dreadcrumbs

Physics and the Elevated Frogman

When I was in school, I never really thought math would be useful to me. I mean, sure, basic math skills, fine. I use them all the time when I'm buying stuff and building my Armaggedon Machines. But I have as yet found no useful reason to bother with cosines or derivatives. Bah. I mean, I'm not ruling out the possibility that I (subconsciously or otherwise) avoid situations where that might come up, but still. Bah.

But here's my dillemma. And really, it's more of a physics dillemma than a strictly math one, but it's all the same language, verdad?

Anyway, here's the thing. I'm in the elevator at work, alone, so it occurs to me that I might want to jump up and down. Sort of relive that freefall thing I did when I was a kid. The thing is, I'm much bigger than I was when I was a kid. And I see on the little brass plaque on the elevator wall that maximum holding capacity is a paltry 2500 pounds. So you see my problem. My being in the elevator is no issue. But would the force of impact from my leaps of fun be enough to rip my iron cage from it's moorings and send me plummeting down to the waiting arms of death and/or dismemberment?

As I am not a physics genius, I couldn't say. Shameful. My own ignorance had shackled me. I hate that.

So, as a matter of pride, I took a little 4-inch jump. It wasn't very fun, but the elevator did bang noisily against the walls of the containing shaft, so that was exciting. I got a (slightly nervous) traveling companion on the next floor, though, so the fun was over.

I did do some research later and found that I would have to jump to a height of .8 meters to produce the appropriate number of Newtons to snap the cable. But I'd hit my head on the ceiling way before I got that high. Not that I couldn't do it if I had the headroom, mind you. I have the thighs of a retired soccer player.

Leaping Mastery. Yes sir. Maybe I'll teach a class.

The Plague of Madness

I have long been tormented with insanity. NO, not my insanity. I am of course perfectly sane. I refer to the insanity of others. I am surrounded by lunatics. There are people doing irrational things (camping), believing in things that don't exist (Guam), and speaking nonsense ("Nah, 'tsall good, man") all around me.

For many years, this was very frustrating for me. I was operating from the sadly optimistic belief that everyone, at their core, is a rational being, and that all you had to do with babbling maniacs was to benevolently disagree with their position and then rationally explain the truth of the matter to them. They would naturally be disabused of their misunderstanding, and join the ranks of the reasonable.

Alas, it never worked. You see, I didn't really know they were insane. I thought they were just confused. Confused people can be educated, reasoned with. Insane people can't. They're ill. You humor insane people, give them medication. You don't reason with them. That path only makes you insane.

So. Now that my default position is that everyone is insane, I live a much simpler life. If someone asserts to me that the cat is the natural master of the world or that mainstream contemporary fiction is entertaining, I'm not flabbergasted. I just nod, tilt my head and raise my eyebrows as if I've never heard such an interesting concept before. I might say "Wow," or "Cool."

I try not to explicitly agree with them, though. I want to avoid invitations to their leagues, clubs, or committees. I hate those. You know, what with the crowds of four or more. I've been cootie free for ten years, and I'm keeping it that way.

Carpe Canum

It is my son's second birthday this Saturday, and my wife is planning a big hoo-ha with all nearby people who share his genetic material, short and tall alike. This alone will be enough to excite him, I think. Just having new people in an environment he is comfortable with will probably make him squeal with delight.

My wife is planning it all, bless her heart. She probably knows that if the burden was upon me, nothing would get done. The party would just be Max and I watching Justice League and eating popcorn. But as a result of my having abdicated all responsibility (or maybe because of it), Shannon has determined that the "entertainment" for the event will be me wearing a dog hat. I think she's still plotting what exactly I will do in the dog hat, but it will likely involve shuffling around on my hands and knees while barking. I will probably also be giving "dog rides." Hopefully my passengers won't weigh more than 100 pounds.

I delude myself by saying that I'm doing it for my son, but really, I do that sort of thing for him already. And, like I said, he'll be excited enough just to have people there. I think it's really for everybody else. For the adults to laugh and point at the ponderous bulk crawling about the floor. For Shannon to gather her family together and say, "See! This is what happens to those that defy me! To those that refuse to pull their own weight! Bark, doggie! Bark!"

And I can't say I don't deserve it. But if they demand too much dog from the man, I may go all the way. I could be pushed over the edge. Whether as a last stand or the first cries of madness, I'll do it.

Yes, carpet or not, I'll do my business.

The Warm Void of Normality

I usually have something bouncing around in my head to write about each day, but today my brain was strangely vacant. All the topics that repeatedly cross my mind I've already dealt with.

Bathroom smells like Play-Doh? Check.
Why you shouldn't be able to track people by scent? Check.
Robots/Insects/Zombies/Swiss trying to take over the world? Check.

So what to do? I was in a long meeting at work today about absurd topics that I thought would be excellent fodder for commentary, but...meh. It wasn't really that interesting. Not even in a "please-kill-me-this-is-so-boring" way. I did notice that our Development Director has a crease in the center of his forehead that looks suspiciously like a closed eye, but I can't really go anywhere with that unless it opens and starts to glare at me with the dreadful intensity of a drowned goat. Now that would be news.

But no.

And yet the universe, as if to taunt me with this dearth of interesting matter, allowed me to hear the beginning of a meeting happening in a neighboring conference room as I walked back to my desk:
"..so if you didn't know, the title of this workshop is 'Support Anti-Human Impact.' We will be discussing methods..."

Woah. Why wasn't I in that meeting? What would they discuss? How to maximize the spread of disease? Increasing the efficiency of fragmentation grenades? Making Robots/Aliens/Zombies/Swiss more comfortable as our overlords?

Probably none of those things, alas. The presenter of that particular workshop was visiting from Jersey, or Newark, or somewhere east of the Mississippi, so he spoke a bit differently than I'm used to. After a few minutes, I realized that he had, in fact, said "Support and the Human Impact." So, not nearly as interesting.

But I think I still would have rather been in his meeting.

Microstory Monday

Scrapbook

Jimmy had been looking for Christmas presents when he found the book in his parents' closet. The book of scabs.
The large one he'd picked from his knee when he was seven was there, and so were all the little ones from when he had chicken pox last year.
But several labelled pages were empty. In the space for the scab from his three-year-old skinned nose there was a handwritten note.
"Delicious," it said.

Captain Quart and His Measure-Men

My company, like many others across this fine nation, is actually, despite having its own name and a misguided notion of autonomy, part of a larger corporation. This being the case, we are occasionally subjected to visits by "Uber-Executives." I don't have enough clout to actually be in any of the meetings these SuperFolk attend, so my experience is limited to seeing people I do not know or recognize scamper about the halls, possibly marking their territory in an unseemly way.

One of these unseen masters, the only repeat visitor I'm aware of, travels with an entourage. He marches through the halls, usually in a short-sleeved shirt with a tiny animal stitched on the pocket, with 2-7 people in his wake.  These trailing courtiers are most often also people I have never seen before, and they're all shorter than he is. In fact, they all seem to be the same height, and they are in suits. It's actually quite a spectacle to behold.

Anyway, this guy only ever seems to enter and exit my field of perception mid-monologue, walking past my cubicle speaking in a volume about two "notches" louder than is really necessary. Today, this is what I hear:

10:36 AM, North to South:
"...tyranny, is what I say! Are we going to let the tail wag the dog like that? It's absurd to go metric! We're an American..."

11:07 AM, South to North:
"...not only heritage, but simplicity! Conversion to the metric system has slowed progress and proved the downfall of countless..."

12:30 PM, North to South:
"...fight them on this. We'll stand up for ourselves. A foot is a foot is a foot, not a meter! We will prevail regardless...."

So, uh, obviously there is some shadowy organization trying to destroy the lives of all Americans everywhere with the metric system. I'm just glad we have someone to fight for us against such insidious evil.

Base-10 math? Pfah! Who needs it? I'll keep my 12-inches-to-a-foot and 16-ounces-in-a-pint, thank you very much. Simplicity dulls the mind!

Until we all wise up and start using centons, hectars, and metrons, I'm digging in my heels.

One Zombie Too Many in the Voodoo Pot

Tired. So tired. I'm afraid I must have unknowingly offended a swamp wizard, because I cannot help but empathize with the undead community today. My speech is slurred and I can only move myself from one place to another in a shuffling gait. I also groan a lot.

Worse still, I find myself doing the electronic equivalent of brain-eating, randomly deleting sections of business documents and programming code. It's very frustrating. At the time I deleted the chunks in question, it sure seemed like a really good idea, but in subsequent moments of lucidity I've realized that I actually mutilated the documents beyond repair.

And I don't think the executives in my presentation this afternoon will likely accept "zombification" as a valid excuse as to why my documents make no sense and present only the shredded entrails of valid concepts.

Feh. I had best get to work patching these things back together. Perhaps I can pass them off as "experimental."