A Request For Techno-Criminals

Let’s find a way to pirate books.

Let’s face it; anyone can get any song or movie ever made for free.  Some people will tell you that this is as it should be and others will tell you that this  stunts the whole creative process.  Personally, I NEVER EVER ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD MUSIC OR MOVIES.  But I can see how it would be appealling to one less interested in  adhering to the written rule of the law than I.

But I want books.  I get that you can burn an audiobook you borrowed from the library and walk around with it in your iPod.  I know you can download a whole  collection of eBook PDF’s from your less scrupulous buddies’ foldes in the shared drives at work.  That’s not what I’m talking about.

I want the open-source red-hat pioneers of the electronic gray market to spend some time offline and come up with a way to use the materials consumers have now, put a whole book in one end, and end up with a complete copy of that book on the other end.  Quickly.  In a way that cannot be detected.  Utilizing a method that I’m too stupid to have thought of but will make me feel even stupider once I see how simple it all was.  I  should not have to turn a page and then press a button for the process to proceed at any point.

“You liked that book?  Burn me a copy.”

“Hello, Borders staff person.  I need to return these 14 books I bought yesterday evening.”

“Virgil’s Aeneid is so good.  Too bad I can’t afford a copy for my teenage child.  Unless…”

I’m not saying  I would use this new machine/method/software/service for illicit purposes.  But I am saying illicit people are the only people  who would be willing to get a project like this done.

So, get on with it.

Atheists Are Dicks

For clarity’s sake, I’m not a deeply religious guy.  I don’t really do church or services or anything like that.  I was raised pretty much secular.  I think faith is a personal thing and should be practiced on a personal level.  I’m not a fundamentalist by any means.  I believe in evolution.  I know oil is dinosaur gunk that’s been rotting for millions of years.  I’m just barely a reform Jew, and even then it’s tenuous.

Right.  It pisses me off that there aren’t enough funny religious people to compete with the tidal wave of funny atheists out there.  George Carlin, David Cross, Bill Maher, Adam Carolla, the list goes on and on.  These are all smart people who are hilarious in my opinion, and their humor happens to be very anti-religion.  That’s fine.  A lot of it is really funny.  Comedians should be allowed to make  fun of whatever they want to make fun of.

But where are the quick-witted church-going artists who will defend their institutions?  I know there are funny religious people.  I’ve met them.  I’ve had drinks with them until the bar closed.  Why will no one go after atheists?

I’ve heard the argument that the material is too weak.  Religion is easy, atheism is not.  But I refuse to believe that.  What about the idea that atheists will make fun of the Bible but will endlessly quote pop science books by a bunch of asshole scientists who most of the time can’t get their stories  straight?  What about the fact that all these atheist douchebags make fun of Jesus all year but celebrate his birthday anyway just to put up a tree and exchange gifts.  How is  that not a compromise of morality?

Religious peoples have a backlog of beautiful tradition and stories and great people, and all these opportunistic, I’m-so-edgy, hip atheist fuckwads talk about is the Crusades and the Inquisition.  Well what about the fucking atom bomb?  That scientific marvel caused a lot of pain.  What about the official atheism of the Chinese government?  What, those guys aren’t considered a bureau of cuddly genius teddy bears?  Go figure.

But there I go blaming the atheists.  If those assholes want to decry prosyletization, molestation, war, and all  the rest while conveniently ignoring the charity, comfort, art, music, faith, human spirit, and handful of miracles offered by all religions then I am powerless to stop them.  In fact rants like this only fuel their fire.  Whatever. Atheists need to have fun while they can because really, life is much shorter for those guys.

But come on, religious people.  Quit turning the other cheek and start fucking entetaining your brethren already.  Let these uppity superior titfaces have it.  They’ve won over a significant portion of this generation.  Fighting fire with fire may be the only way to win ‘em back.

Umbrellas Suck

After it rains in the city, I like to walk around and spot the umbrellas that have been abandonded.  They’re always in such terrible condition that I have to wonder how it got so bad before the former owner ditched the mess I see before me.  I’ve lost or broken every umbrella I’ve ever had.  They’re flimsy.  They get the rest of my stuff wet.  It’s nearly impossible to look cool while holding an umbrella.

So, I say go without.  Just get wet.  Walk in the rain, you pansy.  What are you, made of salt?

Paying Bills Is Like Drinking

I spend hundreds of dollars every month on things I bought a long time ago.  The creditors are getting way more than their minimum payment out of me.  And that’s how I like it.  Or, you know, that’s how I have to convince myself that I like it.

I’m working on cultivating a feeling of pride and contentment whenever I get an email saying that $100 has been taken out of my account and automatically mailed to the credit card people.  My initial though is along the lines of “Gah!  I’m ruined until my next paycheck.  I’m cash poor because I couldn’t control my spending in another lifetime.”

But that sort of thinking doesn’t help me.  I need to rationally see the benefit of climbing $100 higher out of this pit I’m in.  It’s a situation similar to a night of drinking and its resulting hangover.  I can say to myself the party is over and be miserable and sick about it now.  Or I can flip that on its head and think of sticking it to the credit card companies as my party time and the lack of cash as a recovery period.  If I didn’t have to eat and live somewhere and carry on a life of raucous dignity, I’d send those bastards all the money I ever see and tell them to choke on it all.

I may be living lean now, but it’ll only be a year or two until there’s nothing left to pay at all, and I’ll suddenly have a few extra hundred dollars every month.  I’ll have a mortgage and be building equity.  And soon after that I’ll be working on a degree and maybe even getting some stuff published.

My Act, Which Is Not Yet Written

I want to be an edgy comic.  My act will talk about things no other comics around NY will dare talk about.  I’m going to write jokes using these as my premises:

• Office jobs are kind of awesome.
• Marriage is something adults do.  Making fun of it is something sitcom characters do.
• Christians are nice people.
• Fat people are taxing the system.
• Swine flu actually is serious business.
• If people in America want their lives to get better they should probably get their shit together and stop blaming the government and their bosses for all their troubles.
• The Amish make terrific pies.
• Employed people who don’t understand personal finance deserve to die poor.

I’ll be bigger than Carlin.

Just A Cog

I think my problem with office work is its tendency to blur a guy’s sense of what he does every day for a living. Receptionists also fix broken phones. Call center phone monkeys become team leaders. Waiters wash dishes occasionally. Managers do everything the members of their teams do.

I’m much happier being in a defined role. I’d prefer to be a valuable resource with a skill than to be the guy tracking down all the skilled people I need to get something done. I am no manager. But I’m a great resource.

I feel like the best managers realize the difference. Growth does not always mean a promotion to a better office. Sometimes growth is just honing what talents and skills are already there. If I’m given room to really learn how my role works, that’s when I shine. At the end of the day I don’t need my name at the top of a successful project, because at the end of the day I’d rather not think about work projects. Let me come in, excel, and forget about it. That’s my forte. My niche.

There’s no shame in doing good work for a great big office-type employer. Good work is good work.

Perseverance

Today I woke up 30 minutes early and did 38 pushups.  I had a bigass scoop of whey protein powder in 8 oz of milk.  And now I’m eating egg whites and grapes for breakfast.  With coffee, of course.

Setting myself on these nice lifestyle paths has never been the issue for me.  The real issue is sticking with it.  For some reason I have a stubborn resistance to setting bite-sized goals for myself.  I’m sort of an all-or-nothing personality type, with a side order of letting stuff slide.  And so here I am pledging to get back in shape without a clear plan or any tangible milestones set up.

So here are a few promises:

1. I won’t turn this blog into a list of what I ate every day.  I hate reading those blogs, so I’m not going to produce another one.  I’m eating healthy, and you’re just going to have to remember that.
2. I’ll write goals for weight loss, sobriety, and exercise on actual pieces of paper (index cards, actually) and put them in the same order rail where I keep my work to-do cards.  I’ve harnessed the power of my addictions to improve myself before so I might as well put my productivity jones to good use.
3. I’ll be a comfortable size 32 by July 4.  Right now I’m somewhere between 33 and 34.
4. I’ll stay out of bars.  This one is so tough it makes me shudder.  I just shuddered just now.  If you’d like to help me with this goal, please invite me into your home for cocktails.
5. Apropos of nothing, I’m going to decrease my public output of written content.  Less tweets, less forum posts, no more Facebook notes, and less frequent more substantial blog posts.  I’ve sort of been throwing all my thoughts into the cyberether without any real filter and I have to learn to rein that in.  I don’t think I’ve hurt my personal brand too badly thus far, but it’s important to present myself in a way I can be proud of.  Starting a family and a new company and all that.

Right, I’ve written a list and Day 1 is so far, so good.  But I’ve been here before.  This is where it gets interesting.

Wedding Rant

Damn!

What is wrong with this wedding industry?  Someone should tell them that I have no money.  NO MONEY.  And now I have to spend tens of thousand of dollars on a party at a venue where I can only afford to invite family members who “need” to be there because we’ve invited other family members, PEOPLE WE ACTUALLY KNOW, who are at the same generational level as they are.  Where is the money coming from?  YOU TELL ME THAT!  It’s coming from pools of money that could otherwise have been spent on a nice house, some furniture, a college fund, ANYTHING BUT A PARTY FOR A BUNCH OF SO-CALLED RELATIVES THAT I NEVER EVEN HANG OUT WITH IN THE FIRST PLACE.

It’s a god damned racket.  I party constantly and I’ve never needed flowers to do it.

The Absence of Disease

This was a rough weekend for me because the cough which reared its head about fifteen days ago mutated into a full-blown fever complete with sore back, loss of appetite, and bizarre nightmares.  I tried to sweat it out.  I fought it with Theraflu and Advil.  In the end, I brought it down with a combination of chicken soup and two Aspirin.  I can’t tell if this was the elixir I needed, or if the thing had just run its course.  Regardless, I have always thought of Aspirin as kind of a wonder-drug, and that’s just been reinforced.

So what have I learned?  What was the overall effect of being sick for the bulk of a holiday weekend?

1. Surround yourself with loved ones when you’re ill.  My fiancee was so helpful and generous during this sickness.  That soup never would’ve made it to my bedside without her.  She understood when I wanted to stay home on Saturday, and then she understood again when I dragged her out on Sunday only to ask her to take me home.  She fussed over me.  She didn’t mind that I hadn’t cleaned the apartment since Monday (I can blame the fatigue, but the truth is I just hadn’t cleaned).  She was my hero.  I’m sitting upright and typing today because she sacrificed her weekend just as much as I did.
2. Sometimes when life hands you a holiday weekend, you should capitalize on it by just doing nothing.  Granted, that was an easy choice for me to make.  But I’m staring down a long summer of weekends that have already been planned for me.  Shows, weddings, birthdays, trips, and a thousand other Facebook invites are going to make it hard for me to justify laying in bed watching kung fu movies for a little while.  So in a way, I should be thanking the fever.  But, no, still, fuck that fever.  That fever was a dick.
3. Health is more than the absence of disease.  This morning I woke up and instantly knew this bug was out of me.  And  I was glad because the coughing was hurting my head and chest.  But I was also glad because that meant I could finally do the pile of dishes in my sink and clean the clutter up in my living room.  It’s hard to call yourself healthy when you have to step over things to reach a book or you can’t walk through your kitchen without being reminded of a chore in your future.  I like the lived-in look as much as the next slob, but when you get over a sickness you tend to want full health so it doesn’t happen again.  Right now I want clean rooms and smaller portions.  And about one shit-ton of blue Gatorade.

Now then.  Happy Memorial Day.  Remember vets like my mom and dad today.  And if you’re invited to a barbecue, be thoughtful and bring something.

#farlowfriday

Hangin’ with @farlow all afternoon and night.