Author: Brian

While doing some light cleaning around the house this weekend, I noticed that my vacuum cleaner wasn’t the best. I bought it on the cheap, and it doesn’t always pick up dirt and paper shreds and whatnot from my new carpet.

And I thought, “my vacuum cleaner sucks.”

And I laughed.

Because sucking is pretty much what a vacuum cleaner is supposed to do.

I spent a few minutes working on how someone could express that their cleaning instrument wasn’t very good at what it was designed to do, and it made me laugh.

“My vacuum cleaner sucks” and “my vacuum cleaner doesn’t suck” have both the same meaning, and the opposite meaning. At the same time.

I thought of “flammable” and “inflammable” and how, even though the prefix “in-” usually reverses the meaning of the word to which it is affixed, in this one case, it does not. But it’s not entirely the same because the two words just seem like they should mean the opposite. They don’t.

Not like the “vacuum/suck” conundrum.

I wonder if the Language Log folk have ever talked about this?

I was thinking about how rude some people can be, when I stopped to consider where they would fall on the canonical 1 to 10 scale.

Of course, when assigning a level of rudeness on the 1 to 10 scale, you have to think about what the extreme ends of the scale represent. In this case, the 1 would represent “polite”, which is the least rude one can be.

But then I tried to figure out what the high end of the scale would be. What would 10 on the rude scale be? Would it be the rudest person ever, like, say, Andrew Dice Clay’s public persona, or even Rush Limbaugh? Someone who is barely socialized and whose every utterance is designed to shock and dismay?

The problem is, I kept thinking of more and more examples of people who were even ruder than that… like, say, Osama bin Laden, or Dick Cheney. But then we’re getting into a definitional gray area: are they rude or are they simply evil?

And I decided that there was no way to assign a top end to the 1 to 10 scale of rudeness. Rudeness, it turns out, is somewhere in the middle on some other scale, a moral scale.

It’s kinda funny like that.

On Friday, I had a stoopid headache that may or may not have been a migraine. It was painful, and I felt like throwing up, and I was light sensitive. Also grumpy; I chose not to inflict my presence on my friends for the normal Friday night Battlestar Galactica showing at the Bagdad.

But some say that since I was still conscious and was able to watch TV (albeit in the dark, curled up on the couch like I was re-inventing the fetal position), that it was not an actual migraine.

So I updated my status on Facebook (and MySpace, too, but as you’ll see, all the fun was over on Facebook) to read:

“Brian is starting his weekend with a migraine.”

This turned out to be the most popular status update I’ve even posted. I got seven responses to it from six different friends. I got expressions of sympathy (“Your pain. I feels it.”), denial (“It’s not a migraine. It’s all in your head!”), enthusiasm (“Fantastic! You know how to par-tay!”)

All of which were more than welcome. Still, I have to give the random award of Best Response to a Complaint of Pain to Nicole’s “Maybe it’s a tumor…”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgAWK06SXvY&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

I’m here to tell all y’all… It’s not a tumor!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

My iPhone vibrated and chimed to let me know a text had come in.

I was sitting at my desk at work, so I dug the silver brick out of my pocket and looked to see who had texted me.

The screen just showed a phone number, which meant that the person wasn’t in my address book. The text mentioned a birthday party for the sender, tomorrow night, at a bowling alley. It had the look of something sent to a bunch of people, a blast group text, rounding up a posse.

I had, just a week or two ago, done some cleaning up of my address book. Had I mistakenly deleted someone who still texted me? I couldn’t think of anyone – the list of texts I had received in the last few weeks had names and pictures attached to numbers; it looked complete.

Was this from someone I hadn’t talked to in a long time? A girl I had dated once or twice and then fallen out of contact with? Did I get included by mistake? Was this spam?

So many questions. I tried Googling the number, but nothing turned up.

I walked over to my friend Ken’s cube, sat down across from him. “I just got this text and I don’t know who it’s from.” I showed him my phone.

“It could be spam,” he suggested. “Replying might sign you up for something.” He shifted to his Announcer Voice. “Congratulations, by reying to this text you are now the proud recipient of a lifetime subscription to the ringtone of the month club, billed in one lump sum of $999.99!”

“Who, me?” I smiled.

“Did you try Googling it?”

I nodded. “I should just reply like I know who it is. Maybe mess with ’em a bit.”

Ken gave me a blank stare. “Or you could just tell them that your address book is messed up and you don’t know who it is.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” I was smiling, still. “You and your whole ‘be honest and straight-forward’ kick!”

Ken turned back to the computer he was working on, quickly. A bit too quickly; he betrayed a little frustration. “Whatever. Just reply.”

“This could very likely be a wrong number, or someone I removed from my address book for a good reason,” I continued, only half-serious. “It’s entertaining to play around a little.” Meanwhile, I was already keying in a reply – an honest and straight-forward reply, explaining that I had messed up my address book and did not know who had sent me the text.

Ken said, “You’re going to mess something up and piss someone off, just because they invited you to a birthday party! I just do not get you sometimes!” He was a bit rant-y.

“I like things that are entertaining. And if they’re not already, I like making them that way. What can I say?” I was needling him a little, even as I hit send on essentially the text he suggested I send.

“You’re trying to make it a better story. When it’s already a good story to begin with.”

“May-be,” I conceded.

Soon enough, the reply came back: it was a waitress at the Limelight, a restaurant I eat at frequently. I sent a quick “Oh, hi! Happy almost-birthday!” back to acknowledge I’d gotten the text. Nice!

Good thing I hadn’t carried through with my random anarchy plan…

I haven’t been getting out much. Except for my regular Friday nights out with the guys to see Battlestar Galactica’s final episodes at the Bagdad Theater, and my obsession to become a regular customer at the Delta Cafe, and getting to and from work, I haven’t spent a lot of time outside of my apartment.

I’m not sure why that is: a long, cold winter; most (but not all) of my friends living in other counties and me not having a car; the pressure of financial tightening as the economy worsens; or even grumpy-old-man-ism, a preference for being inside and away from strangers.

Perhaps none of these. Perhaps some of them.

I’ve even had invitations from new friends to hang out, spend some time, be social and have fun. Some, like Neva’s birthday party, I accepted. But several I have not. It’s not them; it’s most definitely me.

I lack the energy to dig into my own motivations. I think I’m afraid to find out what they are. At least, I think that, I don’t know for certain. Because… I’m afraid to examine my own motivations. Duh. QED.

I haven’t run in over a week. Last week, after feeling some pain in my groin for several weeks, I finally got up the courage to visit my doctor to figure out what it might be. My fears ran rampant, as you might imagine, considering the sensitive area the pain was in. But it turned out to be a simple ligament sprain, a “sports hernia”, requiring nothing more than some prescription NSAIDs and rest. My doctor, Dr. Carl, once he’d eliminated all other causes, demonstrated definitively for me that that was all it was – he literally put his finger right on the tendon and the spot where the pain originated from, and further demonstrated that rest would relieve the pain.

Running is my anti-depressant, on top of allowing me to eat donuts for breakfast and not gain weight and giving me an excuse to be outside and active. Take away my running and I fall inward.

Luckily the waiting and resting is over. I’ll be able to run again soon. And hopefully my mood and my energy will return.

And hopefully I can lose the several pounds of… um… fuel… I’ve gained in this short time.

I think the lack of energy is contributing to my blogger’s block lately, too. It’s harder for me to come up with a post a day. So excuse this free rambling. I’ll be back on track soon enough.

Spring can’t get here fast enough, for so many reasons.

I think I first heard the term “zombie lies” from Duncan Black. That link goes to top hit for “atrios zombie lies”, not necessarily the first instance of him saying it, by the way, and I’m not saying that he invented the term. But he uses it often, and it always seems to refer to the same idea: a zombie lie is an argument or idea that has been thoroughly debunked and refuted, time and time again, and yet still seems to have people in the public sphere promoting and defending it.

Like the zombies of fiction and fantasy, you can’t put them down. No matter how many bullets you put in them, no matter how many times you stab one, they just will not die.

And the zombie lies seem to revolve, politically anyway, around conservative policies and themes. Like the whole “Social Security is going bankrupt!” zombie lie. You hear this a lot. You heard it from President #43 right after he was elected in 2004. You hear it even today, while we are in the middle of an economic disaster caused by tax cuts and deregulation. But the fact of the matter is that Social Security as currently structured will pay out full benefits until the year 2041. Y’know, somehow I think we have some time to deal with the “problem” of a fully-funded safety net for retirees and the disabled for the next 32 years. Maybe we could be focusing on the more immediate problems right now?

Another zombie lie is related to, and in argument against, the just-passed mostly-spending bill in Congress, and can be summed up in the phrase “government should be run like a business!” This zombie lie includes the idea that “we’re broke – we shouldn’t borrow any more!” It’s a bit more insidious because individual Americans can certainly understand their own household economics: when income decreases, spending should likewise decrease. You don’t borrow money when you’re broke. The reason this is a zombie lie, though, when applied to governments and larger economies is that only the government is large enough to absorb the costs of infusing new capital, in the form of spending, into an economy in an effort to reverse an economic depression. If no individual is spending any money because of a depression, it takes the government to step in and make things happen.

How do we know that this is true? Because FDR’s New Deal spending is what got America out of our Great Depression. In fact, when FDR gave in to some “fiscal conservatives” in Congress and cut taxes and decreased spending, in 1937, you can plainly see that those cuts reversed the gains from the previous spending. It may seem counter-intuitive to those of us who are clipping coupons and cutting back personally, but if we want to get out of this economic nightmare, we should be cheering the spending portions of the stimulus bill that just passed, and should be booing the Republicans who forced a bunch of tax cuts into it.

Just look at how great President #43’s tax cuts were at sustaining and building on President Clinton’s budget surpluses. Oh, wait. #43 turned a $127 billion dollar surplus into a $455 billion dollar deficit.

We need more spending; and because #43 left us in a hole with his tax cuts for the rich and his wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan that costs us billions, and the free money give-away to banks and financial institutions (which I will admit, President Obama supported at the time and is continuing), our situation is far more dire than it should have been. But that doesn’t take away the proven fact that building infrastructure and putting more capital and money into the economy is the answer, in a nutshell.

Luckily, that’s what President Obama is proposing. Sadly, the Republicans seem to want to obstruct that spending and, in some cases, Republican state governors are considering refusing the money. That’s about as willfully destructive and ignorant as they could possibly be.

Y’know, just like zombies.

Sorry I don’t have a real post for you this morning. I’ve been sleeping.

Got home last night from work, and was immediately tired. Well, I’d been tired all day, and had a bit of a headache. I barely had any energy but forced myself to get a load of laundry done (a bunch of black t-shirts, actually) then crashed on the couch and watched a little bit of recorded TV (last week’s Clone Wars) and then… drifted into bed.

Where I slept for twelve hours.

Had a dream about shopping for a VW Jetta that I was sure I couldn’t afford. Had another dream about moving into a new house that I, also, couldn’t afford. I think those dreams stemmed from the conversation at lunch about the economic crisis our country, and the world, is going through.

But beyond my vague remembrances of dreams, being in bed was a half-day of oblivion.

Now I’m over-tired and stiff, muscles sore, and a bit sweaty (I didn’t turn down the heat before sleep so it’s too warm in here).

And now, I’m off to work.

In case you liked my latest in the “Motels and Hotels I remember” series, you may want to read the past installments.

I’ve added a new tag, so you’ll find all the previous posts here.