30 in 30 III - 6 - War on Degeneracy

   This is entry number six. Yes it is being posted technically on the 7th, but hey I already wrote a substansive entry or two on the 6th, so you can deal. Anyway I was working on this at 11, but then Kristy tempted me with food.

Theological Degeneracy
   First off a brief theological announcement. A lot of people were all worked up about it being 06/06/06 today. To quote Shemek "Last time I checked there was a 6/6/06 in 1906, and 1806, and 1706 and so on... And, upon further investigation of any historical document, religious or academic, nothing of any significance happend on those dates. So shut the fuck up"
   More theologically though, the origin of this 666 thing lies in Revelation 13:16-18, which reads: "Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom: let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number. Its number is six threescore six" - whatever the hell that means. But the point is, its a name. It is not a place, it is not a date, it is a name. Meaning: there is no basis at all for the date of 06/06/06 to mean anything at all, so yeah, shut the crap up

Flatmate Degeneracy
   Anyway this morning I woke up and found a new plate in the sink, all lathered with catsup, directly under the "NO NEW PLATES IN SINK" sign. I placed a post-it note on the plate that said "WTF" and another on the sign with an arrow to the part that reads "if you don't have time to wash your plate asap, leave it in your room until you do" which said "we all agreed to this, if you think the policy should be changed please talk to us."
   When I got back from work the plate was gone, but there was another on the floor in the livingroom. I placed a "WTF - please see agreement" post-it on this as well. I declare War on Degeneracy (Remember the War on Wrong?); and I will prosecute offenders to the fullest extent of Apartment Law (Which currently consists of one clause with three subpoints).


   Anyway, the following are some guidelines of roommate ethics which I think one should do well to adhere-to.
   If you and your flatmates share most food:

• Except with extremely mundane items like bread & milk, thou shouldst not be the first to open a flatmate's food item
  
• Thou should not be the one to finish a flatmate's food item.
  
• If thou finisheth someone else's food item, for god's sake throw away the package (there seems to be some guilt dynamic or something that causes people not to throw away the container/package when they finish someone else's item, as if that would be admitting they finished it).
  
• Except with mundane items, try to resist consuming more than say a third of thine flatmate's food item.
  
• If thine flatmate gets something really unusual that they don't usually get, YOU SHOULD NOT EAT IT -- they probably had plans for it themselves
  
• Try to pull thine own weight in food purchases.

   Obviously, most of these are inspired by personal experience. And when they happened I was like "shouldn't one just KNOW not to do that?!" Well now you know. Obviously not starting someone else's food is pretty minor.. finishing it just slightly more disconcerting...

   And then there are the rules themselves. You can't blame your roommates for not following these guidelines if they haven't been set out for them, but you should probably try to follow them yourself to avoid tension. More on rules:

• If you all voluntarily entered into the lease with no discussed "rules" you can't just proclaim them on your roommates
  
• if rules become necessary adopt them by unanimity if possible, if its really a problem you can go to 2/3rds - majority might be acceptable in some circumstances
  
• if rules become necessary, set them down in writing so there can be no dispute and post them somewhere for reference.
  
• In enforcing rule compliance, try to keep it positive, & nonaccusatory. For example I found that stating the apparent violation of the rules (or in this case labelling the indesputable evidence) and asking if they thought the rule should be changed avoided more confrontational possibilities.

Degenerate Blogging Mentalities
   Anyway, we've had at least 22 people declare themselves as joining 30 in 30 III. Two people have since formally thrown in the towel, and I have a feeling a large number of silently faided away. As I've said I think one of my favourite parts of 30 in 30 is the sense of community and I have done a lot to try to facilitate interaction. I'm very pleased to find that a number of the newcomers now are commenting and building off one another. Tomorrow will mark the seventh day, the end of the first week of this madness. Tomorrow I am going to try to determine who is still really here, just to facilitate group cohesion.
   Everyone is free to decide for themselves what 30 in 30 means to them, but to me, personally, it is not about elitism, and its not about exclusiveness, and these things endanger the future of 30 in 30. I see 30 in 30 as something that is to reach out to bring in new bloggers and facilitate their ability to be all that they can be -- not to be judged by rotian commiepuritan cadres or subjected to immature reactionist abuse by otian brownshirts.
   As such, I will not be continuing to track these negative elements in my community support efforts if they are are still being exclusionary tomorrow when I do my analysis.
   In keeping with my thoughts on the individual ability to define 30 in 30 for oneself, I encourage others to maintain concordant amity with as many participants they desire.


Positive Thoughts
   Today was an epic day of blogging. Several of the 30 in 30 first-timers really distinguished themselves. You all are really coming into your own.
   My pick of the day goes to xaositecte, for his template entry for hilarity in making an actually tasteful satire of us all; but he's followed closely by bartgroks, who actually uses the template for an entry. Incidently, I actually do have an entry template. =[
   apoplecticfittz actually once again blew us all away with a legendary blog stunt - he drank a gallon of milk in under an hour!!! Truly we live in a time of heroes.

PS: This election is really crazy -- Results are coming in bit by bit, at a rate of like 10% an hour. Every time it updates it switches between Heystek being the second person elected, or Levy. /=

Results are In

Update Frenzy!



So the votes are counted, and the elections office (pictured above) has been abandoned. Just got off the phone with Lamar Heystek. He's won his city council seat, and he's 36 votes behind the first place position held by Ruth Asmundson. The first place finisher becomes the next mayor. Lamar says that provisional votes will still be coming in over the next week and he expects to receive enough more of these than Asmundson to make him the next mayor.

Also Reisig won district attorney.

Altogether, an excellent election. As a porkbarrel for my support, I expect Mayor Heystek to make me official Davis Bloggist Laureate.

jk.

(no subject)

Got crunk with Sam, Allison & Jimmy.

30 in 30 III - 7 - Experimenting With Controlling Substances

   A year ago today I extensively experimented with controlling substances for the sake of 30 in 30. Well I've experienced a lot of bullshit since then, so I thought I'd update you all on that. Also I've been spending 20 hours a day deliriously working on history papers, researching people's annals -- so I don't have time to make 30 in 30 videos or the sanity to do the alchemy necessary to create blogging gold.

Experimentation Redux
   Anyway, so yeah last year on this date I did a thorough review of 15 different types of energy drink. This is a sequel to that.
AMP - Amp, the Mountain Dew energy drink, is new since last year. It actually tastes like mountain dew on steroids.. in a good way. Unfortunately they don't sell it in four packs like the other drinks, otherwise I'd stock up. )=
Kabbalah - Kabbalah has come and gone in the intervening year. All of a sudden it was everywhere, and just as quickly it completely disappeared. It was so good, it founded a religion! But yeah I really liked it despite the fact that it was probably part of some creepy religious conspiracy headed by Madonna.
Monster "Juice" - And other forms of "juice" as well. I don't get it. I tried it and it was just.. I dunno. It tasted like an energy drink plus weird.
No Fear Gold - Sobe decided to try to harness the power of "blogging gold" by recreating the chemicals in a bloggists body during such moments of blogging glory. What they discovered was alarming and they promptly destroyed their research and mixed some chemicals together at random. I don't know what specifically they're going for with No Fear Gold, but its a different flavour than normal red can No Fear and I actually kind of like it. Plus both No Fear flavours are currently at $5.99 a four-pack while everything else is at $6.99 and I'm not one to argue with a dollar.
Other Developments: Most energy drinks used to be $1.99 a year ago but now they've risen to $2.19. Forget war for oil (which isn't even keeping the price down), we need to invade someone to keep the price of energy drinks down! Also Red Bull is still a ripoff, and the No Fear drinks finally realized that no one thought they were worth 50 cents more than everything else and actually lowered their prices to below average.

Bonus Question
   Three Years Ago I posed the following hypothetical question:
The Question: What would YOU do if you were sleeping with a russian, but when you woke up they were compeletely gone, like in those movies, only, its THEIR bed??
   And got the following responses:

[11:12:36] shid: uhh, go: hmmm
[11:12:48] shid: then try and scavenge some food from the kitchen
[11:12:53] shid: like ramen or something
[11:13:04] shid: or perhaps a danish

[11:45:46] RunModGirlRun: well, first of all, it would be a russian man
[11:46:01] RunModGirlRun: and second, I would check to see if I was tied up
[11:46:17] RunModGirlRun: third, I would wonder how he cut himself free
[11:47:25] RunModGirlRun: and maybe then, I would raid his refrigerator. and take a shower.

[16:14:00] willnotheal: Well, if I woke up in a Russian bed and my mistress had disappeared, then I would ask myself where the hell she went. I would look to my left (where she was sleeping), just to make sure she really was gone and that I wasn't still drunk from the jello shots the night before. Then I would turn to other hot Russian girl on my right and have mad sex with her until the other one showed up. Then I'd have sex with her. And then with both of them. And just to top it off...I'd have sex with them again.¹

   Well its three years later and its STILL happening to people -- just the other day it happened to Chris Bunch (though it appears likely he only THOUGHT he fell asleep next to a Russian)-- so what would you do?


   Entry of the Day: Okay otimus' entry today was actually pretty funny, though apparently he has way way too much time on his hands -- 30 in 30 - The Game


Meanwhile in the Real World
   There was an epic battle on the quad on campus today, which in accordance with tradition I completely missed out on. (Now in video!!!) Yeah thats how we roll at Davis.