Parents favorite author gets a realism edit?

JK Rowling, the author that got millions of otherwise illiterate adults (oh and kids too) and wrote one the best-selling books of all time gets rewritten to actually make sense (oh how unrealistic are the things we expect…..)

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fan fiction series (which is the length of a book) written by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a man with talents in many areas most of which I find difficult to pronounce, has brought a welcome change of scenery to Harry Potter fans everywhere.
Instead of Harry stumbling around as a bumbling idiotstumb, surviving solely because he is the main character, he instead becomes a super-intelligent and rational (read the title,) boy who dumps unnecessary and potentially harmful relationships before they can form (ahem, Ron.)
Yudkowsky delves into the logic of magic with the help of “Muggle” science and in that vein often speaks about things that make me flip a few pages for the sake of my sanity.
This fan-fic (which is free for download, just use the link I provide above,) feels more like an actual book and in my own not so humble opinion is even better than the original (cue the rotten tomato throwing hordes of JK devotees.)

If you do end up downloading and reading this book, beware! Only do so if you have plenty of spare time, a head that won’t explode at the usage of big words, ideas a bit more advanced than your high school political science class, and lung bursting humor of an intelligent sort (finally!) which will cause all your friends to alienate you. If you answered in the positive to all these questions, read on!
Here ends my very clichéd warning that left me bashing my head into the keyboard for even having the audacity to write. y jfW;O IHw 0y6 35wuhngrea hg (That’s the head bashing…)

The origin/ The start of it all

Where does the title of this blog come from? (Why do I assume you people care about these things?) I was reading a book about a Navy SEAL Commander, Rorke Denver.
His book is entitled; Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior. It is a book about a superhuman struggle against enemies abroad and on the homefront and the title as well as the. A great read that inspired me greatly… for about a week.
As far as the blog goes, you may notice I’m trying to carefully sculpt a image of being a nice, stable person. Not a gun nut or anything like that. I don’t like gun freaks and consider myself a nice reasonable boy. If you don’t think I’m rational I’ll blow your head off! Bastard.
Essentially me and my roommate were being giddy after reading Denver’s book combine that with being shuttered in the building all winter and thought that Damn Few sounded fun. Plus I liked the idea of juxtaposing myself with these vaunted warriors who sacrifice so much. Doing it makes me feel like a class A poseur and tool,
That’s just about as far as the story goes.

Look at me everyone! I’m so talented!

I composed this and took it myself!! I’m so talented, I think i’ll just marry myself.

I know you don’t care but i’ll pretend like you do so i’ll get some satisfaction for spilling my secrets all over the internet

If you take a look at all the previous posts on this blog you will notice that there is just about zero identifying information about me. The picture profile for my online gravatar is some Lemony Snicket crap, I never mention any names, and the closest thing I give to you about where I live is a general geographic location, Hell, I don’t think I even mention my age, gender, or whether or not im married (not,) (by the way, I just wrote this paragraph with my face planted firmly in the carpet and and my hands blind typing on my laptop.) So I think i’ll start to put some names to places to make them more easily understood and give you some more info in posts to come perhaps.

Home= Chicago.
School/Work= Texas (not really Texas, its actually on the eastern seaboard in the mountains..)
Me!!= Dude, The Dudester, (just kidding,) James.
My really musically (and in many other ways) talented colleague- Samocles.
Other colleague who is into bass guitar, double bass, and martial arts= Dave
Cook/Roomate/Wishes he could finally get stoned= Cook
Ok, so there are like lots of other people, but I think that’s a good start.

Porter and Chocolate

One of the staff members at the school started a new custom, every Wednesday night all the staff get together and have a little party. Not just any party though. This guy buys a different spread every week. The first week it was mustard sardines and chips with Brown Ale, and IPA. Second week was porter and chocolate. Last night (which was one of the last days of school before break for the holidays) was kipper and lager (did I mention I like this custom?)

Only problem was that I may have drunken a wee bit too much, “No problem” I thought, I know the secret to beating hangovers!! If you ingest a large quantity of water before you go to sleep you will have no problems the next day. I have been fastidious in keeping this rule but wasn’t able to drink more than a liter of water before hitting the sack.

I paid for it this morning, believe me. Teaching rowdy teenagers with a sick stomach is no fun.

Well I am off to curl up in the fetal position in a warm corner somewhere.

Two Shoes- The Cat Empire

Two Shoes- The Cat Empire
Here’s a great song I found last year, It sounds very French and makes me want to tap my feet and shout for joy.

The Foundation

Personal electronic devices are the last refuge of the talentless.

Am I a bad person?

So there was a teacher at the school where I volunteer who was in a major car crash while using a van service, was thrown from the car and suffered major injuries requiring surgery. In the crash two people actually DIED!
So while he was sitting in the hospital recovering we decided to make him a little video saying “hi” and “get well soon” and stuff.
Now I had just watched GI Jane and was enamored with a quote that they used, it goes like this.

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

― D.H. Lawrence.

Now I basically told this guy that he shouldnt feel bad for himself or else he would be a loser. WHAT! What is wrong with me?!

Worst job ever?

So I realize I haven’t posted anything in a few months but I’ve been a bit busy with my sister’s wedding, making plans for the summer and next year, working and trying to forget everything I know about writing. Today however I want to focus on my current job.

 

(Deep breath before starting rant,) So a few months ago the water stopped working for no apparent reason, and after a week of no water our chef took a leave of absence for a week, during which I was to take his place. then during that second week of no water our stove stopped working. I now had to cook 60 servings a day with no gas. How? That’s what I had to figure out, in addition to my regular duties. Fun, right? At this point our internet started acting up as well (although we didn’t lose it.)

Ok, so let’s do a little review.

List of major Utilities:

1. Water
2. Heating (Kind of, See my earlier posts.)
3. Internet (shaky)
4. Gas (for cooking)

The end result of all this was two weeks without water we took showers with snow, and you had to see the toilets to believe them, and 1 week without cooking gas. Turns out the gas company was putting the propane in the tank “at the other side of the property” (where? there isn’t one over there!) Good thing the health inspector didn’t choose this week to come….

 

P.S. A month later the water gave out for an additional week and a half which caused me major acne at my sister’s wedding. Maybe i should tender my resignation.

 

P.P.S. Wow, Proofreading this post I keep thinking that this is possibly one of the worst things I have ever written. I guess my creative juices don’t get flowing under the influence of American Top 40 music. Good thing too.

I feel like I get the respect I deserve…. NOT!!

I wrote in a previous post that I work in an alternative school for teenage boys. I want to talk a little about how it’s been going.

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have experience as a student in this program’s parent branch so I know what the deal is.
The problem is that these kids are on a whole other level of teenage surliness. They don’t give a damn about anything or anyone including themselves. All the people (including me) who have taken a huge amount of resources, (that we don’t have) time, effort, and dedication to drag these guys out of their delinquent ways into having some sort of semblance to a sort of person that one would like to be around, are being, in short, spat in the face.

Although this particular specimen of ungrateful child is younger than our case study, the point is clearly illustrated.

We have a collection of some of the most kind, talented, wise, honest, caring people I have the honor of knowing, working as staff, in addition all of our staff are volunteers who gain no sort of reward for their/our tireless efforts. The staff is nearly entirely young men who have been in the deep end of life and have lifted themselves above the dirt and grime and brought themselves an incredibly long way from their pasts, enough to be able to help others who are stuck in the Dark Side of The Force to find themselves. They also have an incredible range of knowledge including martial arts, parkour, science, philosophy, religion, psychology, musical theory and practice, wilderness survival, computer programming, to name just a few. Plus whatever problems our students have, we have been through worse (and that’s the truth.)

One of my problems is relating to these guys. I connect very well to intellectuals, when I was a child I had only one friend who was my age, the rest were many many years older than me. These guys are the extreme opposite of being intellectually prone.

Well I have been ragging on these guys for a while without saying anything nice about them, so here goes. Truthfully, when we get any one of our young men on their own and have a conversation with them, they tend to be pleasant and responsible individuals, a marked difference between when they are in a group with their peers.

Now that I said something nice let’s get back to complaining.
We work our hearts out for these guys and it seems as if they are impervious to anything positive. I know, I know. I can’t expect results so soon, but I am getting immensely frustrated with the lack of even the slightest bit of reciprocation .

I have much more to say, but just for your sanity I think I will space it out to let you absorb the shock before I regal you again with more tales of the “Youth Development Program of Horrors.”

Signing off with desperation,
James