Blunder Down Under

This chart is interesting--it's the actuarial life table used by the Social Security Administration. What it tells me is that I have theoretically 45 more years of hanging about. That's enough time for eggheads to get off their asses and finally build a flying car, right? I think so. Come on already: give us a flying car.

I'm sure you've probably read about how the U.S. is going to attempt to shoot down a faulty satellite before it crashes into Earth and spills its toxic fuel payload. First of all, whose idea was it to launch a toxic fuel satellite in the first place? It makes sense to launch something like a cellular communications satellite, but a toxic fuel satellite? That's just silly. What else do they have up there? Satellites filled with dirty diapers and Africanized bees? As indicated in the previous paragraph: eggheads = suck. Secondly, is it just me, or does this story have "zombie movie" written all over it? Seeing as how I'm obsessed with zombie movies, it's probably just me. But still: it's an obvious setup--either the military is unable to destroy the satellite and it crashes into the ocean, OR the military blows up the satellite in such a way that it spreads toxic fuel mist over part of the United States. Either way: ZOMBIES. I think it would work best if they missed the satellite and it went down in the ocean, for this simple reason: the world demands a movie with a zombie whale in it. How long have we been waiting for this? Almost as long as we've been waiting for the flying car, I think. Let's get to it, people.

I have now typed the word 'satellite' far too many times for my own good.

The other day at work the printer was malfunctioning; after troubleshooting the situation for about 10 seconds, I determined exactly what the problem was: the rolling mechanism on the right side of the printer was broken and was causing paper jams. As it was something that I couldn't fix, I prepared to take the steps to have the technician come in for maintenance. This, however, didn't stop about five of my male coworkers from coming up to me at regular intervals to explain to me (a) that the printer wasn't working (no shit), (b) what steps they had taken to fix the problem (none of which had anything to do with anything), and (c) their theories on what our next step should be (all of which were about as sound as Homer's theory of the donut-shaped universe). Now, I don't want to generalize about an entire gender, but it's Friday so what the hey: what is it about men that causes them to do things like this? It seems like whenever you encounter a situation involving a mechanical breakdown, you will also invariably encounter multiple dudes who try to take command of the situation and "fix" or "advise" on how to fix the problem; typically, these guys have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. It reminds me of an incident when I was in college. My friend Casey and I were huge Seinfeld fans, and so we decided to watch the finale of the series together at Casey's apartment, because his roommate had an incredibly large TV. Unfortunately, Casey's apartment shared a balcony with another apartment full of blowhard dudes. They were nice enough guys, but they were blowhards. Cut to the night of the finale: I show up at Casey's place to watch the show. But, there's a slight problem: there's something wrong with the TV's connection and the picture is slightly snowy. No big deal, though: the TV was still perfectly viewable. One dude from the next apartment wanders over, sees the TV, and asks us what's wrong. We say we don't know, and we don't care. He tries to "fix" the TV--after dicking around behind the TV for a minute or two, he declares that he can't figure it out; in the meantime, he's made the picture snowier and less viewable. In the next few minutes, this exact sequence of events repeats itself two or three more times, with the end result that there is no longer any viewable picture on the television, meaning that Casey and I have to watch the show on his tiny TV in his bedroom. Thanks for nothing, jerks. This is why the Mad Max movies always made sense to me: it showed an honest vision of what the world would be like, not after a nuclear war, but after a bunch of know-it-alls tried to fix shit after a nuclear war had occurred and made things exponentially worse. The lesson in all of this is simple: if something breaks, bury it in the dirt, move to Australia, and await further instructions.