I'm back from skydiving this past weekend with Ria, her crazy cousin Kat (Cat?), Jimmy, and Mike. It's a great experience, and you should definitely give it a try.
Ria posted some pictures at her livejournal, so if you're curious to know what we looked like in jumpsuits (or what Jimmy looks like when his instructors face is buried in his crotch) you should check it out.
In less than 12 hours, I will be falling out of the sky, plummeting towards the earth at heretofore unfelt speeds. If you don't see me again, it's because of some accident with my parachute and I'm probably dead (or worse, terribly crippled and better off dead).
Alternatively, I might have a ball of a time soiling myself as I cry for my mommy (who just had her birthday) as I fall closer and closer to the ground.
That is all. Good night, and may you all be doing something that makes you smile just a little bit wider to yourself before you sleep.
Why is airport security so bad? It's at this really uncomfortable place in the spectrum of no-security to extreme-security, where it's just enough to inconvenience everybody without doing anything to protect anyone. To make matters worse, this probably makes people feel more secure than they really are (which is worse than feeling less secure than you really are).
There was one time I was going back up to Berkeley and had bought a big box of altoids (with the nice rounded square tins) to take with me. I had them in my carry on luggage, all laid out in a pleasant grid in the middle of all my clothing. They scanned it at the security terminal, and decided it looked kind of shady so they opened it up and took a look inside. After seeing it was just a bunch of Altoid boxes, they let me go.
The problem is, they didn't look inside.
I could have had all sorts of unpleasant things in my little boxes (e.g. C4, drugs, biotoxins, etc.) and they would have never known. It's way too easy to pass things off on one of the guards because they don't want to look like uptight assholes, so they may as well not even be there.
I have a much more organized argument when it's not 1:30am and I'm playing poker at the same time. I'm sure I'm not alone on this; undoubtedly many of my friends are smart enough to figure out that all this hooplah about airport security has bought us nothing but inconvenience.
Every now and again I get into a hating mood. I've hated on all sorts of things in my last few decades. First there were naps; then came doing homework and playing piano; along came religion, and following shortly thereafter came pharmacists (though there was no relation between pharmacists and religion, it just happened that way). Sometimes I think to myself, "I should really stop all this hating and be a big ball of sunshine instead." Which isn't to say I'm not usually a big ball of sunshine -- just that I should be a bigger ball.
But more often than not, what happens is when I'm done hating on one thing, it's time to start hating all over again.
But all good things (and bad) must come to an end, and maybe it's time to stop hating. I like naps now, just had one today. Might have two tomorrow. I like playing piano, and what I record seems to come out alright. Religion's gotten tired, since everybody's crazy (really, EVERYBODY). There are pill vending machines coming out little by little, so the whole pharmacist hating thing's probably going to become nonsensical in the next few decades.
Besides which, hating's getting boring, except on movies. Hating on crappy movies is all sorts of fun, especially ones that Spielberg directs and Tom Cruise acts in. Half of it comes from Speilberg being a wanker, the other half comes from Cruise being a total psychopath.
The moral of this story: Stop making bad movies.
More meaningful stuff tomorrow. My little knot of anger's coming unraveled and I'm finding it hard to be pissy again.
This week's movie review: the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The short: It's awesome.
The long:
* It's deliciously absurd in all the right places
* Johnny Depp is an amazing actor
* The oompa loompa dance routines are very well done
* The oompa loompas in general are hilarious
* Tim Burton gives the movie a surreal atmosphere that can only be described as Burtonesque
* It's not as dark as the original, and Gene Wilder isn't gracing the screen with his own brand of excellent acting either, but the movie takes on a flavor of its own that's just as good as the first.
In summary: Tim Burton good; Steven Spielberg bad. Johnny Depp good; Tom Cruise bad.
Apparently, there are now pharmaceutical ATN-like vending machines. It's too bad I missed out on jumping into the industry, and couldn't play an important role in how it unfolds. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to seeing how the advent of these machines affects the retail pharmacist market. If all goes well, in the next 40 years well see retail pharmacists phased out of existence.
And to all the people who are getting their panties in a bundle over these machines eliminating the retail pharmacist market: with each market that ends, several new ones are created in their places. Think about all the research pharmacists, programmers, and engineers who will now have jobs designing bigger and better machines, improving their user interface and the customer's experience, repairing the machines when something goes wrong, and the businesses which can develop from this.
In tangentially related brain droppings, if your job can be easily replaced by a machine, don't complain about how much money you're making. That's just begging to have your sorry meat body replaced by a tireless metal frame. Welcome to the matrix!