When the Going Gets Tough

...Give up.

I'm serious.  I really don't know where that whole "quitting is for losers" mentality came from, but it really takes a lot less effort to just give up when something is too difficult and time-consuming to really give a shit about.

My friend Skot sent me a Flash animation of frogs on logs.  There are three frogs (green) on the left side, on individual logs, and there are three on the right side (some sort of unfortunate purple color).  There is one free log in the middle seperating them.  The object of the game is to move each set of the frogs to the opposite side, and they can only jump over one frog at a time and can only move toward the opposite direction from which they are being moved.  

I'm all for a little challenge, so I tested my brain at the puzzle.  I failed the first time.  In fact, I failed probably 15 more consecutive times.  The kicker is that the explanatory line at the top of the puzzle reads:

Switch the frogs to the opposite sides within 2 minutes.  This is a 2nd grade computer test in China.

Oh.  Well don't I feel like a fucking genius.  Apparently, 8-year old kids in China are smarter than I am.  So I quit the stupid game.  I didn't get frustrated, I didn't get angry, I didn't even get insulted.  I just quit, because I'm okay knowing that moving frogs from one side of the page to the other doesn't have anything to do with how smart I am.

Well, maybe it does, but I'm okay knowing I could square off mentally with a 5-year old Chinese kid and lose.  I'm working smarter, not harder, by not letting things such as tricky Internet puzzles put a dent in my high opinion of myself.  Hey, works for me.

This philosophy applies to pretty much anything.  Don't want to do it?  Don't.  Who fucking cares?  It's your life, and you can do whatever you want.  Sure there are consequences, but most of them are pretty navigable.  Don't want to pay your bills?  Sure, your credit may take one in the ass, but there's always marriage to fix that.  Don't want to apply yourself at your job?  Meh, there will always be more jobs available, and friends to lie for you on your resume should you need it.

Seriously.  Why stress?

No one is going to judge me as a person by whether or not I accomplish X or Y.  That's for me to judge myself, and I've already made it pretty clear that I don't really care.  See that chick?  She's like, all stressed and got headaches and shit because she's too worried about whether she's 'emotionally ready' to deal with some bullshit when she could be worrying about where she's going for lunch instead.

There's no sense in trying to work hard to have people respect you for your accomplishments, because the only people who are going to truly respect you for your accomplishments are those that want to boast about their own.  Frankly, the only pissing contests in which I'm interested happen in the privacy of my own home.  The people with which I choose to associate are more interested in my ability to make them laugh, and not whether I'm bright enough to move fucking frogs around.

Frogs are stupid, yo.

Internet Dates Heart Skinned Cats

So, I was thinking.  You know why most of us don't commit crimes?  I doubt it's because we're not vengeful enough; I've definitely been broken up with and coupled with the fact that I'm a Scorpio, I'm surprised I haven't burned down something (post 6th grade).  Likewise, I've done some things to some people that I'm sure have warranted some sort of revenge toward me for being an asshole.  I doubt it is due to lack of resources; if I was mad enough I'm pretty sure I could summon to the surface enough rage to bludgeon someone to death with any object within 3 feet of my reach.  I'm also throwing out guilt, since guilt is manufactured and thus can be avoided with clever mind manipulation (see: Catholicism).  Instead, I'm offering up some rather selfish motivation for not acting out on our most hateful desires to destroy other people: because we know we will get caught.  

The underlying theme of every horror or crime movie remains the same: someone alwayssees something.  And, yeah, sometimes those people are capped off, too, but the fact remains the same.  And, yes, the world would be better off without a lot of ignorant, lazy, welfare-sucking lowlifes, but I mean, I'm not going to kill them since a) I kind of like my life the way it is, and b)  Texas is still around.

However.  It is amazing what we will do when we think no one is looking.  Enter: The Internet.

Now, I know next-to-nothing about network security other than having dated some guy for two-and-a-half years that was obsessed with it.  Things that most of us wouldn't second guess:  filling out forms with our real names, uploading pictures, entering passwords into seemingly secure sites -- he was paranoid of it all.  He gave me reasons to be 'careful', which seemed to make sense, and then continued to build his digital fortress protecting him from other people, well, like himself.  I mean, we all know when to be 'careful' and we're constantly reminded that no site worth any sort of authenticity is going to ask us for our password, etc., but I think sometimes we fail to put in perspective that the reason we don't do that is because someone, a digital burglar of sorts, is just waiting for us to leave our e-doors open so he (or a very miserable 'she') can sneak in and go through our proverbial underwear drawer and steal our goodies.

On a more local level, there are always things we can do to second-guess our boyfriend's or children's Internet browsing habits, from checking the "History" tab on the browser itself to the stored AutoComplete entries, and then the most sneaky: browsing for nudie art in the Windows Temporary Internet Files cache.  Hey.  I said I was a Scorpio.

So what if somehow we had access to what everyone was looking for?

Whoops.  In what seems to be a blatant privacy compromise, AOL (in the name of research, of course) assigned a unique ID to its users and then plastered everything they had searched for within a three-month period into some database.  I mean, the good news is that Angel4567374 is now generic user 4834.  The bad news is:  Google maps.  So much for anonymity.

I definitely don't need to point out that people are weird and scary.  But people are reallyweird and scary when they don't know that they are being watched.  For instance:

AOL user 311045 wants to change the brake pads on his Scion (hey, he's clearly a thrifty dude).  However, in the back of his brain, he is worried about more than brake pads judging by his search history:

how to change brake pads on scion xb
2005 us open cup florida state champions
how to get revenge on a ex
how to get revenge on a ex girlfriend
how to get revenge on a friend who fucked you over
replacement bumper for scion xb
florida department of law enforcement
crime stoppers florida

We'll give him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe just some bathroom reading?

User 1515830, however, is a complete psycho.  Like 'I was afraid to break up with her because I was afraid she might drink Clorox' psycho.  I mean, she is a Raiders fan.

Her search string:

chai tea calories
calories in bananas
aftermath of incest
how to tell your family you're a victim of incest
pottery barn
curtains
surgical help for depression
oakland raiders comforter set
can you adopt after a suicide attempt
who is not allowed to adopt
i hate men
medication to enhance female desire
jobs in denver colorado
teaching positions in denver colorado
how long will the swelling last after my tummy tuck
divorce laws in ohio
free remote keyloggers
baked macaroni and cheese with sour cream
how to deal with anger
teaching jobs with the denver school system
marriage counseling tips
anti psychotic drugs

Naturally, she's from Ohio, as she's trying to lose weight by eating baked macaroni and cheese with sour cream.  On the other hand, she sounds like a perfect candidate for a teacher.  She apparently doesn't have a sex drive and she already knew she was psychotic before wasting her money on a Bachelor's in Elementary Education.  Have fun in Denver!

If you've ever seen the movie Gummo, then, maybe this next dude isn't so weird:

cats skinned in fort lupton co
cats killed in fort lupton co
jonbenets autopsy photos
crime scene photos of the crawl space and duffle bag in ramseys house
sexy bathing suits
what a neck looks like after its been strangled
pictures what a neck looks like after it was strangled
pictures of murder victims that have been strangled
pictures of murder by strangulation
knitting stitches
what jonbenet would look like today
new jersey park police
jonbenet in her casket
ransom note in the movie obsession what did it read
movie ransom notes
scouting knots
manila rope and its uses
brown paper bags cops use for evidence
rope to use to hog tie someone
body transport boulder colorado

Masturbation : Arousal
Skinned cats : Jonbenet's Corpse

Awesome.

My favorite, though, is AOL user 2708.  I used to think New Hamshire was sort of boring.  But I know differently, now that I know this woman is trolling around the mountains:

revenge tactics
the woman's book of revenge
dirty tricks for chicks
voice changer
how to humiliate someone
bill me pay later for cd's
scams to play on people
how to get revenge on an old lover
i hate my ex boyfriend
how to really make someone hurt for the pain they caused to someone else
columbia house
advice from women who have seeked revenge on old lovers
makehimsuffer.com
how to say goodbye hurtfully
how to report child neglect in the state of new hampshire
free articles on gay life that can be mailed to me
free christian things
free gay magazines
free angry stuff to send to an ex lover
how to permanently delete information from your hard drive
makehimpay.net
women's harley davidson boots 

I'm okay with this so far.  The next entry, however, is the most disturbing:

www.match.com 

Yeah.  Be 'careful'.  I've met some of these people.