Month: July 2008

This will be the only time I ever mention the band Buckcherry, who are apparently douchebags.

Click the link (several times, if you feel the urge) to find out why.

I’m a modest man living a modest life. I have no huge ambitions, no ground-shaking goals. I just want to live my life, have some fun, and see the world around me as it really is, not as I nor anyone else wishes it were.

To the extent I do have goals, I want simply this: I would like to leave the world a little bit better than it was when I entered it. Can one man make an impact? Yes, I think so, as long as I keep the proper scope.

Here is the lesson I’ve learned: I succeed when I do, in fact, see the world and the people around me clearly, and I adjust my actions accordingly.

I fail when I give in to fantastic or unreal thinking. When I sit around and wait for a magical intercession. When I just hope that things get better. Or even when I take actions without thought for any consequences – no, wait, even when I take actions and wish for an unrealistic or unlikely consequence.

In other words, I succeed when I use the tools of analysis, logic, past experience (my own and others’), experiment and adjustment and iterative process. When I apply science and rational thought to my life.

I’ll likely leave no heirs behind. My only legacy at this point is my words and my actions. If anyone feels inclined to summarize them for me, let it be this.

I can’t even do one chinup.

I am starting at the bottom. Only one way to go!

I’m getting pretty good at flirting with waitresses.

Maybe I’ll step up to hitting on women who don’t work in customer service next.

I won $4.

I spent half on a ticket for tonight.

And so it goes.

It was close to 10:30 PM. My neighborhood grocery store was almost deserted. I was on my way home, and because of the intersection of me having a lottery ticket for tonight’s drawing and being near the store where I’d bought it, I had stopped in to see if I was a winner.

The answer is almost always no. Even when it’s yes, it’s for small amounts. So my normal course of action is to delay finding out for a long time, to delay even finding out if anyone has won the big prize. The longer I can go without, the more fun I can extract from dreaming about what I’ll do if I find myself suddenly rich.

Quit my job. Buy and operate my own strip club. Travel the world. See a baseball game in every major league stadium. Take intensive martial arts training, buy a supercar, like a Dodge Viper, and drive from town to town, righting wrongs and living and loving (possibly with an exotic pet, like a monkey or a talking cat).

As you can see, my dreams quickly spiral out of control. I mean, c’mon. One can’t run a strip club without a connection to organized crime. Who am I kidding?

My friends see me as a very rational person, and so, knowing the mathematical odds against actually winning the lottery, they seem surprised that I play. I don’t pay more than a dollar or two at a time, though, because I know that spending more doesn’t appreciably increase my chances. However, the difference between having a ticket and not having a ticket are measurable. Also, see above – I like dreaming a little, but I still need a basis for my dreams. Like buying a ticket.

The Oregon Lottery puts self-serve machines in various establishments, to let ticket holders scan their own tickets to see if they’ve won or not. It was before one such machine that I now found myself.

I held the barcode under the laser, watched the thin red lines criss-cross the printed paper, and then the cold blue LEDs lit up. Invariably, the machines say:

“Sorry Not a Winner”

..but this time, it said:

“Congratulations Please See Retailer”

See, it doesn’t tell you how much you’ve won. Just a simple yes/no on the fact of winning. I don’t know why they’ve chosen to do this, except perhaps as further marketing and hype. Get the winning customers thinking about their winnings as they’re forced to approach another human being, hopeful, optimistic. A dream shared is a dream more than doubled. Trebled, maybe even quadrupled.

Just so, I approached the lone cashier, an Asian lady whom I recognize from years of shopping here but with whom I’ve never really made any kind of connection. “Excuse me,” I asked, “Can you help me cash this?”

She looked up from counting money, glanced back towards the same place I had just checked this ticket. “There’s a machine over there…”

“Oh, I know. It said this is a winner, but I don’t know how much.” I explain.

She turned her head the other direction and looked towards a dark glass counter full of baked goods and pastries. “Oh…” she sounded customer-service-sad, “The register we pay lottery tickets out of is in the Bakery, and it’s closed. I’m sorry.”

I smiled as if to say I was not put out by this. In fact, I wasn’t. “It’s OK,” I said as I walked off, “I’ll just spend tonight dreaming of big money.”

That was last night.

I still haven’t checked it.

Nobody spoil it for me. I like walking around pretending I’m a millionaire.

I’m pricing Porsches as I type.

Cheetah kills crocodile:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF0Lr–K4oo&hl=en&fs=1]

Whoa. (h/t to Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer)

I sat at the bus stop, tired, checking up on this and that on my iPhone. The bench was comfortable, and no one else was around. Cars would drive by, and around the corner people waited outside the sushi shop, but there was no one in my immediate vicinity.

The bus wasn’t going to show up for another hour. Even though it was only a 20 minute walk home from where I sat, still, I sat and surfed and ignored people.

It had been a long day. My frustration at Tri-Met’s erratic bus schedules on Sunday was just under the surface. Yet another stupid way religion impacts the non-religious. But I tried to let go of my frustration. I knew it grew from being hungry, and tired, and a little bit sunburned.

A thin lady walked up and stood right in front of me. “Is the bus coming? Do you know when it’s coming?” She talked fast, and wavered on her feet, and appeared to have different ideas about personal space than I did.

“An hour. It won’t be here for an hour,” I said. “Eight-fifty-six.”

“An hour?” She looked at her cell phone, closed it, put it back in her purse. “Well!” In one smooth movement she pulled out a pack of smokes and spun around to sit right next to me. “Well, I’ll just smoke a cigarette then go back to the bar, then!”

My tiredness and frustration came to a boil. She’s going to smoke. Right next to me. At a bus stop.

Which is supposed to be a non-smoking area.

In my own smooth movement, I swung my messenger bag over my neck, stood, and put my iPhone away. I turned to walk home, even though I was tired. I did not want to yell at the lady, which I knew I would do if I tried to explain. I think the no smoking rule is stupid, because there’s no way to enforce it except by social pressure, which is easily ignored. And I’m not confrontational enough, especially when I’m tired, to do the enforcing. So tonight I’d rather walk.

“Oh, you don’t drink?” the lady said, sarcastically.

I turned around briefly. “No. I don’t smoke.” But I fumed for several blocks thinking about that encounter as I walked home.