Les Bonnes Choses

Crap. My train of thought left without me. I got sidetracked when I logged in to my blogger account and was met with the opportunity to connect my blog to my google+ account. This seemed attractive, on one hand, because, much as I want google+ to be a viable alternative (or companion) to Zuckerberg et al.'s service, I have so far found google+ to be largely irrelevant because of the large divide between the pool of people I know well and the people who appear on google+ (and who post anything).

One advantage to connecting my blog with my google+ account is that my blog posts could automatically be published there, allowing me to contribute to the relevance of the service, in my own little way. One disadvantage is that it completely strips away at any anonymity I may have here. If one tried, I am certain they could identify me, but it would at least take a modicum of effort. I try not to be an ass online, but neither do I limit my discussion to observations on the weather. Typically, I accuse some party or another of being foolish (sometimes I am the foolish party). Consequently, I may offend some fool or another from time-to-time. There is a claim that North America was founded on the good old fashioned protestant work ethic. Similarly, there seems to be a stronger libertarian mood these days, which suggests to me that a substantial segment of the population believes that outcomes should be tied to merit, at least to some degree. Nonetheless, we should all recognize that we still find people holding positions for which they are utterly unqualified, and doing things that decrease the fulfillment we may otherwise experience in our lives. Though potential may be heritable, capability is not. So, every time some doofus gets a free ride in life because his dad was able to pony up the tuition to a good school in order to maintain the family dynasty -- I've concluded that the system may in fact be rigged to ensure that the greatest power is concentrated among those least capable of wielding it. I am reminded of how nobility worked in centuries past, and how families maintained their status through inbreeding, thereby ensuring that the oldest and most noble houses were most likely to produce an heir unnaturally preoccupied with counting butterflies. I am sure you can appreciate how, unless I radically change my writing style, this poses a problem for me, at least in the short term as I continue to look for more permantent employment. But alas, apart from my popular series detailing the creation of my 3D Catan set, I don't really have any interesting hobbies about which to write. So for the time being (read: until some outfit deigns to interview me), I'm afraid google+ is going to have to go it alone.

I received a catalog of sorts in the post today. Crutchfield is the store's name, and they appear to specialize in electronics -- in other words, this catalog should be to grown-up me what was the back half of the Consumers Distributing catalog to 9-year-old He-Man-collecting me. Why, back in the day, I could spend hours looking at the crazy playsets and toys. As a child, I had, in retrospect, an odd understanding of money. For no particular reason, I was tracking the Canadian/US dollar exchange rate for about a year between 1984 and 1985. I wasn't involved in any FOREX trading, so my drive probably had something to do with a mashup between patriotism and achieving a high-score. But I don't think my appreciation of what constitutes an unreasonably expensive gift was unique. I'd wager the ability to detect outliers develops pretty early, so a $120 toy in a genre of $4 action figures sort of stands out.

USS Flagg, originally retailed for $109.99

I suppose if Motocross racing was a passion of yours, the item for sale on Craigslist might give you a bit of an edge on some of the more challenging tracks:

Young men between the ages of 18 and 31 are targets because of the large amount of time they spend online every week, said Ms. Hargrove, director of consumer solutions for Symantec.
Known as the “millennium males,” they spend more than 49 hours online a week, she said.