Quantity Assurance

I took my car in to get a little bodywork… I rented a car from Enterprise. They rented me an enormous Mercury, the “Sable.”

It’s completely ridiculous- I can only imagine the size of the usual owners of this car. I feel like I’m in Robotech when they are trying to use the spaceship built for the Zentraedi, who are 50 foot alien giants.

I told one of my coworkers about this car, and he started doing the “Quantity Assurance” voice- once when he was a little preoccupied he referred to QA as Quantity Assurance instead of Quality Assurance. I immediately started doing this big fat person voice, sort of drooling a little-

Well try that button now. It didn’t work? Well, we’ll just pack more features into the product, I’m sure some of them will do something.

So it’s a running gag now, a shorthand for the big fat American sucking at the teat of excess. Consume 4000 calories a day, drive a SUV, live on credit, have no notion of want vs need.

In related news, I explained Peak Oil to the drivers at Enterprise. They sort of got it. Ironically, I think car rental companies would actually benefit from the reduced car ownership that could follow from jacked up oil prices: it’s hard to take the train to a picnic.

The funny thing about the economics of oil is no matter how politicized the facts get, they are still facts. You could make excuses for why oil prices go up, or claim that food prices going up with oil costs is a coincidence, or blame regulation on rising costs of biotech research… but those things will still go up when oil prices rise. And it’s not a coincidence.

Our dependence on oil is amazingly complete- very few elements in our economy could currently survive without it. That is not to say this is impossible- I think almost without exception any industry could be retooled to use less or even no oil. Maybe this will be the next “Organic” stamp- “Made without dependence on Oil.”

Example- Biotech is predicated largely on the cheapness of plastic, sterile plastic for instruments or containers. But we used to use glass. If we rebuilt the glass industry, this would create more local jobs (shipping glass is more expensive) and the glass could be melted down and recycled- currently used plastic is “medical waste” and for the most part is just thrown in landfills.

Yes, there is a point to this- the US Government is our Quantity Assurance manager. The government is essentially motivated to preserve “our way of life”- which includes consuming huge amounts of oil. The emphasis is not on Quality- the efficiency of using oil, like say in public transit systems or in experiments like the biotech glass example I just pulled out of my butt. Quantity. Quantity over Quality.

Tax Day

It’s tax day bitches!

I spoke to a (younger) coworker yesterday- “how much trouble do you really get in if you don’t pay your taxes?” he offhandedly asked. Turns out he hasn’t paid taxes in years.

I told him he should seriously consider paying them someday. Maybe even just take all his forms, etc to the McD’s of tax preparation (hint: big green square) and just shell out. He probably would get a refund.

“He’s not getting a refund” laughed our evil Republican CFO. “He was a contractor all last year!” Our CFO doesn’t believe in issuing 1099’s because “why would I do the government’s job for them?”

Eh… you might well be screwed then. Did I mention our CFO is also a slumlord in San Francisco? Whee!

Right then, another coworker chimes in- he would never pay someone to prepare his taxes, he evangelized, because it’s just filling out some forms! How stupid could you be? Taxes are so easy!

I thought about this for about half a second, and then I remembered this was the same guy who was thinking of processing his own real estate forms and doing without a real estate agent, and also the same guy who DRIVES ME FUCKING CRAZY.

I mean damn. Why is it so important people agree on this? Just do your taxes. I don’t care how you do it. I pay someone to do mine, but I’m not going to chew someone out because they do their own. Arguing about this is even more ridiculous than trying to convert people to your religion. It’s insane. It’s like working in a clubhouse for little boys!

As it turns out, Young Master Capone didn’t even have his requisite forms from his banks, previous jobs, etc. He just threw them away, figuring they weren’t too important. Sigh. Maybe I’ll bake him a cake with a file in it.

Warhol^2

You know how Andy Warhol was basically the hack’s hack, and part of the statement of things like the Marilyn prints is how repetition makes something cheap and commercial? No? That’s not what it means? Well whatever with you.

Anyway, for all those who need their irony fix, there is Beautiful Agony– a site which archives shorts of static headshots of various strangers having an orgasm. Maybe “various” is the wrong word. Maybe “Legions of strangers” would be more accurate.

Warhol directed a 30 minute short called Blowjob (1963), in which we watch a man’s face as he apparently gets a blowjob.

So in a way,

Beautiful Agony = (Blowjob * Marilyn)

ZDAG

Essentially, the Bollywood Netflix. Something that is kind of funny is they appear to be also branded as Kalyaa, based in New York (vs Santa Clara), and yet they do not own the domain kalyaa.com. Maybe that is why they are called ZDAG.
Web link of note: ZDAG
(At http://www.zdag.com/)

Digital Sundial

This this is awesome- it’s a digital sundial- a sundial that shows numbers according to the angle of light coming through a grill. It requires no power.

This is the future. Actually, no- if this was made from renewable materials, and required almost no energy to make or design, then it would be from the future.
Web link of note: Digital Sundial
(At http://www.digitalsundial.com/)

Tainted Reina

It’s just a blog of some girl who seemingly plays a whole lot of Final Fantasy. A whole lot. Nice site design though!

Oddly enough she demands no one who actually knows her in real life read her site.

I got to her site through Creative Uncut, which had some Zelda: Wind Waker scans I thought were interesting- stained glass windows of episodes from Link’s life. Lots of interesting religious imagery in that game.
Web link of note: Tainted Reina
(At http://www.taintedreina.com/)

Circo Hermanos Caballero

Mexican-American circus based out of Las Vegas. I saw their tent on the way home; unfortunately I found out about them too late and they are already packing up!

Apparently they had an incident on the morning of March 24th- one of their camels, “Romeo,” got away from handlers around the Oakland Coliseum and was making a break for the freeway. Don’t worry; they caught him in time and he didn’t hurt himself or anyone else.
Web link of note: Circo Hermanos Caballero
(At http://www.circuscaballero.com)