Come on Really

Come on

Really

OK this has my panties in a wad.

The shooting in Newtown was an absolute abomination.

Horrible beyond horrible.

I cannot even fathom the pain that this person wrought.

But I would like to stress that it is “this Person”

I am no gun enthusiast.

I own 1 shotgun, it was my dad’s.

I have fired twice 20 years ago. It currently sits in my father-in-laws gun vault.

The gun did not make this person do anything at all. The bullets did not whisper their madness into his innocent ears.

The dude was wrong in the head and found an instrument of destruction and used it.

If he had stolen a car and drove it into the school room would there be a cry for a ban on cars?

What if he had used a duck?

What if he had taken a bag full of ducks and started beating the poor children to death with fluffy mallards?

This outcry for more gun control is like saying my car’s engine light is on can you check the muffler?

All gun control does, is keep guns out of a law abiding citizens hand.

I can tell you right here and right now the very bestest place to start in trying to hinder* tragedies such as this.

At. Home.

It all starts at the home.

We as a society have just gotten worse and worse on how we treat each other and it is snowballing out of control. I don’t know HOW to fix it but that’s where it has to start.

Only by bringing the next generation up right and intelligently and respectfully can we ever hope of becoming better than we are.

*(I say hinder because horrible stuff will always happen, its just the way the world works).

scary

You know whats scary?

I mean really scary!

This

A newfound asteroid gave Earth a close shave early today, zipping between our planet and the moon just two days after astronomers first spotted it.

View article...

Yeah basically 2 days ago an asteroid appears out of nowhere and, in astronomical terms, just grazed our face.

You know that scene in The Matrix where Neo Reeves is on the rooftop leaning way back as he dodges those bullets?

Kinda like that but there is no way we can get the planet to move like that (or wear that awesome trench coat)

Its not a matter of IF it is a matter of WHEN…

for example:

Scientists have discovered about 9,000 near-Earth asteroids to date, but perhaps a million or more such space rocks are thought to exist.

And some of them are potentially dangerous. Observations by NASA's WISE space telescope suggest that about 4,700 asteroids at least 330 feet (100 m) wide come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits.

Basically what this means is there is an entire army of tanks out there surrounding our little foxhole and they are all rumbling this direction. We know something is out there and we can hear them but all we have been able to do is spot 1 or 2 of them in the distance.

That’s scary and as humans we can’t do a single damn thing about it so why worry about it?

We should be using our global resources to make giant orbiting asteroid killing laser gun things.

Instead we make people like Britney and Lady Ga-Ga rich.

Yeah we deserve a good flattening.

Childhood

Recently on the facebook a friend posted a maudlin post about how he is sad yet proud of his growing little boy.

It really hit home with me.

Childhood is like a really good book.

You first start not knowing what the story will be like just a vague idea as to the way it plays out. Sometimes it can be hard to really get it moving but you move along.

Soon enough the story pulls you in and captivates you. You are enthralled with all the elements. You enjoy your time getting to know these characters and living within their lives.

Time flies by as you hungrily devour each word.

The words zip by, then the chapters.

Then you are looking at the book and seeing how many pages are left.

A kind of sadness befalls you because you don’t want to see the story end, you are not ready to leave yet but there is the end right there looming closer and closer.

Finally the last chapter ends and you close the book.

All you have left is a memory of the story as your child then starts writing their next volume.

The end of childhood is like the passing of a loved one

Sure you are proud of your child and the accomplishments they have done but there will never be any more firsts for you.

No more first steps, first scares, first wonders

Like any death in your life all you can do is accept it and move forward.

At least with adulthood you still have a person whom you can love and loves you right back.

However, there will always be a hole in your life, a part of you will always miss the child that was.

SMH

I can name all the actors who have ever protrayed the Doctor in Doctor Who.
 I can name all the captains and the ships they commanded from Star Trek. 
I can tell you the difference between a quaffle and a bludger and name ten planets from Star Wars. 

Sitting at a stop sign in my car I could not for the life of me remember how to turn on the damn dome light.
.

fast braining

Your brain is fantastic in how fast it and calculate and compute.

No computer on the planet can operate as well and good as that slab of meat sitting between your ears!

For instance: let’s just say you are putting you cellphone into your breast pocket and for some reason or another you miss.

Your brain immediately screams “GRAB IT”

It then sends the necessary instructions to the arms

“45 degrees and grab… NOW!”

“33 degrees to port and grab on my mark…NOW!”

However, sometimes your brain is moving so fast that the impulse coming back from the fingers saying

“WE HAVE CONTACT”

Well that crucial information just gets lost in the melee.

All of this in just a matter of nanoseconds

So the end effect is you end up standing there having what looks to be a cross between a mild seizure and demonic possession. You stand there beating at your own person like you are putting out a small fire as you slap ineffectually at your bouncing phone

This all ends as you finally watch in horror as your own arm, the arm you have known all your life and who you thought was your friend, ends the fight by flinging your phone across the room to smash delicately into the far wall.

Or as I like to all it

Monday

Black Thursday

http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2012/11/13/15136983-target-employees-protest-over-thanksgiving-shifts?lite

This year, Walmart, Toys R Us, Kmart, and Sears are all opening their doors at 8 pm Thursday. Together with Target, that's two to four hours before they kicked things off last year

Reached for comment, Target spokesperson Molly Snyder told NBC News: "Targets opening time was carefully evaluated with our guests, team and the business in mind. Across the country, team member preferences were considered in creating our store staffing schedules. Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest of the year, and we appreciate our Target teams flexibility on this weekend and throughout the holiday season

Synder told NBC News that Target employees always receive time-and-a-half pay for working national holidays. Workers clocking hours during Thanksgiving and Black Friday also receive additional pay bonuses, she said. Only one-third of Target's workforce is scheduled to work on Thanksgiving.

We have heard from many stores that they had more team members volunteer to work than they had available shifts," Snyder said.

Really?

Is this really necessary?

Thanksgiving used to be a time of holiday

A time of coming together as a family and enjoying one another company.

Times change though and that sweet and nostalgic memory is gone.

A few decades back the day after became BLACK FRIDAY and now it is bleeding over into Thanksgiving itself.

For those outside of the retail community they are told that this term, BLACK FRIDAY, means that today is the day that the retail outlet gets out of the red and into the black.

As someone who has worked more than his fair share of BLACK FRIDAY’s from inside of the trenches, that is bullshit.

It is just some marketing ploy to steer any negative connotations away from the day.

This is a dark and dismal day where everyone who wants to save 2 bucks converges on a local retail outlet like locusts and act like the rude, selfish herd mentality humans that makes up all the worst traits of society.

It’s a bad, bad day.

After leaving retail I wanted to see what this day was like from “the other side”

After fighting the crowds and traffic for hours and hours I was left with a final decision.

It’s a bad, bad day.

Now, in pursuit of the almighty dollar, stores are opening earlier and earlier

In the article Target exclaims that they have had more people request to work that day then they have shifts for.

Gee I wonder why.

Could it possibly be that each person is in such dire need of the money that they are willing to forgo quality time with their families just to have the chance at making a few extra bucks?

That can’t be it, can it?

It’s gotta be a strong desire to see the multi-billion dollar company grow and thrive.

Maybe it’s a sense of duty and wanting to help out their fellow man in purchasing the last ipod on the sales floor.

Nah I think it’s the cash thing.

I swear the only thing that is going to save the human race from itself is an apocalypse.

gilded lead

Pretty drained still today

You see, in my adoptive hometown there was a young girl of 15 who recently passed from leukemia

She was a strong spirited young woman whose sickness brought a small town closer together. As a parent, and as a person, the unimaginative rolling waves of grief are just smothering when you are lucky enough to just be off to the side, so it has to be just unbearable under the full rolling waves. It is just so horrible and wrong for any parent to have to bury their child and I have a fervent wish and prayer I never have to experience. It did make me think though.

How many people were here for the support of this ailing girl’s family and celebration of her life and how many were just the cattle climbing on the train with everyone else?

Was she just the flavor of the month to some or did she really spark a fire within full of community spirit and empathy to your fellow man?

Does it really matter what the long term effect may have been when, for that brief moment in the town’s history, everyone was bonded together under 1 small sick child?

Maybe it is just the pessimistic skeptic (skeptimisstic?) in me that drags these thoughts across my mind.

At her service on Saturday she played to a packed house. There were over/around 300 people there all there to wish her well on her next journey. This was a nice thing to see, this young person’s small little 15 years on the planet had really touched so many people’s hearts. I counted up everyone I would expect at my funeral if I died immediately and was struggling to hit 50.

I guess regardless of why it is just nice that it was.

Just take the good at face value.

If you scrape too deep you will find that it is just gilded lead.

stoopid humans

At what point as a society did we just turn into a 5 year old standing next to the broken cookie jar going “I didn’t do it”

For instance: now there is a big hoopla going around that 5 people died while consuming MONSTER drinks.

Well, DUH!

Have you read the side of the can?

It says right there “this can is packed full of more crap than your average dishwashing fluid. “

Oh so you can’t read and the big words scare you?

Ok then take a sip of it and if your teeth start to itch and your eyes are vibrating to an internal samba beat then maybe this may not be the drink for you.

But, nooooo.

Because this can is in a place where I, being a person who has money, can buy it then it must be safe and ok.

Dumb asses

It says right on the can and I quote

“Max 1 can every 6 hours with limit 2 cans per day. Not intended for children, pregnant woman, or people sensitive to caffeine”

Come on!

You are drinking a drink that reads like a warning label on a bottle of codeine.

Grow 2 brain cells and rub them together.

Unless someone is holding you down and water boarding you with a bucket of Monster this is your responsibility.

Yes. People died and dying sucks but take some responsibility for you.

I swear, nowadays people are strapping on a blindfold and running full tilt through the forest then are shocked and surprised when they run face first into *gasp* a TREE!

Suck it up buttercup.

We all want someone to hold our hand and gently guide us through life’s crappy disappointments and heart wrenching pitfalls.

But lassie is dead and Mr. Belvedere has retired.

Looks like you getta wear the big boy boots on this excursion.

*this post written under the influence of MONSTER REHAB. Combining Tea and lemonade and energy (3 of the 4 food groups)

Try it. It’s awesome.

Damn linear time stream

Read this article the other day

Your kids not eating their fruits and veggies? Here's a simple trick that's been shown to increase consumption:

Well, one way seems to be to simply jazz up what they’re called. For example, instead of carrots how about offering "X-ray vision carrots"? When researchers tried that in five New York elementary schools, kids ate twice as many of Bug Bunny’s favorite food.

A second experiment at two more schools dealt with broccoli and green beans—two deeply unpopular items. But when renamed to "Tiny Tasty Tree Tops" and "Silly Dilly Green Beans," veggie consumption again doubled.

Made me think of when my buggers were small.

When Girl wouldn’t drink her milk I informed her that was GOOD! This was because it was really lizard eyeball juice and it would give her a tail like a lizard.

BOOM milk was gone. She gulped it down like it was an antidote and wiped her milk mustache away with a ear to ear grin.

Son wouldn’t eat his vegetables and no matter how much his mother and grandmother cajoled and threatened him not a single pea was making it past his lips.

I said GOOD! Because if you ate it, it would make you grow huge and green like the Hulk and then all your clothes would rip as you grew HUGE and strong and then we would have to move you outside before the house fell down.

BOOM. Vegetables were gone and my 4 year old starts strutting around flexing and bending as he feels his muscles expending to hulk size.

Not saying look at me I am a genius father who manipulated his children through falsehoods and appealing to their childish side.

What I am saying is

I miss that

Nowadays I just get the eye roll.

Or the “Daaaaaad….whatever”

Or worst of all…

The Ignore

Damn linear time stream

Off my meds

I was diagnosed last year with ADD because hey my kids have it and it had to come from somewhere. I took the tests and sure enough I had it. In retrospect I have always had it I just learned to deal with it.

Well I decided that the monetary draining of the medications I take were too much to continue so as of last week off I went.

In other words I can’t afford them anymore.

Back about 10+ years ago when I was working as a contract employee I was in pain so much from my back that I was taking 9 ibuprofin and 9 tylenol at a time.

I believe the medical term for this is “fucking stupid”

What I was able to accomplish is killing off all the bacteria in my stomach making myself lactose intolerant. Luckily through patience and adaptation I have been able to reverse this affect. I am still in pain with ice cream but with ordinary dairy (ordindairy?) I am usually OK now.

Now that the only meds I continue with is my pain patch I can feel every ache and pain I was able to suppress for all this time.

An interesting side effect I didn’t count on is I am now in the process of retraining my brain to slow down as I am running into a familiar incident where my brain moves faster than my mouth causing a vapor lock and forcing me to stumble over some of the simplest statements going “bbb.b.b.b.bb.b..bb”. It took me 20 years to beat this before and now it is back again.

However on the upside I can slowly feel my intelligence returning as well.

Itll take some time but I am sure somewhere along the line it will be for the best.

Everyone should know

I dont mind my government being clandestine, that is part of their job. What I dont like is when they get all up in arms when they get called on it.
This would be like if I were to kill someone and hide the body successfully for a number of years. One day someone stumbles across the body and the police show up to arrest me.
I then file a lawsuit against the person who found the body.
I believe this is covered under the "thats not fair" clause in the constitution.

Thanks dad

When you are born you are born to two people who haven’t a freaking clue as to what they are doing.

There is no manual just another human being who is doing their up most best to do right by you.

You can’t help but love that person.

That is your superhero.

I know when I was growing up I remember that my dad could do no wrong by me.

He all but wore the flowing cape and shiny boots.

I remember telling him once that when I grew up I wanted to be just like him.

He responded with “I want you to be better”

Didn’t really understand it then but I do now.

My son looks to me as his superhero.

Phew that’s a lot of pressure there.

I have, unfortunately, proven to him time and time again that I am a normal human with feet of clay but I am trying.

I don’t have lofty goals for him; I just want him to be happy.

I tell him I really miss my little guy running around at groin level causing havoc with a huge grin on his face but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.

I spend time with him. We play, do homework or just chill.

I remind him each day that I love him.

He told me once that when he grew up he wanted to be just like me.

I told him “I want you to be better”

Thanks dad

Miss you

soapboxing

In case you haven’t noticed this is an election year.

I have stated my political views once before but with the election looming in the foreground hear I would like to revisit it.

Basically in a nutshell they fall as such.

I have none.

I am under the full belief that it does not matter one whit who the person is in office be it republican, democrat, man, woman, white, black blah-blah-blah

Nothing will ever change.

You could take the perfect qualities of all sorts of leaders and innovators and mush them into one genetic specimen who is so absolutely perfect that they glow with a brilliant radiance of pefectionalism.

Instill all the best attributes:

The strategy of Napoleon

The brilliance of Tesla

The fierceness of the ancient Spartans

The wisdom of both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin

The humility of George Washington and Mother Theresa

The negotiation abilities of Lincoln

The wit of Mark Twain

The charm of Kennedy

The money sense of Warren Buffett

The imagination of JK Rowling

The beauty of Jolie, Pitt and Clooney

The breasts of Bianca Beauchamp*

Smush and knead them all together into one being who is just busting at the seams with so much potential that just being in their very presence makes you a better person.

Parades would be held just for them stopping by a small town for a pee and a Pepsi.

Someone, somewhere will not like them.

“They are too perfect” say the democrats

“They are not perfect enough” say the republicans

“they are not a god” says the peoples

“they are the god!” says the other peoples

It’s all so very stupid and redundant and broken.

Basically all we are doing is voting into office not the best person for the job

and not the person best suited to help the nation.

Just the best person to blame.

We have been at this whole “United States of America” thing now for the past 236 years; you would have thought we would have been able to improve upon this system by now.

No, I don’t have a fix its way too broken of a system to be fixed. It needs to be replaced and or rebuilt from the ground up.

It just seems that everyone knows this and yet no one wants to fix it and everyone is so shocked and outraged when the loop starts over with the next president.

*HEY its my creation! When you get your own you can add what you want.

The paper ghost

The other night something odd happened.
 I was crashing in boys bed (when the kids are sick they get to sleep with mommy and daddy gets to sleep wherever he can find) and watched tv for oh about an hour.
 I finally decided to sleep at around 10pm.
At 11:33pm (yes I looked) a piece of notebook paper was dropped edge first directly onto my face.
 It came out of nowhere and obviously woke me up. I laid there for a bit both thinking wth and listening for movement or scampering little feet. The house was silent and I smelled college rule.
No one was up of course.
The kicker?
This paper was on the floor when I went to bed.
I had tossed it there while climbing into bed.

Turn off your phone (NSFW)

pointing out the obvious

Depression Linked with Hyperconnected Brain Areas

Brain regions may communicate excessively in depression

By Carrie Arnold

12
i

EEG data reveal how tightly connected the frontal cortex (red) is to the rest of the brain in depression (left) and health (right).
Image: FROM “RESTING-STATE QUANTITATIVE ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY REVEALS INCREASED NEUROPHYSIOLOGIC CONNECTIVITY IN DEPRESSION,” BY ANDREW F. LEUCHTER ET AL., IN PLOS ONE, VOL. 7, NO. 2; FEBRUARY 24, 2012

Like an overwhelmed traffic cop, the depressed brain may transmit signals among regions in a dysfunctional way. Recent brain-imaging studies suggest that areas of the brain involved in mood, concentration and conscious thought are hyperconnected, which scientists believe could lead to the problems with focus, anxiety and memory frequently seen in depression.
Using functional MRI and electroencephalography (EEG), psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter of the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues measured the activity of depressed patients' brains at rest. They found that the limbic and cortical areas, which together produce and process our emotions, sent a barrage of neural messages back and forth to one another—much more than in the brains of healthy patients. These signals, Leuchter says, can amplify depressed people's negative thoughts and act like white noise, drowning out the other neural messages telling them to move on.
A separate study by psychiatrist Shuqiao Yao of Central South University in Hunan, China, produced a more nuanced view of these two areas' hyperconnectivity. In work published in Biological Psychiatry in April, Yao and his colleagues reported that stronger links among certain corticolimbic circuits are seen in patients more prone to rumination, the act of continuously replaying negative thoughts. Less connectivity in other corticolimbic circuits corresponded to autobiographical memory impairments, which is another common feature that appears in depression.
Scientists do not know whether these connectivity changes are a cause or an effect of depression. A study earlier this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, however, found that electroconvulsive therapy—formerly known as shock therapy—both alleviates depression's symptoms and decreases connectivity in the hub where the cortical and limbic systems intersect. These results, says lead author Jennifer S. Perrin, a psychologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, confirm that hyperconnectivity is a hallmark of depression in the brain and should provide a target for new drugs and treatments.

TLDR: Study shows that A factor of depression is the brain over thinking itself and blocking out its ability to see through the dark. 

um ..DUH! I thought this was a given?

hiatus

I know I have been rather light on the posts as of late.

With this ADD medicine i have been on the creative juices just dont juice the way they used to.
 That and everyday stress between work and looking for a second job to help pay the bills.
Then there is family life, of course.
It is hard to be creative when you have to spend a hour a day* listening to a stupid brain voice telling you how horrible you are. How you have failed in so many ways so many times.

Makes me want to stab my brain with a Qtip just to shut it up.

But never you mind fearless reader, I have some kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bag. Just waiting for them to finish popping.


  


*half an hour commute to work. each way, each day.

A must read

Created By TheirToys.com Sex Toys

And Lower we go

OK I really dont have much to add to this.
Oh I could rant and rave and marvel at how low humans have stooped to be able to call this crap entertainment but I really think it pretty much speaks for itself.
This show, I think its called Yogi and Boo Boo takes a crap in your brain or something like that, has gotta be on TV not because these people are interesting but just as a way of saying "Sweet Lucifer! Take a look at these fruit bats!"

afterthought

If ya'all are wondering yes Disney really came through for me. I then regaled them with this following email

Dear Disney World,
Simply put,  I cant thank you enough.
The ease in which this was handled has really just put me over the moon. I have been extolling the praises of Disney World for many years.
We were the 12 years ago and ever since then I have always exclaimed how wonderful the whole Disney experience is. I have always said how awesome it is that you can go up to any cast member and ask them the most inane question and they will react as if you are the first person to talk to them that day.
Then, 12 years later, having this experience has got me sold.
Barbie was ever so friendly and then to get a call from the merchandising group to tell me they were processing the request was unexpected and it actually made my day.
I'm sorry I do not mean to gush all over your inbox here but I am truly a fan. As someone who has worked in customer service in one aspect or another I know how difficult a job it can be.
I spent 45 minutes last Friday in my bosses office describing to him my experiences with Disney and how we should be sending people to Disney world just to see how customer service is supposed to be done right. I love how Disney doesn't go above and beyond for a guest. What anyone else would consider as above and beyond Disney calls it "just another day"
Once again thank you.
I know it will be quite some time before I will be able to afford to come back but someday, God willing,  I surely will.

The turtles were shipped and arrived on Tuesday.

I brought the kids together and had then open the box.

“Yeah I knew. I read your text messages.” said GIRL

“Yeah. I read your email. You should close your email folder.” said BOY

well that went over like gangbusters.

Not quite the shiny hero moment I was hoping for but ah well.

I tried.

Why I drink the Disney Kool-Aid.

As you may remember the whole Zombee clan went to the big WDW for a week.

One of the reasons I like Disney is each employee is there to make your experience the best it can be and boy when they get it right it is awesome.

For instance: Hotel Arcade: my niece lost her card to play the games and it had over 2000 points on it. She told the people that work there and boom an hour later they had located it and gotten it back to her.

That’s nothing.

We were at Epcot on Tuesday and we watched this neat lil show where Crush (the turtle from Finding Nemo) interacts and talks to the kids and teaches them a bit.

Cool tech and cool interaction.

Afterwards my kids decided they needed stuffed critters of Crush and his kid Squirt.

They were purchased, bagged and set in my mother’s lil cart for transport around the various countries in Epcot.

We made it through and as we were on the bus heading to the room it was discovered that that bag was missing.

Just plain gone.

This caused emotional distress to my Girl, who really wanted a memento of each experience and in a cascade effect, emotional distress to me as well.

My Boy was saddened but not as much. It’s a guy thing, I guess.

Anyway,

We left back for home on Friday I left a note and a tip in our room asking for help but nothing happened from that. Really didn’t expect it to but I had to try something.

I contacted Lost and Found a couple days later and struck out there as well.

Finally I contacted Disneyworld and explained the situation to them.

I Told them “hey we were just there and we dropped some serious coin. I explained that I understood they had no obligation at all to do anything but if they could just send me a couple of replacements that would be really nice.”

They called last night.

Talked to one of their reps there Barbara, she was ever so nice.

She just needed the SKU numbers so they knew exactly which ones to send.

No Muss.

No Fuss.

    Nothing more needed from me.

Just taking care of the customer even after the fact.

Now, everything cant be pancakes and peanut butter all the time but what we would consider as “the extra mile” or “added effort” Disney has already added that into their everyday functions.

And that is why I continue to drink the Disney Kool-Aid.

 

Overthinking the thinking

You know, it is really quite amazing with how much "WE" know how much we really dont.
First you have all the odd out there stuff UFOs, Big Foot, Atlantis.
Some are hoaxes some are..something else but no one really knows.
No matter what we do though we will always be in battle with our brain over what is real and what is imagined.
For instance:
I know how this little bit of movie magic is done and you can see it right there which part is a live person and which of it is a prop.

But no matter how many times I look at it and try to force my perspective I still just cant fully wrap my brain around the illusion.
My brain says "Yes I see that and there is the actress foot. Furthermore, its movie magic and therefore not real but nope I'm not buying it, the neck goes right to the head so it must be real."

Stupid brain

Thats just funny

Disney

Ah 7 days of drinking the Disney koolaid.

It just didn’t last long enough but, alas, all good things must come to an end.

I think that is a major flaw in the really real world.

Anyway here are some tips I picked up along the way.

1. Do not try to vacation with any group over 4 people, 5 tops. There were 12 of us and it was just too much stress trying to get and keep everyone in one pile. Like raking leaves in a tornado.
2. No matter how you plan or what you purchase your feet are going to hurt and hurt a lot. I don’t care if you have purchased shows made from the wings of angels with the soles made of pure full blood demon hide. The average person hikes 9 miles a day at Mousekowitz and that wears on you pretty quick. By day 3 I had to rely on my cane and I NEVER rely on my cane.
3. The benefit of staying on Disney property is you can escape back to your room and then come back later after a swim or a nap. Yeah, that’s a pile of goofy-dung there. Yes, it is feasible that this will happen and we did manage to pull it off once. The truth is that when you get back to the room you don’t wanna go back into the crowds and the heat and the walking.
4. Speaking of Mouse property, the average 4 person meal cost is roughly 50 bucks. That comes out to be a bare minimum of $150 bucks a day (see how I mathed right there?!) Plan accordingly. If you are staying 5 days or more their dining plan might be a good option to use.
5. You are on vacation and have a set amount of time to invest into this place so unless you plan on moving next door to the magic kingdom and hitting it every weekend you are not going to see it all. Pick out some favorites and make sure you hit those.
6. STOP! Take a breath. Sit down and appreciate where you are and what you see. Enjoy the details. I noticed that before I went when I would mention where I was going even perfect strangers would get this glazed look and huge smile. This is the Mecca of vacation spots! People from around the world and I mean literally AROUND the WORLD, travel to this Magic Kingdom. I was surprised to hear British accents and Australian accents and someone over here speaking Italian and someone over there with a New York accent.

So stop.

Take a breath.

Look around.

7. If you are planning on going to Universal Studios too on your trip then just go ahead and move to a hotel nearby the park for that. It is expensive to shuttle back and forth and really eats your time up too.

Now get out of the way

the line for Splash mountain is only 60 minutes long and I gotta get my brer rabbit on.

 

down the rabbit hole

I don’t envy others too much.

I believe you have what you have and you got what you got. Pretty simple.

I do however envy those rose colored glasses folk.

Those people who have convinced themselves that the glass is indeed half-full and that the sun truly will come out tomorrow.

Lucky bastards.

Lucky bubbly, happy, deluded bastards.

I was thinking the other day as to where this sudden huge outbreak of depression across the world really came from. Doesn’t it seem to you that everywhere you turn nowadays someone is being beat over the head with depression.

Plus depression is a emotional herpes, it never truly just goes away but keeps resurfacing over and over again always lurking in the background.

One theory I readily suspect is it is partially because of technology or more to the point the shrinking of the known world. Now that everyone and everything is fully connected we can more fully see the blandness of the world around us. This is basically causing what is called Depressive Realism. I’m not going to bore you with studies and facts and stuff. What this means is a condition where a person has a more accurate perception of reality and sees it for the dull battleship grey it is. It is the middle ground between the horribly depressed and the manically deluded.

Basically we are the dumbasses who swallowed the red pill and followed Morpheus down the rabbit hole only to wake up naked and scared, swimming in our own crap soup.

Why oh Why didn’t I swallow the blue pill.

Put me back in Agent Smith, I wanna go home.

Help me help you.

When you are having an issue, any issue really where you need to call a helpdesk there are some things you need to know.

1. Don’t eat while on the phone. The sounds is magnified by the phone and it is really rather rude. Also, unless you are trapped under a burning ceiling rafter don’t use the speaker phone and even then think twice.
2. A conversation works like this; you speak, then I speak, then you speak, then I speak. Speaking at the same time I am will cause you to miss vital information and really piss me off. If there is a pause don’t feel the need to interject with a “hello” or “are you there?” I am on a land line so if you are on a land line too then the connection can be relied upon to stay connected. I am more than likely thinking of the best fix for you and can’t be constantly making noise to mollify your fears of a dropped call.
3. Try to help yourself before calling. It can really save a lot of time if you discover your computer is not plugged in before calling me.
4. Remember that I am not in the same room as you so you have to be my senses. If you can’t be bothered to see where a cable goes then we are done because I can’t see where it goes either.
5. When you call about a specific object please have that item in front of you. More than likely I am actually going to have you interact with the item in question and having it across the room does neither of us any good.
6. Technology is neat but it is not magic. If it seems like magic to you please stop using it.
7. You would not call a garage mechanic for instructions on how to do a U-turn so do not call me to ask me how to do your job. It is not my fault you are not trained. If it’s broke I can fix it the rest is up to you.
8. If you are not going to listen and do what I say to try and resolve the issue then why did you call? Listen to me. If I say “unplug the power cable” that doesn’t mean start yanking cables at random. If I say “start yanking cables at random” don’t just pull the power cable.
9. I only know what you tell me so starting with a brief statement of “It don’t work.” is not going to get us very far. Also “It said something about something” is equally just as worthless.
10. Do not call the help desk to have us teach you how to use Windows, Excel, Word, navigate a website, operate a browser or code in HTML. If you are using a computer you should already know this. If you don’t know how to do something involved with an application, just do what I do. GOOGLE IT!
11. Your station in life means more to you then it does me. Telling me how important you are is as pointless as me telling you what I had for lunch. You are a voice on the phone to me and even if you dropped dead in mid sentence it wouldn’t even be a blip in my day. Therefore getting snarky at me for something I have no control over is just gonna piss me off and you will be moved to the back of every line I can find. I understand you are frustrated and exasperated I am too.
12. I am not expecting you to be a technical dictionary but when you call saying your modem isn’t working when you mean your computer monitor is off is going to send us in a whole different direction and waste valuable time.

These might read as petty little inconveniences but when you have to deal with these on a daily, hourly basis it gets old quick. Remember that common courtesy goes a long way and we have already made a decision and judgment on what kind of caller you are within the first 20 seconds.

At the most, these tips will help the person who is trying to help you and at the very least, they will keep them from crawling through the phone line and strangling you.

*sigh* if only…..