Odds on the lottery

When I say the Name Dan Young Jr., I'm guessing that 98% of you don't know who I'm reffering to. And with only 5 active readers, that means 4 of you don't know at all and one of you has a one-in-ten shot of knowing what's up. Memory jog: he was released from prison in January 2005 after having spent 13 years rotting away on false accusations. A DNA test showed that he had absolutely nothing to do with the murder he had been physically beaten into confessing to. And his recompense from the state? After those 13 years in prison, the state decided this poor soul should be "awarded" $150,000; a whopping 11.5 grand for each year he was penned up. That's less than a full-time, minimum wage job without any raises, ever. Yay for our legal system! Because in Fresno, California, a woman was awarded--and this time, awarded is quite right--$1.7 million. And what for? Years of imprisonment and beatings from the ever-friendly policemen? Nay, her torture fell just shy of dear Dan Young Jr.'s: Janet Orland was "spanked" in front of her colleagues at work for no more than 10 seconds, in a "camaraderie-building exercise." This probably wasn't even straight-up sexual harassment in that sense, and she walks away with a cool 1.7 mil, 40 grand of which was for "future medical costs." You know, for when her hip bones explode from the obvious hairline fractures that that severe beating must have caused. 450 grand was for emotional distress. Clearly, she suffered at least 39 years of false imprisonments' worth of distress from that spanking. If this were truly the case, than the spankings I got as a kid that acutally hurt should be bringin' me a nice clean... I dunno, ball-park it at 2.5 million. Give or take.

Man, I really hate our legal system sometimes. Not because it is flawed in itself, but because people take advantage of it so badly. 12 complete morons had to sit there and listen to some old bat whine about how some guy spanked her, and how clearly that was worth an entire life's work in cold, hard cash. And then these morons go and agree with her.

Just to make things worse, the Dan Young Jr. saga didn't end there. 15 months later, that poor gent still hasn't recieved his check for 150,000 yet. The governer hasn't signed off on it. Who knows how long he has even had it on his desk. Lucky for Illinois that Dan is just happy to be free again. He has a low IQ and had never learned to read or write before prison. After prison, he concentrated on learning to read the Bible and steadily performing at his assembly line job. He taught himself to be able to write enough so that he could send cards to friends and family on birthdays and holidays. Not that it really matters in the end, though. The state saved themselves that $150,000; Dan Young Jr. was killed by an SUV in a hit-and-run on Thursday. Gotta love SUV drivers.

Chances have got to be hundred's of times in favor of winning the Mega Millions as opposed to what happened to Dan. This whole ordeal makes me so mad I could vomit. But then, I would get sued for millions of dollars at the distress this could cause someone who might see it happen from down the street.

Morbidly depressed? Time for a new post!

So, after that last post, I needed a couple days to specifically not post. It was all killer-depressing, and I don't much care for those types of posts. So now we get the ultra-crazy post!
Pertaining to the story that is about to be unearthed, Chris and Dan can attest to the truths that lie herein:

Death Cab for Cutie show. What a bizarre experience. Not because of the show itself, but because of particular individuals that we met in conjunction with the show. I'm not even sure if met is really the right word to use here. But anyway, the show was in downtown Detroit, and since I now work and drive there all the time, I was elected for driving duty. Little did I know that 30 minutes later, as we pull into the Fox parking lot ( a staple from my hayday in the Ilitch Holdings, LLC ), I biff. I saw a lady in the booth, so I instinctively started to drive to her before noticing that there was one of those little push-for-tickety things. Stopping about a foot to far from it, the woman leans out and says it's cool, just pull up. And pull up I did, only to hear her say "What's the matter, you don't think I'm beautiful?" Thinking it would end there, I reply back (with apparently much cajolery) "Oh, no, you definitly are. So much so that I just got nervous." But it definitly didn't end there. She leaned out a little again and said, and I quote, "That'll be 8 dollars, baby. That's not too much, is it?" Pardon me? "No, that's perfect," comes my now bashful reply as I was stunned that what seemed to be an innocent comment was quickly becoming prostitution. I hand over a twenty, and she takes it like she's about to get naked on it. Terrifying. "Honey , you want your change back?" Yeah, and my innocence, thanks. "Yeah, that'd be great." But no, that wasn't enough. She now counts back to me my change, two fives and two singles, as if she were seducing 30 rich men all at once. Lip-licking and all. If I had a manual, you would have heard my tires squeal for miles. Seriously. Just wierd.
But then as we're driving away I stop and think, "You know, if we were in that booth all day long, that might not even compare to the things we might start doing to entertain ourselves..."
Truf.

Walking to the doors, we pass a kid who used to live down the street from me when I was like 8. Nothing too fancy, just wierd to see him there.

We managed to completely miss the opening act in all ways. We actually walked in as the lights were turned on and their last chord played out until the power was cut for them. I'm talking perfect timing for avoiding them. Anyway, we mill around, watch Franz Ferdinand (who were pretty good; I totally dug how apparently every member of the band actually played multiple instruments). After this, the temperature and local "everyone's breathing on my neck" humidity got a little high, so the roomer and I went for a touch of water. As we went up there, this girl totally did a huge double take on Chris, and I figured she knew him from the way she stared, and he stared back a little bit as if he knew her, too. Actually, he was just trying to figure out why she was staring in the first place. He asked me "why don't we ever talk to people like that? Just start up a conversation. The least I could have said to her was 'hi,' and seen were it went from there." Within seconds of reaching the bar, this totally new woman told us to get in on the round of shots she had just ordered up for her friends whom were nowhere to be found. Hesitant at first, it seemed wrong to make one person drink five shots. After talking to us a little bit, we discovered that this 35 year old mother with a son at home was here only for Death Cab, and that the opening band had sucked anyway. Also, she had a friend Jen, who though she didn't look to be quite as old, was obviously more aged than us. And i'm not talking about fine wines. Speaking of wine, alcohol: she bought us another round, for apparently no reason. Lemon drops both times. Mystery woman (her friend was Jen, but who the crap was she??) then proceeded to heavily push us to watch the show with her. This is when I thanks God that Dan had stayed behind. We told the ladies that we would meet them at the side after we got our friend. As we all waked back through the crowd, this woman almost grabbed my hand twice. Lucky for me I coat my wrists in canola oil for just these instances. Bee line away from them and back to Dan, where life is normal. Oh, and we had a good view of our highschool History teacher who was fired for "relations" with a Junior in my class. The girls he was with was probably about that age again. Way to go, Mr Carem. May you forever molest children.

Moral of the story: don't get pearl inlays in your key chain. Bad idea.

Stay in School, you're a fool.

If I had to describe my feelings on school in just one word, I would consequently type out every dirty word that came to mind without using the spacebar to maximize the effectiveness of that exercise. Nothing is more frustrating than paying thousands of dollars to specifically do exactly what I don't want to do. I don't want to drive out here every-other-day so I can sit and listen to some pompous jerk talk about nothing at all, especially when what he has to say is about one fifth as much detail as what I could easily have read from my book. And my book? It's there more than one hour every two days. When I'm good and ready, I read it. I read it much faster than a professor could explain it to me, unless that professor is very good at his job, in which case he would have a job at a different university.
I'd like for once to have a professor who would just take 20 minutes once a week to talk to me in person, one on one, and just tell me what sections are important. If I have a question, great, if not, go do my work. I tire of all this busy work these professors give, like it's third grade again. I think next time I get a homework packet I'm going to do it with colored pencils and crayons just so I don't feel like it's such a farce.
Case and point, my calc class last year. I took Calc I in highschool, and upon going to Hillsdale, I went straight to Calc III my freshman year. I then took Number Theory, Differential Equations, one class I don't remember anything from (Linear Algebra), and college algebra. That last one was more of a joke. And funny it was. Anyway, I'm a good 3-4 classes out of Calc at this point, and last year my advisor tells me that I simply HAVE to take Calc II, or I can't graduate. What? is there really a doubt as to whether or not I could do it? If people really don't care about what you can do, just what's on a sheet of stinkin' paper, people like this guy get jobs in place of hard workers like myself. Serves them right, but seems to work strangely against me. Anyway, so I sign up for this tard-class, and the only available time is exactly when I get out of work every day, 45 minutes away. I sign up anyway, mostly because I'm stupid. After about two months of continuously not being able to make it to class, I e-mail the professor and cut a deal with him: I'll study up, take the first test that I missed during his office hour (giving me literally one hour to take the test that was given over an hour and a half), and then take the next test with the class two days later. He says it's cool, giving me two days to study for the first test, and then two more days to study for the second. Impossible?
More like easy. I blew through them both. And the deal was made again at the end of the semester: two tests, this time five days. I must have been too relaxed with that extra day or something. I had a complete brain-freeze on the first test and ended up with a "C" on it. The final, however, knew to go down in the hole and rub the lotion on its skin. But when I talked to the professor two days after the final, this is what he had to say to me:
"You did very well on three of the exams, and decent on the fourth. Pretty impressive for about two weeks of work. But, since you turned in only one homework assignment (I had also one homework and one quiz that I took at the midterm time, during those 4 days) and only took one of the quizzes, I can't validate giving you anything better than a D for the course. It's the best I can do. Part of my job as the professor is to see that you meet certain criteria set by the board, and part of that is homework and in-class quizzing."
What. The. . Since when is a teacher's job not to ensure that his students understand the material, but instead perform enough of the busy work to satisfy some board of jerks who probably don't remember a lick of calculus for exactly that reason?? As mad as I was, I couldn't fault my professor. He gets paid by them, not by my hand directly. (Maybe the lesson to learn here is to ensure that the prof. does get paid by my hand directly. Bribes, not dogs, are man's best friends.)
Seriously though. What a bloated structure of jerks. All I want is to be able to take all of my courses in 4-8 week stints. Anything more than 8, it moves too slow and I stop caring. Heck, after 2-week calculus, even 4 weeks seems generous. Here's an offer: I'll pay four times my tuition to have class last for one fourth the length. Any college would have to have a retarded board of directors to pass that up.
Oh... yeah.

I rock pretty hard.

I certainly do.

And now for the main-course of this mechanical meal:

I am in love.

I think this bike encompasses everything that I ever needed in my life. It's retardedly fast, it doesn't care, it gets good gas mileage (but can also get terrible mpg when you really let her loose), and I'm fairly certain that it absorbes all evil that it comes near. I'm serious. Look at this thing. I bet it powers itself by tearing open the astral plains and feeding off the negative emotions in the world. How could I ever be angry or sad again with a bike like that? It's all the anger I'd ever need. Fast and the Furious, meet Furiously Fast. Okay, so that was really dumb. Please don't judge me.

This bike (for lack of a better term; I imagine in its [the bikes] native tongue, it's called something more like Great Tach'alek Tetrakisironfisted Deathbringer) looks something almost exactly like, but just not quite, a praying mantis on steroids spray painted black after eating a locomotive. Ladies, if you're ovulating, you might want to stop looking at it, because that bike is so manly the mere sight of it could impregnate you. Wait, in that case keep looking. I think the world could use a good batch of Wraith spawnlings, bred for their capabilities in hand-to-hand combat, as they'd be 7-foot-tall and constructed of steel with carbon-fiber skin. We already have Ligers for magic.
Look, all I'm trying to say here is that I really really would like to be able to buy this bike. Just so happens that I'm shy a mere 50 grand. So, anyone out there who's looking for (what I believe to be) a good cause to unload some dough, look no further. The Wraith calls to you. to give me the money. so that I may call to it.

man this is gonna rock.

The Ending of an Era

So today is my last day at this store, officially. I still have two unofficial days, but those are more just filler making sure that people don't get *totally* screwed over in my absence. It's weird to be finally leaving after having trained my replacement. Sort of, anyway. How it really went was like this:
1. Replacement is hired and scheduled to fill in gaps in schedule, with just enough overlap for me to teach her what I do.
2. Replacement begins to catch on at a good pace, making me really happy that someone competent will be filling my shoes.
3. Replacement definitely begins to catch on to the fact that in doing my job, I also do my bosses job, because he's too pompous and lazy to actually spend a day working.
4. Replacement stops learning from me, as she starts to learn from my boss. This mostly entails learning only inane details for things that never happen as that's what pretentious people do. As it turns out, she's just as pretentious as he is.
5. Replacement gets huge attitude with me, to which my response becomes ignoring her and my boss, as I now do both their jobs.
6. Replacement watches me take on the attitude of "not my problem," in that anything that I can't find in my employee manual pertaining to me is completely and totally in one ear, out the other.
7. Suddenly, I love my job. Meanwhile, my replacement hates me. I think because I've pretty much made it so that she and my/our boss have to work.
8. I leave. I leave to go work in Detroit, a city that has only slightly fewer one-way streets than Ann Arbor, but the buildings are huge so you have no chance of seeing what comes next. So what if I got really lost yesterday? I found my way back out. And if I do get stuck there, then the crackheads will save me. They already did once.
9. There really isn't a number nine, but I feel driven to getting to ten.
10. Addition to my blog from a fellow coworker (guess who it might be): i love matt smith and i will miss working with him every friday and sunday :(
he should quit, so that my replacement and my boss will just have that much more work to do.
Truth is, I actually will miss him and Keith. And Dave, my boss, but that's a given since he got me the job when I was desperate for work. What needs to happen is that they need to come with me. We'll be a force the likes of which Detroit has never seen, mostly because our group is 75% white. Ouch. Done and done.

Coca-Cola Vlassic.

That's a new combination that I'd like to try. Coke with pickles and/or pickle juice. It's like a match made in Heaven. Which really begs the question, just what kind of matches do they make in Heaven? I'd imagine blue-tip. But then, I bet angels just think about it for a second and the lantern/incense/birthday candles are already lit. So I guess the answer is none?

School. How does it do this to me? Here I am spending an entire two weeks hating it more and more, missing more and more class, doing less and less homework (to the extent that I have to do homework from January till now by Tuesday or I really take a hit in lab), and then it goes and gets me all excited and into it again. Thanks, school, could have used that like two exams ago, Buddy. Oh, and in the background at the time the song lyrics were saying "Count it a blessing that you're such a failure, or your second chance might never have come." Ouch. But seriously. All I could think about until like 20 minutes ago was how I could drop out and escape to Mexico and no one would know better, and then I get into photosynthetic and catabolic pathways and then further into cell division and genetics and the like. And all of a sudden, I'm thinking to myself, "Holy crap, this $#!^ is so cool." Excuse the French, but I mean, it was one of those times where it just flippin' necessary. I guess it's a good thing that when I'm at my lowest with school, it just reminds me how completely bad-ass the stuff I'm "learning" (reading about non-retentively) really is. Think about it. We all came from a single cell that contained a few strands of molecules that were organized just right to tell that cell how to make us. I'd like to invent the drop of Coke that could synthesize itself into a swimming pool of deliciousness, complete with ice, diving board, and creepy scantily clad uncle. 'Cause that's what this stuff is like. Seriously. Wow.

Wait, scratch that. That self-replicating Coke stuff would be lame. Now, Coca-Cola Vlassic, that's an invention.