Getting there??? I’m now in the EditThisPage.Com Top 50. Congratulations to Garret for replacing Builder Live as the number one spot!
I was born in the year of loony tunes?! Smack dab in the middle between couch potato and geek. Gee, weren’t the late 70’s great?
Only in a romantic comedy is stalking someone considered sweet???
Over a year ago, I had thought of my life as a fractal and how, despite the myriad possibilities, it all seemed like the same thing no matter how it branched out. As for recently, I’ve been thinking about my life in the 1900s, particularly last year and the things I could’ve done differently and most likely would do differently if given a second chance. Sure, if I took the other road things would be at least somewhat different than how they turned out, but I’m not sure how different and if it would’ve lead to something more or just go back to being the same old thing again. And I’m not really concerned about whether it would’ve been better or worse had I done so–most of the moments I have in mind are ones where I took the path of least resistance and did whatever was most passive. I’m mainly interested in what the actual magnitude of the possible change would have been. Sometimes, all it takes is for me to decide to go forth and do something out of routine in order to feel better even if I don’t happen to succeed that time. At least I know I tried, that making some effort is possible, and that maybe there’s hope. Still, whether I decide to wait in quiet desparation, or take a stab in the dark, how much choice did I really have? If time could be turned back and played forward again, would everything occur in the exact same sequence of events, does every single, tiny thing in the initial state of something affect the final outcome? Are there some subtleties that are overlooked that inevitabley have a determining effect? Is the unimportance of some things regarded as obvious not that easy to see? When do I know that I’ve gone through it all enough times to be sure that nothing’s been left out? What should I hang on to? What can I throw away?
If they’re planning the the crime of the century now, what would it be? Whatever it is, they have less than a year to submit their entries to claim the title. No, not for the twenty-first century. I mean the century we’re living in now, which happens to still be the 20th. Despite popular belief, it is not a new century or millenium. A lot of people know that already and will admit it but some of those people still go on about it being a new century or talk about last week as if it was another millenium. And there are also a lot of people sick of chronology nerds saying, “There was no year zero, so technically the new millenium starts in 2001!”. I hesitated to write about it myself, lest I sound like one of them. I don’t like to come across as annoying. And when one asserts things like how it’s not the 21st century yet, people usually respond with a shrug, a who cares?, or with a whatever!. But whenever I hear someone mention how cool it is to be in the next century I feel like that girl in Columbine high school who was next to the other girl who was shot and killed, allegedly because she said she believed in God. It’s just not true! Why does everyone go on about it if it simply is not true? It may not seem important whether or not something actually is, but it does matter in one way or another. If we let one such discrepancy go, what’s to stop us from allowing something else that’s just a tad less true than the last one? Take the myth that we use only 10% of our brain for example. There are people trying as hard as they might to “tap into” that supposedly unused portion, and they’re trying the craziest of things. Illogical thinking may be acceptable, or at least tolerated–to a degree–but it’s never okay. How long before it’s too late? When’s the earliest we can expect a new trend in thinking? Or will it always be this way, regardless?
Here are a couple of quotes:
“Now the answer???is plain,
but it is so unpalatable that
most men will not face it.
There is no reason for life
and life has no meaning.”- W. Somerset Maughn
“It was previously a question of finding
out whether or not life had to have a
meaning to be lived. It has now become clear,
on the contrary, that it will be lived all
the better if it has no meaning.”- Albert Camus
I agree with both of them in the senses that I believe they meant it in. But even if I don’t think there’s a meaning of life, or even if I think my own life is worthless, it does not mean that I feel that life is meaningless. Most people I know of who believe we were all put here on this earth for some special reason can’t imagine why anyone would want to go on with their lives if they don’t think there’s any ultimate purpose. But that’s what I love about life. What if I did have some predetermined purpose to fulfill and I didn’t want to do it? Then what? I prefer the freedom that I have to make of my life what I choose, including not making anything of it at all. Not that I choose that, but I also cherish my right to die whenever I want, even if I don’t plan to exercise that right voluntarily. There’s a poem about some dogs barking on a leash, that when let loose, lay down quietly just a couple feet away. The poem concludes that even if freedom may just be an idea, it’s a matter of principle, even to a dog. That’s how I feel about life and death. If I can’t die when I want, I don’t want to live, either!
Typos. You know, typographical errors–spelling mistakes caused by innocent carelessness. Yeah, those. Before spell check, people sure made a lot of them. When writing for the Web, who has time, or even the availability, of spell check? Manila doesn’t have it, but that’s okay–for now. What’s great about Manila is that you can go back to anything you wrote at any time and fix it there and then. But not everyone can do that. Still, I wish there was a way to get any typo I see on the Web fixed ASAP. Sometimes, if the author’s contact information is apparent, I’ll let them know about it. But, as with forwarding every piece of spam to abuse@whoever.com, it’s too tedious to do every time. Browsers should include a feature that lets you highlight a spelling error or broken link, right click (or in the case of a Mac, hold and wait : P) on it and select an item on the pop-up context menu that notifies the author automatically. For the most part this whole typo thing isn’t a big deal, but there are some times when a crucial misunderstanding can arise. I wish I was managing editor of the whole Web (which would all run on Manila-based technologies) and just press the Edit This Page button on any page I go to, to fix it up. That would be nice.
Wow, Dave in a minor tiff over Jason Levine telling everyone on his site how Dave deleted his posting from Discuss.Userland.Com and told him to post it on his own site. Never really seen that part of Dave in a public discussion forum. Interesting??? And my apologies to Mr. Winer for drawing more attention to the relatively unimportant issue. I didn’t have anything else to say for today : / .
Also, I accidentally overwrote my modifications to this site’s style sheet I did at work by adding to the style sheet from home afterwards using the Advanced form in Prefs at home without refreshing it first, so it still had the pre-modified style sheet I left home with this morning–d’oh!
Further apologies to Dave for reffering to him, in an uneccesarily formal manner, as “Mr. Winer”.
So, today is the last day of the Peanuts comic strip. I really liked Snoopy and all of that when I was a kid. The Charlie Brown specials on TV seemed like precious rarities. But I have to say that I don’t really find the comic to be funny at all. Maybe it was funny in the beginning, at least for its time, but I never really saw much humour in them. I’m not necessarily glad to see the strip end, but I do think that it’s gone longer than it probably should have. Most fans of the cartoon would disagree, of course, but that goes without saying. I was sad to see Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side end. I didn’t want to see them go. Now, those ones were funny, and I especially liked Calvin. Garfield is another unfunny strip that should probably stop, too??? In the immortal words of any adult in the Peanuts animations, “waunh waunh waunh, waunh-waunh waunh”.
Wow, this is the 88th most visited site on EditThisPage.Com out of a total of 1501 sites. I couldn’t have hit the page 1,684 times all by myself, could I? Maybe a few hundred, but I doubt over a thousand. I’m catching up to MyMomCan.EditThisPage.Com; woohoo!.
I know this message shows up as the page for the January 2 (as indicated by the calendar, and elsewhere), but in Eastern Standard Time it’s the 3rd, and that’s what I go by. At least I have the 2 highlighted as a link, as opposed to having a dead black number indicating that nothing was posted for that date, and that nothing ever will be.
Now I’m at #73! I’m way ahead of Jeff Cheney’s mom now, but now I’m farther behind Jake’s Brainpan. He went from 87th to 65th. I really think it’s because we’re constantly hitting our own pages with updating, editing, going back and so forth.
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