When I write my blog entries, I like to imagine my words being used against me in court some day. I try to write my best because of this. And use a lot of bad words. It seems really funny to think of the little court recorder chick typing a bunch of bad words in my transcript or whatever. I wonder if she types the full words? I guess she'd have to. If someone asks her to read it back, does she have to read it all word by word, no matter how obscene? Seems pretty funny to me. I guess ideally I'd make her blush. I'd be beaming. Of course if she blushes while I beam, my poor mother probably faints. If I had a lawyer, I'd tell him my mom was forbidden to attend any of my court proceedings, no matter what for. That seems like a good policy. Mom's shouldn't have to find out how rotten their kids are if they weren't directly involved. Then it just makes them question their parenting. I don't want my mom to question her parenting... she did fine. I deserve 100% credit for screwing myself up, thank you. And yeah, I do plan on growing up some day.

I also like to think about people reading my blog after I die. If I died today, would they preserve my blog I wonder? I'd want them to. "Here's the dumb-assed shit Sarah had to say on her last day on earth. Yes, she really did whine for 20 minutes about pencils.". But really, who uses pencils any more? I hate pencils. They feel so unsatisfying when you write, like you're barely making a mark even though you're putting in all this effort. Then they're never really sharp, so your writing always looks fat and blurry. I mean what century is this? I can't believe we haven't thrown the concept of lead pencils out with typewriters and punch cards. Well what are you gonna do. Buy mechanical pencils I guess. I can't even believe we're still using PAPER.

Solaris - The movie

I watched Solaris with George Clooney and a bunch of other nameless losers. They pronounce it So-LAUR-us... which is weird. Anyway the movie was just bizarre. I'm pretty sure it was a big waste of time, but I'm going to think about it anyway. The imagery was great, effects were good, acting was decent, story was alright, movie was crap.

So it's about some space expedition in the future to check out some planet Solaris which is really pretty. George Clooney is a shrink that gets called in cuz everyone up on the big ship thing is crazy or whatever. He goes up, shit is wack, it's discovered that something about Solaris is making peoples dreams come true in the form of what they call "visitors". So, a crew member dreams about his kid, the kid shows up the next day, built from the guys memory. But the kid isn't real obviously. He's real in that you can touch him and stuff... but I guess they hint that he's some kind of collection of atoms held together with crazy glue or something, I forget. Anyways, that's pretty much all there is to it. Everyone has their own little visitors which is a fairly okay idea, and reminds me of a few Star Trek episodes, along with Event Horizon slightly. The crew deals with this shit one way or another and all the moral dilemmas tied with it, and in the end only most of them die. Yeah... spectacular movie. Whatever. It still had really good dramatic filming with beautiful scene stylings and layouts and colors and all that shit. It was artsy in this respect. And in that it didn't make any sense. I guess I can use that excuse to write a review that doesn't make any sense.
posted by 00k at 11:25 PM

Well I'm going to die of West Nile virus soon, so everyone had better be extra nice to me. I have somewhere around 10 mosquito bites currently active, which I acquired in the last two days. See, I got air conditioning in my room. And that was good. But then I didn't somehow block off the little cracks of open space between window frame and air conditioner. That was bad. The mosquitos, they knew this. They took advantage of this. And I woke up itchy. Anyhow, I taped off that space twixt window and a/c, but all it takes is one bad mosquito and you're off in west nile territory. Guess I'd better start reading up on symptoms now so I can imagine that I have them and start freaking out. It's been nice living, but it couldn't last forever.

For now I'm going to leave my door open, sit in the dark with the hall light on, and write my congressman about this mosquito conspiracy. Noone gives me west nile and gets away with it.

In other news, I'd like to give a shoutout to my teacher Rich Albers, who assembled all the brilliant solaris questions that will be posted soon enough in perl script form, hopefully for public use. I'll probably make at the very least a subdomain about it, and of course most credit will go to my teacher. I'm only writing the script that'll do the actual quiz stuff. Content is all Rich. That's Rich Albers, R-I-C-H A-L-B-E-R-S, the greatest teacher in the whole world. He may not deserve a raise because he won't sit on committees, but he does deserve some damn appreciation. And so here it is.

I had the coolest dream. It was really long... I don't remember it all. But there was a lot of fighting. It wasn't like kung fu really, lots of punching. There was all kinds of betrayal and intrigue. There was a girl being fought over. She was with some jerk and another guy was trying to take her and show her what a jerk he was. There was a conversation overheard about a murder that happened, someone found out who it was and swore revenge. There was a lesson about how to fight dirty, on a metal staircase. There was a butler. Alex Trevelyan was there (the actor that played him in Goldfinger). I think it was his girl, because he was a bad guy. It was cool anyways... I wish I could remember the storyline. It was like a movie. Twelve hours of sleep will really get your mind going.
posted by 00k at 11:24 AM

Well they shut down my bosses website because of spam... suspended his account. Which means my job just got a lot uglier. And my weekend just got a lot fuller. Boo hoo.
posted by 00k at 9:25 AM

Busy busy busy. I'll say something tomorrow. Until then, play some games! These used to be at nrasquad.com when I ran the show there.


posted by 00k at 12:08 AM

Cleaned my car yesterday. Cleaned it good! Washed it... vacuumed it all out... took out all the crap that had accumulated over the few months that I've had it. I took it to one of those change washing places. I really like those. Three dollars in change and I get to waste colossal amounts of water. I can understand washing a horse. I would think horses could get sick if you leave them too dirty all the time. But cars? We're washing our cars when people are on voluntary water restrictions? It's so American, wasting water. This is what I think of when I think of America, and capitalism. We can afford to waste water. We can afford to wash our cars. We can afford to take showers every day, and throw food away when we cook too much. We're Americans, because we waste! We waste because we can! We waste food, we waste energy, we waste money, we waste time, we even waste waste by not recycling. And we do it all because we can. We truly are a rich society, because we waste. We may not be great, but we sure are rich.
posted by 00k at 12:43 PM

I just might be...

A robot from the future. Every day I am surrounded by inefficiency. Half of what I have to do could, and should be automated. I see gross inefficiency at my work. Filing cabinets full of years and years of paperwork, all meticulously filed and kept up, added to, removed from, a database, minus efficiency or practicality. Filing cabinets upon filing cabinets of inefficiency. And it will never change. A forest, all chopped down and printed on and sorted alphabetically on the off chance that something will need to be referenced in the future. The man hours it takes to maintain all that shit... I don't even want to think about the wasted hours from peoples lives. Some people work as if they'll live forever I think. Some employers make you work as if you'll work there forever.

And my job, well at least 70% of what I do could be automated. It is conceivable. Is it practical? I'm not sure. It's probably cheaper to pay me $10 an hour and just make me have to work 10x longer than the software and hardware that would do my job. That's obscenely depressing, and fairly degrading as well.

For example, I am going to spend countless, countless hours scanning a catalog that weighs 50 pounds. Fifty pounds of paper, and I'm going to scan it all, one little side of one little piece of paper at a time. It's going to take me the rest of my life, and then a little longer. Not really, but it'd probably take a year and a half to do it all judging by my current rate. All this because they don't make affordable scanners that can copy both sides of a page and dump those pictures to a file with preset color and file size settings. My time, wasted. Wasted doing menial tasks. Wasted doing menial tasks repeatedly.

I answer the phone at my work. I answer it "Stanley Fasteners, this is Sarah.". I don't know anything, so I just route calls and screen for salesmen. That's the most difficult part about answering the phone, and yes obviously that isn't hard. So there you have the most annoying aspect of my job, which pops up on average every 15 minutes or so, and it's something that could be automated. If I can imagine being able to write a shell script that would do it, testing conditions, and outputting based on those conditions, if I can conceive it, it can be done. But it isn't done. Because it's cheaper and easier to just pay me to do it.

But I spend way more time driving to and from work than I do answering the phone. Twenty minutes to work, 30 minutes home. 50 minutes a day. 250 minutes a week. That's a little over 4 hours I spend in my car, getting to work, and getting home from work. What if there wasn't traffic on 270 on my way home? What if it was only a 20 minute drive instead of a 30 minute drive? I'd get back .7 of an hour of time I'm not getting paid for. What can you do with .7 of an hour? Eat dinner and watch the Simpsons, two full episodes if commercials weren't robbing everyone of THAT time TOO.

What if we all thought of our time as precious? What if every single minute wasted was an outrage? What if inefficiency was barbaric? It should be. We should be outraged. Our time IS precious.

We know we have to work to survive, no way around that really. But what of the time we waste doing tasks that could be automated? That is an outrage too. Many people would say "Well at least I'm getting paid, I don't care they can pay me to waste time if they want". Those people make me sick. You couldn't pay me enough to waste my time in pursuits I don't find purposeful. For example, I wouldn't take a job spending 8 hours a day doing something that didn't matter. If there was some looney billionaire that wanted to pay someone to bounce a tennis ball all day long, or to write down what they think the clouds look like then burn the piece of paper at the end of the day, I wouldn't do it for any amount of money. You couldn't pay me enough to do work that doesn't matter. That is the small satisfaction I can have about my job. At least it is not all for nothing.

How many hours upon hours of peoples lives are wasted due to inefficiency? In Colorado? In the United States? In the whole world? It makes me sick to think about. THIS is what is bad about society. The option to save ourselves and our minds for something better, more meaningful, maybe even challenging, but the option not taken. If humanitarians were good for anything, they should be good for this. Where are the OSHA standards that state that a humans time should not be wasted to save money? That is perhaps too anti-capitalistic.

Anyhow.

Inefficiency is my enemy.

So I just might be a robot from the future. Everyone else is okay with doing identical, repeated tasks, forever, repeatedly, repeatedly, again and again, and again, until they die or retire. This is how most people value their time I guess. Well not me. My time is worth more to me than that. What is my goal in life? Literally? To automate every single task that is repetitive and can be automated. If it can be automated, my goal is to automate it.

The problem with this goal is that if I am truly effective at achieving it, I'm going to push myself right out the door of every job I ever have. But I'm okay with that. I like the idea of proving the menial tasks of my hands unnecessary. Automate the planet!

That's my rant for today... thanks for reading it. Whining is therapy for the poor I think.

Pun of the day: I'm going to try Nair once I get paid. I hope it's not a RIP-OFF *ba-dum-CHING!*
posted by 00k at 11:36 AM

Didn't get to any of that crap tonight I thought I'd get to. Luckily I have all weekend, and all of the rest of my life. I watched Antwone Fisher. That was a pretty okay movie, I'm glad I watched it. Denzel Washington is pretty okay. I dunno who the kid that played Fisher was. No review here.

Here's some bullshit. The passenger side mirror on my car - fell off. Minding my own business, driving down the damn stupid road, my mirror just falls off. I heard a weird sound over there, and I look over, and where I used to see what's behind me, now I just see black plastic. That's pretty shitty on it's own. Shittier though is that it's a $40 mirror to replace somehow. They sure do think I'm some kind of idiot. And like some kind of idiot, I'm going to drive my stupid ass down to Boulder tomorrow and pay them $40 for a silly mirror. La dee da. I'm tired and grumpy hehe... bedtime. I'm going to go to sleep thinking about a perl problem in the hopes that my brain with all it's idle sleep-time will figure it out. It's such a shame to waste all those hours while sleeping on idle nonsensical dreams. I either want dramatic, interesting, inspiring, inciteful dreams, or I want to use that time to figure out something useful. Unless it'd mean waking up tired every day. And yes, I do want everything, and I think I should be able to have everything, because if anyone has ever deserved everything, it is me. Thanks for asking. And goodnight.
posted by 00k at 12:49 AM

Iiiiiiiit's Friday Friday Friday, Friday Friday Friday Friday, not MonDAY, not TuesDAY, but Friday Friday Fridayyyy. Iiiiiiiit's Friday Friday Friday, Friday Friday Friday Friday, Friday Friday Friday, Friday Friday Friday Friday, Friday Friday Friday, not WednesDAY, not ThursDAY, but Friday Friday Fridayyyy.

I'm going to change around this page tonight if I get around to it. Going to add things... maybe mix up the design a bit. We will see. I do have a book checked out from the library that has a bunch of good perl scripts in it for webpages. And since I have a ten dollar fine at the library, I should probably get some kind of value from my overdue books. Yes, good thinking 00k. I will also probably post some video of my fish tonight. Doesn't get any more exciting than that! Let's close with Calvin and Hobbes, the greatest comic duo to have ever graced a written page.
posted by 00k at 9:05 AM

Word on the streets is that I'm not the only 00k. For the record though I'd like to point out that this is actually "ook-ook" the monkey, not "00k-00k". Apparently this "ook-ook" monkey fellow has been up to some shenanigans, trying to tarnish the good name of ook's everywhere (that's 00k with zero's dumbass! whoopsy). But I guess that's okay... because it's a great big internet, and I'm nice enough to share. It just inspires me to be the best 00k I can be.

Contributed by Mack.

See what ook-ook the wonder monkey did here

posted by 00k at 5:08 PM

You know what the curse of the competent is?

Everyone else.
posted by 00k at 12:09 AM

Why do digital clock makers want to pretend that making a clock is such a difficult thing? I mean could digital clocks possibly be any more behind the times in technology? We can only have two speed settings, ridiculously fast and ridiculously slow. We can't have an AM or PM button to set the time, we have to go all the way through all the PM hours to get to the AM hours or vice versa. We can't go backwards, no, since time can only move forewards, the clock should only move forewards as well. We can only have two separate alarm settings, because there are only two possible times we will ever want to wake up. You'd think programming digital clocks was the trickiest business in the world by how much they SUCK. Maybe I should go shopping and see if there are any better ones out there, mine is a few years old after all. Maybe SOMEONE HAS CAUGHT ON in the clock industry, and EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. Do I dare to dream? My hopes and dreams may be shattered. Is it a risk I'm willing to take? I think I will be cautiously optimistic.

I spent like 5 hours writing scripts today. My head hurts, and I'm tired as hell. And I have to get up in the morning and go to work at a job that annoys me and doesn't pay enough. And I only have $22 that has to get me through next Monday. And I keep forgetting to do my English homework. And I'm a pathetic wimpering moron. On that high note, I exit!
posted by 00k at 11:55 PM

Boy... haven't done any really good man-hating lately. We can't have that, then people will start to think I'm not bitter enough, then they'll think I haven't been through enough heartache, then they'll stop listening to my opinions. Noone wants that. And I can't just give women all the hating.

Let's put to rest shall we this silly farce known as the self-proclaimed hopeless romantic. Ah yes, those self-proclaimed "hopeless romantics" out there, you know who you are. And I know who you are too. Look, here's one. This guy on the popular online dating/rating service HotorNot.com with the keyword "romantic", and also with the keyword "sex". Hmm.

Well, what is romance, anyway? Let's start with what romance ISN'T.

This guy apparently is also a real romantic fellow, because in his description he states that he is looking for a sugar momma. Interesting. "What a lovely evening it's been my dear, let me get your chair for you, and yes and can you pick up the check? Thank you darling... you have the most beautiful pocketbook I have ever seen...". That's not romantic. I hope he's joking... but I actually doubt it.

Here's another with "romantic" and "sex". This guys a real winner... lists "chick flicks" "cuddling" "long walks" "romantic" "sweethart" (forgive him, he's a MARINE!) with, "sex" "christina aguilera" "crotch rockets" "muscle cars" "partying" and "usmc" to give you a sampling. Yes I can see the ladies lining up for that young man. "Oh Johnny Jarhead, tell me something romantic..." "Hey baby wanna do it on the beach and watch the sun come up? I know we just met, but I got a feelin we're just right for eachother, after all, we both have all the parts huh huh". Yeah... pretty safe to say that's not romantic. Not even backwoods romantic.

But none of those guys can even hold a candle to this next gentleman. "James" here has allll the women fooled... listen to these keywords: "beer" "crazy" "flirt" "gentle" "herb" "honest" "horney" "lover" "muscle" "oral" "outdoors" "party" "pleasing" "romantic" "sex" "smart" "tan" "virgin". Yeah what girl ISN'T totally taken by an alcoholic psycho dope-smoking party-going virginity-stealing sex maniac? You know what they say about that guy? "He's a giver... he'll give you AIDs... STDs...". Not romantic.

Anyways, I hope you're all seeing my point here. These guys label themselves romantic. But they're obviously retarded. You can't say you're some kind of romantic and be some bar-dwelling club-hopping womanizing player. Frankly I'm a little tired of hearing it, that shit is old. Romance isn't just having a lot of slick lines and spouting a lot of bullshit you don't believe to get sex. It's not having a lot of sex either. Maybe you think you're making the women of the world happy, and maybe you think that makes you Don Juan or something. Well, you're stupid. Just stop thinking.

So what IS romance, anyways? Well here are my thoughts on that. True romance isn't telling chicks how romantic you are. True romance is appreciating a girl for who she is, not how she looks. Treating her nice because you think she's a good person, and because she deserves it, not because you think it'll score you points with her. True romance is noticing the shit other people don't notice about her, the things that make her different. Not lame compliments on how her hair looks, or how pretty her eyes are. Tell a girl how attractive her soul is. How more than anything you'd like to get to know her, not to score with her and find out what she looks like naked, but to be a part of her life and her thoughts, and to know what makes her think the way she does and be the way she is. It's not candlelit dinners and chocolates and flowers, all that shit goes away. It's not buying her anything. It's making her feel special by the way that you look at her, and the way that you tell other people about her, and the way her laugh makes you smile. It's doing things for her that you know will make her happy, and enjoying them for that reason. True romance is the understanding that this is the way you feel, without feeling like any of it is a chore, or not worth the trouble, and true love is when she responds in kind. That's romance, and that's love. Everything else is bullshit Hollywood sold you.

That's what I think romance is. If you laughed at all while reading that paragraph, trying to imagine feeling that way about any girl, chances are you are not a hopeless romantic.

So what's wrong with being a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic if you really are a romantic guy? Well, just look at the losers you tie yourself to. I would think that'd be enough to inspire any guy to keep that shit to himself next time. If that's the way you are, that's cool. Good for you. Just don't advertise. That makes you one of "them".

That's all folks!

Disclaimer: If you're reading this and you happen to be someone that I made fun of, well, screw you, ya reject. Good thing I'm LEAVING FOR ALASKA TOMORROW AND NOT COMING BACK EVER so you can't hunt me down and kill me. Phew! Seeya tomorrow!
posted by 00k at 2:32 PM

Well I just watched Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Yeah... girl power and all that fucking shit.


posted by 00k at 12:09 AM

Have you ever noticed that at some point in your life, almost everyone you meet fits into some category of person you've met before? That's what I've noticed. I meet someone, and I think "He is in the BOB category", with category names being taken from the first person I knew that made me have to form that category. I don't know very many people really, but I can categorize almost everyone I know into some category with someone else I know based on personality and character type, sense of humor, manner of speaking, interests, beliefs. I guess that's pretty insulting because everyone wants to feel like they are unique and special and different. Well they're not. I'm sure I fit right into a category somewhere for somebody, and I can accept that. Everyone else should too. I forgot what my point was here. Probably just wanted to piss off everyone I know.
posted by 00k at 9:06 AM

Saw Daniel Tosh last night at the Comedy Works downtown. It was a great show... I'd recommend it to anyone except easily offended mexicans, lesbians, fat women, bitchy women, feminists, black people, old people, people that like Vin Diesel, bridesmaids, and magical midgets. If you're any of those and don't offend easily, by all means go check it out. I can appreciate any comedian that can alienate his entire audience as well as he did, and have noone walk out. Skillz. There was some dumb chick in the audience that kept piping up with dumb shit, and he made fun of her like half the show. I found that very gratifying. I wish I could hire him to regulate on a few chicks I know. I guess he's getting his own show soon... yes here we go:

Daniel's half hour special...

Comedy Central
Presents Daniel Tosh

will air July 25th
10:00 PM Eastern
9:00 PM Central

Good for him.
posted by 00k at 9:05 AM

Wow... 19 years is a long time to be asleep. Ever since I was four. Neat story.

Ark. Man Wakes After 19 Years in Coma

I'm going to be running "The Best of 00k" today. It's interesting to read what I had to say a year ago about this day. A lot can change in a year. But not too much.

From the Archives - July 4th 2002

July 4th, "Independence Day". Fireworks outlawed, large public celebrations cancelled. It's not hard to see that things have changed. But it's hard to imagine what with time will stay the same. I can think of nothing sacred to people any more. The things I thought I knew slowly fall away more every day, and noone seems to mind. More things happen that make people unsure of how they really stand on things, and then the ground shifts to accommodate.

"There is no “slippery slope” toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders."
Alan K. Simpson

Another day another step downward. I don't suppose we can see the bottom yet... but it is getting closer. If freedom was at the top... I imagine at the bottom must reside slavery. Of course there is security in slavery.

That's all I have to say. I can't do the topic justice... so I'll leave the work to famous authors and philosophers from the past. It's interesting to note how these people knew the place we'd be in today so well, even back then. What was so obvious to them back then about now, eludes so many here and now.

"The only limit to the oppression of government is the power with which the people show themselves capable of opposing it."
Enrico Malatesta

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
George Bernard Shaw

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer

"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure."
George E. Woodberry

"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? ... It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, as so much for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."
Henry David Thoreau

"Those who value safety say freedom is worthless if you're not alive to enjoy it. Those who value freedom say life is worthless if you're not free to enjoy it."

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
Henry David Thoreau

"The most dimwitted attempt at argument we’ve heard in this mortal world is the supposed retort to any advocate of freedom: “Do you mean to be free to starve?” We mean, do you think you can’t starve with your hands tied?"
Isabel Paterson

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
Abraham Lincoln

"It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say…that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement."
Etienne de la Boetie

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."
Winston Churchill

"It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes."
Bernard DeFoutenelle