I worked for my grandpa today, as I do every Wednesday. I was filling a large compost bag with some laeves and stuff outside when I felt a sharp pain in my right forearm, then heard a slight buzzing, . I thought to myself, "Oh, drat, a sting...maybe a bee one." But when I went inside, there wasn't any stinger, so I got lucky, it was just a wasp sting. I put some baking soda mixed with water one it, and it didn't swell too much at all, and by late afternoon I can hardly feel the pain at all.
The last time I was stung was when I was 5 or 6 at the large "fort" my dad built at our last house. I remember it very distinctly, having the wasp crawling up my leg, then it stung me right before it went up my short. Now I could understand that sting, because I kinda tried to shake it off, because I didn't really want it going up any further.
but this time, I didn't even hear it or feel it land or do anything to provoke it before it stung me.
So I now hate all wasps and stinging insects even more.
They will feel my wrath.
(more on that later)
I also decided today that rooftops are very cool places. I was putting in gutter guards for my grandfather earlier today on his roof, and it was just a very nice seculded private place, yet very open to nature. It was very nice, and the moss growths covering some of the wodden shingles were quite coo. i wish I had had my camera, they looked like cool little alien planets.
Later my grandparents took me out to lunch (a regular perk) and we ate on a rooftop, which was quite cool. The view wasn't spectacular, as downtown Deerfield isn't that much to see, but at it was only in the low 80s, and there was quite a nice breeze blowing across the rooftop, it was quite comfortable, and kindof fun to look down on the pedestrians and cars wending their ways through the streets below.
During the course of the meal, I had almost finished my bottle of IBC Root Beer (one of the best kinds) when a wasp, battling the breeze, alighted upon it and began to crawl inside, hoping to drink some of the precious liquid. As there was only a little bit left, I seied my opportunity at revenge, and clapped the cap on the bottle. I let him bu around inside for awhile, then I shook it up, coating him in sticky soda. He only made a few more feeble attempts as buing, and crawled around looking mad and sticky. I laughed maniaclyl at his pathetic plight. MWAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!
Anyways, rooftops also reminded me of Mary Poppins, which had a great rooftops scene. I always loved the chimney sweeps popping out of the chimneys, and then lighting off all the fireworks and dancing through them. That was really cool.
7.27.2005
7.20.2005
7.18.2005
Dragons, a Unicorn, and a Polar Bear
Random acts of kindness are fun, especially when they prompt this sort of reaction from people's mothers: "aaawww...wait...who sent that to you? ....why? yes he needs a reason! because otherwise it's just too cutsey, and guys don't do cutsey!! it's...it's....abnormal for guys to get it right..."
7.11.2005
The Relative Values and Disadvantages of Different Methods of World Domination
(You wanted a post people? You're getting a post. Disclaimer: Do not be offended by any of the ideas contained within, these are not serious (at least as far as YOU know), and we profess to have no intention of carrying them out. These are only to be attempted by professionals, do not attempt in your homestate. And it gets very boring in the Deli sometimes.)
Today Robert (another college student) and I had a discussion in the deli about different plans for world domination. It was actually quite interesting analying the different strengths and weaknesses of different approaches.
His main idea was that he wanted power, because power controls everything. No, not political power, electrical power. His idea was to carefully study the power grid of the us, especially around major mertipolitan centers, and have surgical sepcial operations teams disable certain power plants, causing a chain power failiure, like the one that crippled the Northeast last year, and the power blackouts in California a few years before. Because the power grid seems to be fairly fragile (witness those two non-terrorist-induced) and security at most power plants is relatively lax (Time magaine just had an article about how bad security is at nuclear power plants, and it must be worse elsewhere), this would seem to be a relatively easy means to obtain great power over the government and cause mass hysteria. We know what trouble the Northeast blackout cuased, imagine if it were nationwide, lasted over a week, and was known to be a deliberate act against teh government? It would seem the the government would be hardpressed to function without power, because communications would be much more difficult. After he was able to "persuade" certain government officials to "abdicate" using certain techniques with his surgical strike teams, he would take office and president, and swiftly move to consolidate power into a dictatorial position, and use the same tactic to threaten other government all over the world.
I pointed out several flaws with his plan. One of the main ones is that he didn't have any way of gaining popular support, although he amended this after hearing my plan, and decided he would try to use the media to persuade liberals and hippies that he was trying to stop war, and get them to hamper military counter operations through "peaceful" protests which would slow military responses from their bases to his attacks.
I also thought that even though he might be able to cut power to the vast majority of the people, it was likely that many government and communications centers would have backup generators that could last several days, by which the military and the power companies would have taken step to regain control of the power plants and relink the power grid to supply power where it was most necessary (since his plan consisted of taking out key linking power stations which would cause others to fail, very similar to the northeast power outage). he though a way to combat this would be to take on the mildly higher security at the nuclear plants, which would be worth it becuse he could then blackmail the government or military with a nuclear meltdown like Chernobyl. (which, btw, occured shortly before I was born, thereby explaining many thing about me) I thought this would be fairly difficult, because American power plants are built better than Chernobyl, but conceded that it might be possible if he had a nuclear engineer and a computer hacker to change the software of the power plants computers. So if he did that, he would have a much stonger blackmail position, and might be able to convince leaders to step down in favor of his semi liberal government. One of my arguments against him was that liberals would not be very effective in detaining military response to his plan, because most of them don't have gun collections. (silly liberals, they start culture wars, but forget which side has all the guns) However, even though he is in favor of gun rights, he thinks the liberals might be more effective as human shields in stopping a military response.
His final plan also includes being called "god-emperor" in line with the ancient Romans, which I don't think would go over very well with many people, and he still didn't give very many concrete ideas on how he would enforce his position, other than he'd have lots of mercenaries (seeing as he didn't have a very compelling ideology to attract people to his cause, seeing as he's a somewhat of a moderate liberal, whose main platform would be something like "brave new world", with a caste system separating the "stupid" from the "intelligent" (as he puts it) and making the "stupid" people happy with drugs.
My plans didn't receive as many criticisms, because we mainly talked about his plan. However, my plan (which is actually Will's, to be put into effect with him and Damon and I supposedly). It would most likely begin after the election of a very liberal president (like Hillary or someone), which would most likely take place after a very close, divisive election with many accusations of fraud against both sides. We would use surgical strike teams (which are always very useful in taking over the world) to hit main media centers such as newspapers, TV stations, the radio, and websites, in order to start a rebellion of conservative NRA members, rednecks, and the like, who with their gun collections and numnber would form a respectable force, and then proceed with a military coup (assuming that since the military voted 75% for bush, a fairly large number of them would not take kindly to a liberal female president). Once the military was convinced that it had a constitutional duty to rebel against an "uncostitutional" and "oppressive" regime, the majority of the takeover would be accomplished, because a large plurality of "extreme right wingers" would already be up in arms, and the comination of them and the military would most likely make the establishment of a "reformed" state not that unlikely.
Yeah...Mondays in the deli are really slow and boring in case you haven't guessed by now.
Really boring.
Today Robert (another college student) and I had a discussion in the deli about different plans for world domination. It was actually quite interesting analying the different strengths and weaknesses of different approaches.
His main idea was that he wanted power, because power controls everything. No, not political power, electrical power. His idea was to carefully study the power grid of the us, especially around major mertipolitan centers, and have surgical sepcial operations teams disable certain power plants, causing a chain power failiure, like the one that crippled the Northeast last year, and the power blackouts in California a few years before. Because the power grid seems to be fairly fragile (witness those two non-terrorist-induced) and security at most power plants is relatively lax (Time magaine just had an article about how bad security is at nuclear power plants, and it must be worse elsewhere), this would seem to be a relatively easy means to obtain great power over the government and cause mass hysteria. We know what trouble the Northeast blackout cuased, imagine if it were nationwide, lasted over a week, and was known to be a deliberate act against teh government? It would seem the the government would be hardpressed to function without power, because communications would be much more difficult. After he was able to "persuade" certain government officials to "abdicate" using certain techniques with his surgical strike teams, he would take office and president, and swiftly move to consolidate power into a dictatorial position, and use the same tactic to threaten other government all over the world.
I pointed out several flaws with his plan. One of the main ones is that he didn't have any way of gaining popular support, although he amended this after hearing my plan, and decided he would try to use the media to persuade liberals and hippies that he was trying to stop war, and get them to hamper military counter operations through "peaceful" protests which would slow military responses from their bases to his attacks.
I also thought that even though he might be able to cut power to the vast majority of the people, it was likely that many government and communications centers would have backup generators that could last several days, by which the military and the power companies would have taken step to regain control of the power plants and relink the power grid to supply power where it was most necessary (since his plan consisted of taking out key linking power stations which would cause others to fail, very similar to the northeast power outage). he though a way to combat this would be to take on the mildly higher security at the nuclear plants, which would be worth it becuse he could then blackmail the government or military with a nuclear meltdown like Chernobyl. (which, btw, occured shortly before I was born, thereby explaining many thing about me) I thought this would be fairly difficult, because American power plants are built better than Chernobyl, but conceded that it might be possible if he had a nuclear engineer and a computer hacker to change the software of the power plants computers. So if he did that, he would have a much stonger blackmail position, and might be able to convince leaders to step down in favor of his semi liberal government. One of my arguments against him was that liberals would not be very effective in detaining military response to his plan, because most of them don't have gun collections. (silly liberals, they start culture wars, but forget which side has all the guns) However, even though he is in favor of gun rights, he thinks the liberals might be more effective as human shields in stopping a military response.
His final plan also includes being called "god-emperor" in line with the ancient Romans, which I don't think would go over very well with many people, and he still didn't give very many concrete ideas on how he would enforce his position, other than he'd have lots of mercenaries (seeing as he didn't have a very compelling ideology to attract people to his cause, seeing as he's a somewhat of a moderate liberal, whose main platform would be something like "brave new world", with a caste system separating the "stupid" from the "intelligent" (as he puts it) and making the "stupid" people happy with drugs.
My plans didn't receive as many criticisms, because we mainly talked about his plan. However, my plan (which is actually Will's, to be put into effect with him and Damon and I supposedly). It would most likely begin after the election of a very liberal president (like Hillary or someone), which would most likely take place after a very close, divisive election with many accusations of fraud against both sides. We would use surgical strike teams (which are always very useful in taking over the world) to hit main media centers such as newspapers, TV stations, the radio, and websites, in order to start a rebellion of conservative NRA members, rednecks, and the like, who with their gun collections and numnber would form a respectable force, and then proceed with a military coup (assuming that since the military voted 75% for bush, a fairly large number of them would not take kindly to a liberal female president). Once the military was convinced that it had a constitutional duty to rebel against an "uncostitutional" and "oppressive" regime, the majority of the takeover would be accomplished, because a large plurality of "extreme right wingers" would already be up in arms, and the comination of them and the military would most likely make the establishment of a "reformed" state not that unlikely.
Yeah...Mondays in the deli are really slow and boring in case you haven't guessed by now.
Really boring.
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