Thursday, March 31, 2005

Some Advice For You

I feel bad for most people I come in contact with. Most of them are content to live their lives taking orders from The Man, getting stuck in routines, and trying to keep pace with the neighbors. In fact, I don’t even refer to these people as “people”, I just call them “drones”. But, I’m different. I decided a long time ago that I would face life head-on, tirelessly, like a worker bee.

I know that one of the reasons people visit this blog is to get some direction in their life. I also know that when some of you saw the first paragraph of this post you thought to yourself, “Hey Crapples! You’ve lived up to your potential by leading your people, the blogging community, to Funnyland, but how can I live up to my potential?”

My response to this question is two-pronged: (1) Please stop talking to me in your brain. (2) What on earth are you talking about, anyway? And, where’s Funnyland? Is that even a place? You see, if you really want to live up to your potential, one of the first things you need to learn is to formulate precise questions. Right now, frankly, I don’t have a clue what you’re even asking, man.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Insight

I was watching TV with my kids last night when one of the characters on the show got a wedgie. All of the sudden I thought, "Hey wait a minute. Maybe those guys in High School were making fun me."

Friday, March 18, 2005

The Power Of Symbols

Symbols can communicate a thousand words with just one image. Think about some of the symbols that we see in our culture. The American Flag. The Red Cross. The Five Rings of The Olympics.

Personally, I can’t look at the five Olympic rings, for example, without reflecting on the five great pillars of international athletic competition:

  1. Pride
  2. Throwing stuff
  3. I Jump good
  4. Panting
  5. and… I can never remember the fifth one, but if I'm not mistaken it's something about Powerbars.

But, the details aren't important. The point I’m trying to make is that symbols speak volumes. This is why I like to wear Hard Rock Café T-Shirts. My shirt can communicate the sentence, “Dude, I’ve so been to Toronto, or someone I know has been there, unless I bought this shirt at a thrift shop.”

That’s a long sentence, and I don’t want to have to repeat it to everyone I see on the street. So, "Thank you symbols!"

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

CrapMail

CrapMail
Where I Respond to Reader Email.

Last week SH expressed concern about my post titled Down With Evolution. Note: This response will probably make no sense to anyone who hasn't read that original article.

SH Wrote:

I know your joking, but do you really think it's funny for these guys to abuse animals like this? And I don't think animals are as "stupid" as you say. You should read this article. You'll find out that there is a lot more to "stupid" animals than you think.


Then he gave me a link to this story:

My response: This blog has always been about the science, folks. We let the data do the talking here. In that spirit, I'll never forget what Darwin said about artificially augmented animals; namely that they are the only creatures who would survive a nuclear holocaust. Think about that. So, if all of you will shut your mouths for just one freakin'...

... Wait... Actually, maybe they were the only ones who would die in a nuclear holocaust. I can't remember.

Actually, I got a C- in biology, and I probably would have gotten an F except that I think my teacher, Old Man Weatherby, had the hots for me. That's a different story for a different post.

Either way, to make the point more practical for the non-science minded, imagine this: With or without a nuclear holocaust, if you're a female hawk looking for someone to mate with, and when you check out the available males you notice that one of them is wearing a tiny Superman cape; baby, your choice just became very simple.

Similarly, if you're the male hawk, the one with the cape, you'll be thanking Crapples ten minutes later as you fly away into the horizon, abandoning your wife and unborn children to wolves and poisonous snakes.

Check and mate.



As for whether or not I really think butterflies are stupid like I said in my original post: Yes. Yes, I do. If anyone doubts my word, try doing any one of the following activities with a butterfly:

  • Play chess
  • Build a bridge
  • Identify a banana
  • Fix a disposal
  • Make a noise of any kind

I believe you'll find that your butterfly friend, while quite attractive, is actually no help at all with any of these tasks.

So, to summarize the three points that I hope I've made: (1) Darwin was right again, as always. Or wrong. As I said, I'm not really sure on that one. (2) The very mention of Old Man Weatherby's name still totally creeps me out even after 20 years. (3) Butterflies really are just hilariously dumb.

See you next time on, CrapMail.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Sweet Jobs

It's important for men to have a job that sounds impressive. Many men don’t realize, when they’re choosing a career, that they will be talking about it for the rest of their lives with strangers, friends, and relatives; thus they underestimate the social costs associated with having a job, even a great job, that sounds lame.

For example, I had a friend who worked in Dallas as a corporate manager for Piggly Wiggly grocery stores. He was rich, good looking, and nice. He would have been a great catch for any woman. He told me about a time when he was on a bus in Salt Lake City and an attractive woman sat down next to him. She flirted with him for a few minutes, then finally asked him where he worked. He swallowed hard, looked meekly at her, then quietly said, “The Piggly Wiggly”.

She paused. Her face soured. Then out of the blue she started to pretend that she didn’t speak English. This was especially awkward for my friend since they had been talking with one another for the previous ten minutes.

“But, I don’t understand, we’ve been talking in English for like…”

“So sowwy. Me no speeky.”

“But… Please... I’m at corporate headquarters so it’s really not what it…”

“Este es un autobus bonita.”

He realized at that moment that he either had to get a better sounding job or resign himself to life as an apartment dwelling bachelor who eats Raman Noodles three times a week and wears velour sweat pants on the weekends.

A lot of people think that the careers that sound best in social situations are doctor, lawyer, and banker. I disagree. Any young men reading this, take note: If I could live my life over, I’d follow any career path that would allow me to say things like: “I make robot arms that are controlled by monkey thoughts.”

Oh, baby! Take it from Crapples, if you say something like that to a woman on a bus, she’ll be ringing the little bell at your stop before you know it.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

How Time Flies

So, the other day I was at Walmart buying new batteries for my ear-hair clipper when I had the thought, “Is it possible that I’m not as cool as I think I am?”

One thing I'm sure of is that the pace at which I'm aging seems to be accelerating at an alarming rate. A year feels like 3 months felt when I was a kid, which brings me to the subject of this post: Psychologists believe that our subjective experience of the passage of time is a function of its proportional relationship to the amount of time that we’ve been alive. That’s why time seems to speed up as we get older.

For example, one year constitutes one-fifth of the life of a five year old, but only one-twentieth of the life of a twenty-year old. So the twenty-year old will feel four years the same way that the five year old feels one year. The proportions are the same, so the experience of time is the same.

Get it?

Now, according to Ray Kurzweil's Spiritual Machines Time Line, humans will be immortal by 2099. This means, if I understand the proportional theory of time correctly, that our experience of time's passage will speed up infinitely from that moment on.

To an infinitely old being, a billion years will feel exactly like no time passing at all.

I’m actually very concerned about this because I really don’t like to be late for stuff. You could even say that tardiness is one of my hang-ups. I'm afraid the infinite acceleration of my subjective exeperience of time is going to cause all sorts of problems for me at work and elsewhere. For example, I can imagine deciding to lay in bed for a while after my alarm goes off in the morning, then finally getting up to find that I'm a trillion years late for our morning meeting and that the land where my office once stood is now under a billion year old ocean.

That's going to really stink and, frankly, I don't think the boss is going to like it.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Down With Evolution

Sometimes people will come up to me and say, “Hey Crapples! Why don’t you step on that butterfly just for fun or because it will make you popular, cool, or maybe rich.” But, I always respond by saying, “I won’t do it because I know that fundamentally butterflies are just small, really, really incredibly stupid people.”

This is just who I am.

It's my sensitivity to the needs of animals that has lead me to the conclusion that the normal processes of evolution are just not efficient enough to meet their needs.

Listen and learn: Evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years to accomplish even the most boring of animal transformations. It took the giraffe something like 10 million years to get its long neck, for example, and let's not fool ourselves -- it’s not even all that cool looking!

Any really awesome adaptations (e.g., laser eyes, invisibility, stretch arms, freeze rays) would take mother nature a good trillion years to come up with.

Even if you wanted a few features that were only moderately awesome, like glow-in-the-dark fists for example, you’re still looking at a hundred billion years, minimum.

Well, our animal brothers and sisters simply don’t have that kind of time.

That’s why I so appreciate the work of Auger & Loizeau. They are giving mother nature the boost that she needs so that our animal friends can have the advantages that they deserve; advantages like arial attack protection for mice and an acorn positioning system for squirrels. To see more augmentations, click here, then use the little black arrow to scroll through the pictures and descriptions.

Side note: It’s just an idea, but in my opinion Auger & Loizeau should consider adding a few strictly cosmetic animal augmentations to their product line. I’m thinking of things like tiny Superman capes for hawks or maybe pig mustaches. Let's not underestimate the survival benefits of looking good.