The Rabenstranger

This picture makes me smile.

via The Big Picture

I found an old band that I think I like: They Might be Giants. I haven’t had time to listen to a large amount of their music but I have really enjoyed what I’ve heard so far.

Today I ruined more than one thousand pounds of sugar. It was totally my fault, a mistake due to nothing but my own sloppiness.  My co-worker’s kept telling me that it’s a common mistake and not to worry about it, probably because I spent most of the day looking a little shell-shocked.

I thought the mess would be a huge impediment to my continued employment with the company but it seems that it is not that big of a deal. I guess it happens pretty frequently. Throughout the day, pretty much everyone on the shift told me about one of times they had done something similar.

Still. That was ALOT of sugar.

If your book doesn’t have an index, it’s just a pile of paper.

- Merlin Mann

In case anyone was wondering if I stopped reading after May:

June

1. Manalive – G. K. Chesterton
2. Good to Great – Jim Collins
3. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
4. Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki
5. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H. G. Wells
6. True Believer – Nicholas Sparks

July

1. Persuasion – Jane Austen
2. Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe

August

1. The Civil War – Gary Gallager
2. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym – Edgar Allan Poe
3. As You Like It – William Shakespeare
4. Joy in the Morning – P. G. Wodehouse
5. Parenting Isn’t for Cowards – Dr. James Dobson
6. An Ideal Husband – Oscar Wilde
7. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
8. Royal Web – Ladislas Farago and Andrew Sinclair
9. The Weight of Glory – C. S. Lewis

September

1. The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
2. The Mating Season – P. G. Wodehouse
3. The Reverse of the Medal – Patrick O’Brian
4. The Second Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
5. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
6. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

I haven’t quit, I’ve just slowed down

I am getting even more overtime this week. Oh, goody.

In other news, I am almost finished with For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. Unfortunately, I forgot it in my car and did not make any progress today. Maybe, by the end of the week, I’ll be done.

Edit: I finished it!

But they had forgotten something; they had
forgotten journalism.  They had forgotten that there exists in
the modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class
of people whose interest is not that things should happen well or
happen badly, should happen successfully or happen
unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of this party or
the advantage of that part, but whose interest simply is that
things should happen.

It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our
modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of
exceptions.  We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen
off a scaffolding.  We do not announce on flaring posters that a
man has not fallen off a scaffolding.  Yet this latter fact is
fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower
of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth.
That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more
sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.  But
journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the
permanent miracles.  Busy editors cannot be expected to put on
their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of
Worthing, Not Dead Yet.”  They cannot announce the happiness of
mankind at all.  They cannot describe all the forks that are not
stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved.
Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity
fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual.  However
democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the
minority.

- G.K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross

This morning I was going about my business when it popped into my head to figure how much more money I make by working Saturdays. The answer: 30% more than I otherwise would.

That seems like a lot, but it doesn’t really console me concerning the fact that in half an hour I have to drive into work on a beautiful, sunny Saturday and work inside, far from any windows, dumping 50lb sacks down a shoot until 10:30 p.m..

True story!

From XKCD.