My Favorite Albums

Now that songs are just something you shuffle on your iPod, the age of the album is dead.

I have always been an album guy, and have fought the implications of the mp3 age, but even I find myself often just listening to a song or two instead of an entire album before moving on to another band. There was a time when I'd put a cd on and just listen start to finish. Back when artists had to actually worry about making enough good music to fill an album.

So in a sad celebration of a bygone age, I'd like to tell you about my favorite albums.

These albums are fairly diverse, but share some common traits. Foremost, they all have strong emotion. I react to music where an artist is showing true feelings, whatever they may be.

Emotion by itself is, of course, not enough to elevate an album to greatness. These albums also express those emotions through powerful lyrics and enthralling music. Lyrics are so important to me that I'll share a sample lyrics from each album that resonate with me.

So with no further adieu, in alphabetical order, some of my favorite albums.

Boys for Pele by Tori Amos

I have to admit, Tori Amos has always frightened me a bit, After all, if I'm to believe the album title, she wants to throw me in a volcano (google it). I was also never sure if the references she made to fairies was just being cutesy, or if she really frigging believes in Fairies.

Regardless of this (and some may say irregardless, because they're idiots), this album is phenomenal. The songs feature her on piano or harpsichord (yes!) with minimal accompaniment, and are uniformly haunting and mesmerizing. It's also a break-up album, which loads the album with the emotional outcry I yearn for in music.

The one knock I have is that the lyrics can get a bit surrealistic (what's this about the Pope's rubber robe?), but when she plays it straight, they hit like a punch to the stomach:

You say you packed my things
And divided what was mine
You're off to the mountain top
I say her skinny legs could use sun,
But now I'm wishing
For my best impression
Of my best Angie Dickinson
But now I've got to worry
Cause boy you still look pretty
When you're putting the damage on

Funeral by Arcade Fire

An album written in response to a series of funerals band members had to attend, Funeral drips with feeling. I'm a sucker for the moment in the song when the singer's voice breaks with emotion. When Win Butler sings, "Then we think of our parents, well what the hell ever happened to them?!" that's exactly what happens. Considering the inspiration for the album, it's just one powerful moment in an album full of them.

Sample lyrics:
You change all the lead
Sleepin' in my head to gold
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
The song I've been trying to sing

In the Aeroplane by the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

Perhaps my favorite album of all time (and "Two Headed Boy" is a contender for my favorite song of all time). It has everything I look for, though the lyrics can lean a bit too surreal, much like Tori. Still, I love to put on my headphones and listen to this start to finish.

Sample lyrics:
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me

P.S. This album also has the two most angst-filled lines in music history, imho:
Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park.

P.P.S. Their only other album really sucks. Sigh.

Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit

Depression after a hard breakup seems to be a gold mine of inspiration. That's what this album tells me. It takes some effort to get me to think, Dude, you're more fucked up than even me. You need a hug! but this album pulls it off.

But even as Scott Hutchinson wallows in misery, whether comparing himself to an emotional leper, or beseeching someone to sleep with him even if she doesn't know his name because he needs "human heat," there's the glimpse of hope that for me is the most powerful aspect of melancholy music. If the album was a series of, "Everything sucks and I'm going to kill myself," why would anyone listen to it?

Instead, we have these lyrics:
Am I ready to leap
Is there peace beneath
The roar of the Forth road bridge?
...
These manic gulls scream it's okay
Take your life give it a shake
gather up all your loose change
I think I'll save suicide for another year

O by Damien Rice

A guy with a guitar and minimal accompaniment singing his heart out. What else can I say? Bonus points because he's Irish.

Sample Lyrics:
What I am to you is not real
What I am to you, you do not need
What I am to you is not what you mean to me
You give me miles and miles of mountains
And I'll ask for the sea

Plans by Death Cab for Cutie

I could say a lot about this great album, but it's all trumped by the time in my life when I got to know it. It was as if I was meant to hear this album at that time, to share hard feelings with someone else.

So all I can say is, as my grandmother lay dying in a hospital bed, I heard these words:
'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said, that "Love is watching someone die"

Turn on the Bright Lights by Interpol

Interpol is easily my favorite of the rash of "retro" bands that came out a few years ago. They took the Joy Division mantle and ran with it. The album can feel a bit cold and distant, but that can convey as much as a voice cracking with emotion.

Sample Lyrics:
You are the only person
who's completely certain
there's nothing here to be into

Undertow by Tool

I've always been a fan of heavy music, but too often it's generic and juvenile. Variations on either "fuck you" or "I'm an elf prince" set to the same old guitar riffs you've heard for the last 30 years just doesn't cut it.

Back in the early 90s, I caught a video on a late night music show, and I was absolutely stunned. The music was heavy, but unlike anything I'd heard before. The lyrics were personal and introspective. And the video itself... holy shit. A new high-water mark in heavy music had been reached in my view.

It took a while to find the album since they hadn't hit it big yet (but they soon would.) When I finally did find it, the entire album was at the same high level. And more amazing videos would follow.

Sample lyrics:
Why can't we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can't we drink forever?
I just want to start this over
I am just a worthless liar
I am just an imbecile
I will only complicate you
Trust in me and fall as well

The Wall by Pink Floyd

If I have to pick the album that has affected me most, this is it. Never is music more powerful than when it shows you that someone else has had similar experiences to you. When I first heard The Wall, I knew that I wasn't the only person that felt the way I did. You learn as you get older that everyone is struggling with demons, but when you're a teenager, everyone else seems to have it together. I knew I didn't. And apparently Roger Waters didn't have it together either.

The most important aspect to this album to me, however, is that it is a mountain you climb as you progress in your life. At least that's what happened to me. When I was an angry teenager struggling in what felt like a hostile world, the album seemed like a blueprint: If I build a wall around myself, no one can hurt me anymore. I'll be safe.

Then one day, when you're older and have gained more perspective, when you reach the peak of the mountain and see what's on the other side, you realize this is just what the album is cautioning you not to do. Roger Waters had built that wall, and it was a terrible mistake. The day I realized this, my life was changed. And that's why this is such an amazing album.

Sample lyrics:
All alone, or in two's
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall

With All Due Respect by The Young Dubliners

This is an album of classic Irish folk songs (and a couple Pogues songs) done as rock songs. Being Irish, and a lover of Irish music, this one is a slam dunk for me. Especially since Irish music has the emotion I seek in spades.

Sample lyrics:
On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And said let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day
...
Oh I loved too much and by such, by such
Is happiness thrown away

(I have to say I love the repetition of "by such," which implies to me such emotion that the singer is catching his breath and has to start the line over. Of course, it's probably just filling a measure, but I prefer my interpretation.)

The consistent greatness dilemma

Several of my favorite bands are not on this list, and these bands of course have made some of my favorite albums. The problem is, I can't pick one of their albums as a favorite. So instead of listing of several albums by each band, here are a bunch of bands that have too many great albums to list (and some that suck, so be warned):

Eels
The Frames
Hayden
Iron Maiden
Jethro Tull
Okkervil River
Radiohead
Josh Ritter
Bruce Springteen

Life of a Code Monkey

It happens at every party. I'm chatting with someone I just met, and he asks me what I do for a living. (It's always a he, women don't talk to me at parties.) I tell him I'm a computer programmer, and his eyes glaze over. For however long I decide to talk about my profession, he'll nod at the right times, and make the occasional "mmm" of interest, but he's checked out, judging at what point it would no longer be rude to talk to someone else.

This doesn't bother me, because if you're not part of the club, software development is a boring jumble of jargon and acronyms. Also, as essential as computers are, no one wants to know how they work. They're like cars: as long as they get us where we're going, we don't give a shit about what's under the hood.

But I've decided to explain the life of a code monkey, and you might just find it interesting if you come along for the ride. This will be no party patter full of vague pleasantries, this will be the straight dope. So just step right this way.

The most important thing I have to say about the software industry is that I love the former and hate the latter. Software can be exhilarating. It can even be artful, if you're not afraid to look under the hood. But just like any art form, it must be translated into a monetary value if you plan to eat. That means art becomes a business, and business is the domain of businessmen. For businessmen, there is no art, just products and profits. Welcome to the industry.

But for a moment, let's hold the beasts at bay and live in a code monkey utopia. For someone who really cares about software, how you build something is just as important and what you build. For the end user, it can be very hard to tell how well a piece of software is constructed. Certainly, if a program doesn't work properly and is filled with bugs, it's easy to measure its quality. But two developers could produce two programs that, in the user's eye, are identical. Yet one of them may be a masterwork crafted by a talented artisan, while the other is held together by duct tape and is just sufficient enough to earn a paycheck.

In a short period, this difference may not matter to the user, but if he has to live with an evolving piece of software over time, the difference will become apparent. Every change that is made will lead to many problems in poor software. In good software, the changes have much less effect and are much quicker to implement. When another code monkey comes along to maintain a product, he will curse the paycheck collector and praise the artisan. (Briefly, before complaining how much better it could have been done. More on that in a second.)

So for a software artisan, there is a passion to deliver what a user needs, and lay the groundwork for what will be one day needed. This will be done in as simple a manner as possible, but no simpler. It will be fairly easy to understand (compared to other code, at least) and it will be elegant. It will feature the latest ideas and patterns from the thriving community of other passionate programmers. For the layman, it will just be a piece of software that will be cursed when it doesn't do things as well as expected, and taken for granted otherwise. For a code monkey, it will be art.

Chasing this grail of great code is an intoxicating process. When I'm in the zone with no distractions, time disappears. The world fades away, and there's only the code emerging before me and the endless battle of making the computer concede to my whims. Suddenly I'll realize that the day is almost done and I haven't even had lunch yet. Anyone who has thrown himself into art of any sort will know this experience.

I wanted us to stay in my little code monkey utopia for a while. I was hoping the visit would last until the inevitable arrival of the suits. I could keep talking about the joy of making great software, the rush of struggling with a problem for hours to finally solve it, or the glorious feeling when a fellow code monkey looks at your work with awe. But the clouds have come, and the rain is starting to fall.

The price of chasing the software grail is the never-ending need for scholarship. The fundamentals of development evolve constantly, and how to apply them changes even more rapidly. Best practices and patterns have to be followed on an almost daily basis to stay current. Imagine being a writer and having to buy a new dictionary every few years because the current one just doesn't apply anymore. Imagine awaking from a ten-year coma to find you can't even read your favorite author's latest work. Such is the life of a code monkey.

Another problem is that even before we have to submit our creations to the product machine, we code monkeys have to co-exist. To keep the contrast going with writing, imagine writing a novel with ten other people. How far would you get before things would end so very badly. Even if you agreed to an over-arching plot and who would write which chapters, the fact is that disparate parts have to make sense as a whole. That means a lot of communication and compromise. And code monkeys, like any artists, have plenty of pride and ego.

Throw in a few writers who are just there for the sweet writer paycheck (okay, the analogy breaks down here, but let's move on), and suddenly you may feel like Cormac McCarthy writing the conclusion of a story that Dan Brown began and features a middle section contributed by Stephanie Meyer. (And if you're a fan of either writer, I'm very sorry, on many levels.) Even worse, imagine you have to add content between those writers. On a good day, you'll think you put Cormac's prose to shame, and on a bad one, you'll feels as if you abuse the English language even worse than Dan and Stephanie combined.

Despite these challenges, software can still come together in greatness, and despite all the brotherly fights amongst code monkeys, there's still mutual respect. If the only challenge was to deliver great software, developers could work together well enough to achieve that goal.

But software has to be sold. Which means it has to be done before someone else does the same thing. And even if you finish first, if someone else makes it cheaper or better later, you have to react or be put out of business.

There's the b word. Let's begin our descent into darkness.

I mentioned that, on a superficial level, code of vastly different quality can look the same. Better quality takes time, and time is money. That means that the quicker software is built, the happier the businessmen are. While poor code will be more expensive in the long run, and will potentially alienate users (now called "clients" in business parlance), to many profit-driven minds, the equation is simply that money now is better than money later.

Before I paint too bleak a picture, I can't say that every sales-oriented person in the software industry is short-sighted and greedy. There are many people who "get it" and understand the big picture. Some even respect the art of software.

But software has to be sold for software to be made. Someone has to sell it. That means the good guys have to compete with the slimiest, most dishonest jerk at the sleaziest company that ever managed to stay in business long enough to shit out some software (or at least promise to one day shit out software.)

Thus, the life of a code monkey is building something in the time frame that was promised in order to make a sale. To go back to the writing analogy one more time, imagine getting a call from your agent that you have to write a 500 page teenage vampire novel in four weeks. (Insert your own Stephanie Meyer joke here.)

So in that situation, what does a code monkey do? That's the hard reality of being a software developer. We care. We want to make art, but we also have to make a product. So we do our jobs the best we can, balancing what was sold with what we yearn to make. We deliver a book that's half the expected length in twice the promised time. We stick to the theme, but do our best to make it a meaningful, worthwhile creation. The client grumbles about the disparity between promise and product, but is satisfied in the end.

The result may be flawed, but damn it, it is art.

Excuse Me, Sir, But Your Pants Are Falling Off

Riding home on the bus, and some kid is sitting there with his pants hanging down low enough that it looks like he's taking a dump. I watch him get off the bus, holding his pants up. (What else do they have keeping them up if they're under his ass?)

This is fashion? This is what someone considers to be a good idea?

This has me rethinking my staid opinions on clothing. Perhaps I need to take my look in an exciting new direction. Underwear over my pants, perhaps? Or I could try a shirt 3 sizes too big. (Or 3 sizes too small. Genius!) Maybe I'll wear my pants backward. (Oh right, that one's been done. Kriss Kross will make you jump jump.)

No need to stop with clothing. How about the one eyebrow look? Not just for the guy that passed out at the party first anymore! (Whoever just made the crack about my mono-brow: fuck you.) How about shaving all facial hair except what's on my neck? Gross, you say? Awesome, I say.

Now, I'm no fan of couture fashion, or being part of the hive mind. I don't buy clothes every year to keep up with trends, and I'm not too concerned about what people think of how I look. But wearing your pants so low you have to hold them up? That's neither stylish nor smart in any way. It really has no redeeming qualities at all.

Except to say, I'm a complete fucking moron, laugh at me!

Congratulations, sir, mission accomplished.

Marinade Master Meat Tumbler Machine

I stumbled upon an ad for the "Marinade Master Meat Tumbler Machine."

Where do I begin?

The first thing that pops into mind is those toy rock tumblers I always saw in the Sears catalog growing up. Throw some rocks in and hours later, they're worn smooth. Exciting!

Now I had to assume this invention wasn't to make meat smooth. Delving further, I discovered the tumbler both rotates the meat in a bath of marinade, but also sucks out the air in the container to marinade your meat in as little as twenty minutes!

This glorious, nay, indispensable item was a mere 54 dollars with free shipping.

Thank God someone has finally saved me from having to marinade my meats over night! The wait was unbearable. Sometimes you get home from work and need marinated meat, stat.

Now that I got the sarcasm out of my system, I want to know who would buy this item? (If you did please leave a comment, so I can mock you.) What people meet the following criteria?

• Enjoy marinading meats
• Think marinading takes too long
• Have 54 bucks to spend on useless junk
• Enjoy watching meat tumble
• Don't live with anyone that would mock them incessantly for buying a Marinade Master Meat Tumbler Machine

Since that narrows it down to, in my estimation, one person in America, I say enjoy your tumbler, my friend. Let the good times (and meat) roll!

In the Middle of a Proverbial Marathon/We're Out of Control

Hello, my name is Mike. I'm still fat.

We'll, I'm decidedly less fat. Over the last three months, I've lost 32 lbs. I'm eating fairly well, and I'm getting a decent amount of exercise. The metrics all sound good (and we recovering tubbos love metrics): weight down from 252 to 220; waist went from crammed into a 38 to a comfy 36; neck from 19 down to 17.5. Even better, I've actually added muscle, so it's a much healthier 220 then when I hit it on the way up.

I take a lot of pride in what I've accomplished so far. I can see the difference in the mirror and I'm happy about it. People comment on how thin I am. Its enough to give me a big old warm and fuzzy.

But the fact still remains: I'm overweight. My BMI has crossed over from "obese" to "overweight." That is a good thing, but to hit what is considered healthy weight for my height, I need to get down to 184. And yes, BMI is just a rough measure and not an exact science, but I wager it's not that far off when it tells me I have to lose 36 more pounds. Maybe when I hit 195 and I look in the mirror, I'll see something worthy of being called a physique, with little extra flab and healthy muscle tone.

That is the future. For now, the battle continues. And really, when that day comes, nothing much will change. I'll eat a few more calories, but still eat healthy food. I'll continue to get a decent amount of exercise. A few indulgences will probably be allowed. But this a marathon that doesn't end; I'll be a recovering tubbo no matter how long I'm a healthy weight.

Okay, so this has all been pretty dull so far. Fat guy has lost some weight. It was a struggle, but he's succeeding. Let's all feel good about the human spirit. The audience applauds, the credits roll.

Here's the thing: I've had a lot of time to think (especially during all those workouts, when the only other things to think are either this sucks so bad, am I insane? or bored bored bored bored bored BORED! ), and I've come to a conclusion.

We're out of control.

You may be way ahead of me on this one. Truth be told, I've had my suspicions for a long time. But the evidence keeps mounting.

How many ways are we out of control? Too many to count. But here are a few examples:

We consume without concern for consequences or cost. We sell our souls to corporations to get shiny toys and tasty treats, and we don't care who gets hurt or what things they do to shave costs and drive up profits. We look to talking heads that shill hate and outrage, and cause further division and create problems instead of solving them. We let the purity of faith become corrupted with prejudice and intolerance. We allow ourselves to believe that we have to choose between left and right, when the real choice is between regular people and those that want to take advantage of them. We're happy as long as we have big TVs and iPods and sports and beer. We sweat in the winter and freeze in the summer. We look for others to blame, and absolve ourselves from guilt. We eat sentient beings when we have humane options. We reproduce without any thought to how the world will be able to hold us all. We trade fulfillment for material comforts. We say the right things, but we don't mean them.

And, as Thoreau would say, we lead lives of quiet desperation.

Okay, I admit that rant was a bit excessive, but I believe it's mostly true. And this is where it all comes back to losing weight.

I made a huge effort to improve myself in one area I've always struggled with, but there's so many more things that need to be fixed. I could make a list, but my rant hit on many of them.

In the end, the only hope for all of us if we accept that we are all constant works in progress, and that we must keep struggling towards becoming our ideal selves. We may differ in our view of what that is, but I have to believe that for the vast majority of us, it would be a very positive thing. Throw in a healthy dose of tolerance and acceptance, and we could all get along in our new enlightened state. And for those that would strive to become beings motivated by hate and greed, to quote an old song, "get off my cloud."

And as they crept off my cumulus, I'd also say to the back of their heads, to quote another song, "what's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?"

P.S. I'm not really that much of a dreaming idealist. We're going to stay out of control for the foreseeable future. If I've learned anything about humanity, we'll keep going with our bad habits until we have our toes dangling over the edge of the abyss. Then we'll kick a rock over to see how far the fall is before we decide to turn around. We're all fucking nuts!

It Sucks To Be Sick

There is a very fine suite of medication I employ to feel healthy when illness hits me (more on this later), but sometimes, the offending malady is too strong and downright evil to be stopped by any amount of drugs. In this case it's a nasty head cold.

I thought I was going to escape major damage this time around. The drugs were keeping the worst of the symptoms in check. But then, last night hanging out with Cathy celebrating her charity 5k fun run with her co-workers, the shit hit the fan. I felt like total crap.

This sucked on many levels. For one, I was suddenly doing my best zombie impersonation. Secondly, what was a celebration time for Cathy now had one less than festive participant. Lastly, Cathy works with a really good group of people that I rarely see, so not being all there for the get-together was a bummer. Sorry guys.

Fast forward to last night as I was trying to sleep and coughing incessantly. I kept waiting for the pillow to cover my head so Cathy could put me out of my misery and get some sleep. At one point she asked in a groggy half-awake state, "Why are you so mad at me!" as if my coughing was an act of antagonism. When I did get to sleep, I started to dream about being sick. Also, probably because of how deeply I've been thinking through a coding project at work, I will admit with embarrassment that I dreamed that there was a bug in my breathing code, and until I fixed it I would continue to cough. I guess androids do dream of electric sheep.

Fast forward further to this morning and one of my least favorite things: waking up after a long night of cold mucous plugging up my head and lungs. The ritual is then a fresh does of drugs and the waiting game. Am I feeling well enough to go to work?

A few words about sick days. I never took a sick day until my mid-twenties. This had a lot to do with my mother, who is tough as nails and has the New England work ethic. She never took a sick day (as opposed to my dad, who didn't mind taking the odd year off of work). Part of the reason for this is simple: when you're making hourly wages (minimum wage, I might add), you don't get paid if you don't show up. There's no allotment of sick days like us salary boys get. Beyond that though, my mom just didn't need sick days. This is, after all, the woman who has been known to pull her own teeth to save dentist fees.

Because of this, I feel like a big wimp when I take a sick day. But what I've learned over the years is that I can't code when I'm sick. There's just too much mental processing, too many balls in the air at once, and all it takes is one cough or sneeze and you've lost it. Then you're spending several minutes picking them up and getting going again.

Also, when you cough all day, your co-workers want to lynch you. And if they get sick from you, they really want lynch you.

So when I decide to pull the plug on going to work and admit defeat to my head cold, I'm left with deciding how to best get through the day. Sleep would be good, but I just can stand the feeling of filling up with mucous. I also can't really focus long enough to do anything fun like read a book or watch a movie.

So I'm writing a blog entry. I think this must say a lot about how I write. That it's really mostly a stream of consciousness that requires very little active thinking. (This is kind of true, I just sit down and write in order, then read back once for typos.) And that I can lose focus repeatedly (like the 2 minutes I just spent feeling sorry for myself for being sick) and just jump back in where I left off . That's the beauty of writing: your words don't have to compile.

So I'm either going to resign myself to trying to sleep and all the grossness that will entail, or I may just wing out a couple more of these babies.

As promised, a word on drugs. When I have a cold, I use two things: an antihistamine called loratadine (aka Claritin) and the world's greatest decongestant, pseudoephedrine (the main ingredient in some, and formerly all, versions of Sudafed). For brevity's sake, I'll refer to pseudoephedrine as PE going forward. (As pointed out by my blogger buddy MommyDoc, Sudafed now has a non PE version that they've dubbed Sudafed PE, so just be aware that my use of the term PE is different than that of Sudafed's.)

PE is amazing, but it's now hard to get and many drug companies have stopped using it in their medication, replacing it with another drug that doesn't work as well (for me at least) and makes me drowsy (PE is actually an upper). The reason for this? PE is now strongly controlled because it is one of the ingredients needed to make meth. This means you can only buy one box at a time, and only at a prescription counter where you have to show id. My hunch is this will lead to the end of PE being used by drug companies eventually.

Now, I'm all for not allowing people to buy a dozen boxes of the stuff, but can't I at least buy one or two without going through a long process? If some drug dealer wants to run in and out of CVS stores buying two boxes at a time, I just don't care. I'm for educating people on the dangers of drugs, but you can't legislate common sense (or morality). And nothing is as sweet as forbidden fruit.

Oh God, that must be the cold medicine talking, since I hate political rants. Oh well, now you know how I feel about the "war on drugs." And that I hate being made to feel like a criminal because I want to buy medication that improves my quality of life and that I have no intention of abusing. And that I'm pissed that the difficulty of acquiring PE will most likely mean that it will eventually not even be available as a cold medicine.

Blame the pseudoephedrine. Perhaps we need to ban this dangerous drug all together. (Please don't, I'm only kidding. I need my PE!)

Greetings from the Gas Station

A quick walk to the corner gas station always lowers my faith in humanity.

First off, about the only reason I go there is to get soda and/or junk food, so I'm already in a self-loathing mode. This self loathing is further helped by one cashier that likes to remark on my purchases. "What, no Slim Jim today, buddy?" he'll ask with what appears to be a sincere, non-sarcastic smile. This throws me off. I'm always prepared to be mocked, and I'm ready to fire back. But he genuinely seems curious why I just don't want a Slim Jim today.

Which leads me to realize with a twist in my stomach that I buy so many Slim Jims at this place that not doing so is a remarkable event. Now my self-loathing gets a topping of shame, and I'm in the perfect mood to witness humanity.

There is always (and I really mean always) someone in front of me, often of advanced years, picking out scratch tickets with the intense scrutiny of a teenage boy that just found his dad's stash of Playboys. The sucker in question is staring those little pieces of cardboard down like there's a sure big winner in view and all it takes is a good look-see to find out which it is. Our gambler is basically undressing those poor, helpless scratch tickets with his/her eyes.

I'm standing there, jonesing for a sugar fix, staring at the back of the sucker's head as if my intense frustration just might make it explode. (If this ever works, I'll let you know.) Every time I fight the urge to explain the economics of scratch tickets. It's pretty simple: If you buy every scratch ticket on Earth, you will lose money. Therefore, if you buy a fraction of all the scratch tickets on Earth, you will most likely lose money. The only hope for profit is buying a few, hitting a winner, and quitting on the spot.

This doesn't happen. How do I know this? Because all those suckers buying tickets scratch them off mere seconds after purchasing them, and turn in any winners for more tickets. This leads me to wonder if someone hits a ten thousand dollar winner, will I see them everyday feverishly blowing through the winnings in hopes of more winnings? I think I know the answer to that.

I know I should feel bad for these people, since they are most likely addicts. I should also feel bad for smokers who come in and drop eight bucks for a pack of smokes that might last a day. Often, it's the same sad-sack getting both cigarettes and scratch tickets. And to be honest, I do kind of feel bad for them.

But you know what, I'm a lard-ass because I'm in a gas station, buying soda. If I keel over in ten years, it's my own damn fault. We reap what we sow, simple as that.

Speaking of weight problems, one more life-affirming anecdote. Yesterday, I was getting a soda, and I hear a young girl behind me ask her mother, "Can I buy this gum?" The mother's response: "No, because it's full of sugar and it will make you fat."

Beyond the debate of how fattening gum that you spit out actually is (and the cold, delicious soda in my paw has it beat for sure), telling a young girl something will make her fat is not what I'd call a recipe for a healthy self image. I'm sure the girl is glancing over at me and thinking that if she's not careful, she too will end up as tubby as the creepy guy lustfully gripping sugar water. I'm also sure this is not the first time her mother has warned her about becoming fat. The same impulse that made me want to lecture the gambler makes me want to really go off on this woman for destroying her daughter's fragile ego.

Then a voice in my head says, You know, drinking soda is really bad for you, so I pay for my poison and go my not-so-merry way.