Removed all the interesting posts

I removed all the interesting posts! This is one of many small blogs I started a few years ago, and got bored of. I will use this one to add whimsical posts.

It used to have less whimsical posts in it, but those were depressing, and I am not feeling depressing anymore. So I took them away.

Also I removed the comments, because they were almost entirely spam. Now there's room for a fresh new batch of spam!

I also updated TinyStories -- I didn't write any new stories, but I published some of the old ones that had been in the back. There are a lot of stories in the back but most of them just don't work at the end. Tiny stories seem to always end in a depressing fashion.

Okay, I'm lying, I tried to write some new tiny stories. But once again, the endings were really depressing, so I didn't post them.

Don't catch bouquets

Okay, from now on I will actually give useful and productive advice in every blog entry. Today's advice is: don't catch bouquets at weddings.

The popular theory is that catching a bouquet means you will get married soon. However, studies indicate that long arms are the actual key to catching the bouquet. And longer-than-average arms are not a useful way to determine if you're going to get married soon. If anything, they imply you're less likely to marry due to your freakishness. And if you're freakish, do you really need more humiliation in the form of catching the bouquet and then not marrying? So don't catch bouquets. You can only be hurting yourself.

How trying it is, soulwise, in these dark hours.

Look at them:
"These are the times that try men's souls."
"These are days that try men's souls."
"Times like these try men's souls."
"The soul is tried in these dark times."

Sure, the first one is the famous version. But the others aren't that bad. They would have been fine if Thomas Paine had used any of these versions. They would seem like the ordinary version and the others would seem silly. That's the power of fame for you.

It's stayed with me since I first read the Elements of Style -- how wrong they were about this topic. They thought there was a magic cadence to the eight words Paine spoke, but I couldn't believe in that. I couldn't believe in Strunk and White! Of all their little advice blurbs, the only thing that stayed with me was that "Times like these try men's souls" is a phrase that could never make it on its own. Sure, right. When I invent a time machine I'll get Paine to change it and we'll see.

Tonight I washed my clothes, and dried them on medium. As I was hanging the shirts up, I realized that my nice new shirts are supposed to be dried on low, not medium! I started to cuss, and quickly tried one on. As I buttoned it up, I thought, "no big deal, you can just go to Target and get more, they're only $30 a pop," but when I was done buttoning it I realized it wasn't shrunk. I took it off and hung it up and mulled on how the tiny tag in my shirt had tricked me.

Ten minutes

Did you ever notice that "spending time" is by far the most efficient method of describing the concept of, well, spending time? Spending it. Like it was cash. "I love spending time with my daughter," said the commercial on the radio, and the "spend" part started to bug me. But it doesn't really bug me now.

There are parts of the day where time just flies by, and parts where it doesn't, and you have to sort of do stuff to make it go past. I often consider that if the day was just a little shorter, we could skip those bits where you have to think about the watched pot. That's what I'm doing now, I'm watching the pot. I made general tso's chicken (recipe: fry chicken, add frozen vegetables and general tso's sauce), but I forgot rice. So now I sit waiting for my instant rice to cook. It takes a very long time for these ten minutes to pass. I am reminded of the character in Catch-22 who tried to live life as boringly as possible so that they would live longer.

I have five more minutes to wait.

Sometimes Tivo is a curse. I know the synopsis of every show before I watch it, and sometimes after a few minutes, with the help of the synopsis, I no longer feel like watching the show because it's lame. But without the synopsis, it would have lasted a bit longer.

I remember visiting the Sam's Club near here with a friend who's a member, and buying a near-infinite supply of Butterfingers, because I could. I hate Butterfingers now, and it's my own fault.

Dum du dum. Oh it's done now.

Now I'm old

I just recently turned 30. I was not young before, but now I'm actually old by 20-something standards. Being thirty means all sorts of terrible things!

- I qualify to be a Senator of the US (but not a President, yet)
- Eminem says I can no longer comprehend his music and he doesn't want me buying his albums
- My very best sexual years are over and now I have only mediocre sexual years left
- I can now adopt from China if I were married
- I qualify for over 50 different "old person" Financial Aid programs if I was in college
- I can now start a full-featured deferred pension plan
- My chances of conceiving a baby are even lower than they were before (though being male they were already pretty small)
- My upper eyelids begin to droop, fine lines appear under the eyes, frown lines and wrinkles become prominent; doctors recommend blepharoplasty, skin resurfacing, and botox
- if I was a half-orc I would lose 1 point of Strength
- as an Old Person, law dictates that I must now vote Republican
- taking methamphetamines now has a significant chance of causing heart attack
- the ancient Sumerian golden rule for marriage (women should be half your age plus five) means I should marry a 20 year old, who would probably still be in college and be fairly annoying
- my body will now lose 1/2 lb muscle per year while gaining 1 1/2 lbs fat, unless I somehow were to work harder at physical fitness. To impress the 20 year olds. Right...
- if I was a sea turtle I'd be a mature adult now
- it would be almost impossible for me to get into the military voluntarily now

So at least I got that going for me.