Vegas pictures

I went to Vegas last weekend, with the full motley crew of drunks and the People Your Mother Warned You About.

Here's the visual documentation:

http://www.comicore.com/~tobin/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=Vegas2005

What's that? You're too lazy to click but want a taste anyway? Okay, since you insisted.

hard jobs

I heard a woman talking on the radio the other day, and what she said made me angry enough that it's been bouncing around my head for a few days.

She was talking about classes and taxation, and to paraphrase, said:

"Those office workers are always complaining about how hard their jobs are. If you want to really see a hard job, try scrubbing toilets for 12 hours a day. That's a hard job."

Now, this may offend the political sensibilities of my liberal friends, but this is complete bullshit. And I hear statements like this all the time.

Scrubbing toilets isn't hard. Flipping burgers isn't hard. Tedious, yes. Tiring, yes. Maybe a shitty job all around, yes. But it's not hard. Anyone can do it, with no training, very little in the way of having to exercise responsibility, decision making, or problem solving.

One way to find out if a job is harder than another is to take any two people, and have them switch jobs. Which of them is able to do the other person's job? Or, in some cases, which of them is able to learn to do the job faster? Setting aside questions of individual intelligence, that will teach you pretty quickly which job is harder.

People don't like to think about the fact that the capitalist system extends pretty cleanly into the job market, like it does with the goods that we buy, and that your salary is basically a reflection of your job difficulty. If you make $8/hr, your job probably isn't hard. And the thing is, you KNOW this. Because you probably hate your job, and the thing keeping you from switching to a job that pays more is that it's more difficult.

And it's just another symptom of the fact that no one defends the talent class in this country that people can say something like that and no one objects. You're speaking into a microphone that someone with a hard job designed. You're driving a car that someone with a hard job dreamed up and made a reality. But fuck em, they make a decent salary, so they're the prissy wealthy elite. It's so convenient to take these people for granted, because they won't object.

These so-called elite will agree with bullshit statements like this at parties, or on the radio, because they feel guilty for their success. It's oh so enlightened and popular for those who have success to be self-deprecating and accept the slurs about the ease of their lives.

But what it is really is condescension. Instead of telling people that the way to get out of their situation is further education or initiative, they just pretend that the jobs are really hard and noble, while internally not believing a word of it. Instead of encouraging them to do more, they inflate what they're currently doing. It's insulting to the people with difficult jobs to belittle them, and it's insulting to people with menial jobs to lie to them.

chuck

Sometimes, I really love Chuck Palahniuk. Yes, he actually did write books other than Fight Club. Check them out.

"We all watch the same television programs. We all hear the same things on the radio, we all repeat the same talk to each other. It's like we all have the same artificial memory implants.

We remember almost none of our real childhoods, but we all remember everything that happened to sitcom families. We have the same basic goals. We all have the same fears. The way ants are. Insectile. Sheep.

The big question people ask isn't 'What's the nature of existence?' The big question people ask is What's that from?"

This is from 1999, but it's more true of our generation, the internet generation, than of any generation before it. We've become machines that pass around links to things that other people have done, or amusing video clips, or stories. We've become a generation of watchers. We've become URL forwarding automatons, devoid of personal content.

simpsons

Man, I haven't watched the Simpsons for a while, but I did tonight.

This show is much funnier than it used to be. I don't think kids will get any of these jokes. Tonight's episode, they went to China to pick up an adopted baby, and the adoption worker was talking to Lisa:

"Lisa, soon you'll have a Chinese baby sister who will surpass you academically."
"I don't know about that, I'm considered pretty smart."
"Well, Tibet was considered pretty independent. How'd that work out?"

Jesus!

And they went to the embalmed body of Chairman Mao and made fun of it.

That's some funny shit.

an open letter

Dear Car Makers of the World-

Please, please bring back fins. Why can't I buy a car with fins anymore?

I want a big car with no top, and fins. Big fins, with tail lights on the very tip of them.

Stop making cars that look like faggy euro-trash. The new Mustang looks like they took an old Mustang from the glory days, and let a bunch of French cars gang rape it, and then sold the bastard offspring.

Even good old Cadillac sold out. No more boatlike monstrosities, just crappy little eurotrash looking bastards that blend in with the rest of the crap on the road.

Oh well. Here's proof that there is a god. And he hates you very, very much:

i like this quote

"You're looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person - someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, 'This is the problem I want to have.' I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way."

-Andrew Boyd

augh!

I'm not normally the kind of guy who gets "nervous bladder" in the bathroom.

But it's really weird when the CEO of your company steps up next to you while you're at the urinal with a cheery "How's it going!". I don't chat much at the pisser in the first place, so it took some serious concentration.

"Uh, hi. How's the whole being rich and running a company going?"

Heh.

Actually, he's insanely cool and down to earth, which I really dig. And he is regularly here when I arrive, and still here at 10pm that night. The man really gives a damn. I love this place.

please look at your entire AIM window

I've had this problem with several of my friends lately, so I figured I'd do a public service announcement.

It's possible that a lot of you type while looking at your fingers, or you just have really bad attention spans.

I've noticed that many of you have conversational difficulties on AIM when it comes to two people speaking simultaneously. You don't look back more than one line, and if it's the one you've typed, you miss anything else. This is hard to explain, so I'll give an example:

Other Person: Something part 1
Other Person: Something part 2
Tobin: Question or comment about Something
Other Person: Something part 3

Then silence.

My comment or question is sitting there, waiting, one line above the last thing they wrote. On most screens, this is about 1/4 of an inch.

But they're blind. Blind to the fact that I spoke. And I just sit there unbelieving, stunned that they're really not going to answer me. And the seconds go by, and I finally ask the question again, and they respond immediately.

And I try to picture this. Someone sitting there, waiting for me to respond. All they have to do is look at their screen to see that I've already responded. It's right there. But by some horrible brain malfunction, if they're the last person who spoke, they figure nothing else could have possibly happened.

It happens with LOTS of people, too. I wouldn't call it an epidemic, but it's common enough among intelligent people that it mystifies me.

So stop it already.

it's funny because i hate you

God bless you, somethingawful.com.

ah the joys of working at a dot-com

Here's a shot of me with my new coworkers.

Look at these scary bastards and then think for a minute that they're involved in running and designing a nationwide voice over IP network that has to date serviced over 3 billion phone calls.

Man, do I love my new job.

winchester mystery house = 0wn3d.

Man, having Pauly visit was a trip and a half.

I forget how cool east coast girls are until they show up and offend everyone I know.

I need to head back out there for a visit. Soon.

museum hacking

This is the first use of podcasts that didn't strike me as totally useless and pretentious. A medium mostly filled with people talking at great lengths about nothing, at a speed much less than you can read, the idea of podcasts for anything other than music has always seemed wasted on me.

But not now.

When you go to a museum, you can often rent a set of headphones and listen to someone describe the art in a boring monotone. What if people could write their own museum tours, podcast them to you, and you could walk through and listen to an alternative soundtrack? I love the idea.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/28/arts/design/28podc.html?ex=1274932800&en=db1c6d7173dcc0b6&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

"an unofficial, homemade and thoroughly irreverent audio guide to MoMA, downloaded onto her own iPod.

The creators of this guide, David Gilbert, a professor of communication at Marymount Manhattan College, and a group of his students, describe it on their Web site as a way to "hack the gallery experience" or "remix MoMa," which they do with a distinctly collegiate blend of irony, pop music and heavy breathing. It is one of the newest adaptations in the world of podcasting."