Tuesday Hatred of This and That

I hate how Google Chrome has its “hide, minimize and close” buttons on the top right of the window like every other browser but has them in a different size. This often leads to me hit what I think is the minimize button thereby inadvertently hiding – or worse still, closing – the Google Chrome window. You will say that I could easily avoid such inconvenience by only using one type of browser and you would be right if my fingers were not trained by I don’t know how many applications which do use the same standard (too small) buttons.

Also, I’m too lazy to make Chrome do everything I have made other browsers do as a result of years of coincidental history of trial and error. My brain knows which browser does what and it is far easier to rely on my brain to choose what browser fits what use than it is to configure one browser to fit all my uses. I hate that it is not possible to just standardize and settle on just one browser (one operating system, one type of government, one administrative file) because it would lead to one browser that is incapable of anyone ever discovering a novel browser feature.

Maybe I can find solace in the fact that I am using browsers less and less often because of a lack of time and energy to find stuff on the internet. I fear I am finally approaching the age at which I can’t even muster the strength to self-deceive my self into believing I can still mean something outside of The Family. I hate that when I finally will have raised the funds to start ‘my own life’ without endangering the prospects of others I will even have forgot that once upon a time I felt a need for such self-deception.

Tuesday Hatred: aspirations (& lack thereof)

I hate that I seem to be abandoning all of my aspirations. It is like I am trading in old things that I valued for hard cash. This reminds me of the time when I sold almost all of the books that I accumulated over the years to finance some plumbing that needed to be done in our house. I hated that. I still hate it. I remember these books. Sometimes I try to find them in the hope they were amongst the 20-30 that The Wife convinced me to hold onto., only to realize they are well and truly gone.

Likewise I feel like I am letting go of my aspirations in order to do allow for some fancy plumbing on my finances. Maybe it is because I’m finally wise enough to understand what the generation before me had always understood: it takes money, money, money to make your world go around. I think I forget about winning the Nobel prize, about finally studying what I should have studied to begin with and about making the link between Habermas’ ethics & Davidson’s linguistics that will not only explain how to make this a better world but also why a world so made would be a better one.

I hate to admit that I forget all that for the same reason I forgot to study what I should have studied to begin with: I want to be financially independent. I forget all that because I’m hurrying towards earning myself a financial independence that is probably Sisyphean in nature. I hate myths, certainly when they are carrying some truth.

[Don’t worry, ben, I will be doing nothing the next weeks but I will schedule like a real Nostradamus Hatred galore for the next weeks. Don’t worry, josh, I’ll schedule them for my noon time giving the right amount of air for Monday Movies Wins It Big Time.]

Donald Barthelme Has Nothing On These 52 Stories

I am not wired to be either an especially charitable person or an effective fundraiser, but I really got caught up in the moment on Friday at work and broke character in a major way by agreeing to participate in the 3rd Annual SF Climb California. Depending on your perspective, this is either a marked moral improvement or fundamental flaw. Either way, the case remains the same: I still need to raise at least $100, and I need your help to do so.

What’s in it for you? Well, admittedly, not a lot. Good feelings, I guess, about giving to a “worthy cause” — but you know as well as I do that that only goes so far, and it certainly didn’t compel you to help that guy out on the side of the highway, the one with the dog and the illegible cardboard sign. But who am I to tell you how to spend or contribute your money, be it hard-earned or inexplicably extended to you in the form of credit. Barring your feelings about whether this is a worthy tax deduction, I’ll also accept good feelings about helping me avoid the financial effects (not to mention the direct hit it will inflict on my self-image) of having to donate it all myself. In other words, help a brother out!

More tangibly, you will: get: (a) top-notch blogging about my inadequate physical fitness, and the likelihood of my death as I train and then attempt to climb 52 flights of stairs; (b) nauseauting video coverage of my ascent; and (c) images of scenic California, either from the top of the Bank of America building or from the rear window of the ambulance.

Most important of all, though, your money will go to curing us of lung disease. Once we get that taken care of, we can all go back to smoking with immunity.

So, join me, please … donate what you can, a little or a lot. All will be appreciated.