Ajax Thinks

Ajax Thinks
by Muffin Man

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

As Seen on TV...In My Mind

It is the greatest unnecessary invention since the Egg-Wave! As redundant and ridiculous as the Snuggie! Can you stand the anticipation of what it is? I can't wait to tell you, so I imagine you must be full to the brim of excitement!! I present to you, the binder with a shoulder strap! Tired of carrying your three ring binder from class to class in your hand, but can't be bothered to weigh yourself down with a back pack? Messenger bags are the trend, but do you really need to carry around all that extra lugging space? You can fit at least three books in a messenger bag, but you only need to bring one. Here is the answer: the binder with a shoulder strap! Our engineers have taken the standard three ring binder and attached a luxurious pleather strap to the binding. The strap has four loops across the front to hold your pencil, pen, chapstick, rolled-up index card, candy cane, WHATEVER! You can carry four of anything that will fit! Each end of the strap clips into a special strap loop welded to the spine of the binder. Simply clip the strap into each end of the binder and throw it over your shoulder like a messenger bag - without all that horrendous unused carrying space, you are conserving resources! When you get to your destination, simply unclip the strap from the binder and clip the two ends together. You now have a stylish bandoleer for your writing utensils or whatever! When you are ready to travel again, all you need to do is unclip and reclip and head out, its as easy as 1, 2, 3! As if this deal could be any better...well we are about to make it so! If you order now, we'll throw in a second strap, made out of web material, perfect for a casual appearance. But not only that! We'll send you a fabric cover for your binder, one size fits all! Just slide the binder into the cover, which has metal grommets to clip the strap into, and voila! This deal cannot be beat and is not available in stores, so order now! Only $14.95 for the whole lot, you can't go wrong...unless you don't order now!

Thursday, April 22, 2010

If I Tell a Joke in the Woods and No One is There to Hear It, Was it Funny?

The answer to the question posed in the title is yes. Whenever I tell a joke it is funny, duh. But this question begs another question, if I post something on this blog and no one reads it, did I actually post anything on the blog? This question isn't as easy to answer. What constitutes posting something? Me clicking the publish post button? Maybe, but if the internet were to evaporate over night and I was testifying in court that I had posted, it would be my word only to support my claim. As far as the world would be concerned, the post never happened. There would be no evidence. Now, I know what you are asking, "Haven't you read Munsterberg?!?!" Of course I have, I know the fallibility of human witness testimony, but even with an imperfect witness, two claims would still be better than one. I think the answer to the question is no; if I post something on this blog and no one ever reads it then I never posted it at all. Just something for you to think about.
I'm watching the Mets play the Cubs. It is getting a little dicey in the top of the 8th, Cubs batting. The Mets had a 4-1 lead coming into the inning, and they have given back one run since. Two outs and men on first and second currently. Santana started and threw a great game, only allowing the one run. I hope the bullpen doesn't blow it, Santana deserves a win. Strike out to end the half inning. Only three more outs, they got this.
Furthermore, now you know I like the Mets, or you may have been able to infer that, but I'll tell you now, I like the Mets. As I was saying, furthermore, now that you know I like the Mets, I'll also say that I like Glenn Beck. His show on Fox today was excellent. It is hard to believe some of the stuff that is going on in the government these days and is getting a free pass by the news media. I'm glad Beck is there to catch those things and bring them to light.
That's all.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Today is April 14

It has been 7 days since I last posted on this thing. Since school got out I left to visit my sister's family. I've been at her house since. I go back to school-town in two days. The summer semester begins class on the 20th. It has been nice to be out of the desert and back to the East where trees grow freely with lots of green leaves. Grass is naturally green here; flowers and other plants thrive as well. The air is tangible with humidity. Not so much this week, but in the coming months it will be. I like humidity. The best part about all of these things might be the smell of trees. Different trees have different smells and I think I like all of them. Tomorrow I will be mowing the lawn for my brother in law. I am pleased for the opportunity. The cut grass will have a good smell of its own. It will also turn my shoes green. It has been a long time, over 15 years maybe, since I used a push mower (I wielded one in defense of my country while in the Army, but that was Texas, and grass didn't really grow, so I mowed, but there wasn't any fresh cut smell or turning of shoes green, but that's what you get with black leather boots, I suppose). As you may be aware, I've had plenty of adventures with riding mowers (see post from 20 March). Tomorrow will be a nice chance to get back to one of my favorite activities, yard work. Living in an apartment doesn't provide much opportunity for that. I thought about getting a job on the grounds crew at school, but then stopped thinking about it. I think I like working in the yard when I want to and not for the purpose of money. Just like Gerald told Scarlett, the red clay of Tara gives you life, the green plants of the East give me life.
In other news, my brother in law and I are watching a movie called Pulse on TV. It is stupid. Disjointed and poorly written, all of the scenes are not well lit. We are over thirty minutes into it and still have no idea of what the plot is about. So goes the movies these days. I miss the days when good movies were made. Thankfully there are DVD's of those movies. This Pulse thing is just about creepy images and surprise scene changes, just trying to capitalize on base emotional reaction: fear. It is what I like to call exploitation. That is what movies today try to do. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Likewise, which came first, the bad movie makers or the bad movie consumers? Oh, I don't care anymore.
I read a good book this week. It is called Cop: A True Story, by Michael L. Middleton. Middleton is a retired LAPD Sergeant. He writes of his experiences and relates stories about life on the streets of Los Angeles as a police officer. I really enjoyed the book. I bought it a few weeks ago out at school. I started reading it on the plane ride here. Yesterday I was on page 152 and as I continued on to the next page I was confused. It was as though a page was missing. I looked at the page number and realized that 33 pages were missing. I've never had that happen in a book before. 33 pages just never made it into the binding. My sister and I visited Barnes and Noble; I hoped that although I didn't purchase the book at that store, nor did I have the receipt, that I would be able to get some help from them. I did use my Barnes and Noble Member card, which I figured would be as good as a receipt (and it was). We got to the store and I explained my predicament. The woman working there was most helpful and could sympathize with my plight. She checked to see if the book was in stock and then took me to the shelf. We got the book, they swiped my card and we made the switch. Problem solved. I need to send a letter to that Barnes and Noble store to thank them for helping me out. Anyway, I finished reading the book today and it was great.
Meanwhile, this Pulse movie is still on and we are laughing at it. It is terrible, never watch it. That's all I have to say now. I need to start watching the news and stuff again so I can think of things to write about. For now, I am on vacation.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

School is Finished, and Not One Shoddy PowerPoint Based Presentation Too Soon

The title lies, slightly, I have one more final left to take tomorrow, but it doesn't count as school, much. As of an hour or so ago my semester was finished. I am pleased with this completion.
I have been keeping text books through the semesters thinking that someday it'd be nice to have them on a shelf so I could return to them for reference material. Because of this thought, I now have about 20 text books on my shelf. These 20 text books are going to need to go home with me. I will be flying home. Books are heavy. It costs money to mail heavy things. Even with the media mail rates I don't think it will be worth sending the books home, because, let's face it, I didn't read the books when they were assigned for me to read for class, therefore, why would I ever choose to read them on my own time? Plus, text books are dumbed down and generalized, just like the internet. If I need to look up this information in the future I can probably just look it up online. It really is pointless to keep these books. Not only do they take up space, they will cost money to get them home as well. I have decided to try to sell them.
Along the same lines I have a box full of DVD cases. I've purchased quite a few movies since being at school and I keep the DVDs in a wallet. I have no need for the cases, but I've kept them in a box anyway. I was thinking about sending the cases home. Why? Will I someday put the DVDs back in their cases and then occupy tons of shelf space with them? No, I won't ever do that, I don't think, what purpose would it serve? I bagged up the cases and will be throwing them in the garbage. I thought it might be funny to put them on the shelf in the laundry room of my apartment complex. The end of the semester brings a large deposit of things to that shelf. The apartment managers allow people to put things there and if anyone else wants any of it they have until the last day of the semester to claim it otherwise it goes to the goodwill store. I think it would be funny to put all of the movie cases there and then stand around and act like I'm doing my laundry and wait for people to come in and get excited then grab the cases to take them back to their apartment, followed by their eventual return mad that the case was empty. Or something along those lines. It'd be funny for a minute, maybe. At the same time, it'd be annoying to anyone who hoped that there was a movie inside the case, so I'll just throw the cases in the dumpster. That might be funny too, if someone notices and digs in to find a movie.
What else is happening today? How about this, college students are ridiculous with PowerPoint presentations. They treat the slides like giant cue cards for everyone to see. What is the point of having text on a slide if you are just going to read it? Do you think we are all morons and don't know how to read? You don't have to read to us, we can read...well, I can, maybe the other students can't, that's why they also present the slides the same way. Between two of my classes this semester I have seen a lot of student created PowerPoint shows. I'll just state this first, I like PowerPoint as far as an application for creating multi-media presentations. I think it does an excellent job and it is pretty easy and intuitive to use. Used well, PowerPoint can enhance a presentation. Used poorly, PowerPoint exposes your incompetence and makes me shudder with disgust and frustration. My favorite bad moment of the semester, this one isn't necessarily PowerPoint related, was when a girl was talking about hierarchies and the title on the slide was "higher archery." No joke. College. University. Do you follow me? Higher archery. I can't remember any other specific ridiculous things I've seen, but I will end by saying that presentations of this caliber involving PowerPoint are part of the downfall of our society.

Monday, April 5, 2010

The Power of Music is a Curious Thing; Makes One Man Weep and Another Man Sing

I just performed at a talent show with a few friends. We played a song called Winter Winds by the British folk rock group Mumford and Sons. Muffin Man clued me into this group last week and I immediately wanted to play the song. My roommate and I were planning to play a song for the show, both of us on guitar and singing, but didn't have a song planned yet. I suggested Winter Winds and he agreed. We enlisted our neighbor who plays banjo to join in on the fun. My roommate sang, I played guitar and our neighbor played banjo. It was a lot of fun preparing and then performing the song. I love playing music. At the show was a girl I have dated and now we are not dating, that is the long and short of it, but really just the short of it. I haven't talked to her for a few weeks now, as in actual conversation. I missed her tonight when I saw her. One of my friends who also played a song tonight was singing one he just wrote and in the chorus he incorporates lines from popular love songs. He used "this magic moment" and that was one of those songs that had meaning so it made it even more difficult. What can I do though? It is finished and over so now I'm just going to play some more Mumford and Sons songs and then go to sleep. I'll forget about the longing by then. Please excuse my melodramatic post tonight. Sometimes you don't want to talk to people about something, but you want them to know you are feeling it. I think that is prevalent in a lot of songs, I think it really is in the songs I write. Apparently now it is that way in the blog posts I write. This has been a learning experience for all of us. Good Night! (Spell check, prevalent was wrong.)

What If We Did Need to Take LeVar Burton's Word for It?

I love reading. I used to read all the time. Reading and I were good friends. Then I began to stray from reading, spending less and less time with it. I began watching TV and listening to music. There were movies and PlayStation games. Reading was just pushed away and put on a shelf. For the last 2 years I've been in college. Here I have needed to read a lot. I wouldn't say my required reading ended my multi-media affair, completely, but it did take reading off of the shelf. School reading is much different from personal reading. I read for entertainment and learning when I read on my own. I choose books that interest me and if they stop interesting me I stop reading them. School doesn't allow for that, necessarily. I'm not one to do what school always says to do, remember, this is a revolution here. I think the reason I can't really get into school reading is that it is given to me and I'm told how much to read and by what day. Also, text books are usually pretty plain. They just give you the facts and don't try to dress it up at all. I get bored with it so easily. When the book is my choice though, I can read and read, but if I do get bored with it, I put it down and pick it up some months later. I haven't read all of my assigned reading for any class this semester, not even close, but I have read 5 other books on my own. Only 2 of which had nothing to do with any of my courses of study. One of those 2 was Pride and Prejudice (Austen, 1813).

I began reading Pride and Prejudice in January, or possibly the end of December. It is now April. I read through the first 200 and some pages of the book in a week or two. Then I put the book back on the shelf. The reason I began reading this book was not to be ridiculed by Muffin Man, though I was, nor was it to improve me knowledge of 'rly 19th century proper British family life. I decided to read this book because there is a lot of buzz over it. I have always liked reading the "classics." Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, 1719), Treasure Island (Stevenson, 1883) and A Christmas Carol (Dickens, 1843) are three of my favorites. I've heard so much about Pride and Prejudice as being a classic book, though I think most of the hullabaloo I've heard has to do with the movie. It might be interesting to start asking every girl I meet if she has read the book. At any rate, I have now read the book, but have not seen the movie. I probably won't see it. The story started out fairly boring and almost strenuous to follow. For a long time I wondered at what point the status of being a classic would kick in. So far as I could tell, the story was about a terrible young woman named Elizabeth who was proud and prejudiced against people with money. I didn't think Mr. Darcy was a monster as she initially did. Right about the time she was almost able to appreciate him and take an interest I stopped reading for a few months. Finally, yesterday I picked it up and decided to finish it. It turns out that Elizabeth smartens up and appreciates Darcy. The story wraps up rather quickly at the end, and it is happy. I can only assume that this is the reason why the book is so well liked. That or the effect of cognitive dissonance. After reading 250 pages of boring observations and conversations of a bunch of English country bumpkins trying to fit in with high society, you begin to reevaluate your life. In an effort to avoid the shame that will come on from having wasted your time with this novel you begin to change your thinking about it, you decided that it really wasn't so bad and you actually enjoyed it. This may be the case with this book. I am content with allowing that the ending is actually entertaining and the closure it provides is sufficient to win fans. It did seem a little bit rushed, but all of the components were there to get you hooked. All of the components meaning a romanticized courtship, or two, and a scandal. You might ask how a 374 page book can be rushed, but Gone with the Wind (Mitchell, 1936) was 1,024 pages and it kept my interest right to the end. Speaking of rushed, I need to go to class.