MAGIC         PORK

I can’t help but feel responsible for this. Last March, I moved to Washington, DC from Rochester, NY and the very next day there was a snow storm. My moving truck hadn’t even arrived yet, because I drove down myself and the truck wasn’t scheduled to come until later that week. I remember thinking it was kind of nice, made me feel like I was back home in Rochester still. The “storm” was something like three inches but it was a big deal to DC.

Now this winter we have two major snowstorms as well as some other more minor storms. Is it because I moved here? Also consider this last summer. It was a very mild summer for DC. It felt more like a Rochester summer than the scorching humid weather that DC is supposed to have. Everyone thought it was pretty nice, but I bet if people knew they’d be getting a Rochester winter as well, they would have said no thanks.

So I take responsibility for this DC. Rather than me adjusting to DC’s climate, apparently DC adjusted to me.

I walked around the other day snapping some photos. They’re not the best quality photos because:

1. It was in the middle of a snow storm.
2. The lighting was horrible (see #1).
3. I’m not a professional photographer, or even a hobbyist. I point the camera, I press the button.

But with that in mind, here are my photos in Flickr (also linked from my Photos page).

I actually went out three times yesterday. The first time, I realized when I went to take a picture that my camera’s battery was dead, so I just walked around to see what was happening. Then I went back out in a couple of hours and took the first set of photos, then went out again around sunset after the snow had stopped and snapped the rest.

It occurred to me that I’ve never walked around taking photos in DC. I mean why should I? Not like there aren’t photos of the Capitol out there. But it was sort of fun except for the fact that my fingers were numb since I couldn’t wear my gloves while using the camera. Perhaps I should do it more often, not just when we have a storm. I’d blend right in with the tourists. I live in downtown DC and there are always people taking pictures. It’s really annoying at times when you’re trying to walk down the sidewalk and someone’s posing for a picture, blocking everyone while they try to get it just right. Once I even saw a family taking a picture of themselves in front of Austin Grill. Austin Grill?? Unless something truly monumental happened in that place - like you reunited with your long lost son - why do you need a picture of yourselves in front of Austin Grill?

I started to become paranoid at one point this summer because it seemed like people were taking pictures of me. I started to concoct wild theories in my head about how I could have mistakenly become a target of some spy organization. Consider:

• I live in an apartment building that’s one block away from the FBI building, and some of the tenants work for the FBI. So right from the start, it’s not completely ridiculous that some foreign spy organization would want to keep tabs on some of the people living in the building. Or that the US might want to make sure there aren’t spies for other countries living there. Ridiculous yes, but not completely.
• I was in a coffee shop (Steam Cafe in Dupont Circle), next to the window. On the way to the coffee shop, I had seen some young guy with a backpack walking around. I looked out the window and there was that guy across the street with a big camera taking pictures. I thought nothing of it, but when I looked back up, he was snapping a photo of the coffee shop (with me in the window). He walked away after getting that photo. Strange… but okay just some hobbyist or student, or maybe he thought I was silly looking, or has a thing for coffee shops? Not enough to be paranoid right? But there’s more.
• I was sitting in the Navy Memorial reading and I look up… Across the circle is a very stern-looking guy in sunglasses. He looked like, well the stereotypical spy in the movies. That’s what he looked like. He had a little camera and was snapping photos. OK, that’s the thing to do at the Navy Memorial, but he took a picture in my direction and there’s nothing worth taking a picture of there. Any other side of that circle there’d be something worth taking a picture of, but behind me there was… what, that little square of grass where people take their dogs to crap? And then at other times, you see people lying in the grass because they don’t realize this, but I digress. So yeah, I started to wonder what that guy’s deal was. He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself, was just sitting there all creepy-like, taking pictures as if he was a tourist but not acting like a tourist at all. Not convinced yet? Read on…
• I walked out the front door of my building, and was walking down the street. There were two young men, one with a camera taking pictures of the other. They snapped the photo just as I was walking behind him. Now that’s nothing out of the ordinary, but then I start thinking… he was positioning his friend as if to take the perfect photo, but why were they even taking a picture there? There was nothing behind him to take a picture of. Except for me - I was behind him, I was the subject of that photo!! OK no that’s paranoia… but wait, there’s more…
• This time I was walking on E street towards 7th and some guy takes a photo, a long shot of.. something.. but I was right in the middle of the photo. I look behind me… What was he taking a picture of? The restaurant Zola’s? That’s the building the Spy Museum is in but not like you can see anything interesting from the angle he was at. I was starting to get pissed at this point - why does it seem every time I leave my apartment someone is taking a photo of me?

I know, I know… that’s crazy talk and since then, the spy activity has died down, as has the tourist activity. There may be a relation there, and you can say that it’s just that I was blowing it out of proportion in the first place, but I say they realized I was just some schmuck and moved on. Or maybe they realized I was onto them and they’re being stealthier now.

I was in a conversation once with one of those FBI dudes that lives in my building. He said he had something to do with cybercrime so I started talking about how all these people were taking pictures with me in the background. I knew enough not to mention my theory about being the target of spies and made it sound like I was just annoyed that tourists kept getting me in their pictures. I said that one day the facial recognition software would be so good that search engines would find you in the background of all these photos… I tell people I’m home sick, they google me and turns out I was in the background of some photo taken at a bar… BUSTED!!  He nodded his head but I couldn’t tell if he was thinking “yeah numbskull, we already have that technology and are using it, if you only knew what your government was capable of..” or if he was thinking “smile and nod and hope this crazy guy doesn’t start talking about alien abductions and the JFK assassination”.

Wow, that has nothing to do with the snow storm at all, does it? OK right… snow storm.. Some more random observations:

• They use these tiny one-man sidewalk plows. I saw one stuck at a street corner. He was going forward, reverse, forward… like he should do when stuck, but his wheels were just spinning. There was snow piled up between his front and back tires and between his front tires and the plow. He wasn’t going anywhere unless that got cleared out, or unless someone helped push him. I watched a little bit and then went up and asked if he needed help. He just shook his head no and looked away from me. Ooookay buddy, knock yourself out.
• I saw a big snow plow stuck in the street right next to my apartment building, its rear wheels spinning. Nothing I can do for that guy, he was on his own!
• The proper way to drive in snow is not to gun it so fast that you fly above the snow. I saw a car barreling down Constitution while I was walking around. The road had been cleared by this point, but it still had packed-down snow on it and was very slippery. I looked in the driver’s side window to see what kind of jerk was being so reckless. It was some young Middle Eastern woman, and from the look on her face you’d think she was just out for a leisurely drive. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was endangering her life and others going that fast. On the other hand, I saw a guy in a Ford Focus gun it when a light turned green and fly up the street, bouncing over mounds of snow. I managed to send a dirty look directly his way as he passed me, and based on his look back, I think he was in fact a jerk that just didn’t care.
• What’s with the umbrellas? This whole winter, I’ve seen people walking around with umbrellas when it snows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that until I moved here. It never even occurred to me to use an umbrella in the snow. If it’s a real wet slushy kind of snow, then I can see it.. maybe.  But even in fluffy dry snow, people use umbrellas. Odd.
• During the snow storm in December, I looked out my window and saw a car that was parked on the street, blocked in with snow. Behind it, a minivan was pushing the car out of its spot. Like bumper-to-bumper, pushing it out. Obviously they couldn’t time it perfectly as the car started to move, so there was some banging between the bumpers, but I suppose if you don’t care about denting your bumper, that’s one way to do it. The car got stuck in the snow even worse at first, but they persisted and were successful. I’ve just never seen that technique used before.

That’s it… no more bulleted lists or crazy ramblings. Until my next post, I mean.

My dear readers, after having devoured my numerous insightful Magic Pork postings, I’m sure there’s one question that’s been nagging you. But so far none of you have had the courage to ask me, so allow me to posit the question for you:

“Kevin, are you ever wrong about anything?”

Well allow me to put your minds at ease. Although my powers of deductive reasoning may far surpass those of other mortals, I do on occasion come to an incorrect conclusion. Case in point: the Pixies.

I had the great pleasure of seeing the Pixies in concert yesterday at the D.A.R. Constitution Hall here in DC. They were great seats - orchestra level, 20 rows back from the stage. I’ve wanted to see the Pixies in concert for a long time. I’m not a big concert-goer and there are plenty of bands that I like that I really don’t care about seeing in concert. But the Pixies are one of my favorite bands and I was psyched about seeing them. They didn’t disappoint - the concert was awesome! When Black Francis (a.k.a. Frank Black) was screaming and growling on “Tame“, I thought “wow, this guy sounds the same as he did 20 years ago”.

So what’s this have to do with me being wrong? Well for that, we have to go back to 1995, at my first co-op. (That’s what we call it at R.I.T. - a paid internship that’s a requirement for graduation. You take four quarters of co-op. A “quarter” is what R.I.T. has instead of a semester… oh never mind it’s not important!!) I was working the summer of 1995 at a company called Macbeth. They made these instruments called goniospectrophotometers, which I loved to put on my resume for years after that just because it sounded important. The instruments would capture color from four different angles and they had software that worked in conjunction with the instruments to analyze the color, make sure it was within certain bounds and stuff like that. For example, you might use it to make sure the cars that come off of the assembly line are all coming out a perfect “lakeshore slate”. Don’t ask too many questions because did I mention this was back in 1995? I don’t remember much more than that. There were graphs and stuff. It was kind of a funny job for me to have considering I’m colorblind.

There was a girl in her early 20’s that worked at the Munsell color lab there named Anne Marie. We didn’t work together on anything, but somehow we became work-friends. You know, a person you’re friends with at work, but you never do anything with outside of work. We’d usually eat lunch together in the break room. I remember her last name too because I’ve never met anyone with a name like that, but I’ll spare her from having Magic Pork come up on Internet searches of her name and will omit it.

Well one day she let me borrow a Pixies CD. It was Doolittle. I listened to it that night and thought “eh, it’s okay”. I told her as much the next day when I gave it back to her and she was shocked. She was blown away by the Pixies the first time she heard them and she thought I would love them too based on my musical tastes. But just didn’t do it for me.

Fast-forward to a few years later. I don’t remember when, but Fight Club came out in 1999 and I remember being excited that they were playing “Where is My Mind?” at the end so it was definitely before that. Maybe ‘98? I was in a used CD store and saw Doolittle. I don’t know what possessed me to purchase it, but for some reason I decided to give it another shot, even though I wasn’t any more familiar with their music than the last time I had listened to it. I bought it and this time I LOVED it. I then went and bought their other CDs and I became a fan. I couldn’t even comprehend how I could have not loved it the first time.

That’s it. That’s my long-winded story about how I was wrong at one point back in 1995.

I was at a Starbucks in Dupont Circle yesterday that requires a key to the bathroom. I don’t think I truly realized until yesterday just how much I hate that whole practice. I get the reasoning. It’s a busy area and you don’t want people just wandering in from the street and using the bathroom without paying for something, so you have more control over it when they have to come get the key. Even so, I want it to be known that it is the official policy of Magic Pork to unconditionally oppose the use of bathroom keys.

First off, whenever it’s busy, there’s a line of people in front of the bathroom and the key just gets passed to the next person in line, thus circumventing the very reason for the key.

The key is attached to a big piece of plastic saying “Men” or “Women”, so that you can’t just walk away with it I suppose - and also to make it easy to establish which door it goes to. But that big piece of plastic just serves to collect germs and viruses. I’m not a germaphobe by any means. I don’t get freaked out about touching doorknobs and stuff, but during flu season I get a little more paranoid about that stuff. And well, it’s just a little gross, okay? This Starbucks didn’t have anywhere that I could see to hang the key inside the bathroom. I tried balancing it on top of the hand drier but it started to fall off, so I tried balancing it on the edge of the sink and then it just got all wet. All the while, I’m trying to handle as little of the surface area as possible. How many guys are just throwing it on the floor, or shoving it into their pants pocket, or holding onto it while they whiz?

Do they ever disinfect this thing? I’m willing to bet the answer is no. Just like no one ever disinfects the remote controls in hotels and who knows what people were doing before or while handling that remote control. The Starbucks employees themselves have to use the key so it’s being handled by the people making your fancy drinks.

This Starbucks didn’t have any paper towels so I had to use the hand drier which sucked at drying hands. Plus I feel bad spending forever drying my hands when I know there’s guys waiting outside the door for me to finish. So I just wiped my hands on my jeans and exited and handed the key off to the next guy, but I’m sure the key was a little wet from my hands and from the sink. Are you getting the point yet? It’s just gross.

OK I’m not done with the grossness quite yet. I have to complain about the bathroom itself. If you’re going to enforce the use of a bathroom key, you should have a clean bathroom. This bathroom was disgusting. First, it was inadequately lit so it gave it a dark, creepy feel. There was piss on the toilet seat and the sink and floor looked like it hadn’t been cleaned all day. This wasn’t a bar on a Friday night, it was a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon. Clean the frickin’ bathroom. Tangent: I hate when clubs have a bathroom attendant because you’re expected to tip them, but at least if it’s a clean bathroom, I don’t mind too much. But I hate when the bathroom is dirty and the attendant still expects a tip for squirting some soap into your hand and handing you a paper towel. And they never give you enough paper towels to effectively dry your hands. Sometimes they don’t even turn the faucet on for you. Every bathroom attendant should be putting on some rubber gloves and scrubbing toilets and urinals periodically throughout the night. End of tangent.

The bathroom key makes you feel like a child having to ask the teacher for permission to use the bathroom. I’m a grown man, I shouldn’t have to check with a barista if it’s okay for me to go pee-pee. You don’t think it’s not a total power trip for them? It is.

If they’re going to be in charge of handing out a key to the bathroom, they should at least know where it’s located. Once at that Starbucks, I saw the women’s key sitting on the counter (again, gross) but didn’t see the men’s key so I assumed someone was in the bathroom. After waiting 5 minutes and watching some other guy just grab the women’s key and use the women’s bathroom, I meekly asked the barista if they had the men’s key. She replied that if it wasn’t on the counter it must mean someone was in the bathroom. I said okay and waited probably another 5 minutes wondering what the hell that guy was doing in there. Then some other barista shouted out to me and handed me the key that he got from behind the counter somewhere. And do you think he washed his hands after - oh never mind you got the idea.

My mom gave me a box earlier this year that’s full of old papers of mine from high school and college. She found them while cleaning out my closet back home. I wasn’t even sure what was in it because I just shoved it in the corner of my bedroom until it was time to move to DC, and then I shoved it in the corner of my new bedroom. Finally I decided to go through it. Why did I keep this stuff? Did I think that some day I would need to look up my old physics homework?

Looking through this box was mostly depressing because it just makes me realize how dumb I’ve become. The proof is right in my hands: all these homework assignments, in my hand writing, proving that I once knew stuff. I threw out these papers immediately to hide the evidence that I was smarter when I was a teenager than I am now. But I set a few aside to share with you.

Once upon a time, I knew how to solve physics problems. Not advanced physics stuff - I never had to go beyond University Physics III in college - but looking at some of these assignments, I’m like “yeah I remember knowing how to do crap like that”.  Take this question from an exam. The top of the paper says “SPSP 375-371 Practical Exam” and I have no idea what that means. See I’m so dumb now even the heading of the paper stumps me. This is an exam that I scored a perfect score on. BTW I don’t know how to do the “plus or minus” symbol in HTML so I’ll just do “+-” and likewise I’ll write out “degrees” rather than the little circle thingie.

In the preliminary set up of the Equilibrium of Rigid Beams experiment a group of students tied the strings to the meter stick before attaching the clamp! Without the clamp and added mass hanging from the meter stick, however, they were able to level the meter stick, and recorded the following data:

location of “25 cm” hole: 24.950 +- 0.025cm
location of “75 cm” hole: 75.050 +- 0.025cm
location of center of gravity: 52.950 +- 0.025cm
mass of meter stick: 63.4 +- 0.2 grams

mass hanging from “25 cm” string: 50.0+-0.1 grams
mass hanging from “75 cm” string: 54.5+-0.1 grams
angle of “25 cm” string: 34.00+-0.25 degrees
angle of “75 cm” string: 40.50+-0.25 degrees

both acute angles were measured with respect to the horizontal meter stick.

a) Draw a free body diagram of the meter stick with all values indicated.
b) After choosing an axis about which to calculate the torques and clearly indicating its location on your free body diagram, determine if these data are consistent with the criteria for static equilibrium.

This is followed by my neat, well written calculations involving strange symbols and sin and cos of this angle & that. I conclude with the statement, in cursive handwriting (another thing I don’t know if I could even do nowadays without making errors), that ”The beam is in static equilibrium because the sum of the forces and the sum of the torques on the beam both equal zero.” Don’t think I’m bragging that I used to be smart. That probably wasn’t a hard problem at all. I’m saying I’m just dumb now. If someone were to give me that problem now and tell me to either solve it or he’ll chop off my arm, I’d ask “the right or left?”

I had a technical major (started out mechanical engineering and switched to computer science) so most of my papers were of math/science/computer stuff. But my curriculum also included some liberal arts classes. Mostly basic stuff: introduction to philosophy, modern American history, government, 6 psychology classes (that was my liberal arts concentration). Again, I had to face up to the fact that I used to know stuff that I don’t know.

If you were to ask me today about Aristotle’s philosophical views, I’d say that he discovered some laws of logic, but that’s about it. Now consider this take-home test question:

According to Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover - the first cause, the Prime Mover, pure actuality - is the cause of everything. (a) Explain how it could possibly be such a cause, and (b) discuss what that has to do with human beings in particular.

Here’s my essay, which scored a perfect 70/70 and a comment “A very thorough answer”:

Aristotle believes that there is an Unmoved Mover, or pure actuality, that is the cause of everything. Here is an explanation, using Aristotle’s views, as to how this is possible: Every substance in the universe is composed of matter (potentiality) and form (actuality). A substance cannot exist without one of these two components. Actuality precedes potentiality, meaning nothing exists without a cause. For an explanation of Aristotle’s theory of the four causes, refer to the previous essay. [This was the 2nd question on the test.] For any substance we can name, it is logical to say that something else must have caused it (its actuality preceded the substance’s potentiality.) But in order for that other thing to exist, something else must have in turn caused it. Without things affecting each other in this way, there would be no change in the universe. However, with this line of reasoning, there would be an infinite chain of substances affecting each other which didn’t seem logical to Aristotle. For instance, Aristotle believed that the sun moving around the Earth accounted for the changes in Earth’s atmosphere. Then we’d have to ask what accounted for the sun moving (or changing.) If we say the moon accounted for the sun moving, then we’d have to ask what accounted for the moon moving, and so on. Each substance requires an actuality to precede it in order to exist. The answer to this dilemma is that there exists a “pure actuality” that is the prime mover. It is without substance and doesn’t change, therefore it does not require anything to cause it. This unmoved mover cannot be a material cause because it has no potentiality. Therefore it is also not a formal cause because form requires material. It is not an efficient cause because nothing precedes it.  However, it can be explained using the final cause, or purpose. This purpose is what sets everything in the universe into motion. It is the cause of everything, the purpose for everything.

Everything in nature moves towards this pure actuality, attempting to fulfill its purpose. However, nothing can reach this state of pure actuality because matter and form are inseparable. In humans, the highest actuality they can reach is happiness. That is their purpose. There are two types of goals that humans have: instrumental and intrinsic. Instrumental goals are desired in order to achieve a further goal whereas intrinsic goals are desired for their own sake. For example, the goal of my writing this essay is not intrinsic, but instrumental. I am not writing it because I enjoy writing essays about Aristotle, I am writing it because I want to get a good grade on this test. In turn, I want to get a good grade on this test in order to get a good grade in this course. Even things that can be viewed as intrinsic can also be instrumental, however. The only thing for humans that is always intrinsic and never instrumental is happiness itself. Humans desire happiness just for the sake of being happy. Therefore happiness is the final goal of all humans, even if not all humans reach this goal. By being happy we are helping to satisfy our actuality, or soul. By satisfying our soul, we come closer to achieving the unattainable pure actuality. The way to achieve our fullest happiness, and our purpose, is through contemplation. Pure actuality is somewhat like a thought thinking about itself. When we engage in contemplation, we are thinking for the sake of thinking and thus we are coming closer to pure actuality and our purpose. The final form of humans, that which all humans naturally move towards becoming, is that of the philosopher who contemplates.

I remember that class. It was taught by this little man with a gray beard. He basically was what you would expect a philosophy professor to look like. I’m not sure why, because he wasn’t that funny looking, but I would literally not be able to stop myself from cracking a smile when he walked into the room. There was just something funny about him. I liked that guy. It may have been in part because I felt like he thought most of this stuff he was teaching was b.s. too. That stuff I was saying in the above essay? I don’t agree with any of that crap, but the assignment was what would Aristotle think, not what would I think. It hadn’t occurred to me until I took that class that you could appreciate studying about what people have believed over the centuries even if you don’t subscribe to any of those beliefs. Then of course I proceeded to not read any more about philosophy after that. Thus my current dumbitude.

There was something the professor did often that never got old. For example, we were discussing some philosopher’s (I don’t remember who) beliefs about an omnipotent being and he asked if there were any questions. I asked “how could an omnipotent being want anything?” This wasn’t some idea that popped into my head while sitting there in class, I had read Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith and I couldn’t help but bring up that point. He just gave a slight knowing smile and said “Hmm yes…” then looked around and said “are there any other questions?”, indicating that yes, it was an important question that he had opinions about, but no we weren’t going to open that can of worms in this class.

I have a few more papers I could share but I’ll stop here. I’d have to have a couple drinks before I could share an English Composition assignment I wrote entitled “Starlight Elves”. Yeah. I also have an economics paper from high school - I forgot that I even had an economics class in high school! - that’s about aliens from the planet Ryxlen. The point of this post was to show how dumb I’ve become but revealing those to the world might be the ultimate in stupidity.

Not the most original topic, but who doesn’t like complaining about air travel?

In no particular order…

I HATE… when people stand side-by-side on the moving walkways in airports. Hell I hate it when they stand, even if they’re not blocking me. Just them standing there as I walk past annoys me. They’re moving walkways not moving standways. Their point is not to spare able-bodied people the grueling task of putting one foot in front of the other, it’s to allow you to get to where you’re going faster. I’ll typically just walk right up behind someone and say “excuse me”. Or if there’s too many of them and moving out of my way would obviously require a level of coordination that they don’t possess, I’ll walk up as far as I can and have this annoyed look on my face… just so they know that they’re inconveniencing me. I especially love it when I walk past someone on the moving walkway and they give me a look like “what’s that guy in a rush for?” I’m usually not in a rush, I just don’t see the point in standing while the floor moves me at a rate slower than what I could walk at.

I HATE… when people crowd right up against the baggage claim. Let me describe a system that would work remarkably well, and you will never see it happen. The baggage comes out on the conveyer. People stand back at a reasonable distance and watch for a bag that looks like theirs. When they see one, they move forward and check if it’s theirs. If so, they retrieve it. If not, they back up and keep watching. This works because everyone can see the bags. They can also leisurely converse with their traveling companions or people meeting them at the airport. I know, that sounds obvious doesn’t it?

But every time, and I mean EVERY time, people will instead crowd right up to the baggage claim like starving Third World villagers to a UN aid truck. You’ll even have people that are friends of the travelers crowd up to it even though they don’t have any bags. They just want to partake in the excitement I guess. Or maybe they think Santa is working the baggage claim that day giving out suitcases with big red bows on them. I’d like to think that a good half of the people realize the stupidity of it, but since enough people do it that way, they have to follow suit or else get blocked out. Those that get blocked out have to try to spot their luggage by looking between people or over their shoulders, and then push through them to get their luggage when they see it.

Complicating this even further is that as you’re watching for your luggage, passengers from other flights are arriving and immediately pushing forward to find their bags, ignorant of the fact that obviously the luggage that is on the conveyer belt is from flights that got in before yours. Look around you. All these people you see getting their luggage, do you recognize any of them from your flight? Don’t tell me you waited to board your plane, boarded the plane, flew to your destination, got off the plane, and didn’t at any point take notice of any people around you. Are you really that oblivious to the world around you? Don’t answer that because it would depress me.

I HATE… when there’s blindingly bright sunlight shining in through the window and the person in the window seat doesn’t close the shade. They don’t notice that I’m getting blasted full-force like that guy in Sunshine?! Too obscure of a reference? I liked the movie. Cool visuals, great music… then again I saw it on the big screen and don’t know if it would translate well to the small screen. I don’t want to overhype it, but I got totally immersed in that movie. I bet more people are checking it out now that Danny Boyle won best director for Slumdog Millionaire. Speaking of Danny Boyle, 28 Days Later was sooo freaky. Just thinking about that movie makes me feel a little bit uneasy. I don’t mean to knock the traditional zombie, because that has its appeal, but the super-fast zombie was definitely an improvement on the genre in my opinion. Hold on, what was I talking about? Something about planes. Hey wouldn’t Zombies on a Plane make a great sequel to Snakes on a Plane? Maybe not, there’s only so many ways a zombie can jump out at you on a plane. Unless they were zombie snakes but then would you really be able to tell the difference between normal snakes and zombie snakes? No, that’s just silly, it’d be the same movie they already did. Well except that they’re going for your brains. Well no matter, if anyone makes Zombie Snakes on a Plane, I WILL sue because I came up with the idea here. OK now I totally lost my train of thought. Oh sunlight. Yeah it like.. sucks. Or something.  Moving on…

I HATE… when baggage handlers mess with you. This section Mom & Dad may want to skip over. Once I opened my suitcase after arriving at my destination to discover the condoms that I had packed at the bottom of the suitcase lying right on top. It’s not like I was trying to hide them, but just something I tend to be discrete about. But some wiseass baggage handler had opened my suitcase, found them, and decided to put them on top.

Another time, I had done the perfect packing job. I mean I was really truly proud of myself. I used every bit of space effectively. When I got to my destination, I discovered my suitcase had been ransacked. I mean this wasn’t just someone being messy, this was deliberate. There’s no way anyone could have carelessly made it this chaotic. It would have required effort. When I packed my shoes, I put them in plastic bags so I wouldn’t get the rest of my clothes dirty, especially considering I had polished them the night before. I had shoe trees in my shoes to keep their shape. The shoes had been removed from the bags, the shoe trees had been removed from the shoes, the shoes had been shoved back in all crumpled up. My socks were unrolled, my dress shirts had been shoved in there willy-nilly, my condom wrappers had been ripped open (just kidding about that one). I was furious, but nothing you can really do. You can report damaged luggage but there was no real damage. Shoe polish didn’t even get on my clothes. So everything was okay, but I was mad nonetheless. I wanted an option on the form to report “baggage handlers f***ed with me”. (Sorry for the language Mom & Dad, I told you not to read this.)

Perhaps they were looking for something to steal and didn’t find anything. I almost would prefer that because there would be a reason for it. I still think it was just some unhappy worker getting his kicks on some guy that dared to pack a 49.5 pound suitcase. Yeah it was just under the limit - like I said, expert packing job!

That’s it for now, although I’ve got a list going so I’m sure I’ll revisit this. I’ll go ahead and append a “part 1″ to the title.

I was walking down the street today when I saw someone ask the guy in front of me “Do you have a minute for the environment?” I hate those people. You run into them all the time in DC. They stand around with clipboards trying to… well I don’t know exactly because I’ve never allowed one of them to talk to me, but I assume they want you to sign a petition or join some group. Sometimes they tell you the cause up front like this guy, and sometimes I have no clue what cause it is. I just say “no” and keep walking. The worst is when there’s someone saying “do you have some time to help the children?” What a way to try to guilt someone into talking to you.

The man that was approached just said, ”Sorry, I don’t.” I walked past them on the right and was thinking “why are you apologizing?” I never say “sorry” to those guys because I’m not sorry. I just say “no” if I say anything at all. I was glad that I had dodged that one, but then unexpectedly, he had backup just a few steps away. A second man saw me and asked “Do you have a minute for the environment?” It was kind of funny though because just as he was saying that, I noticed a rack of used books and stopped to take a look, so it didn’t even register at first that he had said that to me. But I looked up and saw he was looking at me and just said “no”.

As I was looking over the books, he asked someone else if they had a minute for the environment. Then I went inside the book store. I came out just a couple of minutes later and heard him saying to someone “do you have 30 seconds for the environment?” I got a kick out of that. Somehow within the span of those couple of minutes, the environment was worth half the time it was before. I should have gone up to him and said “Oh, 30 seconds? That’s a different story, I can spare that!” just to see what his reaction would have been.

I overheard two different conversations on a flight recently. To set the stage: I was near the rear of the plane. To my right was an elderly woman and behind us, in the last row, two of her female friends. In front of me were a teenage girl and her young brother, and across the aisle from them was their mother.

I didn’t see the boy when he sat down, but I heard his mom and sister talking to him. Before the plane took off, the mother passed his backpack across the aisle and told him to put it under the seat and if he got hungry during the flight, pull it out and get his snack, but “don’t start screaming”. Well my ears perked up a little at that. Screaming? Then the boy started freaking out about not wanting to fly and being scared. Just over and over saying he was scared and wanted to get off. The plane hadn’t even pushed off from the gate at this point so I knew I was in for a fun ride.

I started to suspect that the boy was developmentally challenged in some way, so I was being understanding about this. Not that I could have done anything anyway - what would I have done, yelled at the kid to shut up? But I did start to wonder if I’d have to break the rules and sneak my headphones on during the no-electronic-devices time period. I’m always a good passenger and follow the crew’s orders but this might just be a necessity, especially since I had my noise-canceling headphones. But there’s another reason I realized that wouldn’t be possible and I’ll get to that next.

The boy kept freaking out and the mother and sister were trying to calm him down. I heard the mother tell another passenger that last year he loved to fly and now all of a sudden he says he’s scared. The sister was trying to convince him that everything would be fine, as the plane was taxiing, and she said “you’re a born traveler”. He must have misheard her but his response was still pretty funny. He said “I’d rather be in a car and be a bored traveler, than be in a plane and be a scared traveler”. I’m not scared of flying, but assuming one is, that’s pretty sound logic. Have to give him that one.

Turns out that almost as soon as the plane was in the air, he was fine. There were a couple of times that the plane made some turn and he got a little excited, but for the most part he was quiet the rest of the flight, until we landed and he thought we were going to land in the water for a minute. It did sort of look like that since the airport was near the water.

The other conversation I overheard was the women sitting next to and behind me. By the way, they all had strong Southern accents. Texas I’m guessing, since I was flying out of Dallas. So picture all this said with a slow drawl. This was also before the plane took off. The flight attendants made the announcement to turn off all electronic devices. Then they announced it again a few minutes later. The woman next to me noticed a young man a few rows up that still had his phone on. The conversation went something like this:

Woman 1: That man up there is still on his phone.
Woman 2: He’s making a phone call?
Woman 1: No, but he’s texting or something. They announced two times to turn off electronics.
Woman 2: Well if we crash then I guess we’ll know why.
Woman 3: Well they won’t know because the black box won’t be able to tell.

All of that was said with absolute seriousness. I have to say, it’s also sound logic if you could bring a plane down with a phone. I don’t know anything about electronic fields or whatnot. All I know is that if it was possible to bring a plane down with a phone, then phones wouldn’t be allowed on planes. Do you really think they’ll go so far as to not let you bring a bottle of water on a plane but they’ll let you bring a device that can disrupt the navigation systems with a press of a button? And if it was that easy, terrorists wouldn’t be smuggling weapons onto planes, they’d just turn their phones on all at the same time. Dastardly!

That being said, I too was a little mad that the guy still had his phone on because if I’m going to follow some stupid rules then I want everyone else to have to follow them too.

I’ve gotten so sick of hearing about Twitter. I always thought it was some weird thing teenagers did but even the software company I work for is on Twitter now. They launched a new marketing campaign recently and when they told us that we’ll be on Twitter (in addition to Facebook) I thought “I give up… I’ve got to check out what the hell this Twitter thing is”.

So I created an account and… well it’s about what I thought it was. You send little text updates to people and receive updates from them. Kind of neat I guess but not seeing the big deal. First off, I already experience that to some degree with Facebook status updates. Secondly, this is what the media are hyping so much? People sending off 140 character messages about random stuff that’s happening? I suppose there could be some useful news in there but it’d be buried under a ton of boring crap.

That being said…

Hey everyone, I’m on Twitter!!! It’s sooo cool. If you aren’t on Twitter, you’re out of the loop. My username is magicpork.

OK, there I tried to sound excited about it. If you try to find me and can’t, then it probably means I’ve already given up by the time you read this. Consider this an experiment, much like this blog was. If you look like a spammer, I may prune you from my “followers” list, but other than that anyone & everyone can sign up to follow me.

If you’re not on Twitter and have no idea what I’m talking about, believe me I didn’t know what this stuff meant either until just this week. Magic Pork is not going away… I will continue to post very infrequent blog entries as I have been. I do tend to have things to say that take more than 140 characters.

Update: Because Twitter is lame, my account isn’t showing up yet when you search for me. If you’re logged into Twitter, try going to http://twitter.com/magicpork and clicking “Follow”.

Another update: My Twitter RSS feed is http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/55052591.rss.

I get cable TV and internet from RCN. When I received last month’s bill, it was for twice the amount it should have been, and that’s because it was saying I never paid the previous bill. It also had two $5 late fees listed, both on 5/30/09. I had signed up for my bill to be automatically deducted from my checking account so not only was I confused why it didn’t go through, I also felt I should not have to pay any late fees and certainly not two of them. In addition, my company covers the cost of the Internet portion of my bill and this was a little embarrassing to submit a bill for reimbursement that has “PAST DUE NOTICE” written across the first page.

When I opened my bill, it was late at night and the customer service department was closed, so I decided to submit an email via their website instead. This is what I wrote:

My account is set to autopay my bills but my bill this month says its past due and the last month was never paid. It also has 2 late fees of $5 each on 5/30/09. Can you please make sure auto pay is working correctly and remove those fees?

Here is the email thread that followed:

From: support@rcn.com
To: me
Date: Friday, June 5, 2009 4:54 PM

Thank you for contacting the RCN email team. My name is Sergio. Wen setting up autopay or updating any information on an active autopay it will reset and take 1-2 billing cycles to start up again. This is explain wen setting the autopay in the terms and conditions. The autopay is not active to charge your account for the full due amount. Unfortunately, are valid and will not be remove or credit. I apologize for any inconvenience.
Thank you,
Sergio

From: me
To: support@rcn.com
Date: Friday, June 5, 2009 5:43 PM

That doesn’t explain why there are two late fees applied to my account on the same date. My bill was not late twice.

From: support@rcn.com
To: me
Date: Saturday, June 6, 2009 8:59 PM

Thank you for being a valued RCN customer. My name is Gregory. It looks like the automatic payment information had been changed online on 05/05/09, and, unfortunately, because of this, the next scheduled automatic payment had been delayed. After this delay, a 305.11 payment has been scheduled on 06/26/09, and, because a full payment of the amount due had not been submitted before the last due date, the late fees are valid charges. In to avoid this issue in the future, after changing payment information online, please submit the next payment manually. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you for contacting us, and please have a wonderful day!
Gregory

From: me
To: support@rcn.com
Date: Saturday, June 6, 2009 9:45 PM

I still don’t understand how the previous bill could have no late fees on it, and then the very next bill I receive has two late fees, both applied on the same date. To recap: no late fees on previous bill, two late fees on current bill. If the first bill was late, and the 2nd bill hadn’t even been received yet, where’s the 2nd late fee coming from?

Not to mention the fact that the first late fee is pretty obnoxious because I never received an email warning me that the autopay wasn’t going through. Perhaps that’s your policy in some fine print somewhere, but that’s just horrible customer service that you can’t recognize that this was a one-time understandable issue and give me a pass in order to keep me as a satisfied customer. And then add insult to injury by insisting on applying two late fees.

Kevin

From: support@rcn.com
To: me
Date: Sunday, June 7, 2009 9:24 PM

Thank you for the reply. Due to recent policy changes, late fees are now charged per line of business, and, because of this, multiple late fees were charged. I apologize again for any inconvenience.

Thank you for contacting us, and please have a wonderful day!
Gregory

I was pretty furious at this point. I even looked at one of the flyers I get in the mail all the time from Comcast and thought about whether I should switch just to spite RCN. I can understand if there’s a waiting period for the autopay to go into effect, and most likely there was some warning on the website I missed when setting it up. But having to wait one or two billing cycles? What kind of messed up system do they have? And what was with the two late fees just because I have two services (cable TV and Internet)?

I considered whether it was worth dealing with them any more on this and decided I might as well call and see where I could get over the phone. I was traveling for work the next week, but the week after I finally called. After going through the menus I got to a very nice young woman. I explained the situation and she said she’d refund me the late fees because so many people have had the same problem. She said “you were probably told there’s nothing that can be done about the late fees, but there is”. I asked her why there had been two late fees instead of one, and she said the late fee is actually $10, they just divided it between the two services. OK that’s still stupid but at least makes a little bit of sense. One of their genius email responders should have just said that. I asked if it was possible to send me a new bill so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by submitting it to work, but that wasn’t possible. But other than that, it had a happy ending. That isn’t stopping me from bitching to the world about the experience though.

A while back - maybe a year or so? - I started to write a post about Michael Jackson. I abandoned the post because it just wasn’t working. I had some vague disjointed ideas but when I went to write them up, it wasn’t flowing right and was just kind of stupid. I’m sure it appears that I just slap these posts together, but believe it or not I put effort into them. That’s how bad of a writer I am that these are the best I got in me. Occasionally I’ve started posts that just weren’t up to the high standards of Magic Pork and they never saw the light of day. I was always disheartened that I abandoned that Michael Jackson post because I felt like there was gold to be mined there.

Now, with the news that Michael Jackson is dead, and with my friends and family starting to harass me to post something, it’s time. But there’s still no flow to these ideas so I’ll just make a bulleted list and throw out there whatever comes to mind.

• Michael Jackson’s little girlish outbursts - you know, the “hee”, “hoo” type noises - what do you call them? There’s got to be a term for that. Well whatever they’re called, they’re absolutely one of the best contributions to pop music ever. You could make a mediocre pop song good just by throwing in some Jacksongasms. Jacksongasm!  I just made that up now! What do you think? It works, right? So got a word for it now. I don’t want to picture “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” or “The Way You Make Me Feel” without Jacksongasms. That last part of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” with the “ma-ma-say-ma-ma-sah-ma-ma-ku-sah” (that Rihanna lifted for “Don’t Stop The Music”)? It’s good, but the accompanying Jacksongasms push it to great. He just goes insane with them at the end of that song. I picture Quincy Jones saying “more Jacksongasm!” like Christopher Walken in that “more cowbell” SNL skit.
  
  Now that I repeat “Jacksongasm” that many times, it’s lost its appeal to me. Must use that sparingly.
• “Just Good Friends” with Stevie Wonder is underrated.
• “The Girl Is Mine” with Paul McCartney is rated just right - it’s not a very good song. It’s like a bad Vegas lounge act. But I do give it points for two things: The bridge is decent, and the talking at the end is (I assume unintentionally) hilarious. You have to listen to it to get the full effect, but here’s what they say:
  
  Paul: Michael, we’re not going to fight about this, okay?
  Michael: Paul, I think I told you: I’m a lover not a fighter.
  Paul: I’ve heard it all before, Michael. She told me that I’m her forever lover, you know, don’t you remember?
  Michael: Well, after loving me she said she couldn’t love another.
  Paul: Is that what she said?
  Michael: Yes, she said it. You keep dreaming.
  Paul: I don’t believe it.
  
  Yeah Paul I wouldn’t believe that either. The best line is “She told me that I’m her forever lover”. Who talks like that? Cracks me up, but that’s probably just me.
• If asked to compare the two, I would have to say Thriller is a superior album to Bad. Pretty much everyone would. Then why do I tend to listen to Bad more often? Does that mean I like it more? I don’t know - it may be because Thriller has some great songs but also some not-so-great songs (see above), whereas Bad may not have as many great songs but it’s pretty consistently good. Or it could just be that I hear the songs from Thriller so often that they wore on me. When I lived in Rochester, I’d sometimes go to this bar that plays a lot of 80’s songs called Vinyl and some of those songs (”Thriller”, “P.Y.T.”, “Billie Jean”, “Beat It”) were in regular rotation. Someone needs to tell their DJ that there are a whole lot of 80’s songs. He doesn’t need to play the same ones every weekend. But hey the bar was always packed so what do I know.
• I remember after “Dirty Diana” was released - I was in junior high school I think - I heard two boys talking about metal bands and hard rock stuff. Then one of them said that “Dirty Diana” was pretty good. And you know what? He was right - that song kicks ass. It’s just begging for a cover by Disturbed. Disturbed did two awesome hard rock covers of 80’s songs: “Shout” by Tears For Fears and “Land of Confusion” by Genesis. I know they could do something great with “Dirty Diana”.
• Speaking of covers, the video to Alien Ant Farm’s cover of “Smooth Criminal” was really good. It walks a perfect line between homage and satire, and their cover is just great too. I hated that other song they released from that album though - “Movies” or something. I’d say they should stick to other people’s songs but are they even around any more? This wikipedia page lists the Michael Jackson references in the video, and the video is on YouTube, although the quality is horrible like most videos on YouTube.
• I can’t figure out why after listening to the entire Bad album, it’s always “Liberian Girl” that gets stuck in my head. That’s the worst song on the album so why does that happen?? Even if I skip past the song, it still happens. I don’t even listen to it and it still gets into my head! That’s just not fair. It’ll probably happen now just because I wrote about it. That’s how much I sacrifice to bring this great content to you.

I suppose I should end with some statement about his death. I’m not a huge Michael Jackson fan despite what it may look like from me rambling on about the guy. I think he was very talented though, and to be honest I always personally believed that he wasn’t a child molester, just some really odd guy with a stunted mental maturity and isolated enough from reality to not know or care how his closeness to kids was perceived. So - am I sad he’s dead? No, not in particular - but I do think it’s unfortunate. He made great music, he was a unique guy (very unique), and I think the world may just have been a little better with him in it - or at least more interesting.