sheer potentiality

What is a cascading life failure?

A cascading life failure occurs when something goes wrong in one’s life, putting them into an obsessively bad mood that hinders their performance in other aspects of their life. This causes other things to go wrong, thus worsening the subject’s mood, thus causing other things to go wrong, and so forth. Susceptibility to cascading life failure can be a very significant personal flaw.

Number of Americans killed on April 16: 33
Number of Iraqis killed on April 18: 172
Number of Facebook profile pictures changed to memorialize dead Americans: 4*
Number of Facebook profile pictures changed to memorialize dead Iraqis: 0*
Number of WSU campus memorials for dead Americans: 1
Number of WSU campus memorials for dead Iraqis: 0
172/33: 5.2121…

What does this say about us as a people?

*Out of 64 Facebook friends

“Physics does involve occasional congress with demonic beings…this demon is very stupid and has a very boring job”.

From Slashdot comments:

Well, some people just make me nervous… like people who wear black pants and leather jackets, walk into the plane, sit down, and have this tense forehead and just look downright antisocial. AFAIK it’s just etiquette to at least say a simple “hi” or nod politely before you take your seat next to someone. Most people do. It makes people comfortable. Others just stare at you, stare at random parts of the aircraft, and have the tense wrinkles on their forehead. They just look sketchy.

My response:

Yeah, those darn kids with their black pants and leather jackets, not saying hi to strangers on the plane and staring at random parts of the aircraft. It’s even worse when they wear dark glasses on the plane and listen to music on their “I-Pod”. You know, I actually sat on a plane next to nice people who said hi and smiled at me and let me past them to go use the bathroom. Bastards stole my phone.

Honestly, I’ve heard lots of complaints about air travel. Screaming kids, depressurized cabins, being groped by airport security, flight delays and cancellations, 2 hour layovers, 20 hour layovers, 20 hour flights, bad food, having to taste your own breast milk to prove it isn’t a bomb, loud engines, claustrophobia, I’ve heard it all. Many of these are legitimate complaints. Which makes it all the more puzzling why black pants and leather jackets figure so heavily into this guy’s fear level.

I’ve been doing some research since my initial post about how pants make no sense.

A couple people suggested Utilikilts. If I had $171 to spend on a kilt and belt I’d get one. It doesn’t really bother me that a Utilikilt costs $131 when I could easily get three or four pair of pants for the same price, because I don’t like pants and because wear and tear is three or four times higher for pants, to say nothing of having to wash them more often.

The used Utilikilt market doesn’t help much either. eBay doesn’t have much, and it would be hard to find something in my size. There are also alternative brands but they don’t save me that much money.

I think it would be ideal and most elegant to just wear some type of robes around, but that’s too much of a departure from cultural norms and would require inventing my own clothing instead of just buying it. So that’s out.

Sarongs are interesting, because they’re from Polynesia, and men wear them in Polynesia as an unbifurcated garment. Plus, I actually have one (a friend got one for me in Bali after hearing me rant about how there should be alternatives to pants). But sarongs are really just summerwear, and it’s not warm enough yet, so…

It’s getting close to Easter, which means my favorite seasonal treat, Cadbury creme eggs, are now available. But many people don’t like Cadbury eggs because they’re disgusting. Perhaps they don’t like the idea of a chocolate-and-creme treat which looks like an egg (with some of the creme dyed yolk yellow for that purpose), or perhaps chocolate and creme should never be mixed together, but I for one find them delicious and would find it a true sacrifice to give them up for Lent.

If I was still an observant Catholic.