Terrible Analogies

My website has been down for the past four hours. It’s finally back up (after a marathon phone session with my hosting provider), but it’s nearly midnight and I’m mentally and physically spent.  And because I’ve yet to win the lottery or write a best-selling novel I’m going to have to wake up in a few hours and drag myself into work.

So, my apologies for the lack of content today.

In the meantime, please enjoy this (unrelated) pic:

See you tomorrow!

Geez…this list puts my accumulated knowledge of life hacks to shame. In all of the years that I’ve wandered this planet much like David Carradine in Kung Fu (minus the flute and auto-erotic asphyxiation fetishism), the only useful bit of knowledge that I ever came across and retained is that baby food jars make great nut & bolt holders, you can usually bypass telephone phone trees by says the word “operator” or press the # button multiple times, you can open combination padlocks with a soda can, and Sting’s real name is Gordon Sumner.

After seeing this graphic, I’m wondering what useful bits of esoteric knowledge I don’t know…

It’s been four years since we moved into our new home, and I finally decided that it was time to get a new drivers license with my current address. To say that this was a low priority on my list would be a bit of an understatement.  I mean, I have more important things to do. Critical things. Things that matter. Things like re-arranging my blu-ray movies into order by last name of the ‘key grip’, playing through Oblivion for the third time, wondering if Kafka was depressing at parties, and planting the seeds of my own self-destruction.

But I finally decided that it had been long enough.  Recently certain scenarios had been running though my head; what if we had an earthquake or a fire (or any other unexpected disaster) and the only way home was through police checkpoints which required a valid ID?  This was one duck that I wanted to get in a row (can you have a row consisting of only one duck?) just for preparedness sake.

And so I made an appointment for the DMV.  Seven days later I showed up at my appointed time and was seen within ten minutes.  The person behind the desk was helpful, kind and efficient.  All paperwork was completed in just a few minutes, and eight days later I received my new license in the mail.

Yep, you read that right.  I actually had a quick and expedient DMV experience.  I mean, for a blogger this simply will not do.  I need something to complain about, and the DMV seems like the perfect target to rage on, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t actually a painless process.

What is this world coming to?

A friend of mine asked me this weekend if I could live forever, would I?

I replied, “No.”

The way I see it, I’m not independently wealthy, so that means that I’d have to work the rest of my life.  I would forever be trying to make ends meet to afford food and shelter.  If I became injured, lost a limb, went insane or was beset by any other similar calamity then I’d have to suffer with it until I died (read: never).  If I ever committed a serious crime then the sentence of “life in prison” would take on a whole new meaning.  And if everyone chose to live forever, how quickly would the planet become overpopulated?  How could we grow enough food to support a population of immortals?

There are just too many factors to consider in this particular scenario.  I believe that humans have just right amount of life in them to grow, learn, experience, multiply and eventually die.  I myself am not anxious to leave this mortal coil, but I’m of the mind that there’s something else waiting for us beyond this life, and I’m quite curious to see what that is.

Live forever?  Count me out…

I was having a conversation with my brother-in-law recently as I was helping him move his ancient 90′s widescreen television out of the house and down to Goodwill when he mentioned a television series that he was currently watching on DVD, and would I like to borrow them?

“No, thanks. I unfortunately wouldn’t have the time to watch ‘em.”

“Don’t have the time?” he asked quizzically.

“Yeah. Between work, reading, electronics, blogging, running, lifting, the kid and the wife I have very few free hours in my days. What work doesn’t take up the rest of life seems to. I honestly don’t think I’d have the time to work my way through the DVDs anytime soon. I just don’t have the time.”

“This reminds me of a book I just read,” the bro-in-law haughtily replied. “It’s all about how when people say ‘I don’t have time time’, what the really mean is ‘I don’t know how to prioritize my time’. It’s all about what more important? Should I call my wife, or do the dishes? Should I go grocery shopping or mow the lawn? Should I reply to that e-mail or play a video game? It’s all about prioritizing your life.”

“You sure you don’t want to watch this series?  It really is amazing!”

“I appreciate it,” I said looking as deadpan as possible, “but I just don’t have the time.”

Call me strange, but it seems to me that one can ‘prioritize’ all of the fun out of life if one so chooses, and no author with an on-line degree is going to tell me that I don’t know how to live my life…

BTW:  I just finished Stephen King’s Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, and I have to say that I’ll never look at Harry Potter or Star Wars in the same light again.  This was perhaps the most enjoyable entry in the Dark Tower series.  Next up: Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer.