Animal psycology 102

So, a chinese farmer in Warcraft let his friend borrow a weapon they found, and then he sold it on ebay, or a similar online auction place, for $1,100. Then the farmer stabbed the person in real life, because of this sword.



A few days ago I spoke of animal psycology, and this is an example of animal pyscology at its best. On my trip down from DC, I came accross 4 people who were doing 90 miles an hour down the road. They came up from behind me and quickly shifted lanes to get around. I jumped into the back of the line and continued with them. They looked like friends, in that, I notice that groups of people enjoy driving around at breakneck speeds. It's like a group of people skateboarding through town together.

Like geese constantly switching positions from alpha to omega positions, occasionally one of the cars would switch positions. If they wanted to lead the group, or go a bit faster, or change the speed of the group, they would go to the front. We followed the same pattern. The person in the front would put their blinker on, and we'd all follow suite, passing the same cars.

There is a big reason for a group of people speeding together, and wanting to speed together. Police are theoreticlly less likley to give you a ticket if you are in a group. This is because of the traffic mentality: if you do not stand out, or if the entire road is speeding, then the individual is not speeding. Just like animals in the wild, we banned together for safety. No communication was necessary, as we all understood why we were there.

We trusted the person in front of us. If someone shifted, we all did. The person behind me would watch for my blinkers, instead of watching for cops. Watching for cops was the alpha goose's job. It turns out none of these people were friends in real life. Eventually they all started peeling off the group to go to their individual locations. And every time one would leave, they would flash their high-beams, or hit their hazards, depending on the location in the group.

Finally, I peeled off to hit a rest stop. As I turned off, I flashed my high beams, and the person in front of me hit his hazards, to wave good bye. I never met these people, but there was a certain comrodary in knowing that we were there to look out for each other, in common interest. Animals, by nature, ask no questions and pass no criticism. There is no judgment amungst a group of animals fighting for the same thing. For those eighty miles, five people from differnt backgrounds, different ages, different political afiliation, different belifes, all banded together to travel in a common-good community. No judgment was past, no critisisms were made. We were just five animals banding togeter to avoid a predator's radar detector.

I was a goose amungst a street of hidden predators. We came accross two police on the way, and none of us got stopped. If I were by myself going 90 miles an hour, just like in the wild, a predator would have singled me out, as I was weak without numbers.

Animal psycology at it's best.

More updates

Updates for the day, nothing too intellectually stimulating here, for all those who enjoy those kinds of posts.

1) I found a rest stop that sells mellow yellow in northern Virginia. It's the rest stop after the welcome center.

2) Some guy yesterday was complaining that easter bunnies had nothing to do with christianity and was all saying that easter was BS and stuff...so I said "you never heard of jesus tearing apart the bunny to make a thousand loafes of bread?" and he shut up for a good 5 minutes

3) I think I am going to start a new blog, that is like a fictional journal, which I'll start for my new book project. I'll keep everyone updated

4) Not that it impacts anyone's lives, but I've been really happy recently. Everything seems to be going perfectly. Can't wait for the summer to start so I can start going back to school

5) I tried drifting today, in the rain. It was scary, because I did not expect my tires to break loose with such ease. I turned off my traction control, and the car immediatlly complained by displaying a huge orange icon on the panal, which is car-speak for "you're a moron, you realize that?" I was moving around 10 miles an hour, and I put the clutch in around five thousand RMP's, and the car immediatlly slid around. I stopped and put traction control back on :)

I made it a little more interesting

Animal psycology has sparked my interest recently. I brought my dog up, and my family's labrador quickly established itself as the Alpha male. All it took was one feroucious bite at one of the toy's my dog was playing with and it was all over.

My puppy needs to gain about five to ten pounds before it will be considered perfect in health. He doesn't eat very much in Clemson, even though he has his food out all the time. He eats right up to about where he needs to then he stops. I think it is because he's too excited and wants to go onto the next thing, much like me. Either that or he's nervous about eating, worried for whatever reason, like a puppy eating disorder. In any event, he came up here, and the labrador eats everything in site. So the added variable of my dog competing with the alpha dog was thrown into the picture. Suddenly my puppy scarfs down all of his food. Outside, he even goes to the bathroom at the same time as the Alpha, I suppose to prove a point, or maybe not to be left behind.

I went to the Zoo today. There were apes and various other monkeys there. They obviouslly preceived us, as there's only a 2% difference between humans and apes. The ape was doing exactly what I would be doing if I were in the public's captive eye: sitting almost cross legged near the back, waiting for the next thing to happen. This brought up an interesting point that Marc -- who the rest of this information is credited to -- brought up. Basiclly, an Ape is an intelligent being. Such to the point that an Ape can tell the difference between right and wrong. In a mock trial example, an Ape was to be used as a witness in a crime. In order for the Ape to be used as a witness, they would have to prove that it can tell the difference between right and wrong. Interestingly enough, through sign language, they have been proven to have the capacity to detail if an act is considered morally right, or morally wrong. While trying to prove this, they found an interesting side note. Amy, the name of the "famous" ape, who was trained by Jane Forgotthelastname, started to develop cuss words in sign language, when she became frustrated. (When I say famous, I mean I recognized Amy the Ape, and the trainer Jane, but don't remember any more details than that. If they are so well known that a non-ape buff like myself can remember their names, they must have a big impact).

By this I mean, she would signal "poop" then signal "Jane", showing her discontent for the current situation Jane had put her in. She was assumably able to "swear" at other people she felt frustrated with. I find this to be incredible. It is one thing to be able to express and relate sign language, and do basic communication through signs. Heck, my dog does that: a paw on my arm plus a bark means he wants me to rub him; sitting at attnetion and giving me the paw shows he wants to go outside. It's a huge step, however, to develop new words in a language, and to corrolate something like "poop", who's slang in all languages is a curse word, and action applying it to a specific person. This Ape clearly displayed intelligence on a high level, for being able to create a cuss word. When other animals get upset, they simply bite or bark or something of that nature. But this particular animal actually came up with something it wasn't taught, and that most defintily did not come naturally to it. This wasn't an act on instinct.

Crazy.

From now on, if someone makes me made, I'm doing sign language for "poop" and singlanguage for "you".


In other news. Now that I've said something decently interesting, I'll say what I said in a previous post that was not insightful at all:


It's almost summer time. This means several things. Most importantly, the human body will quickly release most of the fat that it geared up for the cold winter. This combined with just a little bit of walking or jogging, and we'll all experience the quickest weight loss in history. I'll be one step closer to graduating. I'm going to try to do summer classes at Tech. Here's the great news: Stewie will shed about two pounds of fur, and he'll get more tired quicker, and this means that one trip to the botanical gardens will last him a good week. w00t x 2
But hey everyone listen up. I think everyone needs a good confidence boost. So next thursday, friday or saturday, we should get a big group together to go downtown, just go to coffeeships, clubs, whatevers all night. Start living again. I know at least I have gotten into a rut, and I need to start living again, so I can feel alive when I go back to school. And I know a few other people need to get out and start enjoying themselves again. So drop me a comment if you're interested :)

Advice for March

Here is Spring Break advice, as told by Carter, my friend. "Don't break your cell phone, thinking insurance will cover it, because it won't." Once again, a friend of mine comes up with priceless information, only receivable through experience. It's my duty to report it, so that others won't have to learn it the hard way.

One day I was in Greenville. I had my old nokia 8900 model. Not sure if that was the exact model, but it was one of the first digital units that hit the market several years back. By the time I was in Greenville that one day, it was way out of date. Nobody had a monochrome phone any more. Everything had 256 bit graphics, and the only people still using my model phone were homeless people and recluses. My phone showed all the signs of use: the battery was taped on, the screen was shifted to the side, and all the numbers were worn off. The social ineptitude of my phone finally gave way, when I accidently dropped it, on Main Streen in Greenville.

I looked down at it for half a second. During that half second, I thought to myself, I can either spend ten minutes putting it back together, and making sure the screen is in the right place, or....

And in that half second, I realized that whatever came after "or" would be the best solution. If you count all the times I spent putting my phone back together in the last year, it would probably accumulate to nearly four hours. So for the next ten seconds, the "or" ended up being me stomping on my phone, maniacly laughing, like a crazed cartoon supervillan. If this incident were to have happened during the daylight hours, I am sure birds would have been chirping, and love songs would have started playing. That's how blissful it was, stomping on that phone. The phone was all over the street, in a billion beautiful pieces. I bent over and retrieved the Sim Card, and started down the street to continue my night-life experience in Greenville.

After a weekend of being free of an electronic leash, I started to miss my communication with the rest of the world. But this only excited me further. I couldn't wait to get to Cingular and upgrade my phone.

Finally on Wednesday, I went to my local Cingular store. I expected people to cheer me with awe, and sales people to drop everything they were doing to assist me. "There's the man who's getting a new phone!" I imagined the world saying. People walking into ajacent stores would see me, pause, and say "Wow, there goes one lucky m-f-er." (they had to say 'm-f-er' because children were around).

So I trotted into the store, gitty as Seth when he's drunk, and waltzed up to the sales person. Long story short, turns out I would have to pay near-full price for a new phone because I wasn't at the end of my service, and my insurance only covered a small portion of a new phone. So I bought the best phone I could afford: the 8901 model. This phone was exactly like my old phone, but harder to use. I didn't know any of the commands, and the firmware was "updated", so I didn't know the interface either. All in all, I was stuck for the next year, with a phone I disliked even more than my previous one.

A few weeks ago, Carter was in a similar situation: he wanted a new phone because his old phone was not up to par with his standards. He went about it slightly differently. He climbed to the top of a hill in my apartment complex, and spent an hour drop-kicking it down the stairs. This got the job done perfectly, however during the incident, the battery and cellphone parted ways, and the battery found itself somewhere in the underbrush. He and a friend spent another hour looking for the battery, which, to this day, is still leaking alkaline fluid into the roots of mutant shrubbery.

When he made it to Cingular, he had to pay for a new battery, and pay for repairs on his old phone, since his insurance plan did not cover drop-kicking. To be honest, that's not what his plan said, but I cannot remember the exact reason for Cingular's lack of help. So this is why Carter gave the advice we should all take to heart: "Don't break your cell phone, thinking insurance will cover it, because it won't." Sadly for Carter, the Romans where right when they said, "When a thing is done, advice comes too late."

Carter's advice servers to help and aid us in our daily struggles. But watch out for people too eager to give advice. Author Charles Varlet Marquis de La Grange, who's name is entirely too long, offers a bit of wisdom. "When we ask advice we are usually looking for an accomplice." Keep that in mind if anyone EVER tells you, "Break your cell phone, because I did, and insurance WILL cover it." This applies to any sort of insurance fraud.

Now, while on the topic of advice, I will tell you a secret: The art of advice is to make the recipient believe he thought of it himself. So my goal is to not give advice, but rather tell a story that will make the reader say to himself, "You know, maybe it's not a good idea to throw this cell phone, in hopes of receiving insurance money." So, whatever you do, don't take any of this information to heart. Instead, live your life as if you never read this. And if you ever come accross an opportunity to break your phone, think twice, but pretend like I didn't tell you to.

Ama, Marc, Todd, call me

I finally got a call from Marc last night. I was a bit worried that my friends in DC had forgotten about me. I was really excited about hanging out with them while we were all in DC. Previous to last night, I had Marc and Todd several times, leaving only one message with each, and neither have returned my calls. I even tried calling WSBF where Ama works, to see if maybe Ama left Tim's number with one of them, no luck there. I sent a series of Instant Messages to Marc and WSBF. Again, no luck. It was a good thing that I finally got in touch with them. As Jessica put it, "All we need is another missing Ama story."

Until last night, I was wondering what was going on. I had went so far as to think that Ama was being held hostage. Maybe she had seen all my phone calls and IMs, but couldn't get untied long enough to send me a message back. Then I was hoping she'd be able to sneak away or something and call, as if she were some secret agent calling from a dark ally, why everyone else is up stairs partying on, not knowing she's gone off into the night to do her mission. That reminds me of True Lies, when Arnold Swartzzawaanagra is at a high class party, then sneaks off to do his secret agent work.

It's always exciting to show your friends the "other side" of yourself. I try to get all my Clemson friends into DC at some point, and try to bring all my DC friends to South Carolina. It's always interesting seeing someone's expression when they see a new side of you that they've never experienced. I used to have friends that would come visit me in Maryland, and they lived in New Jersey. I thought I knew them pretty well, until I visited New Jersey, and found out they're much deeper and dynamic. I always love to offer people that same inside into my life, and I love learning more about my friends.

I wanted to show Jessica around DC, but she moved to California before spring break. Now if things with Ama/Marc/Todd falls through, I'll be 0-and-2. Or maybe that would bump me to 0-5?

Benjamin Disraeli -- whoever that is -- once said, "What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens." Is this going to be one of those times when I've looked forward and anticipated something for weeks, only to see it fall into one of those categories "seldom occurring"? After confiding in a friend of mine, Rachael, expressed her ideas on anticipation, "It is always the people who aren't held in anticipation that never get asked to do something." After three days of being in DC and not hearing from any of them, I was beginning to wonder if that was me.

I wonder what Harry Tasker -- Arnold's character in True Lies -- would have done to get in touch with his buddy, while in a far away place. Maybe I should be watching the sky's for flares or explosions. It's not like Ama's trying to escape from anywhere otherwise I'd be looking for high speed chases. But Ama likes to walk places instead of drive. So maybe I should be on the look out for an out of control power-walker.

How do you spell Al Quieda?

Al Qeada -- or however it's spelled -- is crippling America. They have won, and they're continuing to win.

But before I explain why, let's back up and talk about some domestic issues. I was posed the question the other day: what would you do with $2,100? Plenty, I responded. I'd start paying off my student loans, or maybe pay for a few months of rent to get that out of the way. I asked some friends, and their answers include:, down payment for a car to impress sorroity sweathearts downtown, pay for their texbooks, treat their extended family to dinner, and buy a new computer. A gift of $2,100 would be excellent, especially now that my bills are the highest. My friend explained the reason behind his question; that is what America is currently spending per second in Iraq.

Continuing with the questioning, my friend posed yet another question: What would you do with this second's $2,100? And now this second's? Every second you have to think of something new to do with that money. After the first minute or so, I would have done everything in this life I've ever dreamed of doing.

And this is why Al Quida has won, and will continue winning, the war against America. Somehow they convinced us to spend billions and billions on forign soil, thus insuring an economic downfall within the United States. The cost of the World Trade Center is nothing compared to what Al Quida got us to spend in Iraq. To make it worse, it seems like Bush's goal is to double the deaths of the WTC by sending wave after wave of American to their death.

Remember that huge typhoon that killed three hundred thousand humans? If we spent the same amount on them as we did in Iraq, we could have built a house and bought a car for each person who lost their domicile.

Hitler didn't even spend as much money as Bush is, in their respective wars. Maybe if Hitler acted more like Bush, the Germans would have won. In fact, Bush is trying to spend more money in the next 5 years in the military, than existed in the entire world when Hitler was trying to play global police.

So Al Quida attacks us, and we invade a country that has nothing to do with Al Quida, except for the religion. Of all the random people to attack, why did we choose Iraq? There are currently 182 countries that practice the dictionary definition of "genocide." Speaking of Hitler, dozens of these countries would make Hitler blush, claiming death tolls far greater. Bosnia, Kosavo, Serbia...their genocidic numbers have surpassed twenty million. Now that I think about it, Sadam Hussen is a pretty good person in comparison.

This all proves that Al Quida is winning the war. They've convinced our top leaders to support dumping money into a place that doesn't deserve American money. This liberal minded author agreed with his republican friend in saying that dumping the $2,100 on a higher-income braket family is a much better use of money that burning it. With that in mind, the $300 tax refund I got last year was a slap in the face from Bush. It was like saying, I'm not as good as an Iraqi citizen, and don't deserve the same respect that America is giving the Iraqi public.

If you gave one American man woman or child $2,100 every second, and continued in order until every American received that gift, then every 331 days, we would restart the payout. That would mean that the average family would receive around 9 grand a year. Far better than Bush's crappy gift of $300. Think of it this way: the average armed robbery yeilds about $200. How many people would be commiting those crimes if all they had to do was sit on their couch and receive that money?

But that's veering off topic. All I'm really saying, is the terrorists are winning, and Bush is doing a great job of insuring their victory.

Random news

1) Made it to DC fine. Waiting for a call from Ama-and-friends to see what they're up to. I have a theory that the guys she's hanging out with don't want to share her time because none of them have returned my calls or IMs :) I suppose it works out, cuz my family's trying to claim me around the house as long as possible.

2) Seth, I misquoted the eclipse I saw on the forum. The car is more like 12K

3) This one's been deleted

4) Hot tubs are my best friend

5) During my bored times, inbetween events, I've been going to other people's weblogs. I'm glad Brad and Jessica have new content, but sadly there're no updates for Sooz or Crystal Lite :(

6) Jasmine and I have been channel surfing. The shows they have these days are amazing....etch-a-sketch contests for instance. Who woulda thought? Oh, I found a screen saver channel, which plays nothing but High-Definition screen savers all day long.

7) The market is way down since last week. Waay down. The DOW has been diving at an average 50 points a day. So far, it looks like a good move that I sold most of my stock. This may just be a blip, but we'll see. So far the car -- even though it's a depriciating piece of property -- is still the better investment.

8) You can't find mellow yellow in any of the states that touch Washington DC......well maybe you can, but I've stopped at every gas station and grocery store between here and northern virgina, with no success :( No caffine for me!

9) I've been receiving everyone's calls just fine. I havn't been calling back because roaming for me is like 60 cents a minute. I try to call everyone back at night time from my home phone.

That's it for now I think. I may post a bit more later.