Nobrainer’s Think Tank

• UP: I went to the career fair, spoke with several interesting companies. And in the “it’s a small world category” one of the frat brothers was recruiting.
• DOWN: Frat brother could get me a plant manager/engineer job, but he warned I would be severely underpaid.
• UP: I scheduled an interview with the US patent office.
• DOWN: They prefer candidates with lower grades and low ambition.
• UP: I can be paid well enough to become ambitionless.
• DOWN: I saw a string of about 8 cars make illegal left turns and I didn’t get to hit any of them.
• UP: I sold a used book for $75.
• DOWN: On the way to the post office to ship the book, my pen leaked all over my nice shirt. I have to spend $35 on a new shirt.
• UP: I will still have $40 leftover for beer.

This weekend’s football mandated road trip will kick off in a few hours if I am so lucky. So I’ll share some random thoughts, news, and observations before I leave.

• On the downside of things, my indestructible pet fish, Boris “the Bullet Dodger” passed away over night. I guess he wasn’t so tough after all. His funeral flush was held this morning.
• I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but how’s this one: George Bush is not-only quite bright and shrewd, but is also in fact the puppet-master of the Iranian government. By helping via Iran Hezbollah, he provides a lot of extra work for American defense contractors. By playing the nuclear weapons charade, he keeps the price of oil high, which keeps him, his buddies, and a lot of other countries really happy. It also means that we’re not really in danger at all and that the global political situation is really a lot more win/win for nearly everyone.

  Or maybe not.

• Where the hell did summer go? The highs have dropped to the 60’s here and the skies have dropped I don’t even know how many inches of rain, with little expectation of an immediate slowdown. Get me out of here!
• Well I guess I am leaving in a few hours and heading southwest, so I will be getting myself out of here.
• South Carolina didn’t look impressive last night whatsoever. Their win seemed to be more related to Mississippi State losing than anything else. The Ol’ Ball Coach managed to pull out another SEC road victory, but having to rely on trick plays to get past a basement-dweller does not inspire confidence. If Clemson-USCe played today, I’d pick Clemson by 30 points.
• I talked a little football last night at my help session with a professor and some other TAs. The prof was shocked that the UVA/Pittsburgh spread was only 3 or 4 points in Pitt’s favor. I’m betting on Pitt winning big.
• Still in college football mode, bottom dwellers Temple and Buffalo played themselves to a 3-3 tie at the end of regulation. Somebody had to win and neither team seemed to know how to do it. Buffalo finally figured it out in overtime.

That is all.

Combine a slow news cycle, school work and research, with a week-long visit from TGON and there just isn’t much time left or interest for me to hate and attempt to lay waste to the shallow minds of the world.

What good have the traditional media been over, say, the last month? Not a bit really. Cheney, Plame, Katrina, rinse, repeat.

Similarly, the blogosphere is suffering a power-hangover. It has generated an over-inflated sense of self-importance. Now, when it can’t find any documents from Dan Rather to debunk, it’s left blogging just to blog, much the same way journalists will report, just to report. While during times like these the amount of spewing idiocy is at its peak, the topics of interest don’t make even make for a good discussion.

The internet has also proven to be horrible for discussion. It is little better than than a room full of people yelling “rabble rabble rabble.” To have a good discussion to you need a small group of people… but not too small. I must wonder if the ‘net is helping to equalize things, or just making it easier to find and affiliate with only those of like-mind, thus making things worse.

Soon I’m also hoping to revisit the elasticity-of-truth/truth-overshoot idea I wrote about in September. Also I want to get into a bit about Hubbert’s Peak, the peak oil theory. I’ve had some thoughts on the state of education in this country — at this point no one is making any sense. How do I address beliefs of mine that seem directly contradictory, do they actually contradict? How do you expose a person or group’s unforgivable ignorance without giving to them the attention they desire?

Either way, I’ve got some ideas that may make for interesting reading if I am able to articulate them. I suppose I’ll have to come up with something since there probably won’t be drunken adventures.

Casting call for the movie “Evan Almighty”:

On February 25 & 26, from 10am-1pm/2pm-6pm they’ll be looking for adults who can play the simple townsfolk of Crozet better than the actual simple townsfolk of Crozet. If you play your cards right, you might be “discovered,” leading to riches, fame, dissatisfaction, depression, and, ultimately, an early death fueled by a mixture of drugs and alcohol.

That line and my increasing disdain for my TV, expensive cars, and all kinds of shit made me think of this from Fight Club:

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

Of course the value of that line is greatly diminished since it was delivered by Brad Pitt.

Now for some real no-brainer advice:

Now, let’s take the really hard case: Even excluding debt payments, reducing your committed expenses to 60% still seems like an impossible goal. If that describes your situation, the odds are good that you’re facing one of the following problems:

# You have a more expensive home than you can afford.

# You’ve committed to car or boat payments that are larger than you can afford.

# Your children are in a private school that you can’t really afford.

# There’s just a big, ugly gap between your income and your lifestyle.

Thank you General Awareness!

Signed, Professor Chaos

Well, I am bored and Doug @ Literal Barrage Agent Orange tagged me with a blog version of the chain mail. I think you have to add your own new four thing at the end, so if you play on add something new.

Four Jobs I’ve Had

1. Paper boy (Middletown Journal)
2. Busboy (Sara Jane’s, Bill Knapp’s, and Olive Garden)
3. Co-op (Bosch)
4. Research/teaching assistant (UVA)

Four Films I Can Watch Over and Over

1. Clue
2. Super Troopers
3. Old School
4. Stewie Griffin: The untold story

Four Places I’ve Lived

1. Ohio
2. Clemson, SC
3. Pendleton, SC
4. Charlottesville, VA

Four Current TV Shows I Enjoy

1. Family Guy
2. America’s Test Kitchen
3. Law & Order
4. Scrubs

Four Foods I Like

1. Cow
2. Pig
3. Chicken
4. Other animals not listed above

Four Places I’ve Vacationed

1. Cocoa Beach, Fl
2. Central Europe
3. Spartanburg, SC
4. Denver, CO

Four Websites I Visit Daily

1. fark
2. drudge
3. cafe hayek
4. brothersjudd

Four Things I’d Like to Do Before I Die

1. be a family man
2. have my own company
3. run my own country
4. shoot a round of golf under par

Four Things I Miss From College

1. JAGERBOMBS!
2. Always having a reason to drink
3. beer pong where getting drunk was way more important than winning
4. the old crappy frat quad

Four favorite drinks
1. Guinness
2. Jack & diet coke
3. Jagerbombs
4. PBR

Four People I am Tagging
The chain ends here

From a union backed report about the widening rich-poor income gap, via Russell Roberts:

Renwick [an economist with the union-backed Fiscal Policy Institute in New York] said the government “needs to continue its commitment to correcting the natural outcomes of the marketplace”

Or in my words, we must punish the successful and reward the losers. Otherwise only the best will get ahead in life.

W had some fun with the media recently, via Orrin Judd:

“Having my picture taken with someone doesn’t mean that I’m a friend with him or know him very well,” he said. “I’ve had my picture taken with you at holiday parties.”

[snip]

When a radio reporter asked the president again to never mind the photographs, just talk about lobbyists’ influence on the White House, Bush interrupted: “Easy for a radio guy to say.”

And this is a good way to lose your job as a campaign manager (again via Orrin Judd):

In a live call-in show on the Pennsylvania Cable Network, Seif told viewers that Scranton’s main opponent for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Lynn Swann, who is African American, was the “rich white guy in the campaign.”

Whoops.