Sunday, January 25, 2004

A really helpful invention, if it doesn't exist yet, would be a plastic agitator that users could put in the microwave with something that should be stirred as it cooks. Maybe it would be spring activated, maybe you'd rev it up like a top, using flywheel principles. I was thinking today as I was cleaning the office that among pet neuroses, tearing paper is a pretty inoffensive behavior. I haven't figured out what Snack is trying to train me to do, but apparently I haven't learned. 7:53:28 PM

I was just thinking about how the scams I'd like to see on the Internet would be some kid from Pocahontas, Illinois, emailing millions of people telling them that he is in the process of receiving a large sum of money from his mom, who doesn't want his dad to know about it, requiring transfer of the amount to a third party. That might be the ultimate fun scam - e-mail (and you'd obviously get alot of innocents in the mix) every single Nigerian or South African or e-mail scam nation d'jour with that message. I was also thinking what fun it would be for cyclists to scam people at shopping malls, waving them to follow them in the crowded lot, and then unlocking their bicycle from some tree, trying to motion the car up into the spot. It's such a strage phenomenon - and I dont' know if it's true world-wide - that on beautiful days, people crowd into shopping malls. Maybe it's actually a testament to our fundamental need for community, rather than Romero's more cynical take on zombie consumers. 12:33:01 AM

I just had a dawning tonight, about what makes me more a processualist radical or liberal, maybe even a true Marxist, recognizing capitalism as part of the evolution of humanity, rather than the apex. Living in a society of laws gives me hope in a somewhat damaged and evolving system. Living in a society where we have an established exchange for value, as imperfect as the market is, and in need of an evolving series of rules to ensure we do not entirely destroy ourselves and our planet, keeps my own rational self-interest focused, to some degree, on a higher power. We just got the last check from the Zoo, which is not something we'll see anything from, paying subcontractors and taxes. I could, conceivably, and would if I lived in a less stable community, take the money and run. It wouldn't get me far at all, but if I lived in an a completely anarchist or authoritarian society and I had ready access to even that small an amount, I'd book. I'd head to some place cheap to live, and have a few months of margaritas on the beach, sleeping on the sand, to cap off an otherwise short, brutish existence. In the United States, I'll deposit that money, pay my bills, keeping to the credo of subcontractors first, the golden rule, knowing that we'll have a stable enough society and stable enough economy that I can pretty much bank on the credit rating we'll get, both with banks and the folks we rely on, helping us get to the point where we won't live paycheck to paycheck, or margarita to margarita. 12:17:01 AM