1. the car thing that's supposed to save the world. you see, those awesome batteries occasionally die. and apparently they're awesomely expensive. but i have some good news! i just paid a bunch of money to someone to basically let me keep using what i had already paid for.
2. the iphone. though at&t doesn't know it's an iphone, and that's kind of at the root of the problem. in order to avoid allowing them to ream you on the data plan you have to perform some digital magic, among other steps. but this magic has certain side effects, including people can't call you. ask your doctor if ultrasn0w is right for you—i should have.
3. the roof. it has holes. in it.
4. the stereo of my other vehicle. a long time ago i turned the ignition in my truck a certain number of clicks so i could listen to the radio or whatever, but went one click too far, and then back a click, all in rapid succession, and this let the magic smoke out of the shiny lights of the faceplate. and magic smoke, as any scientist will tell you, is hard to put back in a device after it has escaped.
5. the nail of my left index finger. and now every time i use it it's like the terrorists won their war against the kittens.
6. the dog. i've made clear my thoughts on the matter of sub-sentient life forms. they exude smelly substances and totally ignorant of this fact. they whine for attention. and not one of them has a job.
7. the internet. conservapedia.com will eventually become skynet.
8. my liver. and i have the other items in this list to blame.

do not do it. without exception babies are a losing investment, for many reasons which i'll break down for you:

financially, gads, they're a nightmare. one baby will eat, wear, drive, and matriculate six figures of dollars of money before it is legally its own human and you can with good conscience stop pouring money down its maw. if you're to receive any kind of return on your money, you have to wait forty, fifty, maybe even sixty years and then your little youngster will gladly pay to lock you up in some geriatric warehouse that smells like hemorrhoid cream and old people's feet. great r.o.i. there, gramps.

their primary export is poop. actual no-fooling human poop. you are wasting good food by putting it into a machine that turns it to poop. there are starving children in africa, and you're making poop machines. bravo.

they have all kinds of compile errors. at first they sleep almost randomly and execute any dna they come into contact with. then they start blatantly doing the opposite of what they're told. (and have i mentioned the poop? I'M SERIOUS HERE. POOP.) they are congenitally idiotic; at some point in its debugging stage one will willingly jump off the tallest tree in the park and destroy every cell in its body requiring outlandish sums of your dollars to nurse back to health. (it won't die, though. they're robust little buggers; i have to give them that.) they are intolerably needy especially around late december, and when you get them what they think they want they will just break it and then want something else.

they get larger but their brains apparently do not, and the runtime errors continue. they will think they have this 'love' thing figured out and give it a shot for themselves, but of course they did not; they will eventually collapse into a sobbing puddle which you must mop up. they interpret neurological signals of fear and stress as fun and will drive your cars at too fast a speed and wreck two or three of them. they are bad with dollars themselves and will constantly beg you for yours. and when they finally stop exhibiting buggy behavior they leave, and will be totally normal for someone else. but not you.

and perhaps the most compelling argument is that everyone else is investing in them. there are plenty of (perhaps even too many) humans in the world already. do you remember what happened when all of a sudden everyone wanted a house? everyone started getting houses and then the economy exploded. there is no room for growth in the market. this is the reason eskimos don't invest in ice. or poop, for that matter.

p.s. poop. poop! IT IS POOP, HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THIS

STONED PAULSON ORDERS 700 BILLION BEAN BURRITOS

i am a homeowner. well, technically, for the time being, the bank is a homeowner, but they kindly allow us to live here.

biggest
huzzah
ever.

to summarize our other top stories:

i am a hardened catnapper;
the bear-sharks were enraged;
the radioactive lava acid burned;
beck music videos are winning;
i need a couch.

cheers, renters.

hey, I'm a nice guy. I mean, you trust me, right? come on, baby. you do, right?

SECOND
since you're done with that
there's a 'popular idea' currently floating around the interweb. readers ask the author (in my case, me) to take pictures of things and whatnot and then post them to the author's (my) web-o-log. though I'm not generally fond of 'popular ideas,' I think this one is particularly fascinating: you get to see the current state of my life, and I get to find out what really interests you. I'm 'gung-ho' to do this, as the kids say these days. if you love me, you'll post requests. if you really love me, you'll let me do the same.

what fun!
what fun.
what fun?

something tells me I'm going to have to make dinner tonight (my wife is something).

(and, apparently, only if you live in the general vicinity of london. pooh.)

containing:

1. a wireless network adapter for a laptop computer, and
2. a laptop computer.

not just any wireless network adapter for a laptop computer and laptop computer. a very, very special wireless network adapter for a laptop computer and laptop computer.

specifically the laptop computer I had sent to a right bastard somewhere across the atlantic* after I had sold it to him on ebay for the agreed-upon price of US$750.

he wanted me to use an escrow service (escrowtm.com—though they no longer exist so don't bother looking) that would, so he said, hold his money until he verified receipt of the computer, at which point they would send me the money. so I cheerfully sent the package off that morning. hatelife died that afternoon. I had friends over for my birthday party that evening. it was a very significant day in my life.

soon after, the guy wanted to know where his laptop was, hurry it up, give me the tracking number again, etc. fearing negative ebay feedback, I did my best to help him out.

I went about my business with only an occasional passing thought about the computer. I didn't have the money yet, but no big deal, I have bigger things to worry about. in the meantime I graduated. I said some vows in front of some people. I designed and implemented a honeymoon.

then I came back from the honeymoon. still no money, and the communication had stopped. I was flummoxed. 'hmmm,' I said. I went to the escrow site again, and lo! no website. very fishy, I concluded. I googled the website and much to my dismay discovered that it was quite fraudulent and gosh what an idiot I am. I kicked myself and wailed and gnashed teeth and carried on and thought of a way to lightly drop the news on my lawfully wedded wife. tears and sighs ensued.

I reported it to everyone I could think of (ifcc, fbi, mi6, kgb), but didn't tell anyone else. for example, you people are learning of this before my mother is. I blame embarassment. it's not every day you throw away a significant amount of value and hope to be reimbursed based on a promise and a website. seriously: thirty seconds' research could have prevented the whole thing.

and when nothing turned up and the usps website said the package had been delivered, I resigned myself to the whole stupid situation. if I were calvin, my dad would probably say 'losing money builds character.' and if that were the case then I've built a whole lot of character lately.

so when the postman rang the doorbell this afternoon, you might be able to better understand my happiness.

now my wife is saying that the pears in the kitchen are ripe and we must eat them immediately.

what a day.



p.s. through the magic of the internet I saw you squinting to try and see my address. foiled again, villain.

*GIORDANO BRUNO, of
93 WADDINGTON STREET
STRATFORD
LONDON
E15 1PJ (UNITED KINGDOM), YOU ARE A RIGHT BASTARD

~escrowtm.com, YOU ARE A BUNCH OF RIGHT BASTARDS

I called her today and apologized. she forgave. we talked and laughed. nothing like the olden days of older brotherly pesterance. I'm so glad I'm not young anymore. it really is nice when sibling = friend. I hope it stays this way for a long, long time.


slashdot karma decreasing daily. we might not survive this. however: THANK YOU /. for proving again and again that I am not the nerdliest human living. not by a long shot.


financial situation can only get better. I know this because if it gets any worse I'll be living in a cardboard box and I've promised myself that will never happen.


red bull is yellowish. I've never come across yellow bull but if there's any justice in the world it must be red.

… how strange. I'm reduced to talking about colors of freaking beverages in this so-called journal of mine. something must change and that thing is me.



if writing insubstantial posts is cool, then I'm miles davis.


LAPTOP I will miss you when you're gone. we'll always have the good times to remember, though. like that one time when I typed that really funny thing using your keys. that was a good one. or that time that I used you to find out my grade in that one class. that wasn't so good, but I'll remember it nonetheless. or that one time I bought you on eBay. of all the times we've shared together, that certainly was one of them.


insight: quality of this post is falling.


I'll just be hitting the 'post' button now.

dammit, that exam has had the unexpected side effect of severely disillusioning me. long, long ago I thought I was good at everything, but that was before I had any real challenges. this isn't conceit, mind you. I'm genuinely just figuring out my limits. it's healthy, but healthy hurts. sometimes. really I just need to grow up.

randomly, I here feel the need to interject to all the kids of hatelife just how stupid high school is. high school is the dumbest four years of your life, but seriously, time passes and so will imagined high school angst. I know wisdom is lame and free wisdom doubly so and you're not even reading this anymore but it's true nonetheless.


old laptop is on the outs! I found a sooper-excellent deal on a near-new Dell, and if all goes well, the eBay proceeds from old laptop will cover the cost of new laptop and then some. how pleasantly good and nice when things go my way. I'll show you the auction if and only if you promise to meet my buy-it-now price.

boring honesty: I have determined/discovered something important. I only get gotten down [aside: grammar alarm bells ringing] by things that I don't expect. if I have time to mentally plan for them, bad things don't really bother me. I've mentioned this to other intelligent people who 'know me' and they seem to agree.


it's 2:20 in the morning and stormy outside. inside, though, I am the definition of calm. I am the jedi master. I am a singularity. I am zen itself.

on a scale of one to awesome, I'm pretty great—and the weekend has just begun.