Fluorescence as a Norm

A new fish has come onto the market in the last few years. Glofish are basic Zebra Danios which have been genetically modified to fluoresce red, orange, green, blue, and purple. These fish are identical to the original Danios in every other way and require the same care. They can cohabit with any other tropical non-aggressive fish, making them ideal for most fish tanks. They're popular with people looking for something novel to put in their tank, and especially popular with children of all ages.

Today at work I came across a bag of fish I'd never seen before. Glofish Tetras are basic gold skirt Tetras which have been genetically modified to fluoresce green. They're identical to the original Tetra in every other way and require the same care. They can cohabit with any other tropical non-aggressive fish, making them ideal for most fish tanks. Same idea as the Danios, completely different species.

When people come into my store with their children to buy fish, they ask me for fish that they had as kids. Familiarity with a particular fish keeps people from feeling overwhelmed with the amount of money and effort that goes into setting up a tank. Eventually they expand their collection, allowing their children to choose the fish. Of course, the kids choose the first thing that draws their attention and what draws attention like a flourescent fish? The kids grow up and repeat the process with their own children, remembering and seeking out Glofish.

Assuming that inserting a fluorescence gene into a fish embryo is a trivial task by today's standards and considering the great demand for the Glofish currently on the market, I imagine the company will expand their selection of fluorescent fish as far as they can. What's to stop them from making Glofish Palties, Glofish Oscars, or Glofish Plecos? If  they accomplish this and fishkeeping remains a popular hobby (read: profitable market) something interesting is bound to happen.

If the demand for Glofish remains consistent and the company can get the fluorescence gene into a larger selection of species the demand for our non-modified fish will drop considerably. In 100 years, the fish department at any local pet store will be comprised almost entirely of fluorescent fish. What makes me so sure of this? Where goldfish get their name.

The majority of the goldfish we sell are red or orange. Anyone who has taken a look in a pet store will know this. They're called goldfish because their ancestors, recorded as early as 265 CE were gold in color with a very rare orange mutation. These mutations made the fish more visible to natural predators (birds, raccoons, etc.), which kept these color mutations rare. In the 1300's people began raising goldfish indoors, which effectively stopped natural selection and allowing selective breeding. No one wants to look at a fish that's the color of gold, so demand drops for those and rises for the orange fish. Now most fancy goldfish are orange or red with an occasional dirty brown fish.

Thanks to 21st century technology, we can condense the entire tedious process into just a few years and break species barriers.

The New Fiscal Year

Things are starting to look up at work again. We have a new store manager who will hopefully find a permanent position at our store. He's an older guy, so he has tons of experience, a good work ethic, and knows what he is doing. He has a genuinely friendly personality and is very approachable, and most importantly he doesn't put up with all of the problems our store has been experiencing over the last year. There have already been significant changes, and I can honestly say that I'm happy with it.

I wish I could say the same thing about some of the people I work with. Many of them are hard workers with a friendly and pleasant demeanor. Some of them are lazy, some are idiots, and some have wretched personalities, which is to be expected when with the current state of the hiring pool. My main complaint is that I miss the feeling of solidarity I experienced when I first started the job. My coworkers and I used to be a well functioning team with specified duties. Everyone had a job and everything got done by the end of the night. These days it feels more like a random assortment of people simply thrown into jobs they hate.

Welcome Back to Middle School

The thing I disliked most about middle school were the tattlers. Pansy-ass mama's boys who couldn't leave well enough alone and alerted the teacher to every little thing I did. Not that I generally did anything that was 'wrong' by standard definitions, just things that may have been against arbitrary rules or thought of as unusual for someone of my age. Even when I was doing something that was arguably wrong, I'd like to think that there was usually a reason or I knew relatively well what I was doing.

Enter: Little Baby Bitch. Everyone knows the kid who thought he was special because his parents had a small amount of money saved up. He was sheltered so far beyond socially acceptable levels that I honestly wonder if he could function as an adult today. Hell, the kid's parents would even dress him so he wouldn't get any ideas. He probably though that his good scores on standardized tests meant something more than that because for all intents and purposes, the kid was a bumbling idiot.

This kid would always walk up while I was doing something or discover something that I had done and immediately tell the all powerful teacher. I'm not sure what he though he had accomplished by wasting all of our time, but I would always end up receiving a stern talking to in the principle's office. For some reason, it would never go beyond that. I guess there's something about my personality that let's me get away with murder. All I have to do is smile.

Unfortunately, some days I feel like I'm living in middle school all over again. It starts with the figures of authority who think they have it all figured out despite their ignorance of the bigger picture. From there we progress to people who think they're better than everyone for X idiotic reason. Of course a number of people believe the same thing for Y or Z reason and none of them are willing to cohabitate. Then there are those who would rather read the gossip in tabloids and other illegitimate news sources instead of something with actual substance or news. And of course there are the tattlers who waste everyone's time stirring the pot while the world moves on.

Surprise Realization of Our Engagement

I think the title and photo explain everything here.

Frustration

I think the thing that frustrates me most about my life if my relationship with the people I live with. It's hard relating to an elderly conservative Christian when you're a 25 year old, gay, atheist. And that's just my mom. I don't know where my dad stands on any issues because he barely talks to anyone.

Whenever I try to tell my mom something she goes out of her way to make me feel bad. The good news of one of my best friends getting married becomes a lecture about when I marry a beautiful woman. My friend having a child turns into a rant about how my mom will never be a grandmother. Obviously, reading a book about the influence of disease on human evolution is to prepare myself for when I get AIDS.

And those are just the things I've told her. I haven't mentioned that I plan on moving in with Jason (preferably in Ann Arbor) sometime this year. Or the fact that Jason and I plan on spending the rest of our lives together. Or the inevitability that Jason and I will one day in the future get married and have a reception. Or that I don't believe in the same invisible hand in the sky that sue does.

There is just no common ground for us to start a conversation. She's dead set that I chose to be gay to cause some sort of drama for her. Her little burgundy book told her so. She'll never understand the relationship that I have with Jason and that kills me. She'll never be happy about any of the major events in my life. Moving in together and getting married are major events in my life that she will either write off as dramatic fantasy or simply not be notified of. And I feel that there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm just stuck in a rut, suffocating in my house, and I need to get out.

'Twas a Busy Afternoon

YOU HAVE CLEARED THE PUTRESCENT WOODS
You have gained a level.
+12 STR
+ ATTRIBUTE Farmer's Tan

YOU HAVE CLEARED THE SULTRY WETLANDS
You have gained a level.
+8 END
+4 WATER RESIST

YOU HAVE CLEARED THE EVIL FOOTHILLS
-75 GOLD

YOU HAVE CLEARED THE LAIR OF THE SNAKE KING
You have gained a level.
+10 COURAGE
+ATTRIBUTE Battle Scar

YOU HAVE CLEARED THE JUNGLY PLAINS
You have gained a level.
+6 VIT
+24 MAX HEALTH

YOU HAVE MADE THE HALF ACRE KINGDOM SAFE AGAIN
The king offers the hand of his beautiful daughter.
You graciously decline and say your goodbyes.
You return home to your loving boyfriend
In a time of peace and quiet, you rest.

I Can't do This Anymore

I am so frustrated with my life I can't even conceive the words to describe one hundredth of what I feel. I don't have any of the things I need to succeed as a person. I was suffocating in this room, in this remote corner of the house when I started my blog five years ago and I'm still sitting here in the same room in the same remote corner of the house today.

I need a place to call my own. Somewhere I can be at peace and do the things I need to do. Instead, I'm stuck living in the house of people who are practically strangers to me. I can't sit down at my desk without constantly being badgered or worrying someone is going to walk in and criticize whatever I happen to be doing. But I have no money to get out.

I need a decent, predictable paycheck every week. Something I can rely on and budget around. Instead, I get between fifteen and forty hours. The boss doesn't think I'm excited enough about my job to promote me to full time, and it's next to impossible to get excited about a job when you hate your boss. But if I get a second job, the assistant boss is going to cut my hours further.

I need a way to spend time with the people I want to have in my life. I can't spend any quality time with Jason because these people are always around and never leave their house. I don't have any friends in my city who I haven't repeatedly alienated. The friends I do have live mostly out past my work, which would be fine if I didn't already spend $250 a month on fuel.

I Think There's A Problem Here

I really need to get out of this house. When there's a woman trolling outside my bedroom when Jason and I are trying to have some alone time, there's a fucking problem. All I want to do are some of the things normal couples do in the privacy of my own bedroom. There's nothing unusual or interesting going on in here, honestly.

When there's a woman who can't walk ten feet to get something from the refrigerator interrupting me every five minutes, there's a fucking problem. All I hear all day is what other people need. I don't care anymore. There are things I need as well, but I don't demand people help me while I sit on my ass. I need to do these scholarship essays and finish my library book. And I need some uninterrupted time in which to do it.

When there's a woman purposefully insinuating things about me every time we interact, there's a fucking problem. If I go out with my boyfriend, it doesn't mean we go to the local gay bar and have an orgy. When people laugh at a stupid joke you make, it doesn't mean they're on to my horrible secret. I'm not going to marry any of the women I spent time with. And If I'm reading a book about how sickness influenced the evolution of our species, it doesn't mean I plan on getting AIDS. Thanks for making that connection, though.

Yes. There's a fucking problem here.

Procrastination

In a highly successful attempt at procrastination, I spent a lot of time outside today.

Our shed (a.k.a. our local dump) was in desperate need of cleaning. It started out fairly uneventfully; I discovered that the number of both rakes and shovels exceeds the number of people in the house, and that we have an unusually large number of hand rakes and shovels. As I was condensing my mom's junk into boxes and moving them to the back of the shed I discovered the Mushroom Kingdom, complete with a grumpy cactus and a guy running around in red suspenders. True to it's 2D form, the Kingdom was entirely contained in the space between a row of boxes and the shed wall.

When I was finished, I proceeded to mow the front lawn. To my dismay I found that a colony of ants had taken up residence between the motor cover and the engine. Perhaps it was to their dismay, because the mower started right away and I mowed the lawn. Since it's been raining for the last few days the grass was longer than usual and left a lot of clippings. I decided to rake them up and toss them on the compost pile I made last year. Sometime between late last year and early this year all the crap I had been throwing in there decomposed and I had a nice big pile of compost. Which is nice because I was about to give up on it.

275 Words, Just for You

All I wanted to do when I got home was write a 700 word essay about how $500 would help me achieve my dreams for a meager chance to win the said $500. That's how desperate I am for money. Instead I'm going to blog about how much I hate my life, because it seems that that's all I'm really good at.

All I ever hear is what people need from me. Whether it's idiot customers, my idiot bosses, or my idiot family, they all want something from me all the time. No one ever stops to ask me if I need anything. No one bothers to take my needs into account. Instead of "Hey, are you okay today," or "Is there anything I can do to make your situation better," it's always "Smile Rich," and "I don't want you to be so moody (presumably because it makes my mother look bad to other people)."

Do you know what I want? I want to move on with my life. I want to get the fuck out of my parents house. I want to tell my boss (take your pick) to fuck himself over the PA on a busy day. I want people to start respecting my time. I want people to start respecting me, as a person, and stop talking to me condescendingly. I want to go to college completely free like many of the people I know who didn't work for it. I want a cushy job, getting paid $11 an hour for data entry. I want something completely different.

I'm tired and I'm annoyed at the crappy job I'm stuck at and I can't take it anymore.

Raiding Tombs for a Living

I've been playing a lot of computer games lately, partly because it's a cheap form of entertainment and partly because it's something I'm really passionate about. I buy most of my newer games on sale from the Steam Store. Recently I picked up the 3 Hitman games, a few Half-Life 2 Mods, both Deus Ex games, and Tomb Raider Anniversary and Legend. I've been enjoying them all, but something about the Tomb Raider Series completely threw me off.

I've always been a fan of the series. Lara Croft is one of the first playable characters I remember and I've always felt close with the character. I played the Hell out of the first three games and am intimately familiar with the storyline up to that point. I rented and quickly played through The Last Revelation and Chronicles, which I feel added nothing to the storyline or the series as a whole. I haven't played the games at all since then until I downloaded Anniversary last week.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary is an expanded remake of the original game. Some of the locations are the same with a few minor tweaks, some are re-imagined with better gameplay, some are entirely new and add continuity to the game. As soon as I saw Lara's tour guide get eaten by wolves at the beginning of the game, I was drawn back into the world. I would flinch every time she got hit by an angry bear and cringe at every jump I wasn't absolutely sure of. I felt her anguish in the last area where we had to kill her first human enemy.

Enamored with the experience, I downloaded Tomb Raider:Legend. Even though Legend was released a year before Anniversary, it takes place almost 10 years after the events of the original game. Although Lara's James Bondish personal style threw me off a bit, the deep storyline and brilliant locations kept me in. I had to Gamefaqs almost every boss and the interactive cutscenes drove me crazy, but I was hooked. That is, until the end.

The opening scene of the game shows Lara and her mother at a archeological site in the jungle. Lara stumbles upon an artifact which reacts to her presence. Her mother tries to save her, and in turn dies. The rest of the game is spent finding parts of this particular artifact and carrying it back to this location. When that is accomplished and the final Boss, let's call her Amanda, is defeated things turn for the worst. Lara activates the artifact and a portal opens in time and allows for communication between Lara and her mother.

Lara begins speaking to her mother, who is concerned for her daughter, standing behind her. Adult Lara tells her mother not to touch the sword, while Amanda yells to remove the sword or the contraption will explode. Lara's mother follows the advice and dies, while Lara ignores the advice and flees the exploding device. Essentially, Amanda killed Lara's mother. And that's that.

Lara doesn't kill Amanda. She simply mutters something and walks away. She contacts her right hand man and lays the beginnings of a plot to possibly find another location where the artifact will work (it had been established that there were a number of them), but that's it. Credits and a black screen. There is no closure and I'm really fucking pissed off about that.

Aging Hardware

Some days I want to punch my computer right in the motherboard. Not just because it sounds like a jet engine. Nor because it's getting pretty old and can't run many of the games I'd like to play. I want to punch it because of all the stupid things it does.

I have Firefox set to remember my usernames and passwords so I can log into my sites quickly and easily. It stopped remembering about half of them. On some it remembers either the password OR the username, not both. Some sites it doesn't remember either. Some sites it remembers failed login attempts, but not the good password or username. Also, when I download a file (any file) I have to manually open the download manager and click 'retry' before the download will begin, despite using a third party plugin that is supposed to (and used to) fix that.

All of my USB ports function at 1.1 speeds, even though Jason swears they're all 2.0 ports. It's possible that the ports in the back are because they're on a PCI card. Maybe I'm using an extremely outdated driver that doesn't recognize them. All I know is that none of the USB ports on this computer work worth shit.

When I bought my dad his computer, I removed the video card from his old computer and put it in mine. There was a decent performance boost in some of my games and the ones that required pixel shader and vertex shaders work now. On the downside, the computer freezes a lot more than it used to and I haven't determined if it's a driver, heat, or power supply issue. But there's always tomorrow.

Frustration

I hate my new boss so much that I'm seriously considering quitting my job so that I don't have to hear his voice. He is such an ungrateful, inconsiderate, moron that every time we interact I have to resist the urge to punch him in the face.

He's always going on about how the store has good teamwork. Almost everyone in the store is register trained and he expects everyone to jump on the register, whether they're busy or not. When I'm helping customers with their pet needs or in the back room disassembling the pump system so I can perform maintenance tasks it's not my job to jump on register. If I wasn't busy and I was in the vicinity, I would. But never am, so I don't know why he expects me to.

I can't call a cashier to aquatics when I get overwhelmed with customers. A good portion of the time I'm the only person in the store who can work my department anyway because very few people are trained for my department. Even some of the people who are trained for my department avoid it by all means possible. Great fucking team work there. If you want there to be enough cashiers to cover two or three lanes at a time, schedule more fucking cashiers. It's really that simple.

The new manager also complains that we don't get things done in a timely fashion. New fish need to go from an open box to being poured into tanks in no more than twenty minutes. Any longer than that and ammonia will build up in the bags and quickly kill the fish. He gets pissy when I don't get done in that timeframe, but won't hesitate to pull me up front to help a customer with dog treats. On the other side of the store. When there are four fucking people working customer service. On that side of the store.

So fuck him, and PetSmart, and fuck corporations, and fuck capitalism.

Anything

My life bores me to tears. It really does. I clean up after animals all day at work just to come home and play ten year old computer games because that's all that will run on my six year old computer. I rarely go out and when I do it's to do something I don't enjoy in the first place. I don't really do anything for myself and most of my money goes into paying off old debt.

I wish I could just get out of here and do something - anything.

New Years Resolutions

A quick post before I'm off to Connie's house. My New Year's Resolutions are as follows:

To become a Weekday Vegetarian.

To pay my debt in it's entirety. (Currently: $3585)

To spend time with the friends I've neglected over the last year.

To purchase fewer items and make use of the ones I do.

Good Year

It's been a good enough year. I have significantly less debt than I did last year, but I've made and spent more money. I've grown farther from my family but closer to my friends. I've found out who my real friends are. I found a way to organize the things I need to do, but realized how little I actually accomplish. I've come to a number of realizations that affect my everyday life. I've eaten a lot of new places, tried lots of foods I really enjoy, and found a number of good meat alternatives.

Christmas was nice this year. I got my dad a new computer (Asus referb, really good deal), my mom a new monitor, and the animals a variety of animal related stuff. Jason got me a much needed pair of work shoes, a few nice books and a shirt (a very interesting set of shirts). I got Jason a few shirts, Kirby's Epic Yarn (very fun game), and a book about video games. Not quite what I wanted to get him, but he liked them. My parents got me a Braun 550cc electric shaver (so now I can shave daily again), a nice pair of cuff links to match my tie tack (that I wore to Rose's wedding), and a case of Jone's Soda (always good).

That's all I have for now. I just didn't want to go a month without blogging.

Call Me Crazy

But I usually try to avoid spending time with people who wouldn't like me for who I am. Weird, how that works. My mom is apparently not the same way. She invited my aunt over to spend the night four days ago and she still hasn't left. During this time I can't have Jason over or do any of the things I enjoy or need to do. I also can't really go anywhere because I can't get my car towed and looked at until my dad gets paid on Wednesday, if he has enough to cover it, otherwise I have to wait until Friday and I don't even know when the mechanic would have time to look at it.

The only thing I can really rely on are my friends, all of whom I am grateful for.

Fighting Sleep

I'm kind of disappointed with life right now. I've learned not to sweat the small stuff, which becomes apparent when you look at the frequency of my posts over the past years. I usually don't blog when I'm in a good mood because I'm busy being happy. Funny how that works.

My car broke down last week and has been sitting at Phelp's because he couldn't fix a car if his life depended on it so I have to get it towed across town on Monday to a place that can look at my head gasket. Even though the head gasket is a cheap part, they'll have to disassemble the top part of my block, so I'm looking at a total of up to $1500. It could also be a plastic plume which would cost me more along the lines of $450, but I don't know. It's unclear to me what is wrong with the car because it's showing a few symptoms from multiple problems and then it wouldn't start, which is uncommon for a blown head gasket.

Jason and I have been running this forum for a while (mostly Jason because I don't know what I'm going), but it's been really slow and I hate to see it stagnate. There are a million things I'd like to do with it, if it only had a larger user base. All I can do for now is make Jason make a favicon and I'm going to make some sig bars because that's the only think I really know how to do. Right now I'm taking suggestions and hoping for the best.

I'm still satisfied with my holiday shopping. During the evening on Thanksgiving I bought my mom a Canon SD 1400 at $80 off. Target and Sears were running the same deal, but I try to avoid going out on Black Friday unless I work. I do have to finish buying Jason's gift though. Time is running out and I need to juggle my money this month, but I don't have an insurance payment due, so I think everything will be okay.

Q4

The whole minimalism thing is working well for me so far. I've been weeding out the things I don't really need, it's just going to take a while. That's mostly because I have a number of people trying to convince me to hold on to all these material possessions. It would probably help if I could explain what I'm trying to accmplish a little better, but all I can do is link to the Minimalist Blog.

The weddings went fairly well for me. Both of my friends' weddings were very nice. I'm glad Steph chose me to be in her wedding, as it was a very positive experience. I already talked some about Rose's wedding. The family weddings weren't entirely horrible and none of them lasted long, which was a plus.

Christmas is coming up and I've already done the bulk of my shopping. It's never too early to start, especially when you have to wait for the merchandise to be shipped to you. I got my mom the same ViewSonic monitor that my dad and I have because her current monitor produces a very poor picture. I got my dad a refurbished Asus computer, which is in perfect condition with the exception of a small scratch on one of the metal plates. I bought various other things for various other people, but this isn't the place.

Science Fiction Double Feature

Jason, Connie, and I saw the Rocky Horror Show in Port Huron this evening. We all had a pretty good time. The performance went well and everyone did a very good job. The audience participation was fun and we all did the time warp...again.



I have an eventful weekend coming up. Steph is getting married Saturday and I'm going to help her decorate the hall tomorrow before the rehearsal dinner. I picked up the tux today. It's very pink, not in a bad way, just pink. It looks nice, though. My plans for Halloween are still up in the air. That's all.