind of guy Barbaro is. I don't know whether it's true or not, but once he told me this:
She told me to give her 10 inches and make it hurt. So I fucked her twice and slapped her on my way out.

Yeah, I wonder what that guy is up to.

An interesting question.

Do you think you've read more books or seen more movies in your lifetime?

And I'm talking about actual books, not Bernstein Bears or things like that.

I'm kind of torn on how to judge juvenile series books, i.e. The Boxcar Children (my favorite as a 9-year old), or the Babysitters Club (my sister's choice reading of that time). I mean, when you're 9, you can't exactly be reading literature, but you'd certainly count movies you watched at that age.

I'm really not sure which I've done more of. Of the books I own, I'm at about 200. My Netflix says I've rated 801 titles, but a lot of those are Simpsons, Family Guy, Seinfeld, and other not-movies. I'd say maybe 650-700 total would be actual movies, but I doubt I rated every movie I've ever seen either.

Really, I'm not sure, but I think it might be books.

Wow.

Ouch.

U.S. private employers shed 693,000 jobs in December, up sharply from the revised 476,000 jobs lost in November and far more than economists estimated, a report by ADP Employer Services said on Wednesday.

Six hundred seventy nine thousand. Think about that.

That's more people than live in the states of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, and almost Alaska.

Granted, those are not populous states. But imagine an entire state of people lost their jobs. Including infants, and toddlers, children, and retired people who don't actually work.

And this all happened in a month.

Indifferent express.

I don't think most people have a favorite author.

I think I can say that I have a new favorite author. Which to nobody else is a big deal at all, but to me, is a huge deal.


Sorry Miss Rand. But Mr. Gladwell is where it's at.

Because.

A lot of people have asked me why I do what I do, occupation-wise. It is true, I could be doing more...intellectually stimulating things, or at the very least more profitable things.

I don't know exactly how to explain it.

For the years and years I was in school, and not just college, but always, I never understood why I was there. Yes, to get good grades, then graduate, then go to school more, then get more good grades, until you eventually get a job and then...I don't know what is supposed to follow. But I never felt like it was the place I should be. The first day of class began the interminable countdown of days until the semester was finally over, and then I could be one semester closer to being done with school. On the whole, that's not a terribly healthy view to have of academia. I never really cared about graduating, I cared more about not having to be in school anymore. The difference is subtle, but important.

Working at Checkmate, it's not been like that. I don't come to work so I have one less day that I have to work before I retire and/or die. Although I don't always want to go to work, I like working on the whole. I feel better after work than I do before, even on long days. I like doing something, as opposed to sitting at a desk all day. I like being outside (in the summer), and I like being able to make positive impact on the company and its workers without having to deal with corporate policy.

I feel like school is something I did for others. And Checkmate is what I do for myself.

The latest from Mr. Bates.

I only heard this second hand:

Steve walked up to Mr. Bates carrying a bag. He asked "Do you know what this is?"

Mr. Bates looked at the bag for a second, and said "Looks like a couple of rotten bananas."

"No. It's a bag of shit."

WOW.