Week 8: Why is this a thing?

What the hell is going in with the world now?  There are some things that I’m seeing that I don’t even understand.  Things that I just look at and wonder to myself why it’s a thing.  Why is it even here?  Take for example the Magic Mountains.  No, I’m not talking about the fantastic theme park in California, I’m talking about this:

What the hell is this?  Who the hell does this kind of thing?  This is about 45 miles outside of Las Vegas I think.  I thought about driving out to see it in person this week, but then began wondering why the hell I would make a 90 mile round trip to the middle of nowhere just to see some painted rocks.  Someone apparently had too much time on their hands.

I had no idea this was even here until I saw it on YouTube.  A guy named Justin Scarred drove out there and did a video with the painted rocks.  He’s into bizarre things like that.  Please, feel free to watch his trip:

Justin Scarred

This was not my only surprise this week.  I love video games and I came across a video game where you play as a 911 emergency dispatcher.  Now while I don’t dispatch for 911, I do dispatch for a casino/hotel for a living.  While the job does have amusing moments, I never thought it would become a video game!

Is this something I would possibly want?  Dispatch all night and then come home to dispatch some more in a video game?  Why the hell is this a thing?  If you watch a video of the game, you receive phone calls from people calling for help.  Ok, send the police.  Now another emergency, send more police.  Ok, now you’re out of police units and you get a call for another fight.  Now what?  Bleagh!  I get enough of this shit at work!

This isn’t even the beginning.  You can buy a video game where you play as a bus driver.  Join the excitement as you drive a bus around town and pick up and drop off people!

There is a game called Papers Please where you work in a border booth checking passports.  You can be a video truck driver! How about driving trains?  Yes, all those things are video games!  We’ve now come to the point where we’re not only spray painting rocks florescent colors out in the middle of the desert, we’re also making video games for mundane jobs in the world!  What the hell’s next, a janitor video game?

This one is called Viscera Cleanup Detail.  You play as a janitor cleaning up after some horror movie thing.  Let’s simulate picking up body pieces and mopping up blood!  What a fantastic game idea!  I have no words for this.  All I can do is ask why.  Why? Why? Why?

Until next week, keep asking why with me.  Question everything.

Week 7: Why are my taxes such an annoyance?

Lovely, it’s tax time here in the US.  Everyone should be receiving their W-2 tax forms and it’s time to file for a refund.  Or if you’re really unlucky, it’s time to pay.  I had to pay one year after I had actually had a fairly decent year for book sales.  That would be because no one seems to take any taxes out of book royalties and so you have to tell the government how much you made at the end of the year and then pay tax on the amount you made.  Fantastic.

Now years ago what I had to do was to go down to the library or somewhere else that had them, and get whatever tax form I needed.  Then I would fill my form out by hand and mail it in to the IRS.  That’s the Internal Revenue Service for anyone who didn’t know.  I don’t mind the IRS as they’ve actually helped me once.

Years ago I was fired from a job after working there for a couple years.  It was a bad place and getting fired was probably one of the better things that could have happened to me.  Anyway, when it came time to file my taxes that year the company didn’t bother to send me a W-2 form for me to file with.  I called the company and they told me they didn’t care if I received my form or not.  So I called the IRS and told them the company refused to mail me a W-2.  The nice IRS guy had me estimate how much I had made that year and then they sent me a W-2 with that estimate on it that I could file with.  Someone also obviously went down to the company and had a little chat with them because within a few days I did then receive the actual W-2 from the company.  So I was quite happy to be helped out.

That was back when I was still getting the form and doing things by hand before mailing it in to the IRS.  Things are different now.  We now live in the age of electronics!  I can just file my taxes online!  That makes everything quick and easy, right?  Right?  WRONGO!

All of a sudden my email is full of these tax companies wanting me to do my taxes with their program online.  Of course they charge to use the program.  The forms at the library were always free and I’m sure they still are, but I don’t want to do everything by hand.  That takes time and I have to do the math myself.  This is the age of electronics, so my computer should be doing this stuff for me!

I looked in to a few of the tax programs and they all want to charge you for every little thing now.  I don’t feel I should have to pay for every little thing, though!  I need help from the IRS!  So I go to IRS.com.  And there’s a program that will allow me to do my taxes for free!  Halleluiah! I get to work on that.  All I need to do is plug in the numbers from the forms I have and it will figure everything out for me.  Very cool!  I don’t need to worry about paying the IRS this year as I was only paid a total of $69 in royalties this year.  Yes, very sad, but I’m not disappointed.  That’s still $69 more than I would have made if I hadn’t bothered writing the books.  And these are old books that have been out for a while, too. 

So I get my taxes all figured out and the IRS owes me a fair amount!  Very good, I get a tax return!  Hooray!  Now I’m faced with two options, I can file online, or I can print the forms the program has filled out for me and mail them in.  I don’t want to mail anything.  Why use a stamp when I can just file electronically?  I’ll tell you why, because it costs $45 to file electronically!  What the hell?  It was supposed to be the free IRS software!  After pouting about this for a bit, I finally figure who cares about $45, just file electronically and then I’ll be sure my taxes don’t get lost in the mail somewhere.  And then there is another problem.

Now before it will let me file electronically I have to find some number.  The software sends me to this web site, but I still can’t figure out what number I’m looking for!  What the hell?  I have to log in, but can’t log in!  Now I need a password!  Now I need the 84 digit code that has 28 capitals and three random phrases from some movie I’ve never seen!  What the hell is all this?  I just want to file my taxes!

It took me a little bit of time and was quite a pain in the behind, but I finally figured out what number I needed.  After paying my $45 up front, I was then allowed to file electronically.  What a pain in the ass!  Why is something that’s supposed to be so simple so complicated now?

I still haven’t received my tax return yet.  I’m sure it’s “in the mail”.  I opted for direct deposit instead of just having them send me a check that I’m sure would have been needlessly complicated to cash anywhere now.

I’m not sure why this was such a pain especially when it should have been easier than just doing everything by hand.  I’m probably just bitter about the $45 electronic filing fee.  That seems like an awful lot just to send a file!

At least I’m finished with taxes until next year.  I really feel for my friends in the UK who I’ve heard are taxed way more than I am!  Ok, I’m done asking why for this week.  But please, everyone keep on asking why!

Week 6: Why did I miss winter?

I’m one of those people who likes cold much more than heat.  Sadly, I ended up living in the desert.  Needless to say, I’m happiest every year during winter time and not as happy during summer.  I waited all year for winter to finally get here and things just haven’t been to my liking this year!

In a way, I feel a bit odd writing this blog today when so many of my friends are digging themselves out from under a huge amount of snow.  I didn’t get any snow this year, though.  As a matter of fact, my heat barely ever even came on this winter!  Now yes this does sound like I’m whining about something that I shouldn’t be whining about, but I feel cheated out of my winter!

The last several days here it’s been around 70 degrees.  For you Europeans who like Celsius, that’s about 21 degrees Celsius.  I understand that I live in the desert, but it’s still supposed to get at least a little cold here during the winter!  Now it just seems to be getting warmer and warmer each day!  Where’s my damned winter?

Now I’m going to spend most of the rest of the year waiting for winter again!  Before I know it, it’s going to be 118 degrees again! (That would be 47 Celsius.)  I’ll be back to driving around thinking I’m driving an oven!  I hate summer, bleagh! 

Ok, I know this was short, pointless, and whiny, but that’s my why for this week.  Why do I not get the cold while other people who would be happy to be out lying in their yard in 70 degrees are wondering where their yard went under all the snow?

We’ll see what I question next week.  Keep asking why!

Week 5: Why do movies suck now?

Why do movies seem so bad now?  I decided to go and see a movie last night and it wasn’t the most pleasant experience.  Let’s start with my trying to buy a ticket.

Now you can buy movie tickets online before you even get to the theater.  I didn’t bother with that because I found a pre-purchased ticket that I had forgotten having.  That should get me in to see the movie, so I should be all set.  I just need to stop off at the box office and present that, right?  Nope.

I get to the theater and when I show my pre-purchased ticket the guy still charges me $1.50.  I’ve already paid for my ticket, but now I have to pay more?  What the hell kind of scam is this?  I’m already upset now!  I went to the theater to see the movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  It’s been out for quite a while and I had been waiting for the crowds to die down before I went to see it.  No crowds for this film!

After paying my $1.50 scam money I was asked to pick out my seat.  The clerk shows me a screen and tells me I can’t sit in the best row in the theater because that’s reserved for handicapped people.  It’s ten minutes before show time and no handicapped people have picked out seats in the row, but I’m still not allowed to sit there because I guess a huge amount of handicapped people may still show up.  And so I end up picking a seat in the very back row.

I get into the theater and see there’s maybe ten other people there to see the show with me, none of them handicapped, so none of us can sit in the good row.  Finally the show is ready to start.  Does the movie begin when it’s supposed to?  Nope!  I have to sit through fifteen minutes of previews for movies that I really don’t want to see!  Why do movies seem to be so bad to me now a days?  What happened to the good writing?  Back when movies were still black and white they were good because the story had to be good or you wouldn’t want to see it.  Now it just seems like movies are nothing but two hour long special effects shows.

The movie does finally start and most of the way through it I still have no idea what most of the main character’s names are.  The characters are so overshadowed by special effects and explosions and robots and things that I never really get to know them very well. 

Here’s…What’s his name fighting a bunch of guys!  This robot, or droid, or whatever shows up and makes a smart ass remark!  Then a midget fires a machine gun!  Boom, boom, boom!  There’s kind of a story there, but…damn.

I can see why so many remakes of movies are being made now a days.  Ghostbusters was a great movie, I would even say a classic!  Remaking a classic is a mistake though, if you ask me.  Come up with something original.  King Kong was made three times that I can think of.  STOP DOING THAT!  Please leave King Kong alone!

What are kids today growing up with?  I fondly remember The Wrath of Khan, and Ghostbusters, and the original Star Wars movies.  What do kids today have, superhero movies jammed with CGI and special effects?  I need to find me a decent movie with no special effects to restore my faith that Hollywood can still make something decent.

Until I can find my good, current movie, keep asking questions!

Week 4: Why Swansea City?

I love sports.  But lately I’ve gotten a bit tired of American sports.  American sports don’t really usually have anything to play for.  Yes, they play to win the championship each year, but that’s it.  They compete and that’s it.  If an American professional sports club loses every single game in a season, there’s really no consequences for them.  They come back the next year and play in the same league again against the same teams that beat the hell out of them before.  What fun is that?

This brings me to English league football.  In the English leagues, if you have a really bad season you can face “relegation”.  This means your team is bumped down to a lower league to play lower league teams.  Teams that do well each year are bumped up into higher leagues.  So each year you have teams moving up and down and you really have something to play for!  The teams in the highest English league want to be in the top spots because they can qualify for “European play” where they play the best clubs in the world in tournaments!  This all sounds much more exciting to me!

This now brings me to an English football club called “Swansea City”.  I look at Swansea right now because one of their current managers is American.  Or at least he was a manager.  They “sacked” him which means he was fired.  Apparently he sucked.  And besides sucking, the English fans weren’t very fond of him because he would use American terms when speaking to the press and they didn’t like that at all!  It might have been acceptable if Swansea City were winning, but they were losing, and losing badly.  This has to be all Manager Bob Bradley's fault, doesn’t it?  It can’t just be the circumstances he was put in.  I mean anyone off the street can manage a club in the English Premiere league, right?  Hell, I’ll bet I could do a better job and I’m American!

Ok, since I’ve written that it’s now time to put my money where my mouth is.  I have a video game called Football Manager 2017 that simulates being a football club manager.  (Soccer, for those of you who don’t understand.)  This thing takes everything into account including where players are from, agents, who’s happy and who isn’t, who’s in shape, and on, and on, and on.  But I should be able to easily handle this!  So let’s play!

So I started a new game which will start me as the Swansea City manager at the start of this season.  I’m certain I can come up with a better record than the real club.  Right now they have 5 wins, 3 draws, and 14 losses.  I can get more than 5 wins by this time of year.  They’re a club with a bit of money, so all it should take is me making a few key transfers and we’ll be off and winning in no time!

So now it’s time for me to look over my new club.  This Bob will do much better than the other Bob!  Or at least that’s what I hope!  Looking over my club the best player I seem to have is Gylfi Sigurdsson.  And…that’s about it.  No other real superstars.  I’ll just have to build my club around Gylfi. 

Looking things over, I have a few problems at Swansea City at the moment.  Looking at what the game says are the club's weak spots, my players are bad decision makers, they have a weak work rate, they lack strength, there are really no leaders at the club, and my coaching and scouting are the worst in the league.  This isn’t me judging, it’s what the game is identifying as weak points to me!  Well damn, should I bring in new coaching staff?  I look that over and there are literally thousands of people to look through!  I have no idea who is really good and who isn’t?  This might turn out to be harder than I at first thought!

I decide to forget the staff and play on with who I have for the moment.  If I just hit the transfer market and bring in a few team leaders, maybe I can start getting things straightened out that way.  I send a couple of my horrible scouts out to look for some players.  Now keep in mind I haven’t even advanced the game one day yet!  All this is still on day one at Swansea City for me!

Looking through the “Under 23” group that I have at the club I find a guy who doesn’t look too bad.  I transfer him to the senior squad.  He’s 28 years old.  How is a 28 year old on the Under 23 squad in the first place?  Now I’m a bit confused, but that doesn’t matter, I’m pressing on!

A scout emails me a few transfers I might be interested in!  Hell yes, these guys look good!  I decide to make an offer for one of them.  He should only cost me something like 2.3 million to bring in with some negotiation.  No problem!  … … … Ok, problem.  I can’t make an offer for the guy because he’s not trained by an English club.  The game is telling me that I have to have at least 8 players on my club that have been trained by an English club and the guy I want is some foreign player!  What the hell?  Realism is getting in the way of my winning now!  I check my senior roster and only have 3 English guys and one guy from Scotland.  The Scottish guy counts though, right?  I sure hope so!  So now I’m going to have to search for some English players, I guess!  Why is my squad loaded with foreign guys!  Even Glyfi is from Iceland!  DAMN!  How many of my players speak English?  What the hell am I doing?  Welcome to Premiere English League Football, I guess.

Now I’m going to have to do more research into things.  I’ll have to try and find some English players and maybe transfer list a few of the foreign players?  But then the game tells me that if I transfer out too many players everyone will be unhappy because they will all be afraid they’ll be the next to go!  And they damned well might be, too! 

This is honestly some people’s career!  This is not going to be as easy as I thought it was.  *sigh*  Ok, I’m going to end the blog and try and figure out what to do before moving on to day two in my game.  I have a match scheduled between my senior squad and the under 23 team so I can “take a look” at everyone.

You really do seem to need to be a hard core football fan to play this game.  So off I go to see what I can do.  Keep good thoughts for both me and Swansea City.  And keep asking why!

Week 3: Why can I not understand the Star Wars accents?

I’ve loved the original Star Wars movies since I was a kid and first saw them in a theater.  And as I got older I began to notice that the Evil Empire people had English accents and the good guy Rebels had American accents.  After watching some of the films over again and also watching the newest “The Force Awakens”, I am now really confused about the accents.

Ok yes some of the Evil Empire officers had the English accent, but all the Stormtroopers seem to be American.  How did that work?  You don’t hear many Stormtroopers actually talk in the movies, but when they did, it sounded American.  Darth Vader sounded American.  He was a huge Empire bad guy!  Why didn’t he sound English?

I’ve played an online game about Star Wars and when you create your character, all the Empire side characters sound English and the Rebel characters sound American.  Want to be a Jedi?  Your character sounds American.  Want to be an evil Sith?  Your character sounds English.  Shouldn’t we have a few Empire characters with a German accent?  Wouldn’t that be more appropriate?

And while I’m on the subject of Germans, why do so many Nazis in the movies have an English accent?  The Nazis were NOT ENGLISH!  Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to make movies where Germans weren’t played by German actors?  The world is so baffling to me sometimes!

Anyway, back to Star Wars.  Han Solo sounds American.  Of course he’s a smuggling pirate.  Or is he?  Some people will argue that he’s a hero.  Maybe he is a hero, but he was still a pirate.  And of course since he ends up joining the rebels, he has an American accent.  Princess Leia has an American accent…sort of.  *chuckle*

One of my favorite actors in the Star Wars movies only has one line.  I honestly don’t know who he is, but I remember him saying, “You Rebel scum!” just before they blow him away.  American accent.  What the hell?  Now I’m losing track of things. 

Now I’m watching The Force Awakens and the main character of Rey has an English accent.  She becomes part of the “Rebels”.  “Finn”  or FN-2187 is part of the “First Order” and has an American accent.  What happened to the Stormtroopers?  Why are there no Stormtroopers now?  I’m not sure I like changes like that!  You don’t just get rid of Empire Stormtroopers! 

In the “Prequels” the mercenary Jango Fett had an English accent.  Actually his accent was from New Zealand.  Could the English people who watched the movie tell he wasn’t English from his accent?  And again, why is one of the bad guys speaking with an English accent?  Or New Zealand accent?  I’m quickly losing track of things now!

I give up.  It’s taking too much energy now to try and sort out the Star Wars accents, let alone the new plot line.  I need to go back to when I was a kid and didn’t question how people spoke as much.

The End for this week.  Until next week, question everything.

Week 2, Why do I need this?

Welcome to week 2 of 2017.  This week I ordered something I don’t really need.  But then what does anyone really need besides food, air, and water ,right?  Right?  Ok, yes I’m just trying to justify buying something that I really don’t need.

I ordered it online.  It was a bit expensive, but sounded like fun.  And what else should I be doing with the money I earn if not buying fun things?  (Don’t be telling me I should be paying rent and bills and such either!  Those aren’t fun!)  So it was scheduled to come by FedEx.  Don’t they make you sign for things?  I’m not sure!  I went online and somehow put in a request for the package to just be left in front of my door.  Will they listen to the request?  I’m not sure!  The item will be delivered on one of my days off, though!  I can’t wait!  (I’ll more than likely be bored with it shortly after getting it, but what the hell?)

And so my day off arrives and I await the package!  Will it come in the morning?  Doubtful, stuff I order never seems to come in the mornings.  I wonder again why I ordered this.  I wait and wait and wait.  Did I just hear a truck?  No, that was an airplane.  Damn!  I wait and wait some more.  Now I’m getting tired and have to go to the bathroom, but I can’t sleep or relive myself because the package might come!  It could be here any minute!  And finally…I wait some more.

My package does finally arrive around two in the afternoon!  I’m thrilled!  I’m so thrilled I go to the bathroom and then drop down for a nap.  I can play with it later when I wake up.  That’s one thing I hate about being an adult, I don’t seem to get as excited about things as I did as a kid.  So what did I get from FedEx?  THIS:

That’s right, I ordered an air freshener!  Wait…how is that fun?  I don’t think that’s what that is.  Taking another look, I actually ordered what’s called a Google Home.  Much more fun than an air freshener!  It’s kind of like having a computer from Star Trek.  You ask it questions and it answers them.

Me: “Hey Google!”

Google Home waits

Me:  “How far away is Orlando, Florida?”

Google Home:  “You are 2,298 miles from Orlando by car.”

Me:  “Hey Google, how old is the Cookie Monster?”

Google Home:  “Frank Oz is seventy-two years old.”

So apparently Frank Oz is the Cookie Monster?  Maybe she didn’t quite understand me.  I ask how long Sesame Street has been on the air and the Google Home tells me a bit about Sesame Street.  It didn’t quite tell me how old the show is now, but it did give me some information.

So what is this thing for, just asking questions?  I’m still figuring that out.  I did ask it to play a local radio station and it put the station on!  That was quite a thrill for the moment.  I’m still trying to figure out how to get it to play podcasts.  It will tell me the news, but so far just the news it seems to want me to hear.  How about some local news?  Nope!  Google Home only cares about national news!

I guess I can set alarms and timers with it.  I can ask a few trivia things and maybe have it ask me some trivia.  Yes, pretty useless at the moment.  It will tell me how long it should take to get somewhere and what hours different places are open.  And now I begin to wonder about something called an Amazon Echo Dot!  That works through Amazon and may know more about books and things!  Now I might want one of those!  Am I going to end up with two talking wifi connected things sitting on my nightstand discussing how to get rid of me so they don’t have to answer stupid questions anymore?  Quite the possibility!  I’m sure it would be quite disturbing to walk in and hear one of them saying, “So tomorrow when we make him fall down the stairs…oh wait, shh, he’s here!”

I’m still learning about my Google Home, but it is still kind of fun to have.  Every so often I’ll ask it something.  I’ll have to think about whether or not I want one of the Amazon ones, too.  Again, I don’t really need one of these things, let alone two!  But why not fill my life with useless things?  *chuckle* 

So for this week I’ll try and figure out why I bought a Google Home and why I may need an Amazon Echo.  And maybe next week we’ll figure out why the hell I’m doing some of the things I’m doing in life!

Until next week, question everything!