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I think I may be near death at the moment.
I went to bed around 3:00 AM this morning, only to find myself awake at 5:00 AM and completely unable to sleep. I lay there for two hours before giving up -- I just didn't feel tired.
A bit later I went to Lowe's to buy some vegetation killer for my increasingly ill-conceived front yard rehabilitation project. I spent an hour or so spraying it all over the place and breathing in the delicious fumes.
Afterwards, I found myself sitting on my couch with a pounding headache and a general dislike of everything. I watched TV, played some video games, and made a couple phone calls to try and schedule a meeting, and after four hours of this I thought maybe I could manage some sleep. So I took my body and rested it in a horizontal manner on the top of my bed, closed my eyes, and desperately tried to relax my mind. Eventually I somehow managed to succeed, and slept for a couple hours. I woke up feeling even worse, and realized that I hadn't really eaten anything all day...
Problem is, food seems pointless. I recognize a bodily need for sustenance, but there is no desire within me to consume food. I forced myself to drink some milk in the hopes that it would create a desire for chewable nourishment, but so far no go, and now I'm strangely aware that my stomach is cold. My brain feels sluggish, my eyeballs are clutching wildly at my eye sockets in a hopefully non-futile attempt to stay inside my skull, and I can't quite shake the feeling that life would be better if I didn't have a head.
So I think I've learned a valuable lesson: Don't attack nature. Now, if I don't die, I can put this life lesson to work. From now on, nature is my Internet, and I will love and cherish it, letting it run free and unshackled to express itself in ways both beautiful and ugly, both tragic and joyous, both terrible and sweet. The bad will come with the good, but I will learn to selectively filter it without destroying it, leaving the awful and rank for the white trash living down the street. They seem to like weeds quite a bit, just as some people enjoy the darker corners of the Internet... and who am I to judge?
Resolution: pull up unwanted foliage and plant it in neighbor's yard.
So nature, how about it? Do we have a deal? Can I have my well-being back, please?
I work on vital statistics software. The software is used by several States to process birth and death events. Perhaps I will talk more about what I do some other time, but it's not important right now. What matters is that we are the "Vital Statistics team" where I work, and often we are just called "Vitals".
From my office, there is a Chevron visible across the street. This Chevron closed down several months ago (how it managed to stay open for so many years is a mystery to me... the place seemed very poorly managed). Naturally, when a building is abandoned it becomes needful for said building to be covered in graffiti, and so soon the local talented midnight artists thoughtfully and tastefully turned this eyesore of a building into a beautiful monument to illegible scribbles. Sadly, the city didn't appreciate such fine art, and so they painted over the tags. But they missed one.
Over the months, the tagging has continued, only to be painted over every time... except for that one tag that still persisted.
One day, my colleagues and I were looking out of my office window with some binoculars (why is not important...), when we decided to get a better look at that one tag that always managed to stick around.
It appeared to say something about "vital". So we got a closer look.
There was some disagreement about the first word -- "ks", "its", "pi s", "ns" -- but we decided that the tagger was trying to pay tribute to us, and to recognize all the hard work that we do every day. And so, it was decided that the words said: "it's vital". And that, of course, is some clever wordplay.
I went over and took a photo of the graffiti (which is where the above photos came from), and I then proceeded to chop the letters out so we could print it as a banner. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to use the full width of the paper roll when I printed it out, so we were only able to make it about nine feet wide, but now we have a glorious banner that proclaims who we are, how important we are, and also shows that we have serious street cred. And even though we have to tell everyone who sees it that the first word is not "ks", we still feel pretty special... and also vitally important.
Here's how it looks as you enter our section of the office
I can even see it from my office
Here they are right outside my office window - I apologize for the poor photo, but I had to hurry and they flew away right after I snapped this shot.
The pad has fifteen letter keys, each of which can generate five characters, plus they all have at least one "function" -- arrow keys, page up, esc, and so forth. So, to type anything besides the fifteen main letters, you have to push one or more of the five "modifier" keys. The most common of these is pressing the space key at the same time as one of the letter keys. So, for instance, you can type an 'e' by just pressing the appropriate key, but pressing it at the same time as the space key produces a 'z'.
The problem here is that there is a built-in delay in the algorithm, so if I'm typing, say, "the pad", it will often come out as "thzpad", because I type the space too soon after typing the 'e', and it changes the 'e' into a 'z' and the space doesn't get output. This happens a lot to me now, and it happened in that last sentence in fact ("it changes the" came out as "icchangegthe"). So there is definitely an upper limit on how fast I will ever be able to type. This error is a common one since the space key is easy to hit, and I can quickly type it after any character, even though I'm not that fast with the keyboard itself. So I need to train myself to be slower with the space key...
Today's typing speed (based on TypingTest.com):
Frogpad: 33 WPM
Standard keyboard: 93 WPM
It was a cold September morning. The rain was pounding, and as I ran through it it gradually changed into hail. Though I lacked umbrella, jacket, or hat, I was only vaguely aware of the little ice balls smashing my head and the slow loss of feeling as the cold numbed my fingers and toes. I was thinking on other things, and when my mind is focused nothing can distract me. "What is the other natural flavor?" was the question that haunted my thoughts. Indeed, my desire -- no, my need to answer this question was what prompted this sudden mad dash out into the unknown.
I was sitting in my home watching a fine episode of Rocko's Modern Life (which I discovered on a video tape while going through some old boxes of stuff), and thoroughly enjoying Heifer learning French ("J'ai besoin de papier de toilette") when suddenly there was a deafening and oddly terrifying knock on the door. It was odd, because I don't really know how a knock can be terrifying, but this one was. So I grabbed my butterfly knife and opened the door, but there wasn't anyone there. Instead, there was a can of Country Time Lemonade Flavor Drink at my feet. I almost didn't see it, and even when I did I nearly kicked it out into the street. I would have too, but my conscience didn't think that would be too environmentally sound, so I brought the can into my house. "No way will I drink that. Artificial lemonade makes my stomach hurt, and who knows where it came from anyway? I'll just throw it away." But I never did. I picked the can up and looked at it, and that's when I saw the words that would burn themselves into my mind: Natural Lemon Flavor with Other Natural Flavor.
"Other natural flavor." That's odd. If there's just one other natural flavor, why not say what it is? Lemon Flavor with Lime Flavor, Lemon Flavor with Guava Flavor, or even Lemon Flavor with Lettuce Flavor. Any of these would have been less interesting or curious to me. If they won't say what this singular "other" flavor is, there must be a reason!
These are the kinds of thoughts I had. At first it was just a minor curiosity. I laughed at the absurdity of it all, and went back to watching that old tape and then went to bed. But the can was still there when I woke in the morning. I glanced at it quizzically, but had to hurry off to work since I only woke up with 10 minutes to get there. I found it exceedingly difficult to focus on my work that day. Everything reminded me of those words. "What other tasks are you working on?" someone would ask, but all I'd hear is "What other natural flavor are you working on?" When we were sitting around imbibing delicious beers, a colleague would say, "Mmmmm! Smoooooth flavor!" and I would shout out, "Is it natural? Would you put it in lemonade?!" My co-workers were quickly becoming aware that I was going crazy. No one thought much about it though, since computer programmers are actually more effective when they're insane.
I went home that night and the can greeted me. Not literally, mind you, it's just that it was the first thing I saw when I came in. It's a figure of speech. Anyway, it was sitting there and that really pissed me off. "Why are you sitting there?" I shouted. So I took it and put it in a cupboard so I couldn't see it. Then I popped in a DVD of Futurama to try and take my mind off of it. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking clearly, and I started to watch the episode where they go to the Slurm factory. If you've seen it, you know why it was a bad idea. Now I simply HAD to know what that other natural flavor was! I went to the kitchen to open the cupboard, but then I stopped. "No! You can't let the lemonade control you!" So I left. Then I came back. Then I left again. I paced back and forth for several hours until I got a charley horse and collapsed in pain. "Argh! Curse you, potassium!" were my last thoughts as I blacked out.
The blackness turned into a swirling mist of natural flavors. As I looked on them, I saw many familiar ones. Peach, mango, tomato, banana, strawberry, orange, and of course lemon. I smiled as each one drifted by, priding myself on my ability to name each one. I made my way through hundreds and thousands of natural flavors, becoming happier and happier as each was identified: cucumber, blueberry, maple, vanilla, cherry, apple... But then something horrible happened! A natural flavor drifted by, and I couldn't tell what it was! A voice asked, "What natural flavor is this?" and the only response I could find was: "other". As I whispered the response, I woke up in a cold sweat. I was still lying on my kitchen floor, my head resting in a surprisingly large puddle of drool. I jumped up and ripped open the cupboard, removing the Country Time Lemonade Flavor Drink. "I WILL FIND OUT WHAT FLAVOR YOU ARE!" I screamed at the can, and jamming it in my pocket I rushed out the door.
So now we have come full circle. I was running through hail on a cold September morning, consumed by the question "What is the other natural flavor?" I did not know where I was going. I hadn't eaten anything since drinking those beers at work. I was sprinting blindly through body-numbing coldness, desperately hoping that in doing so I would somehow find the answer I sought. It was then that he grabbed me. A strange cloaked figure had appeared out of nowhere, taken a hold of my neck, and slammed me down on the ground. "I knew you couldn't resist," he hissed, "but some things are best left unknown." This felt oddly like something out of 1984. Not the whole Big Brother thing, but that bit about being set up because "they" knew that Winston needed to have his way of thinking "altered". Enough with the Orwell references. The point is that this was obviously planned. Here was the man who could produce terrifying knocks on wooden doors, and this time I didn't have my butterfly knife. Things were looking grim.
"Look, I don't know what's going on! I just want to know what the other natural flavor is in Country Time Lemonade Flavor Drink!" I said. He let out a freakishly creepy laugh. "That is not for you to know! If you were to discover the source of the other flavor, you would tell everyone, and then Country Time would lose their 33% market share of United States lemonade consumption." Despite my fear, I laughed. "You're crazy! I'm just a lowly programmer who loves beer. I'm not proactive and I certainly wouldn't have the motivation to do what you claim I would. Besides, no one would believe me." He glared at me, and something about his stare cut my breath short. "You have no idea who you are," he said mysteriously. The mystery was soon gone, however, as he continued, "You are the so-called chosen one who is destined to reveal the other natural flavor to the world."
Me? A chosen one? Someone made a prophesy about this incredibly mundane subject? Why couldn't I have been chosen for something at least mildly cool? Then I had a question. "Wait a minute. The Dr. Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. (DPSU) enterprise sent some madman after me just so they could maintain lemonade market share?" "Naive fool!" he shouted, "DPSU is nothing but a division of London-based Cadbury Schweppes plc. We are a major international beverage and confectionery group selling brands around the world. Any loss of market share is incredibly important to us."
I was in shock. Surely the company that makes Cadbury Creme Eggs -- my most beloved of Easter candy -- wouldn't want to harm me. Reality was crumbling around me. If the company that brought me such joy as a child could plan such a heartless plot against me for the sole purpose of making money, well, nothing mattered anymore. Nothing, except revenge.
As the man stared at me, I made my decision. Like lightning I reached into my pocket and ripped out the can of Country Time Lemonade Flavor Drink. I saw the light behind the man's eyes change as he realized what I was doing, but I was too fast (like lightning, remember). Before he could react, I smashed the can into his left temple. I hit him with such force that the can exploded, and other natural flavor was everywhere! As he crashed to the ground, I kicked him a few times in spite and then took off. I ran and ran, but this time I had a destination: Plano, Texas -- the location of Dr. Pepper/Seven Up, Inc.
Needless to say, I didn't run from Salt Lake City to Plano, but through various means of transportation I finally arrived. Through all kinds of exciting and interesting events I managed to infiltrate the bottling plant and locate the actual recipe for Country Time Lemonade Flavor Drink. I also snuck a couple of Cadbury Creme Eggs from someone's desk (London sends them here year-round, lucky jerks...). I read over the recipe as I sucked the creme out of an egg. It was all here. I finally knew what the other natural flavor was, and it terrified me. Fortunately, about this time I was apprehended and taken to a room where unspeakable things are done to people like me. Good thing, too, because some things are best left unknown. I know I don't have much longer to live, but as I look up at the giant poster of Country Time Lemonade Flavor Drink with Natural Lemon Flavor and Other Natural Flavor staring down at me, my eyes fill with happy tears as I smile. I love Country Time Lemonade Flavor Drink. Perhaps this is 1984 after all...
