Yesterday at lunch somehow we ended up talking about cadavers. Our new chemist was talking about all the body parts they had in the freezer at his old job. They had big sheets of skin, foreheads, even penises in the freezer.
That got me thinking about what I want done with my body after I don’t need it any longer. It’s actually something I think about quite often after reading Stiff, by Mary Roach. A great book I might add. I Honestly I don’t really care what is done with my body. My family will do whatever they want with it. It’s not like I would ever know. Personally, as creepy as it sounds, I would prefer to have my body donated to science, after of course all the usably organs are donated. I doubt that will happen because I’m sure my family wouldn’t want to do that, and my first choice would be whatever my family want.
I find it kind of wasteful to just burn the body, and even more wasteful to burry it and use up the limited land space we have here on earth. Maybe by the time I die they will be able to shoot my body into outer space. How fitting would it be for the molecules that make up my body to be put back where they came from? Call me weird, but my ultimate wish would be to have scientists and students learn all they can, and then have my leftover parts launched into the Sun. Who knows, maybe someday that will be my penis in the freezer that will someday have it’s final resting place on the Sun.
So I was just thinking back to what I was doing ten years ago today. So much has changed, but many things have stayed the same. I’m driving the same truck, working the same job with pretty much the same people.
Today is one of those days where I wish I saved my blog archives from back then. Back then blogging was new and exciting. I don’t even remember if I blogged about the tragedies of September 11th, or if I just went silent. In September of 2001 I had been blogging for only a year. I started blogging sometime around August of 2000, shortly after getting broadband internet in July. I’m pretty sure I was still on blogger back in those days.
News moved so much slower back in those days. There was no Twitter or Facebook. There was no Google Reader as RSS was just in it’s infancy. There was no podcasting, no YouTube, and very little videos online. TV and radio were the best and fastest ways to get your news. I often wonder what it would be like if such a tragedy were to happen today.
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was bummed out that day because one of my favorite Bronco players, Ed McCaffrey broke his leg the night before on Monday Night Football. Suddenly that seemed so insignificant. When the first plane hit the reports were sketchy. At first it sounded like it was just a freak accident buy a small plane. Once the second plane hit, the world was changed forever. It was such an eerie time. After the four planes went down we were just waiting to hear if there were going to be more. We couldn’t be sure it was over until all planes were grounded. For months after that, I couldn’t look at a flying plane the same.
The only positive thing that came out of that was how united our country became. Most of the political bickering came to an end. Too bad that didn’t last long, and may even became worse. The way politics has become is sickening. They are all about protecting the big corporations, and trying to sabotaging the other party to help with their own re-election. If only both of the parties could look at the facts and work together to decided what’s right for the people. Yeah, I guess I’m a dreamer.
I’m finally recovering from the weekend in the Cities. Saturday we went to the Minnesota State Fair. We ate way to much junk food on a stick. Like $60 worth of junk food on a stick. It was only my second time ever going, and I will totally be going back if they bring some more good bands. Saturday night we saw probably my two favorite bands, Motion City Soundtrack, and Weezer. Both of them were amazing. Motion City even played one of our favorite songs, “Capital H”. They didn’t play that song the last three time we have seen them, so it was nice to hear it again. Weezer is always great, but this was the first time I was able to see them from the front row. Rivers came into the crowd a bit, and my Wife was able to touch him. It was pretty cool being that close. I can’t wait to catch both these bands again.
After Motion City was done their drummer, Tony Thaxton came out and took a panoramic picture of the crowd. Do you see me there in the front row? No, you can’t really see me because it’s too dark, but I was there.
On Sunday we went to Valley Fair. I’m not a big fan of amusement parks and ride, but I still had fun. I don’t find rides very much fun, but I still manage to ride them all.
On Monday we were back at the State Fair for some more junk food on a stick and to see Maroon 5 and Train. Originally I wasn’t going to go, but my Sister-in-law backed out, so I got stuck going. I had no idea who Maroon 5 even was. They just aren’t my type of music. I thought they were pretty bad, and probably responsible for half the crappy music that is on the radio these days. I’ve see Train many times, and they are usually pretty good, but I was disappointed this time. They just seemed to waste a lot of time, and didn’t play a lot of the songs I like.
We drove straight home from the concert, and got home around 4:00 AM, so today has been sleep and catch up day.
Does anybody ever like their cable company? You can tell how many people around hear love our cable company by the number of dishes that popped up once local channels became available. I was one of those that dropped cable as soon at I could get my local channels on DirecTV. I just got sick of them dropping channels and raising prices, plus there were a handful of channels I wanted that our cable company didn’t have.
I still had to keep them for my internet though. I think the $55 for 5Mb down and 500Kb up is a pretty ridiculous price. In other parts of the country those speeds would probably be a $30 package.
Our cable company is now advertising a 50Mb plan, which would be sweet, but it has too many restrictions. It’s pretty much unusable for me. In fact I don’t know who it’s aimed for. It has a ridiculously low 50GB cap. Any power user would blow through that cap, and any non-power user would probably be fine with their slower 5Mb plan. Here is what my router says my bandwidth usage has been the past few months:
So I would reach the cap in about six days. That reminds me of the olden days back when I was on AOL and had a 20 hour a month limit that I went over easily in the first week and then paid an arm and a leg for internet the rest of the month.
But that’s not the only thing. Not only would I have to cut back on my podcast downloads, and Netflix watching, I would also have to get, or at least pay for cable TV, or phone service in order to get the faster speed internet. And of course they hide what the actual price even is. All they show is the introductory price, which looks good, but would still cost me $75 because I would have to pay for a service I wouldn’t use.
So it looks like I will be stuck with slowish internet for some time. It’s not like it’s terribly slow, it’s more of the slow upload speeds that are killing me. I would be happy to pay $75 for uncapped, or maybe even capped if it was reasonable, 50Mb speeds if they would ever offer such a thing. Maybe I’m just dreaming though.
I’ve been on many vacations, but usually I don’t miss the places I have been once I get home. Hawaii was different. For some reason I really miss Hawaii. If money was no object I would totally move there. I could easily get use to perfect weather 365 days a year. The main problem is it’s just too far away from everything else in the US, oh and that money thing.
Yesterday at work I was craving this:
It’s a loco moco! It was probably the best meal I had in Hawaii. It was at just a hole in the wall place on the Big Island that served local dishes. A loco moco is usually rice with a hamburger patty covered in gravy and topped with an egg. I had a Kilauea loco moco which had chili instead of a hamburger patty. And of course it came with two Hawaii staples, macaroni salad and Spam. It sounds weird, but it was delish.
I pretty sure I won’t be able to find loco mocos anywhere in Fargo. I may have to try and make them at home sometime.
So the other day I watched MTV for the first time in probably over five years. Why? Well, 120 Minutes is back! The downside is that it’s only on once a month. The last Saturday of each month. That kind of sucks. It should be on every Saturday night, but I guess once a month is better than never.
Monday happened to be the 30 year anniversary of the launch of MTV. You can watch the first hour of MTV over on the mental_floss blog. MTV launched in 1981, but I don’t remember our cable company getting it until 1985. I loved MTV in the early days. I use to watch it all day long waiting for my favorite videos. I don’t know if it was because I was getting older, but it seemed to get worse as the years went by. By the time the 90s rolled around, the only time I watched MTV was when 120 Minutes was on. I couldn’t even tell you what MTV is like nowadays, because I haven’t watched it, but watching old MTV clips sure brings back the memories.
This video is depressing and the amount of ignorance, discrimination, and hatred toward Atheists is amazing. It boggles my mind how we can be the most hated and mistrusted minority group despite being the “least violent, most tolerant, most intelligent, most progressive” minority group out there.
To me science and religion don’t mix. If science showed even a sliver of evidence of a God I would feel different, but the more we learn, the more obvious it is that there isn’t a God. I don’t understand how I’m part of a minority because I believe in science, but maybe someday the majority of the populace will wake up to science.
Thankfully I don’t live in the bible belt, so I haven’t been discriminated against too bad. I still believe the reason we were denied the ability to adopt a child was because we left the religious questions blank since they didn’t apply to us, but I don’t really have proof of this. That is just my speculation. My family is pretty battshit crazy about religion though. When I’m hanging around with my family, and reading their ignorance on Facebook, is about the only time I have to deal with religion. I just keep my mouth shut when I’m around my family, and chuckle when I read their Facebook comments.
Like most people, I feel like I never win anything. Well, this morning I was surprised when I checked my email to discover that I won a Roku 2 from Todd over at GeekNewsCentral.com. I’ve been listening to his podcast almost since day one. I have entered many of his contests, and many I didn’t enter because I never seem to win anything anyways. On a whim I enter this one. I thought what the hell, I would give it a shot. I could use a Roku for our upstairs TV.
I have the original Roku and love it. I have been thinking about getting one for the upstairs TV for quite some time now. I now will have one for each TV just in time for me to cancel my DVDs from Netflix since I never seem to watch them anyway.
So Casey Anthony was found not guilty. Who the hell cares? Apparently everybody. I honestly first heard of her just this past weekend. Frankly I avoid all exploitive news like this.
Personally I feel happy for Casey Anthony. Now I know nothing about her, or the trial, but obviously there must have been some doubt. I would rather see our judicial system fail this way, rather than filling prisons with innocent people that couldn’t prove they were innocent. She was found guilty of four counts of lying to the police, which was probably much easier to prove, and will do time for that.
Maybe Casey Anthony is guilty and got off, but realistically she isn’t a threat to society. She will have to live with whatever she did for the rest of her life. It may haunt her, it may not, but chances are she isn’t going to end up killing anybody else. My personal belief is that prisons should be used more to protect society from crazy people and less of a punishment. Obviously most people don’t have this opinion and our prisons are overflowing with inmates costing out country millions of dollars, but that’s another issue.
What really makes me sick is everybody making money off of this. Because of the coverage this case has gotten, chances are that Casey Anthony herself is going to be able to cash in also. With out the coverage she wouldn’t be able to. Now I don’t really blame the media companies because they are just broadcasting what people want to see and watch. We just live in a sick society that just wants to see revenge. People want to see people punished and put to death. I don’t get it. Maybe that’s why I don’t pay attention to this kind of news. I find it sad when people are found guilty. I was even sad when Timothy McVeigh was put to death, even though he deserved it. I would never celebrate somebody being incarcerated or put to death. I’m just not that kind of person.
I just finished reading Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries. It’s such a great book. I think it would go a long way in science education to require reading such book, or maybe Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy, in high school. Maybe it’s just me and my interests, but those two book really get me interested in science, and wanting to learn more. I know science classes are probably too busy teaching their curriculum to require students to read books, but science is more about a way of thinking then actual facts. It’s about the process, and both of these books stress that.
When I was in high school I had no interest in most of the required reading books, and they made me hate reading. I enjoyed reading To Kill a Mockingbird and really loved In Cold Blood, but couldn’t even tell you what else I had to read in high school. Once I was done with school it was probably ten years before I picked up another book. School taught me to hate reading. Nowadays I’m not a hugely prolific reader, but I manage to read 20 or so books a year.
Having students read a variety of books in high school may encourage more reading and better overall education, but then again a lot of kids are just lazy. It’s tough to teach the lazy.
I just saw the new Rise Against video for “Make it Stop (September’s Children)”, and it really hit home. It is a very powerful anti-bullying video. I was never bullied in high school, but I had many of the same feelings. My family moved after my freshman year of high school to a new city. I had to start over and try to make friends my sophomore year of high school. While I got along with almost everybody, I never met anybody that I considered a real friends. I didn’t really fit into a single cliché. I was a jock on the football team, a band geek playing in concert, pep, and marching bands, and I was also a nerd who took physics and calculus as electives. I was friends with everybody, but not real close to any of them. To this day my best friends are the ones that I have been friends with since the first grade.
I had a real good childhood growing up, but in the back of my head I always wanted to kill myself. This is the first time I have ever came clean about it, mostly because I think that phase of life is in my past. I never new my Grandpa because he killed himself with a gun that he bought my Dad. I have no idea if that sort of thing is hereditary, but in my head I always thought it was. I used that idea to rationalize what was wrong with me in my head. I never mentioned my suicidal thought it anyone because one, I didn’t want anybody interfering with my plans, and two, I didn’t want to be forced to go to therapy. Nothing against therapy, it works great for many people, but I didn’t want anything to do with it. I wanted to be able to rationalize my problems in my own head, and it seemed to work for me. My darkest days were when I started college. I seemed to have even less things in common with the college students, and had no desire to study. What was getting me through those tough times was the great 90s music that I loved. Then that spring, my rock hero, Kurt Cobain killed himself. It was shortly after I read Michael Azerrad’s biography of Nirvana, Come as You Are. That book was amazing and I felt like I had so much in common with Kurt Cobain. Most of my friends didn’t understand Nirvana’s music, but their songs were my anthems. I took Kurt’s suicide hard. So hard that I wanted to join him in Club 27. I actually had mixed feelings when I turned 28. I was disappointed that wouldn’t be a member of club 27, but also relieved that I lived past 27.
I don’t know exactly when the suicidal thoughts ended, but I haven’t had them for years. I don’t know if I out grew them, was able to find more people I could relate to online, or just quit giving a fuck what other people think anymore. I will be seeing Rise Against open up for the Foo Fighters this fall and this song will have a special meaning for me.
It hasn’t been a good last six months for my family. First my Mother-in-law had a heart atack and needed surgery. Then my wife’s aunt was flooded out of her house for a couple months. Then my Grandma died, and now my Dad has cancer.
I don’t think it’s really set in yet. He is still going through tests, but they think he has Multiple Myeloma, which is bone caner. They first thought he was having kidney problems because they were only running at 20% and the protein in his blood was off the charts. They now think the cause of the high protein is the cancer, and they are filtering his blood hoping his kidneys start functioning properly. Originally there was talk about a kidney transplant, and I hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t know if I would be a proper match, but if I was that would be a really hard decision to make. Now that they think it’s cancer, the tough reality is he probably wont live long enough for a kidney transplant to be worthwhile.
It’s still early in his diagnosis, and we don’t know much yet, but of course we are hoping for the best. I kind of feel guilty for not feeling too sad. Death doesn’t scare me though. It’s going to happen to all of us. Hopefully later rather than sooner. I’m constantly thinking about my Dad, but it does no good for me to get worked up and worried about him. What happens will happen. I’m sure I will feel much different after I visit him next weekend, and everything becomes more real, but for now it is what it is and I’m hoping for the best.
So my father-in-law lost his job back in April. I kind of lost a little respect for him because he found out in February that he was going to be losing his job, but wasn’t going to bother to start looking until it happens. He wanted to just collect unemployment like everybody else that has lost their job recently. That’s not really cool in my book. Jobs are pretty scarce in central Minnesota where he lives, especially for someone with no education, and not many skills.
Over the last couple months we have given him $1700 and another $600 for some home repairs. I have no problem helping someone out when they come upon hard times, but it’s hard for me to give money to someone that should have been looking for a job in February, and waited until May to start looking. I can’t stand laziness.
It feels like we are getting taken advantage of because we were smart and went to school to get good jobs. Both of my wife’s brothers are losers too, and don’t have a pot to piss in, so when anyone ask for money they come to use. Thankfully she refuses to give money to her brothers.
We always seem to get stuck with the bill on all the combined gifts also. When her cousin graduated high school we bought her a Roku since she liked ours so much. It was from my wife’s parents, two brothers, and us, but we paid for it. For Christmas we bought her Grandpa a new TV and split it among the families. Of course we got stuck with paying her parents, and two brothers share along with ours. I hate to complain about money, but it drives me crazy when people are too irresponsible to take care of their own finances.
Tonight my wife is sending her Dad another $500 and she wrote a resume out for him. Hopefully he gets a job soon. I’m getting sick of sending him money.
My Grandma died yesterday. She had Alzheimer’s and has been going down hill for years. On Tuesday she had a stroke and was basically brain dead. We visited her on Wednesday to say our goodbyes. While we were there, a priest stopped buy. He read some mumbo jumbo out of the Bible, said a prayer, and starting singing while touching my Grandma’s head. I found it creepy and cultlike, but it seemed to make everybody else feel better, so I guess it was good.
People live and die. It’s very sad when we lose friends and loved ones, but that’s part of life — it ends eventually for us all. Maybe some people need to believe in a fairytale to make them feel better, but I don’t. There is no heaven or hell just like there is no Santa Claus, sorry to spoil it for you. When you die you are dead, gone, only a memory, and that memory won’t be around all that long either. That is the reason I try and enjoy every day, and live them to the fullest. Our days are numbered and I don’t want to take any of them for granted.
Goodbye Grandma. You will be missed by all, but I know where you are really at. You are in my memories, and will be there until I am just a memory like you.
So this weekend I thought we were going to be able to finally get rid of our houseguests and three extra dogs. Now, they will probably be here until July. When my Wife’s Aunt was finally able to get to her house, her loser, homeless, drug addicted ex was squatting there. See tried to get him out, but since he is on the mortgage, she can’t really do anything. He insists he wants the house now. She has been wanting out of the house for a while now. Her credit is already shot, so she is going to let him have the house and all the bills that he won’t be able to pay. It’s only a matter of time before the bank comes after the house.
So this weekend we are helping moving all her stuff to storage until she can get into her apartment on July 1st. It’s going to be a long month and a half, but at least she will finally be out of an area that floods every year.
