A hodgepot of thoughts 3.0
Philosophical question: If I clean my apartment to impress my girlfriend, but she helps me in the cleaning effort, does that defeat the purpose?
Recently my mom was poisoned and became ill. Almost to the point where ‘deathly’, before ‘ill’, would be an appropriate descriptor. In the thick of it, she sat paralyzed on a toilet thinking: “Oh [insert appropriate curse word for a mom], I don’t think I finalized my will and, did I leave the stove on?” No need to worry though, she’s completely recovered; the event only lasted two days.
“What! Poisoned?” says an empathetic listener.
“Yeah, by a Chinese restaurant,” says I.
“Hmm, do you mean food poisoning?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, you made it seem like she was actually poisoned…”
***
It’s funny that it’s socially acceptable to poison someone if you do so accidentally. We shouldn’t give the Chinese restaurant a pass just because they chose the wrong poison to finish the job. Instead, we should accidentally storm their establishment and seize their castle by force!
I toss a sword to the empathetic listener and yell, “Charge!” while sprinting off towards the restaurant.
The empathetic listener, dumbstruck, says (to no one in particular, because I’m already gone), “Wouldn’t it have been simpler to, I don’t know, just say: ‘No I don’t want Chinese food for lunch’?”
Is it illegal to discriminate service based on age? Specifically, I’m thinking of babies on airplanes. I was flying from Portland to Seattle recently and I was seated behind a crying baby for the entire time. The experience left me thinking: “Ya know, I’d pay $10 extra if the airline service guaranteed no babies.”
This isn’t true, but I’ve never been a baby, I’ve never cried on an airplane, and I fully understand the struggles of parenting - so I’m entitled to this opinion.
The fourth season of Rick and Morty finally dropped on Hulu. That isn’t a joke, just something I’m happy about and wanted to share.
Here’s something crazy: My company, because they’re canceling the extravagant holiday party, is instead giving each employee $500 to spend however they like. The stipulation is that the spending choice must be something experience based or a self-gift, basically something you wouldn’t normally do or buy.
My initial thought was partying it up at a casino, but, is that a bad look if I gamble gifted money? One step further, is it a bad look if I have a statistics degree (true) and I’m at a casino to begin with? If you run the numbers, most of the time, the smartest choice while at a casino is NOT to gamble. The fun part of my brain walks over and says: “Well, did you consider enjoyment utility into your calculation?” The logical part says: “No… How would I even quantify that?” (The next hour is spent trying to figure that out.)
My second thought was a pilgrimage to Powells to buy more books. At $8 a book, I could buy roughly 63 books. Maybe that’s overindulgent? My pace is roughly 20 books a year, so that’d supply me for three years, but even still, sometimes I buy books because they look good on my bookshelf. It gives the illusion that I’m well read which granted, is somewhat true, but only along the genres of fiction and books on writing.
My third thought: Maybe I’ll just use the money to buy Christmas presents for my family. (For any family members reading, notice that this was the third item in the thought process, so don’t hold me to anything.)
Philosophical answer: No, she was still impressed :)
