SeanTerrill.com » Archive

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Lab

webmaster — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:28:45 +0000

On my way into work today I was in the right lane, driving about 60 in a 55, maybe two lengths behind a green compact. There are three reasons I wasn’t passing the green compact:

I had to exit in a few hundred yards.
This is the spot I was pulled over for speeding last summer.
There was a truck next to the compact, in the left lane.

The truck was one of those pickups with the modified bed that can hold more cargo, and this one was carrying a bundle of about two dozen aluminum tubes (which, as we all know, are indicators that the driver is pursuing a nuclear weapons program). And as it turns out the truck was going to ORNL too, because he suddenly hit the brakes (I could tell because of his one working brake light), nose-diving from about 65 to 40, and cut between me and the compact. I missed getting sideswiped by something like a meter, mostly due to my reflexes, and he swerved onto the exit ramp, where he passed what I can only assume was the same motorcycle cop who wrote me my speeding ticket, sitting there and clocking traffic.

So, after probably the most dangerous thing I’ve seen someone do on the road in years happened literally twenty meters from him, did the cop take any action? Of course not. He had speeding tickets to write.

Is it wrong of me to envision a system in which victimless crimes have lesser consequences than actual dangerous acts?

Hey Purdue, read this!

webmaster — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 00:52:32 +0000

I am just so pissed off at the state of education in this country. You’re expected to spend four years in school – if you’re lucky – and spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education that focuses almost entirely on rote memorization. What’s worse, frequently it isn’t even memorization of the personal knowledge of the professor, who may or may not be knowledgeable in the course material in the first place. No, it’s memorization of a textbook, which costs about $3 in materials and labor and retails for $120. So for half a decade or more you put off the things you want to do, assuming you can afford to do them after you graduate, what with paying off your student loans, and get the same education you could have gotten for the cost of a library card once the lawyers and affirmative action have dumbed the curriculum down far enough that everyone can graduate – because without that degree, you’re just a void check. Meanwhile, professors who forgot everything they ever knew about the subject matter pull down six-figure salaries because they’re tenured or they pull in grant money, the board of trustees sip cognac on the dry campus and vote to give themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses, and the president squeezes alumni dry while simultaneously twisting the local political machine’s tit so hard he winds up being the de facto dictator of a police state, where cops in riot gear bust the skulls of anyone between the ages of 13 and 30 who dares to walk down the sidewalk with a smile on his face.

And they wonder what drives college students to drink. Hell, just thinking about school makes me want to go tie one on. And as if that weren’t enough, some limp-dicked community college grad who couldn’t even hack it as a real social worker starts doing shit like this:

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=194268

and saying that they have students’ best interests at heart, when if that were really the case what they’d do is get off their asses, roll up their sleeves, and make some goddamned changes in the whole fucked-up system. But no, the last thing they want to introduce into a university is some honesty or integrity. So what you wind up with is a degree factory that trains the next generation of while-collar drones to keep their heads down lest they get fucked over by the man, that the rules only apply if you don’t have something to offer in return, and that fun is a four-letter word. So go ahead kid, wear your sarcastic t-shirt to class. Just don’t be late, or you’ll miss the attendance quiz.

What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

webmaster — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 14:06:38 +0000

My mom just called me – twice in a row – and woke me up from a dream in which a multinational corporation was selling a fruit juice that turned people into sex-crazed zombies I had to kill with a katana. Maybe I should start from the beginning.

It was a cross between Snow Crash and Æon Flux – people could eat things like jelly beans that affected their brain. Green was a $50,000 wire transfer; orange made me violently ill, courtesy of the enormously overweight son of the CEO of the multinational (L. Bob Rife or Trevor Goodchild, I suppose). This company was also distributing some sort of fruit drink (someone said it was guava, someone else said passion fruit) that by the same mechanism overwhelmed people’s higher brain functions. The effect was a loosening of sexual inhibitions which ensured the drug’s popularity among young people. Culturally, it seemed like at this point in the future that had already happened; women went topless and no one stopped people from having sex, say, on the dance floor in a club. The other really bizarre thing about the dream was that although I was this Hiro Protagonist-esque hacker/samurai/rebel people would recognize me as the brother of someone they’d slept with, to the point that I had this conversation in a bar:

arfly: I had sex with your sister, you know.
Me: [Pointing to enormously overweight associate.] Yeah, so did he.
[Barfly looks ill.]
Me: You know, I’m Sean Terrill. I’m actually pretty famous in my own right.

Which doesn’t make much sense because you just don’t say that kind of thing to someone who’s wearing a katana.

The Sean Terrill Health Plan

webmaster — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:58:32 +0000

My dinner consisted of five beers, chips with guacamole, and buffalo wings.

This, incidentally, was my reward for losing 10 pounds in six weeks.

Who let the dogs out?

webmaster — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 02:19:29 +0000

My roommate/landlord, Norm, has five dogs right now.

JR is some kind of big mutt. He’s very affectionate and (this is the part I’m really learning to appreciate) he rarely barks. He’s also learned how to climb the fence by hooking his paws through the chain link, so he spends most of the day on a chain in the yard. Which seems to be OK from JR’s point of view; he’s equally happy going on the chain and being taken off of it. When he gets taken off the chain though, he takes off like a furry little cruise missile; JR is easily the fastest dog I’ve ever seen.

Norm also has four Dachshunds: three females and a male, part of his breeding program. None of them have names as far as I know. I’m fairly sure that the females are part of the litter that was born last summer. The male is a new addition; he was a puppy a month and a half ago and is pretty much full grown now. Anyway, I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that I’m not a Dachshund kind of guy. They bark all the time, which is extremely annoying, and it turns out they’re pretty mean. More on that in a second. Oh, they also turn their ears inside out when it’s hot outside, which is cute.

Enter Dusty, Norm’s girlfriend’s Doberman. Dusty in roughly the same size and weight I am, and she’s much, much nicer than the Dachshunds. The hell of it is, the Dachshunds give her crap all the time. The past two nights, they’ve kept me up literally all night barking. The best part is that every once in a while Dusty will get completely pissed at the puppy and start attacking it. The puppy thinks she’s playing, however, which is funny because Dusty’s idea of playing is to put most of the puppy inside her mouth:

Playtime

Long story short, I’ve never been much of a dog person, but they can be fun.

Generic Update

webmaster — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 02:51:09 +0000

I bought a bike and I’ve started riding in to work. It’s amazing how easy a good road bike makes things.

http://www2.trekbikes.com/bikes/bike.php?bikeid=1424000&f=4

But like any hobby, the best part about cycling is all the little ancillary toys: cycling shoes, cycling computer, cycling tools…

The majority of the interns at the Lab started this Monday, so hopefully thing are going to pick up socially. I’ve been pretty bored the past three weeks, but on the plus side, I’ve lost six pounds already, so I’m actually on pace to lose the 20 I want (and need) to. I’m training for a sprint-course triathlon on 9 July, so at least I have something to keep me interested. It’s going to be tough, though: I swam today for the first time in years and couldn’t make it 1000 yards.

Links

webmaster — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 20:55:38 +0000

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzZkNDU5MmViNzVjNzkzMDE3NzNlN2MyZjRjYTk4YjE=

It’s amazing how ambiguous things become clear when you look at them through the lens of your own ideals.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=o762HKxYMeA&search=bush%20was%20right

I just assumed this was tongue in cheek, but no, hard as it is to believe, it’s ironically funny.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/hourbyhour/37830?begHour=6&begDay=156

Monday is going to be the most perfect day that has ever happened.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

webmaster — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 21:48:52 +0000

OK, so I had some really weird dreams Wednesday night. I guess they
could actually be normal dreams for me, it’s just that I almost never
remember my dreams, so remembering three in the same night is off the
charts.

The first one is that I was on Jeopardy! and after the first round all
three of us were in negative numbers and Trebek (who still had the
mustache) said that if we didn’t pick it up they would just cancel our
show and air a rerun. Then I went to the bathroom and when I came back
the had started Double Jeopardy without me and I had missed two
questions. I don’t think I dreamed about how the game ended though.

In the second dream someone saw me listening to music and air drumming
and somehow I wound up playing drums on tour for a group that sounded a
lot like Slayer, only louder.

As for the third dream, well, let’s just say I’m keeping that one
private. ;-)

Ow

webmaster — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:36:50 +0000

Things you should never say at 1:00 AM:

“I’ll just watch one episode of ‘24′ and then go to bed.”

I think I have a TV hangover.

Greetings

webmaster — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 06:17:01 +0000

I’m in kind of a weird place right now. I don’t mean at this exact moment, although I’m not exactly a bright ray of sanity; I just mean that for the past five weeks I’ve been in this weird holding pattern, like I’m sitting around waiting for something and I don’t even know what it is. Something authentic, I guess. That got me started thinking about doing some serious writing, because there are lot of things I just won’t have the opportunity to say in day to day conversations. I mean, who’s the one person in this world with whom I have a deep, intimate relationship? Yuri Broze, and Yuri, I love you, but that’s a little sad. Plus I’m narcissistic enough to think that maybe I have something of value that other people might benefit from hearing. So here are some ideas I’ve been kicking around:

This guy in his early 30s always wanted to be a writer but never quite made it and at some point he wound up writing obituaries for the New York Times or something equally semi-prestigious; he has the technique but never quite found his voice. So one day a death notice comes across his desk and he doesn’t have any information on the decedent (never thought I’d use that word in a sentence). Nothing too unusual; just another anonymous New Yorker. But none of his usual sources have any information either. He takes the afternoon off, talks to the landlord, neighbors, and no one knows a thing. He takes a whole day off and follows a thread to… Iowa, or North Dakota or something. Small-town America anyway. And the days become weeks and then months as he arduously tracks this intensely private man back in time and he discovers that for the first time in his life he can write. The words just pour out of him, faster than his hands can keep up as he tells the story of this everyman who turns out to be a World War II hero, or maybe take it the other way and he was a Nazi who changed his identity, or he had an illegitimate daughter and the writer falls in love. No, better yet, he turns out to be an escaped convict and the writer despairs over whether or not there really are any good stories left to be told, and then he sees a picture of the convict and realizes that it isn’t the man he saw buried; the man he’s been following switched identities so that the criminal could have a fresh start and with that one selfless act condemned himself to a lifetime of isolation and loneliness. If this was a movie then each new discovery would be followed by a flashback tracing the man back in time and the last scene would be him in a rainstorm discovering this man he had the opportunity to save.

Someone about my age (college senior) goes back to the town where he grew up, but it isn’t really his home anymore and his parents have even moved away, so he’s staying with his friend and his friend is throwing a party in /his/ parents’ house. All the action of the story takes place in this one 12-hour period as he runs into all these people who aren’t really his friends anymore and yet it’s still emotional because they’re all about to graduate and will probably just never see each other again. And as he talks to these people he realizes that to a one they all feel like something is missing from their lives, and they try all kinds of things with drinking and drugs and maybe an escapist video game if it can be worked into the party setting. And some of them get depressed about the situation and some of them get manic and some are just numb, but in the end they’re all going the same place and the only difference is going to be how they interpret their individual journey. Ultimately it winds up being a message of hope because he realizes that even if the only thing he has to count on are these people, or other people like them he’ll meet, that’s enough. And we close out with him watching the sun come up as a girl he met at the party sleeps in his arms – “I came here, we all came here, looking for something, or trying to find something that was looking for us. But looking at it in the light of day, I think maybe all there is for us to find is each other. And I think maybe that’s enough.”