Peering into the cosmos...

Space is amazing.

Looking through a telescope, seeing Venus and Mars, Saturn and its rings, I can't help but wonder how anyone who has seen that could do anything but want to explore it. The fact that we have ended our space program, and yet haven't ended the unnecessary wars that we're still involved in, baffles me. There is no good rationale for it.

I think that Bill Hicks said it pretty well:

"Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."

Long-time friends are kind of awesome. Even if they're very different from you, the fact that they have stuck around that long means that they probably think pretty similarly, at times.

The last couple nights, I've been working with Tony at the Hoquiam branch of Murphy's. Only for a few minutes while we go through the shift change stuff, but it's still fun. On Friday, I showed up a few hours early, because I had a horrible cough and wanted some cough drops. I told him the premise for my "Uh, Domino's..." post the other day, and his reaction was the same as mine was in the post. He even went a little creepy with it and pretended to rub his hand on something before pretending to lick said hand. Considering that's exactly one of the things I suggested, it made me laugh (which, of course, sent me into a coughing fit).

AND its his damn fault that I've been sick. I was fine until I got a ride home from him on Thursday, and then the next day, I had this cough and some sinus issues. It's mostly gone, but he finally realized it was probably his fault -- earlier that day, he'd had someone sick in his car. Now that Tony's getting it too, he's accepting the blame... fucker.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to listening to TANcast. And then getting ready for that work shit. Different Murphy's location again -- not my local store, and not "my" store. Argh.

Uh, Domino's... I have a question

What the hell are you doing to my food?

Pizza for lunch. Or, since I got up at noon and ordered it at 3pm, maybe a really really (really) late breakfast. One of those things that you can only get away with as an adult, and only rarely for me. You know, one day off of healthier eating isn't that bad.

So, I decided to get Domino's. I didn't actually have pizza, but instead one of those sandwiches they make. They have a mango habañero sandwich, did you know that? Mmmmm. Sweet, and spicy, and with just a little crunch from the bread and the jalapeño slices. Sounds pretty good, right? It is. Or, more accurately, it was.

They also have a neat little order tracker, when you order online, with five steps. The first and second, placing the order and prepping the food, go pretty quickly. The third one, cooking the food, took the longest. Not surprising, but then I got to the fourth step: "(employee name) is checking your food for deliciousness!"

.  .  .

HOW?! Are they licking it, tasting it? Are they giving it a good rub-down and then tasting their hands? ARE THEY UNDRESSING MY FOOD WITH THEIR EYES? EYE-RAPING IT?!

Sure, it probably means they're making sure it's all up to food-service safe temperatures, but is "checking [it's] deliciousness!" the right way to put that? Now, if I ever go in there and see that employee, it might get awkward.

"Managatorial"

-Hey, dude. We're both off at 10pm. Any chance I could get a ride home?-
-Sure. Where do you work tonight?-

That was the start of it. Since I am without a car (read: broke as hell), and the bus doesn't run that late, I had to ask Tony for a ride home. We were both off around the same time, and even though he's moved out of town, he still works for another Murphy's store. I felt bad for having him drive in the opposite direction he needed to go to get home, so I offered to buy him some grub.

$10 at Taco Hell and a ten minute car ride later, we were at my place, and bullshitting about a lot of shit. Some of it was recent past (like the Mafia games at 9thWonders), and some of it was my stupidity-as-a-kid (there's a lot more than I'd like to admit. Then we started talking about work we'd been trying to find that wouldn't be minimum-wage, soul-crushing Murphy's. And a glorious word was born, brought forth from the head of Tony, as Athena was birthed from the head of Zeus. That word? "Managatorial".

TONY: "So I checked out that (well-known rent-to-own company) position, and it's for assistant manager. Neither of us are really qualified. We don't have managatorial experience."

I picked on him for it, but a Google search reveals that he's not the only idjit to come up with it. There were a lot of shitty resumés for people with "managatorial epxreinse" (and other atrocius misspellings), who couldn't think of the words "management" or "managerial". And, at the end of the conversation with him, we've agreed on a few things to share. He's got a few spelling/word errors like that, and we still chuckle about a few of the older ones.

Anyone want to help me make "managatorial" a thing?

This Post Has No Title

"I don't mean to bore you with mundane tweets about food, but I have to tell the world that melted cheese on top of tater tots is awesome."

That's from the awesome Lauren, over on her Twitter. It made me chuckle, and then it made decide to post what I've thought a few times lately. MY version of this tweet would have been two tweets, and they'd have looked a lot like this:

I don't mean to bore you with mundane tweets about food, but this is my Twitter account, so fuck off if you don't like it.

That said, melted cheese on top of tater tots is awesome. #foodtweets

But that's because I'm a crotchety old man at heart, and a vulgar bastard, too. It's also something that applies to the blog in general. If you don't like something I'm talking about, you don't have to read it. If you do, and I'll admit that I hope you do, then that's awesome. I hope that you comment whether you like it or not. Constructive criticism helps drive improvement, man.

That was all I really wanted to say. Maybe that tendency towards vulgarity and wordiness is why I'm up near 32,000 tweets in about 3.5 years. Although, since my tweets-per-month have dropped significantly over the last two years, I'd attribute a large portion of that high number to my 9thWonders friends, and the conversations/arguments we had on Twitter. All the time. o___o

Now it's time to go watch some pre-recorded TV. I missed Castle and shows like that last night. Excuse me while I get my Stana Katic fix. :P

Why do they keep ruining Mister Terrific?

When you have something good, why not run with it?

Mister Terrific (Michael Holt) is a pretty awesome character. He's one of the few minority main characters, the 3rd-smartest character in the DC Universe, a self-made businessman and partially tech-powered hero, and in most iterations of the character, an atheist.

To me, that last part is awesome. My preferred versions of the character have him rationalizing the gods and magic of the DC Universe as simply being different -- advanced, whatever. Many pieces of fiction point out that to ancient people in our world, we would seem magical and godlike, and that's the viewpoint that Michael Holt seems to operate from.

The problem is that he can't seem to keep a title going by himself, which is a shame. I'm going to buy/borrow/read it soon, but from the Wiki description I read, the newest series that DC has put out might have made him a religious man. It might be talking about an alternate-universe version, but I'm not sure, because the main comic is itself in an alternate universe from the main DCU featured in Justice League and the like.

I think that he's one of the characters that I would love to write, if my writing eventually includes a career in comic books. It's not any one specific part of him, but the combination of it all that appeals to me. Honestly, I think I'd greatly enjoy writing a team of DCU underdogs: Mister Terrific, Ragman, Blue Devil, Deadman, etc. Maybe I'll write some of that out for fun one of these days anyway.

EDIT: Having talked with someone who did read the eight issues that DC put out, it looks like they didn't make him religious this time around. He doesn't openly state atheism, but he does correct someone using science when they say "you had the faith in us", he states a disbelief in an alien character's "Seven Gods", and says he doesn't believe in ghosts. So, he's at least a skeptic. The Wiki article must have been referring to some other Mister Terrific shenanigans. Stupid confusing crap.