Notes from a bemused canuck
OK. So Facebook suggested I might want to add the following people as friends:
OK Facebook, you win. You can stop showing off now.
I borrowed Katy’s phone this morning to check something out and saw that she had a browser tab open with “husband murder” as a Google search. If I shorty die in mysterious, unexplained circumstances, she did it.
The first generation to do worse than its parents? Please. Been there. Generation X was told that so many times that it can’t even read those words without hearing Winona Ryder’s voice in its heads. Or maybe it’s Ethan Hawke’s. Possibly Bridget Fonda’s. Generation X is getting older, and can’t remember those movies so well anymore. In retrospect, maybe they weren’t very good to begin with.
But Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs, and actually had to pay for its own music. (At least, when music mattered most to it.) Generation X is used to being fucked over. It lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush, and 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis.
Generation X wasn’t surprised. Generation X kind of expected it.
Generation X is a journeyman. It didn’t invent hip hop, or punk rock, or even electronica (it’s pretty sure those dudes in Kraftwerk are boomers) but it perfected all of them, and made them its own. It didn’t invent the Web, but it largely built the damn thing. Generation X gave you Google and Twitter and blogging; Run DMC and Radiohead and Nirvana and Notorious B.I.G. Not that it gets any credit.
But that’s okay. Generation X is used to being ignored, stuffed between two much larger, much more vocal, demographics. But whatever! Generation X is self-sufficient. It was a latchkey child. Its parents were too busy fulfilling their own personal ambitions to notice any of its trophies-which were admittedly few and far between because they were only awarded for victories, not participation.
In fairness, Generation X could use a better spokesperson. Barack Obama is just a little too senior to count among its own, and it has debts older than Mark Zuckerberg. Generation X hasn’t had a real voice since Kurt Cobain blew his brains out, Tupac was murdered, Jeff Mangum went crazy, David Foster Wallace hung himself, Jeff Buckley drowned, River Phoenix overdosed, Elliott Smith stabbed himself (twice) in the heart, Axl got fat.
Generation X is beyond all that bullshit now. It quit smoking and doing coke a long time ago. It has blood pressure issues and is heavier than it would like to be. It might still take some ecstasy, if it knew where to get some. But probably not. Generation X has to be up really early tomorrow morning.
Generation X is tired.
It’s a parent now, and there’s always so damn much to do. Generation X wishes it had better health insurance and a deeper savings account. It wonders where its 30s went. It wonders if it still has time to catch up.
Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?
Whatever. It’s cool.
Generation X is used to disappointments. Generation X knows you didn’t even read the whole thing. It doesn’t want or expect your reblogs; it picked the wrong platform.
Generation X should have posted this to LiveJournal.
Zeno’s paradoxes: “You will never reach point B from point A as you must always get half-way there, and half of the half, and half of that half, and so on …”
Omnipotence paradox: Can an omnipotent being create a rock too heavy for itself to lift?
Problem of evil: The existence of evil seems to be incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect God.
Bootstrap paradox: Can a time traveler send himself information with no outside source?
Grandfather paradox: You travel back in time and kill your grandfather before he conceives one of your parents, which precludes your own conception and, therefore, you couldn’t go back in time and kill your grandfather.
Hitler’s murder paradox: You travel back in time and kill a famous person in history before they become famous; but if the person had never been famous then he could not have been targeted as a famous person.
Fermi paradox: If there are, as various arguments suggest, many other sentient species in the Universe, then where are they? Shouldn’t their presence be obvious?
Tea leaf paradox: When a cup of tea is stirred, the leaves assemble in the center, even though centrifugal force pushes them outward.
Upstream contamination: When a fluid is poured from a higher container onto a lower one, particles can climb up the falling water.
Irresistible force paradox: What would happen if an unstoppable force hit an immovable object?
Decision-making paradox: Selecting the best decision-making method is a decision problem in itself.
Fredkin’s paradox: The more similar two choices are, the more time a decision-making agent spends on deciding.
Liar paradox: “This sentence is false.” and “I’m lying.”
Card paradox: “The next statement is true. The previous statement is false.”
Catch-22: A situation in which someone is in need of something that can only be had by not being in need of it. A soldier who wants to be declared insane in order to avoid combat is deemed not insane for that very reason, and will therefore not be declared insane.
Programmers’ Day is an international professional holiday celebrated on the 256th (hexadecimal 100th, or 28) day of each year (September 13 during common years and on September 12 in leap years). It is officially recognized and observed in a number of countries. The number 256 was chosen because it is the number of distinct values that can be represented with a eight-bit byte, and 256 is the highest power of 2 that is less than 365, the number of days in a common year.
1 while (!apocalypse)
2 {
3 if (today.getDayOfYear() == 0x100)
4 {
5 programmers.congratulate();
6 programmersDay.celebrate();
7 }
8 }