Seeping Matter

Call me a humbug but I have a hard time getting into a lot of holiday music.  Some holiday songs, like “O Holy Night,” I absolutely love and would enjoy them any time of the year.  But some of the other stuff I have a hard time with and it usually takes me clear until about Christmastime until I’m feeling it; of course, by then it is about time to put the Christmas music away for another 11 months.

I tried to remedy this problem one year by buying Twisted Sister’s “A Twisted Christmas” album, but it honestly didn’t help much.  Frankly this album sounds like something they just threw together one afternoon, much like most other Christmas albums.

Some holiday songs sound like they were recorded after a few too many mugs of adult-style eggnog.  For example, I wouldn’t want the guy who sings “It’s A Marshmallow World” driving me home after a Christmas party:

Izzza marshmallow worl dinna winner,
Wenda sno comesta cubuda groun,
uh, duh duh day, blah blah blah blah ay,
I wayfer idda holear roun!

Some make sense for us Mormons but not so much for others.  One is “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” clearly written to be sung at tithing settlement which occurs at the end of the year at Christmastime:

Good tithings we bring to you and your kin,
Good tithings for Christmas and a happy new year!

Here, “kin” pretty obviously means “counselors” and possibly also “financial clerk.”

This is also the song my sister infamously sung at high volume in my father’s ear all the way home from Heber one Christmas season, in the following completely ironic manner:

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
AND A HAPPY NEW EAR!!!!!

Some songs simply don’t make any sense to me at all, like this one (as best I can tell these lyrics are correct):

Frosting the snowman is a jolly happy goal,

But the plain fact is the stuff won’t stick, and your snowman will just fall apart anyway if you try it, and it really doesn’t taste that good anyway, because if your snowman is anything like mine there’s a bunch of sticks and grass packed into the snow anyway, so there’s really no point in it.

Perhaps the best example I can think of this is the holiday classic “All The Dang Signs.”  They sing this all the time at New Years and even at the end of that holiday classic (and one of my favorite movies), “It’s A Wonderful Life.”  But nobody really knows the lyrics, which go like this:

Should all the quaintens be for naught
And never brought to mines?
Should all the quaintens be for naught
And all the dang signs?
Yes all the dang signs, my friend,
For all the dang signs,
We’ll spend a cup and kind of cheer
For all the dang signs.

Anyway, happy and prosperous 2012 everyone.

Karate is a form of martial arts that you may find mysterious.  I did too until I did a little research and found that it is actually really easy to understand.  Here’s all you need to know about karate:

• The primary purpose of karate is to break things, like boards.
• Sound effects are very important in karate.  Every striking move has an associated sound.  Fortunately there are only two striking moves — the kick and the hit.  When you kick you have to say, “Haaaaa!”  And when you hit you have to say, “Hi-Yaaa!”
• In karate it is illegal to punch with your hand.  You have to strike in a chopping motion.

Apparently, drugs can mess with your mind, and stuff.

Some time ago I was attending Microsoft’s TechReady conference in Seattle with a few of my teammates.  I don’t sleep well when I’m away from home so I generally take Ambien at night to help me sleep so I’m not a complete disaster during the days at the conference.

One night at the beginning of the week I had already taken my Ambien and was waiting for it to kick in.  Since I needed to sync up on some schedule planning with one of my teammates I decided to fire off a quick e-mail.  Whoops.  It really wasn’t helpful, but it was pretty funny.

I really have no idea what most of this is even about, but you can definitely tell that I’m falling asleep along the way.  I’ve fast-forwarded to the good part.  (Names and confidential details removed.)

I would feel better about this if I knew [teammate] was covering the stuff I’m missing.  Let’s start talking that way tomorrow when we are trying to decide when we cn a plansll.  I sent out an unvitation to a dinner at cheesecake factorqay, so [teammate] shoule llo ve that.  We can findine the meetin schedule over dinner therer.  Then wenb we get back to the olifwe 8 yu  can sweettak the peoples into getting gus a meeting room on the cheap. Maybeww sese ccan we=just meet here insteaed ov hainf to go find someppleace priavete to have our team planinig sessin.If those schedules also work for [teammate] that gives us two longish sections where we wcould gt stuff done, hopeulllf at some time when Im not so tierad as I am now.  I thin k the ambien is really kickin in.

Sometimes, dreams are just dreams.  But sometimes they are more than just dreams.  Sometimes you learn something really valuable.

Last night I had just such a dream.  I was heading off to work, carpooling with a person from my neighborhood with whom I never carpool.  For some reason we were in my hometown of Roosevelt.  We were turning onto my parent’s street when we were held at the intersection to wait for a passenger jet airplane, which came hurtling down my parent’s street and into the parking lot of the strip mall at the end of the street, pulled up abruptly and banked hard right to avoid running into the store at the back of the parking lot, then leveled out and pulled up hard again, then banked hard right again 180 degrees and pulled up a third time to complete the take-off.

Someone commented to me, “Only the very best pilots fly in and out of here.”

At about this point the person with whom I was carpooling said to me, “So, how do you want to square up on the carpooling?”

I said, “Well, what did you have in mind?”

“Well, I usually charge $25 to carpool plus mileage at a minimum.”

“Okay.  See you at work,” I said as I walked off toward my (not my parent’s) house.

I thought to myself, “I’ll just drive my ’67 Camaro to work.  It’s a nice day today anyway.”

I walked back toward my parent’s home and watched another airplane take off.  ”This is weird.  This seems like a dream,” I thought to myself.  I pinched myself pretty hard on the arm.

“Ouch,” I said.  I didn’t wake up though.  I kept walking toward my house to get into my Camaro.

Then I woke up later.  ”That WAS a weird dream,” I thought.

Like I said, sometimes you learn from your dreams.  For example, I learned that pinching yourself doesn’t really wake you up.  That’s good to know for future reference.

That last post reminded me of a funny story.  It is 100% true.

It was April of 2000 and we had just moved to Utah because I’d taken a job at Novell.  We were closing on our home the following day and I had just received a paycheck I needed in order to close on our new home.

Some of you already know where this is going.

I walked into the bank with paycheck in hand.  I went up to the counter and said, “I need to deposit this check, and then I need to draw a counter check for certified funds in [x] amount.”

The teller looks up my account information and says, “Uh, you don’t have enough money in your account to draw a check for certified funds in that amount.”

“Well, that’s why I’m depositing this check, see.”

“We have to wait for the money from that check to clear before we can draw a check for certified funds with that money.”

“How long does that take?” I asked.

“Usually two or three business days.”

“Well, that is not going to work for me.  I need to close on a home tomorrow!”

“I’m sorry, sir, that is our policy.  I’m afraid there is nothing I can do for you.”

I thought for a minute, nearly stepped away from the window.

Then I said, “Can I cash this check instead?”

“Well, yes sir, you can cash your check, if you want.”

“Alright,” I said.  ”I would like to cash this check.”

I endorsed the check and she counted out the money into my hand.  But I didn’t leave.

“Is there something else I can help you with?”

“Yes, just a question.  If I deposit this cash, can you draw a check for certified funds using this cash?”

She looks at me, a bit stymied.  ”Well, yes.”

I handed her the cash she had just given me.  ”I would like to deposit this cash into my account, and then draw a counter check for certified funds for [x] amount.”

She proceeded to do just as I asked.  We closed on the house the next day.

(Homework assignment:  Essay:  Should I feel more annoyed at such a stupid rule with such an obvious workaround, or at the fact that an employee of the bank was unable to identify the workaround and help me out?  Discuss.)

I don’t know if you guys knew this, but I’m dang funny.

I’m not kidding around here.  Well, actually, I sort of am.  But really, I’m hilarious.

I mean it.

In fact, I’ve been told that I’m too funny.  I tell too many jokes.  People don’t appreciate that.  I totally get it, too.  It hurts to laugh too much, plus you start to cry and you blow snot all over yourself.

In Heinlein’s book “Stranger in a Strange Land,” the story of the human Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars and brought back to earth to learn how to behave like a human, one of the hardest things for him to learn was to have a sense of humor.  As the book goes, Martians had no concept of humor and the humans had a hard time teaching Michael about humor and why people laugh.

Initially Michael was told that people laugh when something is funny, which means it is something happy or something that makes him happy.  Yet Michael knew that people also felt happiness through love, and friendship, and achievement, and yet those sorts of things didn’t make people laugh.  It wasn’t until some time later that Michael came to the realization that things are funny not because they are happy, but because they are painful.  People laugh to deal with the pain, the irony, the frustration, the sadness.  Not because they are happy.

Jerry Seinfeld says, “What’s the deal with airline food?”  We laugh because we are thinking, “Yeah, no kidding.  Airline food is lame!”  Brian Regan says, “I before E, except after C, and when sounding like ‘A’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and you’ll always be wrong no matter what you say!”  We laugh because we think, “For sure.  I can never figure out how that rule is supposed to work!”  I say, “People hate to laugh because they blow snot all over themselves.”  You laugh because you think, “I know, that is so embarrassing, and now I have to wash these clothes.”

We don’t laugh at jokes about airline food because we love it so much.  We laugh because it is so annoying.  Michael Smith (or Heinlein, technically) was right — we laugh because it hurts, not because it is happy.

This is why I’m finding it odd that some people don’t like me making such funny jokes because my humor is too cynical and sarcastic.  According to Heinlein, it wouldn’t be so darn funny if it wasn’t a little painful.  And we know that Heinlein could not be wrong.  After all, he wrote Starship Troopers, which was a great story before Paul Verhoeven ruined it.

In other words, it isn’t the cynicism or sarcasm that is inappropriate.  It is the humor that is inappropriate.  It’s like I’m trying to tell you, I’m literally too funny.  I can’t help myself.  I start out trying to have a serious blog post and the next thing you know you are scrubbing snot off your monitor.

Sorry.

So last night was the big finale of “Lost,” the TV show sensation that proved you don’t actually need to have a workable plot to make uber-gazillions of dollars selling flashing pictures to people.

I haven’t actually watched the finale yet.  I may or may not, but the murmur I’ve seen on the interwebs about it today indicates that the finale is probably pretty much what I thought it would be.

A month or so ago I read about this in my issue of “Wired.”  I like Wired, but admittedly the authors are guilty of a bit of fanboyism with some things.  Like Google.  And Apple.  And, apparently, Lost.  They did a big write-up where, among other things, they discussed with the writers of “Lost” many of the unsolved questions in Lost up to that point, and asked the writers if all the questions would be answered.  The writers pontificated, talked in circles, praised themselves and their genius, and in many other ways answered, to paraphrase:  No, not really.

I was going to post a link to the Wired article, but I changed my mind because they used a potty word.  But you can get pretty much the gist of it here.

Anyway, I figure I better chip in here, to help people understand the finale of “Lost.”  I think I owe it to the global economy to just cut to the chase here and end the debate.

Episode 1: A bunch of people miraculously survive a jet airliner crash-landing on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, only to find they are deserted there.

Episodes 2-(Finale-1): The writers attract a devoted following as they create more questions than answers by throwing everything into the show they can think of.  Lifelike inanimate objects.  Unexplained wild animals.  Intricate past and future lives.  A mysterious sequence of numbers.  Others.  Dharma Initiatives.  Moving islands.  Magnets.  Time travel.  Alternate universes.  Nuclear weapons that don’t kill people.  Dead people who are not dead.  An island that needs protecting.  As best I can explain it, the writers would get together on Monday, do drugs all week long, and on Friday they’d take whatever they happened to write down or remember from the week and make that into a show.

Finale: Panic sets in as the writers realize that people want an ending.  Then they remember:  We’re artists!  We’re elite!  We don’t have to explain ourselves!  If the audience can’t understand our art, that makes them uncultured swine!  And we can even tell them this and they will worship us all the more!  We don’t have to explain anything!

Somewhere in here, in an incredible act of hubris, they actually tell people in magazine interviews that they are doing this.  And even more incredibly, most people hear this and say, “Oh, yes!  We ARE uncultured swine!  Thank you for not answering any of our questions!”

Anyway, I hope this clarifies things for you.

Have you ever sent your child to school when they had a sore throat?

You probably thought it wasn’t too serious.  You probably didn’t want to have to deal with them being home sick.  You probably didn’t want to have to take a day off work or cancel your lunch date with your girlfriends.  (By the way, if that last one applies to you, I hope you are a girl, or not married.)

Anyway, you sent your child to school with a sore throat.

Well, guess what, Mr. Selfish-Pants?  Your child has strep throat!  Yep.  You didn’t even know it.

And then, since your child has strep, and since your child is in class with my child, now my child has strep.

And guess what else?  Maybe my child reacts differently to strep.  Maybe instead of just getting strep throat, my child gets a much more severe infection.  Did you know that thousands of children under the age of 12 are hospitalized each year for strep infections?

I’m not really sure if that is true, because I just made it up.

Nevertheless, maybe my child has a severe reaction.  Maybe my child ends up having some form of vasculitis or a fever or severe muscle and joint pain or pneumonia or swelling in her abdominal organs!  Maybe my child ends up severely ill and hospitalized for days and days while doctors try to figure out what is wrong!  Other than the fact that she gets to take narcotics, almost nothing good has come out of this!  All because you sent your child to school with strep throat.

That’s not all.  Maybe I had to miss several days of work to help take care of my sick child in the big scary hospital.  Maybe this happened right at the end of a project deadline, so as a result maybe my project missed its delivery date.  Maybe that means that our software product is not going to ship on time.  All because of you.

If that were to happen, maybe Microsoft misses its earnings projections. (In seriousness, please see below. Really.)  As a result of reporting bad earnings, our stock tanks, costing thousands of Microsoft employees and other shareholders thousands or even millions of dollars.  Revenues in Best Buy stores in the Redmond, Washington area drop 50% over the previous year due to unrealized bonuses.  The economy plummets as the S&P drops hundreds of points in a single day due to Microsoft’s bad numbers.

People all over the country lose their jobs due to the tanking economy.  This death cycle continues as one company after another fails to meet revenue targets.  More and more people lose their homes.  Homeless rates skyrocket.  Anarchy reigns as people band together in small militias to stay alive, using force to raid convenience and grocery stores for food and water.  Larger militias take over entire towns and enforce their will through starvation of those who will not align under their rule.

Martial law is put into effect as the entire country becomes a military state in attempt to maintain some semblance of peace.  Basic freedoms guaranteed by the constitution are lost as the military takes over.  Local militia groups band together under an evil leader and take over the government by military coup, installing that leader as a supreme fascist dictator in a new communistic government.  Millions are needlessly slaughtered in public executions in order to bring the rest of the populace under control.

Then a huge asteroid is discovered, hurtling through outer space and heading straight for Earth.  And since the government has been overthrown and the new government no longer has any money, we can’t hire the world’s best deep-water drilling team to come and learn how to be astronauts in two weeks and fly up into outer space, slingshot around the moon at 35 g’s and drill into the asteroid, put nukes in there and blow it up.  The asteroid hits earth and everyone and everything on earth dies.

All because you sent your child to school with a sore throat.  You selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish little self-centered selfish-person, you.

DISCLAIMER: I work for Microsoft, but I don’t speak for Microsoft. I already said this before, but I’m just making sure you know, in case you don’t know how to tell when I am joking around. Seriously, I have no idea how our earnings will go. I have absolutely no inside information. I’m just a peon. Whatever you do, don’t make investment decisions based on my blog posts. If you saw my portfolio you would know what I’m talking about.

On Twitter I just announced that I’m starting a new fund:  the “Build Matt a Private Indoor Lap-Swimming Pool” fund.

I’m so excited about this new venture.  If successful, I’m sure it will bring me a lot of joy, and hopefully it will do the same for all the contributors.

Here’s how it works:

• I want a private indoor lap-swimming pool.
• I don’t have any money.
• Other people have money.  Maybe even YOU.
• You contribute money to my fund.
• I build a private indoor lap-swimming pool.
• I’m happier.
• Maybe you will be happier.

I know you are eager to contribute and become a Partner.  Here are the different levels of contribution:

• $10000 – Gold Partner
• $5000 – Silver Partner
• $2000 – Bronze Partner
• $1000 – Iron Partner
• $500 – Tinfoil Partner

Minimum contribution is $500.  Gold Partners get their names printed in a little plaque that I might display inside the pool.  And they also get a 50% discount on swimming at my pool between the hours of 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.

Talk about win-win.  I know you are excited, so feel free to contact me for more details on how to contribute.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So, uhhhh, hmm…..

Wulllllllllllllllll…….

I, uhhh, was told, uhhh, at work that, uhhhh, they, uhhh, wish I were, uhhh, as passionate about, uhhhh, my job as, uhhhhh, my blog.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, hrrrrmmmmmmm.   This is, uhhhh, a problem, hrm.

So, uhhh, that’s it.  No more, uhhhhhh, interesting posts.  Only, uhhhhh, boring posts.  From now on.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh, bye.