Oh, By the Way...

I've yet to read "How to Win Friends and Influence People". It seems like it might be useful, if it actually gave good advice. But I'm guessing that a lot of the good advice is mostly common sense. You know, things like "Be friendly" and "Get to know your doorman". Things that you don't really need to read the book to understand.

Yet, people still buy.

So I've got to write a book myself. I'll be a bazillionare. I'll be able to go on a three-month around-the-world cruise every two days! I'll be able to swim through a vault of gold coins like Uncle Scrooge.

Or at least that's my plan this year. So today I'll start writing my book, "How to Be Smart and Know Everything." I'll use my own life as a blueprint for the book. I'll market it to new college students, they'll all want one so they can be smart and know everything.

Since I'm so smart and I know everything, I find myself realizing that people might claim this plan has a somewhat minor hole in it. That, of course, being that college students are notoriously under-funded. But this is where my true genious comes through, this is where the evidence of me being so smart and knowing everything shines. College students are already paying a gazillion dollars a semester on books. $29.95 to be smart and know everything is quite a bargain then. I'd much rather spend $29.95 to be smart and know everything than a gazillion dollars to know a little bit about a subject, material that will change by the end of the year.

Not only will my book singlehandedly increase the intelligence across the world, but will also greatly reduce post-college debt and improve the standard of living. So, this seems like a wonderful idea.

For the next year. And then I still have plenty of time for many more goals by the time I'm thirty.

A Sad Tuna

One year. A full 365 days. Plus a bit of change. And yet again, I have to blame it on the tuna.

If there had been no tuna, there would have been no interesting first post. I would have ended up having to blame everything on the cute bunny rabbits, and that's much less enthralling than blaming it all on the tuna. Without that first post, there would have been no second, no third. My time would have been spent doing things like cleaning my apartment or figuring out how to prevent hang-nails. Of course, I can do the latter, but it requires removing all fingernails at birth.

A year, and still the tuna are to blame. But perhaps they have had enough. Perhaps they're getting a bad name, and it's because of all the blame I'm piling on.

I can't blame /everything/ on the tuna, either, I suppose. Well, I could, but if I were to expose their intricate network of contacts and agents I would quickly have to blame my 'removal' on the tuna, before I could blame no more. So I won't. So to save myself all of that, I'll declare an end to the year of blaming-it-on-the-tuna. Now it's all the mongoose's fault.

Why, the mongoose? Well, for that, you'll have to ask the tuna.

Colorful Astronomy; Colorful History

Once in a blue moon, the amazing happens. Thankfully, the marvelous and wonderful and great and exceptional and various other exemplary adjectives occur more frequently, but amazing only once in a blue moon.

Me standing alone? Not amazing. Without a dream in my heart? Not possible. Without a love of my own? Just incredibly sad. But nothing to do with a blue moon.

But this, of course, has me pondering the phrase, 'once in a blue moon'. Is the moon actually blue, but got covered in a layer of dust so it now appears white? Did memories of the blueness of the moon live on through generation after generation, knowledge that when the moon again was blue we would have a new age of properity?

Or does the moon appear to be (without actually being) blue occasionally; say following a volcanic eruption? Or maybe when the weather is just really, really screwed up? The particles in the air reflecting and refracting the light just right that the red and green get bent off into space or into some 'bottomless' trench in the sea, while the blue bends toward any onlookers?

Could it be a mis-pronunciation of a French or German or Albanian word? Or a morphed meaning, meant to be never, but changed as rebelling children refused to use it in the same way their parents did? Language rebels are the worst kind, you know.

Or is it, as is apparently widely believed, because an almanac's second full moon of the month was colored blue, when the first was colored red? Is it amazing that months are spaced that this can happen? Human-created-coincidence is much less interesting an explination and makes the whole 'blue moon' thing rather silly.

No, none of these are true. But nobody would believe that it's because the moon is really sad, so I'll have to go with choice A, the dust and new-age-of-prosperity thing anyway.

I'm a big fan of new ages of prosperity. They're amazing.

Beware Anomaly

Ameron Binkley, a 22-year-old male, works at Binkley and Binkley (no relation), a Law Firm (notice the caps) as an "Assistant Janatorial Assistant (In Training)". That's right, he's not qualified to even assist a janator's assistant yet -- maybe in a couple years, he'll get promoted to "cleaning the third floor"! Life in San Fransisco is nice, but sadly he lives on the "wrong side of the tracks". The trolley gets in his way _every_ morning as he walks to work.

Born on a cold winter night (sometime in December, he thinks, but for various reasons, he's not actually sure), he lived happily with his parents in a small northern California town..for about two weeks. Sadly, both of his parents died in a freak cooking accident, and he only lived due to the heroics of his pet cat, Snuffy. (Snuffy was confused and thought Ameron was a toy his parents brought home and was playing with him at the time of the acciddent -- batted him right out the door.) Of course, Ameron himself doesn't actually remember this, but does wake up sometimes at night from a horrible recurring dream where he is a ball of yarn, and there is this giant cat with a tail of fire.

After that, he was shunted from foster home to foster home until finally he was taken in by the Wolves, a rather unfriendly family that wanted some "cheap" labor. So he spent the next twenty years doing all of the cooking and cleaning, living in a room slightly larger than a broom closet, with the roaches and ants his only friends. Over the years, he came to enjoy the company of animals, and actually currently is caring for two hampsters (George and Gertrude), a goldfish (Eliza), an ant farm (with Queen Bess), a variety of household insects (unnamed, as they keep running from the light), and three mice (Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod), although they may move out once the weather turns really nice.

Standing 5'7", blonde hair, blue eyes, and a large jagged scar down his right arm from chasing a lizard through an abandoned warehouse, Ameron is rather lean (from feeding half of his food to his pets), and hauling mops has done him well, building up some decent muscles. Sure, he's no body-builder, but they're all fake, anyway. He pretty much is out of touch with the world in general, although he does have the major San Fransisco newspaper. Generally it doesn't get read, but George and Gertrude are quite pleased. He does have cable, although it's suprizing something that "high-tech" can work with his apartment. (He tends to not watch it, but Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod simply /love/ the Food Channel.) To afford these luxuries, he had to go to the "condemned" section of town, and is currently renting a small 2-room apartment at quite a decent price (considering the big gaping hole in the middle of the main room -- coffee tables..err..board sitting on bricks make a great covering). In an old run-down commercial zone, he has no neighbors to speak of, although there is this guy living in a cardboard box under the overpass on his way to work.

No library card, as his pets are much more enteretaining than books. He /does/ have a copy of every Audubon animal guide ever made, and several of the others, thanks to the time he tried to catch a cat that ran into the dump. No favorite show, but when Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod aren't watching the Food Channel, Ameron tends to leave it turned onto Animal Planet. He does have a couple hundred dollars saved up for a rainy day, but no bank account, no credit cards.

Rolling Over

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It would appear that there are people whom haven't yet read my blog. For I am unwilling to accept that my thoughts are not intelligent, but honestly can anyone have thought them all before?

Given that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived from 1749 to 1832, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Many people thought they already knew it all way back then. And I'll not argue too much with him, at least he didn't say that there's nothing left to invent.

Besides, arguing with him would be rather silly. It's hard to win against someone that won't talk back.

Still, how can all intelligent thoughts have already been thunk? There are so many things we haven't considered, so many places our minds have yet to go. So many things we cannot imagine or dream of. There are so many thoughts left unknown and ideas unpercieved.

But then again, who's to say that any of these are truly intelligent thoughts? Who's to say the only intelligent thought wasn't concieved millenia ago, thought again and again as the years pass by.

"Zzz.. Ungh.. Just five more minutes, mom."

The mist-ak-EEN em-FAS-ees the-at-EAR

This Weekend I read a Story. The Plot was rather silly, and It didn't keep my Interest, although It might have done better if I hadn't been so confused by the Style adopted. For most of the Nouns and Pronouns (and one Adjective) were capatilized.

As I read the Work, I kept emphasizing all capatalized Words. I frequently do That when reading Poetry, not with the Capitals, but simply with how the Words fit together. Mostly in my Latin Class, the Poetry had a Cadence simply because of the word Pronunciation, Something which made reading Poetry like singing a Song. Without the Tambourines.

This Story was nothing like That. I mentally emphasized many Words, but there seemed to be no Rhyme nor Reason to the Emphasis. It didn't draw me into the Writing, but rather made Me feel as if I were stumbling along a rocky Shoreline, barely able to keep my Balance.

Artistic License, My Big Toe! There was no good Reason to do This to the Readers, to make their Brains hurt as they tried to understand the Story.

There is no good Reason for Me to be so mean either, except Pain is much easier shared.



Sadly, though, It's too bad I never had to read It in one of my English Classes. The Structure can change the entire Meaning of the Story. I find myself wondering if That might be what the Author intended.

Yeah. Right.