hell if i know

Just back from another fine weekend of practice. Except, our act is not together, whatever it is, and whenever I run to the easiest bunker in town I get shot stupid about 20 seconds in. Questions about next year are right in our faces now. Do we want to keep going, who's in, what would it take. Sponsorship, a home field, a full squad, consistent practice? We're counting players, thinking of holding open tryouts, thinking of moving, thinking of asking people on, considering pyramid schemes, something to make it work. And if it can't work, we need to figure it out so guys can get on with life or find a team and keep going. To the guys mature enough to be able to give a straight answer, thanks.

I'm going to out and admit it - I often consider quitting paintball. Some Sundays you can't take three steps without getting lit up, and you drive two hours home wondering what the hell you're doing with your time and money. Some days the only other people at the field are there for a dorm trip or to test their battle skills or some bullshit, plus one kid who thinks he's hot shit and spends all day screaming and overshooting the new guys. Some days only three guys can make it and you can't do shit, but you got up at 5:30 and came out here to sit in a parking lot. Sometimes it's when you have to pay the credit card bill you racked up for air fare, hotel, rental car, and paint and suddenly you're staying in every night until the first comes around. Sometimes your friends from the rest of life wonder why you keep doing this, after you pass yet again on another soccer league with a bunch of guys you love, or skip out on a friend's wedding because the team needs you to fly out to East Bumfuck and put some paint on some people just so. And some days, you watch a couple games from the stands and go "what the fuck is this that we're doing here?"

If you're playing to impress people, you're going to be disappointed. You learn that talking about paintball is about as good at parties as describing the chain of events that led to you switching fabric softeners. 95% of the time you end up on the wrong end of some raised eyebrows that say "seriously?", or some jackass tries to tell you about how hard his gun can shoot and how his cousin used to have this angel.

But then Wednesday rolls around and you can't wait for Sunday so you can show up and do your thing and blast some people. Thursday afternoon your roommate catches you pretending to snap-shoot behind the couch, and you have to try and play it off like you were stretching. One weekend you go play by yourself and suddenly these guys you spend your Sundays with don't have your back, and there's no way in hell you're going to trust that kid wearing the camo to get your tape so you can do your thing, and absolutely zero chance people are going to shift and lock the zones back down when the snake side starts to drop. Field layouts for the next tournament are released and automatically half your work day is up in smoke. And when it's you who spots the gap and takes the other team apart, you wonder how you could ever give this up.

Recent quotables from the field:

"It's 9:00, where the fuck is everybody? And why can't I feel my fingers?"
"That's the rage."

"I'm seriously going to cry the day we decide not to be a team anymore."

"Left nipple's hot!"

"Some guy with a chest protector on bunkered me."
(chest protectors are the Smirnoff Ice of paintball. Unless you have boobs, in which case protect away.)

"Who else gets to do what we get to do? We travel around the country shooting people. We get to do something we love. When are we going to be able to do this again?"







apologies to Matty Marshall, who said it better than I did.

Oil Spills

Every now and then something happens where I find myself really wishing I could've just been in the room when the engineers were doing their design thing. Presumably they did the best they could, and it just wasn't idiot proof enough. Here's what probably happened:

Engineer 1: So we'll be carrying 1300 tons of oil. How do we prevent it from spilling everywhere in an accident?
Engineer 2: Lets beef it up. We'll give the ship a double hull.
Engineer1: Sounds good. And what happens if we hit something pointy, and it manages to pierce both walls?
Engineer 2: Well it would be stupid to put all our eggs in one basket. Let's make 10 compartments for the oil, so if we rupture we don't lose all of it at once.
Engineer 1: Got it. Ok, what happens if they hit something really big really hard? Like, they run into a major bridge?
Engineer 2: A bridge? Fuck, man, we put a rudder on it, right?
Engineer 1: Right, steering. Ok, I think we're good.
Engineer 2: I'm going on lunch break.

Calvin

You know what really grinds my gears? Stickers of Calvin (and sometimes Susie Derkins) praying to a gigantic cross. In addition to this being a fatty copyright infringement, did these people ever actually read Calvin and Hobbes? No. No they did not.

I'm thinking as retaliation on behalf of me and whoever cares to align themself, I'm going to cook up a batch of stickers depicting [insert your favorite religious figure here] water skiing. Now I'm not saying they water skied or didn't water ski. I don't know. It's not really well documented, I'd imagine. The point is, that's not what they're about. Cowabunga!

Somebody go halfsies on this with me

If we buy two, we get five dollars off! Plus we can tape cardboard to the front as armor and have wicked jousting fun with wrapping paper tubes.

http://sacramento.craigslist.org/bik/438351939.html

"2 California Charriots with front suspension and hand brake. Minimal usage, foam grips are dry. Shock covers may have cracks, otherwise good condition. These cost $119.00 each new I believe. The other one looks about the same but is buried in my garage. $40.00 each or both for $75.00."

• Location: Cameron Park
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Freshmen

Tomorrow marks the first day of the year for students at UCD, which means a number of things. The roads and eateries will be packed, the bathrooms on campus will once again become disgusting and unusable, furniture will go missing, and not-very-clever messages will be left on our chalk boards. More importantly, though, there will be 6,000 freshman trying to stay upright on bicycles. Davis is a biking campus and a biking community, but if you zoom out beyond that you quickly find that we, the people of the United States of America, are not a cycling culture. Maybe we are between the ages of 6 and 10. So basically what you've got is a bunch of 8 year olds (with rusty bike-handling skills) trying not to run into one another. Stanford is also a biking school, being enormous, flat, and mostly paved, and has similar troubles. Everybody is back on a bike for the first time in years and waaaaaay too confident in their abilities to maneuver past trouble with their superior intellect and life skills. I heard that the average Stanford student gets into two bike crashes a year. I only managed two* during my entire stay there, and I was considerate enough to not take anybody else down with me.

Stanford has an Intersection of Death, which is basically what it sounds like - an unmarked intersection that nearly everybody has to ride through on the way to and from their classes. There are a few conveniently placed benches right on one of the corners of this intersection, and if you can get over being a bit of an asshole, its some terrific free entertainment to sit and watch people do stupid things. Extra exciting when somebody goes flying though late for class or if somebody on a skateboard doesn't know what they're doing. Davis seems a little more self-aware, on the administrative level at least, because they've installed traffic circles at all of the major bike intersections. However, I'm not confident that everybody knows how to use a traffic circle. Shit, I'm pretty sure not everybody here knows to ride on the right and don't stop abruptly and start talking on your cell phone in the middle of a busy street. But anyways, if I'm unavailable tomorrow, try the traffic circle by the silo. I could use some company.



*Crash number 1: Riding down a short hill, over a plank across a stream, and then up another short hill on Nic's bike. Nic's bike has no brakes, no seat, and no clamp to prevent the handlebars from rotating freely. It is orange, though.

Crash number 2: Attempting to take a turn, wave, and switch on my bike light while going over a curb and carry several large pieces of aluminum roundstock for a project. It's also worth noting that I can't ride with no hands. I crashed right in front of the side of my dorm with all the windows, a dismaying number of which produced familiar faces. All I could think to do was make a gravel angel and try to play it off.

NPPL Kansas City, Update 1

All seven guys arrived safe and sound in KC, despite a missed flight and some last minute scrambling. We spent Thursday walking fields and figuring out game plans. We also spent a good amount of Thursday lost in various parts of Missouri and Kansas. Everything is under construction here, and every time we think we can see a straight line to our destination, we're blocked by half a building or a city-block sized pit. What else about Kansas...For some reason, its cool for people to randomly park in the right and left lanes. There don't seem to be any signs saying its ok during certain hours or in certain areas, people just do it, parked right in the lane. You'll be cruising along and every couple blocks there are a few cars right in your way. Also, it looks like people have trouble turning right cleanly. Most of the corner curbs have been pulverized by constant curb integrity checks.

Preliminary round consists of 8 games, 5 on Friday and 3 on Saturday. We went 5-0 today, which is an excellent start, despite some sloppy closes. I think at least two or three of us shot JT at various times. JT is on our team, so...not the best person to shoot. As for the venue, Hello staph infection! We play on astroturf, which they reuse and bring to each tournament. Problem is, they hose down the turf after each event, then roll it up wet and let it sit for two months. There's this funk nasty smell that I can't really recommend.

Check out nppllive.com on Sunday if you want to maybe video of us playing. No idea when and if, though. More soon!

Kansas City

Just a few hours until we fly to Kansas City MO to do or die for our season. We started this year strong, with a win and a 2nd place finish, and tanked hard in our third tournament in Boston. From the way we practiced between our second and third events, we had it coming. For the last month and a half we've been struggling to get it together again and rediscover the drive and intensity we had at the beginning of the year. To tell the truth the lead-up to this one has been a goddam mess. Every week is a fight to get a good practice together, to get enough guys to drill or scrim, to find paint for everybody, and to find money for all of this. Three days before the tournament we still didn't have a full seven to bring to Kansas City, and were asking ourselves what happens if we actually have to go with five or six. Devin wins quote of the day with his response: "Fuck it, we go in brawling. That's what we do."
Despite all the confusion and logistical trouble, I'm cranked up for this event. We have a strong squad and a pretty decent draw, and we're hungry to come back from the wreck in Boston and shoot some people.

I've tried a couple times to write about the chunk of life devoted to paintball, but each time I end up sounding like I'm biting hard on Matty Marshall in "Sunday Drivers." So, here's Matty Marshall in "Sunday Drivers." I've got some stuff to pack and a flight to catch.

"It happens on a random Monday, coming back from an event, or late on a Sunday night, right before you get on the plane and you're about to be frisked for the third time. You're driving, you're flying, you're sitting in an airport seat with boys from the team. You're drinking stale coffee trying to stay awake. You're explaining the fat welt on the side of your neck to a confused stranger or a best friend. You're coming back to the other life, the one without paintball, where no one understands why you do it. You're tired, you're working off little sleep, and the question creeps up and you try to ignore it "Why do I do this? Why the travel, why the losses, the missed work, the missed school, hours of practice and the complaining girlfriend?" Because the lure of living a paintball life is just too potent, and the products of the road, the travel, are memories forever in trips and strange lands with stranger people. At tournaments, it feels like, for once, you actually get to live as loud as you want. It's worth the sacrifices, its worth all the bullshit, because if you work hard enough, a Sunday will roll around, and you'll be in the huddle, screaming, with your hand in, one among ten, playing for the world title, and suddenly all those cliches that you ever heard make sense, and you, are defined. You say it to yourself, and it means everything "I am a paintball player, and this moment, right here, is my life."

Status

Burner: Burning
Lid: On order
Lab: Evaporating
Cranks: Pulled
Team: Registered
3 1/2" x 1 1/4" 304 stainless concentric reducing cone for butt welding, in stock in either 10s or 40s: No
Rage at above: Building
Weekend: Imminent

really amazingly small talk

This morning found me at the coffee cart, pondering the various donut options to go with my french roast, and I saw that they had cups of carrots and celery on offer. The part of me that thinks I'll have cardiac problems in later life liked this idea, and the part of me that would like to be in better shape also applauded, and the part of me in charge of the digestive tract and regularity probably also said something, but all I heard was a sort of gurgling sound.

A ten ounce plastic cup of carrots and celery evidently runs $2.49 + tax. I'm not that hard up for money that this killed me, but what the fuck Davis? This town really is rich and green. Almost makes me want to bring a lunch, if I weren't so damn lazy.

What the hell, Ads by Google?

I will never understand why 'ads by google' thinks I'm a mom. "Are you a slacker mom" and ads for daycare keep appearing next to my paintball team emails. Perhaps it's the universe's attempt at entropy within the organized technical wonder that is google. To be fair though, if I am a mom, I've certainly been remiss in my duties to whomever the hell it is that I'm supposed to be mothering.




Another winner, amid a sea of useless but at least relevant paintball ads:



The real winning ad just came through. No commentary of mine could do justice to it. Here you go.

The Game

The Game. Do not question it. Just play.

Rules:

• Rule 1. If you think about the game, you've just lost the game.
• Rule 1 1/4. If you lose the game, you have to tell somebody, preferably somebody who plays the game.
• Rule 1 1/2. Once somebody loses the game and announces it, there is a 15 minute grace period for everybody around to forget about the game again.

....aaaaand GO! If later today you should find yourself wondering "what was that game?" or "I wonder if anybody else plays this stupid game" or "How can I make Joe lose the game?"....too late sucka, you lose. And the more you play, the easier it becomes to lose. So yeah, good luck with that.

Ok, so maybe some ground rules...

In the first post of the new blog I declared that I'd just write whatever. Three posts in I'm chickening out. I feel I need to steer clear of certain things, or this little neck of the web is going to disgust even me.

To avoid:
-Overly detailed accounts of what happened today with the intent that if the world goes ape and this blog survives, future generations/aliens will have a glimpse of our daily lives. Tourists with cameras, take note here.
-Detailing the "why" of this and that.
-Expressing feelings other than amusement, incredulity, or irritation.
-Rambling introductions. Sort of.
-Predictable formatting.
-whizzing on the electric fence.

That is all for now.

More bikes!

I almost got smished in the road yet again today by a dude in a minivan. It always seems to be minivans and SUVs piloted by the oblivious and the super-aggressive. I'm becoming much more liberal with the finger these days. For everyone's betterment, I hereby impart the following knowledge: If there are 3 lanes going the same way and no bike lane, the right lane is mine as much as yours. It is not, however, both mine and yours at the same time as you try to wedge by me and either risk running me over or running me into the line of parked cars. If you're only going 2mph faster than me, would it kill you to change lanes if you're hell bent on passing? If you risk running me down because you're too lazy to check over your shoulder, I'm eventually going to catch up with you at a light and do something awful. Nya-nya-nya.

The gods of craigslist smiled upon me today and I snagged an old school Schwinn road bike for $40. Actually I grabbed 2 bikes at once, bringing my count up to...too many. One for riding, one for riding fixed, one for leaving at work, one for the rain/locking up around town and not worrying about. I also still have my first bike that came with training wheels and red and white padded checkered things. We're going to need more real estate soon to house this farm.

Ya gotta accessorize! Buying a good $30 set of lights and a $25 lock makes sense for $400 bike. In fact, they're pretty much mandatory if you're going to be riding at night and leaving the bike anywhere with the expectation of coming back to it. On the other hand, those little things more than double the cost of a beater. Its still relatively cheap, but its the most sting I've felt from a small purchase since I bought that free-range scorpion farm. Too much?

Then there's the tires. The tires are just about as old as me, but tire years must be akin to dog years because at the ripe old age of 25 the tires are disintegrating and covered in cracks, whereas I still have yet to lose any parts and am equipped with just the one crackola. badum-ching! Bad crack jokes aside, blowouts are bad news, and new tubes and tires need to happen soon. Damn you, obscure 27" x 1 1/8 sizing!

The second bike purchase today was totally on impulse, since it wasn't actually advertised. While checking out the schwinn I spotted a blue Nishiki Riviera leaning against the wall and grabbed it too. Total shit show. The frame is in great shape though, albeit maybe a size too small for me. If all else fails I can steal the cranks and put them on my fixed, if I can figure out how to get the stripped ones off. grr

Gear

If you don't play paintball and aren't interested in hearing about gun problems, you should probably start at paragraph 4 or so.

Since I started playing paintball in 2001 I've been plagued with gear problems. My first paintgun, a tippmann (known to be more or less bulletproof) suffered from wild velocity fluctuation. Turned out to be a cracked power tube. My next gun, an autococker, fell victim to not only the normal host of troubles that accompany a highly adjustable gun owned by an idiot with a wrench, but such new and exciting problems as not being able to thread a barrel into the body and having a bolt seize in the top tube. For those of you who don't speak paintball, this is somewhere on the order of finding out your skateboard has transmission problems.

Next gun was an Angel. I don't even want to talk about it. The first motorized loader I bought, also marketed as bulletproof, died when the battery terminals decided they didnt want to be springy anymore. The second loader broke no less than three times, between the feedneck, the loader lid, and the shells. At one point I went on vacation for a week and left it sitting on my desk, and when I came back it had committed suicide - the battery door had shattered into 3 pieces from the forces associated with staying closed.


Last year during a practice in Santa Clara, the top of my newest gun peaced out mid-game, taking my hopper and some of the gun body threads with it. A photographer captured the moment for all to enjoy. Note that the hopper is still feeding even as it flies away. Something works!

Currently I own four tournament grade guns, having already sold off most of the aforementioned ones. There is no really good reason that any normal person should need this many guns. In a given day, you might possibly require a backup gun when something awful happens, but two is generally considered plenty. I bought the fourth gun because the first three had a bad case of gremlins. Two with some sort of bolt problem (the 'general malaise' of paintball), one with board trouble, one with eye trouble, one with low pressure regulator problems, one with crazy shootdown for whatever reason, and with wicked bolt stick. For those of you doing the math at home, a few of these paintguns are not doing well.

Those close to me generally agree that I need to find a sport with less equipment. I considered taking up running, figuring that even I could avoid shoe malfunctions. This idea ended up flopping for two reasons. One, I hate running. Two, the human body could be considered the necessary equipment for running, and I'd hate to have a leg to fall off mid-stride. I decided, for reasons that I now know better than to believe in, that cycling would be a good compromise. Its an aerobic sport, you get to go somewhere to distract you from the unpleasantness of getting tired, and all you need is a working bike. Cycling, it turns out, can demand more gear than
cog collecting.

The road bike has a few creaking noises to it, but on the whole it more or less works. My fixed gear, on the other hand.... a fixed gear is the simplest bike you can make. No shifters, no freewheel (the ratcheting thing that allows you to coast), brakes optional. Its a frame, 2 wheels, and some pedals. At the moment I'm having major problems with the pedals.

Should I fear using equipment more than I do? Possibly. My job requires me to operate machinery that is plenty capable of taking a finger or an eye, and while paintgun malfunctions suck, bike malfunctions hurt. I'd go hide in a cave, but caves are prone to collapse.

The last thing I did before posting this blog was grab a toothpick from the toothpick jar. Out of probably 200 toothpicks, mine was the only deformed one with no point on either end. Is it tomorrow yet?

Off to a rough start

So somehow its already day three and the new blog seems to have kicked the bucket right out of the gate.* I migrated all of my previous posts over from myspace (well, migrated is the wrong word. I copied and pasted a lot. Myspace is gimpy, it turns out) but that doesn't really count. The good news? There are six drafts waiting in the wings for some time and inspiration to finish them off. Not to mention the authoritarian toilet blog, which has been brewing in my mind for months. So keep checking back! For now, I leave you with this link to some most excellent Japanese television programming. I am truly envious that I was not a part of this.




*When I'm dictator that's going to be a sport that all the kids have to play in elementary school. Each heat lines up at the starting gate, gate lifts, and they run two steps and punt a bucket. Maybe you could glue one of the buckets to the ground as a joke. Maybe two kids run at the same bucket from gates on opposite sides and try to kick the bucket so that the contents spill onto their opponent. Maybe all you do is take two steps and kick a bucket.

Goals and...wait, goals?

Here we go, a fresh blog to fill with poor word choices. I have kept a blog before and tried to keep a reasonable standard of quality in the posts. This resulted in about one post every two or three months, and they still weren't all winners. Nowadays, I strive to say no to quality control! Prepare for a lot of stream of consciousness, cell phone pictures, and personal commentary on pretty much nothing. Maybe some lead-based toys from China will slip through. Self indulgence, updates on that idiot kid at work, notes-to-self, and rampant linking to other people's creations. Hopefully for you, the unwitting reader, some entertainment will fall out of this. I think I had 5 readers on the previous blog (Thanks Dave/Adrian/Stacy/Kaity/Jillian). My market analyst tells me that this new strategy will likely reduce me to about two readers. Well I told him to shove it up his butt, and who the hell are you anyway, I don't have a market analyst! Whatever, I'll have to artificially inflate my hit count by visiting my own page from every computer I can get access to. That's not too sad, is it?

Anyway, this is all by way of saying that if I were you, I'd let a few posts build up and then sift through for the good stuff. Wait, no, if I were you I'd send me a large sum of cash for no reason. Is it too late to say that? Or if you're not feeling so charitable but are either bored or obsessive, g'head and just check all the damn time, that's fine with me.

The Rules of Shotgun

1. You must be able to see the car to call shotgun.
2. Shotgun only lasts until you get out of the car. If you stop at a gas station and get out, shotgun is up for grabs again.
3. Shotgun can be trumped by "Slingshot Warrior" unless "Shotgun no Slingshot Warrior" or "Shotgun no battle" is called.
3b. "Indian Rampage" trumps both "Shotgun" and "Slingshot Warrior" unless "no battle" is called. I know this has potential to be very offensive, I didn't make the rules here. Indian Rampage allows the caller to decide where everybody in the car sits, including the trunk but excluding the driver. Indian Rampage is only effective between the hours of 11 and 12 (AM or PM).

The Birds and the Bees

I swear this actually happened.

Monday 6/4 – Went out to the car at lunch and found it covered in a swarm of bees. None of the neighboring cars had bees on them.

Tuesday, 6/5 – 3:00 Soda break at the Silo Bookstore. Walking back to my building with a berry-Dr. Pepper in hand, a duck flew into my head. Yes, I was struck by waterfowl. A mallard swooped in from behind and to the right and whacked me in the temple with his wing. He then landed alongside another mallard who had managed to avoid me and began to quack. I looked around desperately for spectators. None to be found.

Wednesday, 6/6 – Walking to the car after work and a crow was following me and screaming at me. Every time I'd get away a little, he would fly to the tree or building directly overhead and continue squawking at me. Followed me for about 2 blocks, which is the entire distance from my building to my car.

Thursday, 6/7 – Crow was waiting for me in the morning, and followed me back to the building. Terrific, he knows where I live. Now I know crows are smart as hell*, but this one is about to get blasted.

Friday, 6/8 – No remarkable encounters with anything flying. Best day this week.

Saturday, 6/9 – Went to the air show at Mather field. A Thunderbirds solo pilot experienced a 'birdstrike' and had to land. Yeah, we killed the bird, but it damaged a $15 million plane and sunburned 70,000 people. But man, we killed that bird.

Week of 6/10 – Crow follows me to or from the car several times this week. A passing cyclist informs me that the crow is scolding me. Who the fuck asked that guy?

Wednesday, 6/20 – The crow is after me again. This time I hid behind some trees until there was nobody around and then lobbed a few small rocks at it. My ability to throw straight up in the air shames me. Try it sometime, your body gets in the way.

Thursday, 6/21 – Walking around downtown Davis and a bee lands on my shoulder and will not go away. This isn't something that would be worth mentioning at all if it wasn't part of the ongoing chain of 'airborne critters harassing me' events. After 2 minutes of walking around and flapping at it, drastic measures were taken to get rid of the bee. Success, but at the cost of minor loss of clothing. I was getting tired of this shit happening so I squished the bee when it came out. Take that, nature.

Later Thursday, 6/21 – Riding along the American River Bike Trail, where there are tremendous swarms of bugs around dusk. I've never figured out what a swarm of bugs like that does except for get hit by bikers. There were several of those little flippy darty birds flipping and darting around after the bugs, and one such bird darted in front of me and hit me in the armpit. At 20 mph, I sort of hit him too. Dragged it along for a half-second before he got away. Further down the road, as I was wondering what all this meant, I nearly ran over a quail that was walking across the path.

After the first couple of these things I was figuring it was just weird, but now I'm starting to consider my options. They seem to all revolve around building an ark, carrying an attack-rodent, growing gills and living underwater, or generating some sort of force-field powered by crystals and diesel gasoline. Anyway, I'm open to suggestion.

*Crows can use tools. Davis contains a few groves of walnut trees and a huge flock of hungry crows. During the walnut season the crows want to eat the walnuts (no surprise here) but are unable to break the shells. The solution they've devised is to pick up the walnuts and wait for a car to drive by and drop them into the road in front of the car. The car runs over the walnuts, cracks them, and birds feast. The first time I saw it I couldn't believe it, there were actually birds dropping what appeared to be bouncy balls on the road in front of me. Evidently, the crows are unable to distinguish between cars and bicycles, which has resulted in more than one cyclist being pelted with walnuts from above.

For the skeptics who are saying "that's not really using tools"……check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo
BAM!

Only so Complicated...

If you only had one job and you'd been doing it professionally for years and years, you'd think you'd be fantastic at it. Hendrix could play an out of tune guitar and bend the strings to bring it into pitch. Old machinists can feel a screw with their fingers and tell you the thread pitch, and identify what type of steel you're working with by the sparks it throws when you hit it with a grinder. Professional truckers can back up trailers with free pivots in a smoother arc than I can drive my car. Meter readers can go to an apartment complex and read 8 meters at once, and work out the math in their head on the way to the next stop. They say we only use 11% of our brains, and I'm betting the other 89% is there for adaptation (and good ol' laziness).

So why can't a shopping cart company make a cart with 4 wheels that touch the floor? How is it possible that after 25 years cd cases still suck so hard? Why can't the vending machine lady load the snacks so that they actually fall out when you order one? Is it really possible that this entire rant is because of a stuck bag of skittles?

God Gives Man Earwax

Here you go, man, a wax for your ears. No need to apply, it will just sort of occur naturally. This will not affect you and you may not even notice it for quite some time, since you will not have anything proper to stick in your ear for thousands/millions of years, depending on who you listen to. In the future it will become a nuisance when it gets on your headphones and generally grosses people out. Around the same time somebody will invent a swab to clean your ear with, and then immediately tell you not to use it in your ear. For now, if you are fortunate to live long enough to grow ear hair, it will hold it down nicely so that it doesn't blow all willy-nilly when you're running after something. And put on a loincloth, for the love of me.

It's really been quite slow at work.