Resolution #14: Don't Die.

So I've always been kind of confused by the tradition of New Year's resolutions. I get that it's a new year, and maybe you want to do something differently, but why do it only once a year? And why don't we do it on our birthdays, since it's another year of your existence, or on Christmas, because Jesus died for your sins and you're probably correcting your sins with your resolutions anyway. (Dieting falls into this category, because gluttony is a sin. Yes, that means that all fat people are going to hell. Jesus hates fat people.)

I thought about making New Year's resolutions, but I didn't. I didn't make any resolutions because I know that I'll forget them in a couple months and continue doing things like I always do. This is the problem with society. We don't collectively remember things. People were like, "Oh my god, the Holocaust was terrible because the Nazis hated the Jews. We should all be nice to each other, so things like the Holocaust don't happen," then they forgot, and now people hate each other and there're genocides in Africa and people killing each other in the Middle East and everyone is acting like a bunch of d-bags. Everyone needs to chill out and love other people more. The United Nations should mandate that everyone needs to New Year's resolve to chill out and love people more so the problem people wouldn't listen to them and things wouldn't change very much.

I kind of vaguely remember being afraid of the world collapsing upon itself nine years ago, when we were all afraid that the entire technological infrastructure of the world would fall apart because none of it was prepared to increment 1999 to 2000. I was sitting in California, watching Dick Clark and his fake tan talk about how great Christina Aguilera is, genuinely afraid that the TV might blink out and I would be left in a technological void. Even though it was past midnight in pretty much every other time zone in the world, and the transition had gone without problems. People are stupid.

I watched Bucket List today, which is a pretty mediocre movie, but the premise is good. This doesn't have anything to do with the movie, but rather a question that Jack Nicholson's character asked. In the context of the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, he asked (something along the lines of), "What does a snail have to do to move up after it dies?" I think that Buddhism is a pretty good religion in terms of not causing any wars and having people be generally pretty nice to each other, but Jack Nicholson had a point. I don't think that a snail can lead a good or bad life. The same thing goes for most creatures that have no responsibility besides themselves. Snails don't have kids to feed. Snails don't have vices. They can't be drunks and beat up their wives, nor can they cure cancer or establish humanitarian institutes or help little old lady snails cross the street (partly because there's no way for a snail to effectively help another snail, but mostly because snails are hermaphrodites).

On another note, I don't understand the grammatical structure of New Year's Day. Am I wrong to think that it should be New Year Day? It's not like Veterans' Day, where it's a day for veterans (and thusly in their possession). It's more like Arbor Day, where but we're celebrating a new year instead of trees. Maybe it follows from New Year's Eve, which is the eve of the new year, which actually makes sense. Maybe I'm just blowing hot air. Or typing hot words. But by the same logic, Christmas day would become Christmas' day, because it's the day of Christmas.

Resolution #31: Stop nitpicking.

Stuff Like That

I don't have anything in particular to inspire this post. I just kind of feel like writing, and it's been a while since I've written anything. So here goes.

I really like pork ribs. They're amazing. They don't taste particularly good on their own, but with the proper seasoning and barbeque sauce and such, cooked for a long time, they end up being amazing. Ribs are also entertaining to eat, because there's a bone in the middle that you have to eat around. It requires skill and concentration to eat a rib efficiently. If you're not skillful, you end up with barbeque sauce on your face and rib on the bone; if you've been blessed with rib-eating talent, you can strip the bone clean in one swift stroke, leaving your face and hands free of rib residue.

Alliterated names are ridiculous. Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Michael Madsen and Tony the Tiger come to mind. I don't know why they're so funny, but I can't seem to take them seriously. Sometimes they're fun to say, but that shouldn't give parents a reason to give their children a name fit for a dime novel character.

I love snickerdoodles. Snickerdoodles are amazing cookies. They're light and airy, and sugary and buttery, and cinnamon-y and delicious. The cinnamon sugar on the outside is the best part. Especially when all the cinnamon and sugar gets pushed towards the edges when the cookie expands when you're baking it. Yum.

Things come in sets of three too often. I believe that there should be more sets of other numbers. It could be the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Ricardo the Luchador. Or lions, tigers, bears, llamas and killer whales--Oh my! Fork, knife, spoon and cowbell. Think about it.

"Easy as pie" is a terrible saying. Pie is not easy. It is delicious. There is no greater good than pie, as far as I'm concerned. However, it is not easy. The crust must be just right, and to achieve the proper flakiness and crispness and sweetness and amazingness and deliciousness and awesomeness and pieness, much effort and care is required. That doesn't even begin to describe the arduous process of making the filling. My proposed amendment to this statement would be, "Easy as sitting." Sitting is pretty easy. I don't think I know anyone who has a hard time sitting.

I've got some statements that I'm gonna throw out there that I don't really want to elaborate on, but want to write down. Humans are ridiculously strange animals. Feet are weird looking. Old cars are way cooler looking that new cars. Humans need to develop the ability to levitate. Evolution happens too slowly. People are generally too conservative. Fear paralyzes the world. Mustard is an ugly color. There is a lot of stuff in the world. Infinity is frustrating. So is finity (that's the opposite of infinity).

Poop is funny.

Knuckles and Puppies

Knuckles is a totally ridiculous word. I thought of that while I was eating lunch today. I don't even know why I think it's so strange. Maybe it's the two K's or the fact that knuckles are such weird looking body parts, but I really don't know. Just think about it a little bit, and I think you'll understand what I'm talking about. You just can't think about knuckles without thinking how strange they are. Also, if I'm not crazy, I think the sidekick in the Sonic the Hedgehog video game was called Knuckles. Random factoid for you. Learn something new every day. Or maybe that's not new.

While we're talking about puppies, (which we weren't before, but now that we actually are,) puppies cheat at life. Pretty much all babies of any species are way cuter than the adult versions. Anyway, puppies are particularly cuter than dogs (even though dogs can be pretty damn adorable), and I think it's unfair. No reasonable person is going to refuse a puppy. Darwinist theory dictates that that only the fittest members of a species should survive to procreate, but puppies don't care about Darwin. They all survive because they're all so damn cute and people adopt them and make sure they survive. However, humans have outsmarted the puppies, because humans are cruel and sadistic being that don't mind cutting off other animals' genitalia. This is how the world was saved from being conquered by puppies, which are actually an army of aliens that were sent here to take over the world.

But really, puppies are adorable. They have puppies from the Humane Society or something like that in the Macy's window in San Francisco, and they're really cute. If I could have anything for Christmas, it would be a few billion dollars so I would never have to work and I could buy a puppy and somebody to train it for me, and another person to clean up after it, and someone else to manage the rest of my money so I don't become poor and have to sell my puppy and fire my puppy trainer and puppy-clean-upper and crappy-money-manager.

I should convince the government that I need a bailout.

DUCK!

So my linguistics professor doesn't have very many examples, so he just reuses them. One of his four or five examples for lexical ambiguity is the sentence, "I saw her duck." It's ambiguous because duck can be a noun or a verb, and there're some other things too, but then it would get hairy and I don't really want to explain it. Anyway, I was thinking about this sentence a little bit and I couldn't figure out where the verb "duck" came from if it wasn't the animal. Then I though, "Hey, maybe there are other unexplored verb possibilities derived from other animals! I should write a blog post about this!" So now I'm writing a blog post about this.

Here's a scenario: You're walking down a side street of a large city with a couple of your friends, just after dusk, on your way to dinner. You need to cross the street to get to the restaurant, but it's directly across the street from you and there isn't a crosswalk. Because you're in a large city, the blocks are relatively long, but since there's not too much traffic, you decide it's going to be easier to jaywalk than to cross at a crosswalk like you're supposed to. As you begin to cross the street, your friend yells:

Option 1: "DEER!"
You turn around and find yourself facing a pair of bright lights, getting bigger very quickly. The lights are horrifying, yet fascinating, and you can't look away, let alone move; the lights have mesmerized you, and you're rooted to the spot. With a glorious "CRUNCH!" and an explosion of blood, bone and flesh, you disappear.

Option 2: "FROG!"
You turn around and find yourself facing a pair of bright lights, getting bigger very quickly. As they get nearer, you run a little farther across the street, only to see another set of headlights heading at you from the opposite direction. With the grace of a matador, you step out of the way of the second car, leaving mere inches between you and an untimely demise. Slowly weaving your way across traffic, two steps forward, one step back, you make it to the other side of the road.

Here's another scenario: It's fourteen and a half years in the future and we're on the brink of World War III. Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Tahiti, Lesotho and Djibouti all have nuclear capabilities now, and they all hate the US for letting China colonize the moon. One day, as you're hoverboarding along the sidefloats (since nobody walks on sidewalks anymore), you hear the air raid sirens go off. You start to head towards the nearest subway station, but it's too late. You hear the low rumble of the ballistic missile closing in on you, and suddenly there is a bright flash of white. Someone yells. "COCKROACH!!" and you continue about your business, miraculously surviving the radioactivity in the fallout.

Here's another scenario: You're a floor trader at the NYSE and the bottom is falling out of the economy. You hear someone yell, "CHIPMUNK!" Suddenly, you start scrambling around like a madman, selling all the stock you can and stuffing your cheeks full of cash for safekeeping. You can't trust the banks these days.

Here's one last scenario (for now, at least): It's a balmy 73 degrees in June in Martha's Vineyard, and you're standing under a white tent just off the beach in your Sunday best. You're at a wedding reception. There's booze flowing freely, happy people surrounding you. Men are wearing their seersucker suits and pastel shirts and some of the women are wearing large straw hats with their silky, summery sun dresses and $400 heels. The band announces that they're going to start their last set; the party's slowing down. While you're embarrassing yourself on the dance floor, the frontman of the band walks up to the microphone and says, "Folks, it's about that time now. RABBIT!" In a flurry of hormones and champagne, the dance floor empties as couples make their ways to their cars and happy endings to a glorious evening of revelry.

If you've got other animal suggestions (and definitions), I'd love to hear them. That's all for now. Rabbit.

Acronyms

Acronyms are lots of fun. I'm not going to come up with any right now, but I'm just saying that they're fun. There should be more acronyms for innocuous things that end up being dirty words. Like that movie, Accepted, where he invents a school (South Harmon Institute of Technology) that acronyms to S.H.I.T. I think that's funny. And I just made acronym into a verb.

People are taking a lot of liberties with language. People are inventing words left and right. I do it too, but I think it's okay when I do it because they're usually useful words. The Internet was a terrible invention, because now stupid people have a way to share their stupidity with the rest of the world. There should be a Internet Test to make sure that people are intelligent enough to use the Internet. It'd be kind of like getting a Driver's License but it'd be for the Internet.

I probably shouldn't have written this post because I don't have anything else to write now. Lame. But I do think that I could get an Internet License.