Just in the last couple of hours, the population of the United States topped 300 million residents. About 2.5 million of those 300 mil are right here in Utah, and about 2 million of those are clustered along the Wasatch Front, i.e., the part of the state where I happen to live.
No wonder my commute sucks so bad…
FYI for anyone who may have been trying to reach me by e-mail yesterday: my ISP had some kind of outage and was out of commission for a good part of the day. Because my personal e-mail account is web-based and hosted by said ISP, I was unable to access my mail during the outage. The ISP is back up now, but I don’t know if any messages got lost or not. If you tried to contact me and have had no reply, you might want to resend your message today…
Following a link from Scalzi’s AOL Journal brought me to this page, which contained the following list of 25 Signs That, Sadly, You’ve Grown Up:
From the Department of Generally Amusing Stuff Discovered at Random While Avoiding My First Work Assignment of the Day: Scalzi bakes a Schadenfreude pie. Just to see what it tastes like. And he includes pictures. With amusing captions, even. It’s the perfect compliment for your morning cup o’ joe, so take a coffee break and go get yourself a slice…
People get into their hobbies. I understand that, really, I do. But this takes the cake: it seems some crazy French Ferrari enthusiast spent 15 years constructing an exact 1:3 scale model of his favorite car. And when I say “exact,” I mean exact:
This 12-cylinder engine just isn’t any 12-cylinder engine, it is a 1:3 scale Ferrari 12-cylinder engine with the same beautiful sound. It took Pierre six months of running the engine on his own dynamometer to tune the header pipes so they would give off the same sound value as he had recorded from the engine of the real car. Once Pierre had the engine bolted together for the first time, it started on the very first try and, since then, has logged more than fifty hours of running time with no failures or refusals to start (It’s probably more reliable than the real engine).
I suddenly feel strangely… inadequate.
Today is my 37th birthday, an event I’ve been anticipating with about the same degree of enthusiasm I usually reserve for defrosting the fridge. Yes, I realize that I just dated myself terribly, since I don’t know anyone who’s actually needed to defrost their fridge in years, but I’m feeling pretty dated today anyhow, so what the hell. (Incidentally, I apologize to any youngsters out there in the InterTubes that don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Not to worry, it’s just grown-up stuff.)
My morning train these days is always crowded with college kids making their way to the U for their daily classes, giving me an unparalleled opportunity to observe the species up close and personal, in a setting somewhat close to its natural environment. I’m especially fascinated by the gender-based differences apparent in these creatures, which are frequently so glaring that an observer might wonder if the males and females are indeed of the same species at all.
This morning, for example, I spotted a charming example of the female college student, fresh-faced and sleekly attired in a dainty white sweater, designer jeans, and stylish shoes. She carried her books in a clean, new-looking messenger bag and devoted her transit time to study, making notes in the margins of her book with a small, neat hand.
Beside her was a male of the species: smaller and greasier in appearance, clad in ridiculously oversized pants and a t-shirt on which the Hustler magazine logo was printed in colors resembling a dollar bill; beneath it was the phrase, “In Lust We Trust.” He carried his books in a paper sack and spent the ride staring straight ahead into some distant space only he could see.
Makes you wonder what the members of this species see in each other, doesn’t it?
I’ve been around plenty of fannish types in my time, and I’ve seen a lot of outlandish behavior perpetrated for the love of a particular media personality or property. I’m generally inclined to excuse such silliness with a shrug and an indulgent smile.
However, if this item is true, it is one of the most asinine, repugnant things I’ve ever heard about:
I was just cleaning out my e-mail archives and ran across a little gem, forwarded to me a while back by my buddy Dave, which I will now share with my Three Loyal Readers. Note: if you have small children hanging around your computer desk as you peruse the blogosphere, you may want to distract them by pointing out the imaginary caribou in the corner. I won’t be held responsible for any future psycho-therapy bills:
Mmmmmmm… celebrity sushi!
And so, just like that, another summer is behind us. Oh, the days are still plenty warm, and I anticipate good shorts-wearing weather for another month or so (although in this goofy state, it isn’t at all unusual to see people wearing shorts in the dead of January… and it gets pretty damn cold around here in the dead of January, just in case you didn’t know), but the open-furnace temperatures of late July are long gone and the nights are acquiring a bit of a bite. I’ve got that same feeling you have when you realize the emotional energy is spent and the party’s over, but the guests haven’t yet started to leave.