I watched four of my employees this morning struggle mightily with the photocopier like it was cavemen learning about fire. They fought the machine for a half hour before they got it to work again. This copier is brand new, and it already is failing. It’s a Xerox, who has been making copiers since 1959 and things still don’t work.
You’d think if they’d been making the same kind of machine for over six decades they’d have figured this sort of thing out. Nope! Everybody around the planet is still struggling with the same flaws, failure, frustrations, and fury. It’s almost like they build these machines poorly on purpose. So you can pay them for maintenance or have to buy a new one all the time.
Everybody wants to Office Space their photocopier. It will always be so. Aliens don’t even need to blow up the planet to take over. They just need to give every family on Earth their own copier. After one month of dealing with failure, we’ll be begging the aliens to become our overlords. Just as long as they destroy all copiers.
not complying with electronic equipment environmental disposal / destruction laws is the dream of every white collar employee
Five years later I can’t really say my overall opinion of the Olympics has changed much. This boondoggle probably made a whole bunch of Japanese construction guys super rich ala The Bad Sleep Well. Instead, they probably should have spent all the money fixing Fukushima but oh well. What’s a two week sporting event for supermen and superwomen when you can just go ahead and dump a billion gallons of radioactive water into the oceans. Silly oceans, what do they really do for humanity anyways?
What really is kind of crazy is how the IOC and the Japanese government are so hell bent on making this happen. To them the Olympics must happen. All the athletes are already there, rearing to go. Why? What makes these two weeks so special that they have to risk the health of the Japanese nation just so a bunch of creepily machine engineered humans can defeat the other creepily machine engineered humans by 0.15 seconds.
Well, the first answer is money. And the second answer is money. The third answer is politics (Japan sees cancellation as a political failure. Let’s not forget the IOC is a corrupt money pot like FIFA where dishonest men and women go work to take backhanders from politicians and corporations. Don’t think these politicians and businessmen are just gonna go ahead and let the Olympics get cancelled just because somebody’s health might be endangered.
I have this idea for an official Tokyo Olympics commercial. It’s of a random human buying a Coke with a Visa credit card and then getting into their Toyota with Bridgestone tires while wearing an Omega watch and they’re talking on their Samsung phone and so are so distracted as they exit the parking lot they run over a 78 year old Japanese woman on her way to get tested for covid. Then they quick cut to a whole line of rich dudes in suits licking their cigars with 10,000 Yen notes and the CEO of Omega looks directly into the camera and wryly states, “Stupid peasant, she should have gotten out of our way.”
Eh, why bother? I’ll probably just binge watch a BBC series on Netflix for two weeks. Or, like, read a book.
So we’ve started to see a brand new kind of water receptacle in the office lately. It’s the BuildLife Motivational Water Bottle. Here a picture of this insanity:
So you see, the purpose of this bottle is to display the time of day. Then you get to drink as much water to get to that time. Do you get it? Then, if you fall behind you can read all these motivational slogans to keep you going throughout your day. So you can stay hydrated. DO YOU GET IT?! Wow, who would have thought hydrating your body throughout the day could feel like a mandatory work training event where they take a roster.
You know, once upon a time humans were drinking not water, but ultra-low alcohol beer to stay hydrated. Water was poisoned or tainted for the most part. They drank this swill out of simple stone or pottery or animal skins. Now we apparently need something that will set you back a minimum of $13 to look like an idiot. At first I only saw flaky coworkers sporting this. Now a ton of people are.
My personal water source is a nondescript stainless steel bottle in dark blue. I have no idea what brand it is, I don’t care. I think it cost me $5. I think it’s about 24 ounces. Maybe. I drink from it five times a day. I do so without any motivational crap whatsoever. I just do it, it’s a task I set my mind to and I do it. End of story.
I have some questions about the methodology of this bottle though:
1) What do you do if you get up before or after 7 AM? Or go to bed before or after 9 PM?
2) If you’re drinking water at 9 PM for hydration purposes, wouldn’t you get a terrible night’s sleep by going to the bathroom all night?
3) If I fill the bottle with vodka instead of water does the same motivational spirit still count?
4) What happens if I get to 9 PM and I’ve only reached the 5 PM mark? The bottle says NO EXCUSES. What’s the bottle going to do to me when I fail, kidnap my niece? Do I have to beat myself with a wire brush?
5) Is any human being on the planet actually motivated by statements such as “Keep going” or “Tons of ENERGY”? If so, they should severely contemplate their life choices and report to a reeducation camp.
6) Is purchase and display of this bottle more of a personal flair statement first, and a water source second? Kind of like how you wear a tie of your favorite sports team or stupid superhero character?
7) The water bottle is clear, so if you’re outside or it’s hot, you have to suffer all day drinking hot water. Or, constantly have to put it back in the fridge or cooler thus killing the perpetual hydration process the bottle requires.
8) If two people have this bottle, and it’s 3 PM, and one person has met the bottle’s demanded goal, and the other person hasn’t, does the person who’s fallen behind have to cut off their pinky like Yakuza? Is the shame too great?
9) How long will this company / fad last before they go bankrupt and the founder moves onto Etsy to design Hello Kitty water bottles so poorly even the Japanese don’t buy them?
10) Why did I do this post?
We, here, at TAP are here to help. Motivation is for losers. Demotivation is for those who take life seriously and are winners. Here are our bottle recommendations:
7 AM – Congratulations, you woke up, you lived. Nothing else you accomplish today will be just as successful.
9 AM – Drink this water, or you’ll die.
11 AM – Just kidding, you’re going to die one day anyways. Resistance is futile.
1 PM – You have accomplished nothing of actual value today.
3 PM – Whatever you have done today will be meaningless to you in three years.
5 PM – In 147 years, nobody will remember your bleached skeleton ever existed.
7 PM – Are you with family or alone? Either way, you’re alone.
9PM – There is a monster under your bed. It’s the monster inside your head. Fear everything. Sleep tight.
A whole lot of very, very rich and famous people are going to be making their first trips into “space” in the next year or two. There are essentially three private companies getting launches out the door: Amazon, Tesla, and Galactic. These aren’t their actual company names but you all know the three lunatic billionaires behind all this. These genius businessmen / ten year old boys are going to send people up there for millions in coin per ticket. Plus they’ll go up on their own. Bezos is going first.
There’s also an effort to send people up to the ISS. There are currently two competing movie companies sending Russian and American film teams up to the ISS to shoot C grade movies that’ll look like trash. I think Tom Cruise is the American guy, because of course. This is not a joke. He’ll get space madness (his normal demeanor) and treat everybody around him like human garbage (also his normal demeanor) before the drunken Russian botanist puts him out the airlock. Then Cruise will get what he always wanted, seven billion people always able to look at him for all eternity. But seriously, Tom’s a talented fun actor.
But, what exactly is the barrier of space? As in, when are you actually in space. Though behind a play wall, The Economist gives a pretty good background for the accepted definition. But apparently there really isn’t an accepted definition. It’s between 80-100 kilometers up depending on who you ask. BUT, this is not enough altitude to actually put you into orbit. You get up there, see the black, feel some lack of gravity, but you end up coming straight back down to Earth like an artillery shell.
So if Bezos goes up there in his rocket, and only feels weightlessness for a few minutes, and then immediately comes back down on a parabolic trajectory is that actually space? No.
We propose a new definition of space. We’ll call it the Arcturus Space Definition Those Who Disagree Will Be Purged First (ASDTWDWBPF): You have to reach orbit, and then complete a single orbit. Then you’ve been to space. Anything less than that, in terms of altitude or length of time in space, then you haven’t been to space.
Gagarin completed a single Earth orbit 70 years ago. He went to space. If you want in on the space club, you have to match Gagarin’s flight at minimum. Otherwise, you’re a fraud and total loser.
Unrelated picture of a Bond villain who’s actually not going to get to space. So Bond is unimpressed, ignores nonexistent space travel, takes the day off, gets blasted in a Moscow bar, toasts Gagarin, takes three Russian women back to his hotel room.
So my dog, sigh, finally broke through the knowledge tomb door and discovered should could, in fact, and did, in fact, like to eat cicadas. She napped two of them off my brother’s deck during a happy post-covid Memorial Day barbeque. She grabbed them before any of us could intervene. Her pro level digestion took care of those two poor bastards just fine. It’s just gross, and probably unhealthy if consumed in volume.
Now she walks around the apartment courtyard with her tracking radar on as she attempts to locate further cicadas to eat. I have to watch her like a hawk. But, per prior post, most of the cicadas in my apartment courtyard didn’t survive the first few weeks.
And now apparently the government is saying that folks with seafood allergies shouldn’t eat cicadas. I’m not even going to try and wrap that one around my brain, how a cicada can make the body react as if it was a crab?
Also, I somehow (only somewhat) get the whole eating insects thing. Lots of cultures do it. Likely, in order for all humanity to eat meat / fish long term at least some insects will need to be a part of planetary diet, etc. But, sorry, I can’t do it. I don’t get it. Maybe you have to be raised with it? I sure wasn’t.
In a three hour and 34 minute huggable tirade, fueled by esoteric party speak mixed with Xi Thought, Xi Jinping, Ordinary Average Chinese Citizen, Football Lover, Journeyman Bridge Player, & Secret The Walking Dead Aficionado appeared to chart a new path in China’s diplomatic demeanor, according to various news services. Xi promised a “credible, loveable and respectable China.”
Xi’s comments perhaps herald a change in China’s diplomatic verbiage which in the past few years has increasingly focused upon a so called “Wolf Warrior” style of interaction with the world. A current example being China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, calmly, and professionally admonishing critics of China’s handling of covid-19 by promising to “slit the throats of the haters in their sleep; then we steal their family heirloom silverware.”
Xi’s comments might perplex the practitioners of the Wolf Warrior style. Said another anonymous Chinese official, “Look, Wolf Warrior might be a B grade action movie for teenage boys who can’t get a hard-on (Editor’s Note: And will struggle to find a Chinese bride due to gender ratios), but so was Delta Force. In my mind Reagan was always dual wielding a pair of Uzi’s as he defeated the Soviet Union. What we’ve always prayed for is Xi dual wielding a pair of Type 82 machine pistols and tearing through Hong Kong’s financial district like Chuck Norris does in Beirut. After all, Chairman Xi never sleeps, he waits. I truly hope our beloved Chairman isn’t depriving us of this right, this blessed dream.”
Xi also vowed in his speech to make available to the world’s population more “bears and fluffy bunnies”. Zoo enthusiasts were delighted, hoping this meant that additional Chinese pandas would be made available worldwide where they are the darlings of children at any zoo and top billing for any live streaming webcam.
Pundits however contended that Xi might have meant “bears” as in everybody’s favorite lovable honey thieving scamp, Winnie the Pooh. Many wondered if Xi would make an attempt to nationalize his namesake for an internal audience. Children’s movie critics everywhere were fearful of the impacts of Disney’s upcoming 2021 film, Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Adaptation.
“Let’s face it,” said one children’s book author, “China hasn’t really been a fan of intellectual property anyways, so they’ll take what they want, and Disney won’t complain because they essentially work for China. Hell, Disney will probably even apologize to Xi for having had to make him illegally appropriate Winnie in the first place. They’ll pay him back royalties or something.”
The Arcturus Project 