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Category Archives: ponderings

The Irritation Quota

Anger has been a bit of a problem for me recently.  A lot of it is tied into how some people or things irritate me a lot.  Now that I think about it, a lot of my anger has its roots in some form of irritation and then more irritation piles on top of it and then they morph and congeal and become this huge mass of irritation which becomes a ball of anger.  Think about it, wouldn’t it make you angry if there was a huge ball of irritating anger in you and you had to carry it everywhere?  Where would you even put such a thing?  It’s not like there’s a lot of room for you to store big balls of anger inside of you.  You have all these innards in the way.  It must make you feel bloated.  That would be another source of irritation, which would make you even angrier.  It’s a vicious cycle.  Sugh.

Anyway, to deal with this, I have come up with a new anger management system.  Granted, I don’t know much about real anger management systems that they teach to you in…anger management classes.  All I know is stuff that I’ve seen on TV and in movies.  And I’m sure it’s totally true.  Hollywood would never lie to you.  Hollywood portrays life in a completely accurate manner.  Seeing the anger management classes that people conduct in the media…well, they irritate me and that feeds the anger ball, and that needs to be avoided.  So, new anger management system!

Now, I have tracked down that the root of a lot of the anger comes from irritation.  This should probably be limited that in some way.  It seems that people are capable of producing limitless amounts of irritation.  You would think that would violate some laws of physics, but apparently not, because I am can generate just infinite amounts of irritation.  This is no good for anger management.  Thus, I propose a quota system.  You will only allow yourself a limited amount of irritation a day.  Preferably some amount that will keep the bits of irritation from reaching critical mass and then interacting with each other and congealing into a big irritation mass that then becomes an anger ball that will make you bloated and thus more angry and more bloated and more angry and more bloated and more angry until you explode with bloatation, anger, and irritation.  That would be a sad way to die.  Bloated to death!  Bloatality!  Yeah…no good.

So, if you limit the amount of irritation you are willing to hand out at every irritant, it should greatly help reduce the size of the anger ball.  Oh, you’re smacking your gum incessantly?  Two units of irritation for you.  You come in every two minutes asking me the same question but in different ways because you didn’t like the answer I gave you the first time, an answer that was truthful and reasonably well thought out?  Five units of irritation for you.  You are entirely incapable of working out a schedule that is realistic to the resources we have and insist that I work overtime for the rest of my life and also work 23434 hours in a day?  Ten units of irritation for you.  Actually, this is a lot irritation already.  I should be careful.  Maybe I should lower the quota a bit.

But anyway, say now someone comes in and wants me to answer a question for them, a question they could have easily answered themselves just by doing the smallest amount of research.  Well, this might coincide with three units of irritation, but I am out of irritation for the day.  Therefore, that person will just have to come back tomorrow while I refill my irritation quota.  That person can even be the first person in the line for fresh irritation.  Thus, I can deal with the person and his stupid question with the appropriate amount of irritation that they and it deserve.

Limit the irritation, limit the anger.  Ta-da!  Anger management system!

(Hahaha, you thought I was going to talk about limiting the sources of irritation from reading the title, didn’t you?  Well you thought wrong!  HAHAHAHAH!!)

How to survive a zombie apocalypse with a scaredy-dog (1)

This post is about zombies, in case you couldn’t tell reading the title.  Not about peanut zombies, as depicted above (go check out his site, it’s the greatest), but zombies in general.

Recently, the CDC posted on their blog a brief list of things to do or have on hand in case of a zombie apocalypse.  This is very important.  You should always know what to do in case of an emergency and a zombie apocalypse is an emergent situation.  This got me thinking about how I would survive a zombie apocalypse.  I am apparently already well versed in zombie survival tactics.  Facebook told me so.  I took a few of the zombie related quizzes and my survival chance was always in the high 90th percentile.  I think I would stand a very good chance.  But the thing is, I might be in a group that does not know the proper zombie attack survival skills.  I mean, what if I was trying to survive with my dogs?

I’m not too worried about Choco.  She can be pretty stealthy when she wants to be.  All I have to do is take off her belled collar and you’d never know she was around.  That’s why she wears a belled collar to begin with.  She wouldn’t attract the zombies’ attention.

But what about Yaris?  Yaris is a bit of a scaredy-dog and she is not stealthy.  A friend often comments that her stealth rating is in the negatives.  That’s not stealthy at all (yet she still manages to catch and eat birds, but more on that another time).  Yaris might be so unstealthy that she’d end up attracting a lot of unwanted attention.  Well, basically any attention from the zombies is unwanted if the end goal is survival.  Anyway, what if she were like Captain Falcon and kept announcing her sneak?

This would be a problem.  Or…would it?  Zombies seem to be pretty willing to accept German Shepherd Dogs (GSDs) as their leader.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s only Hasta Mia that they’re willing to accept or if it’s all GSDs.  Seeing as how her brother was able to approach the zombies too and he’s also half GSD, I would say that zombies are just very tolerant of GSDs in general.  Yaris is a GSD.  The zombies might just ignore Yaris.  That would make her less of a liability to have around.  It might even get us close enough so that I could try Dr. McNinja’s technique for disabling zombies in close quarters when you cannot swing a weapon.  But wait, Dr. McNinja is a ninja and has had a lifetime of ninja training, you say.  How will you be able to mimic his technique?  Well, it’s true that I have not had a lifetime of ninja training, but I am a ninja.  Facebook told me so…and Facebook never lies and it wasn’t even a quiz that that told me I was a ninja this time, it was something else…and it’s classified.

Anyway, I think I may have unwittingly taken some of Frans Rayner’s ninja drug and became a ninja that way.  Anyway, because of that, obviously I would also be able to use Dr. McNinja’s method of close quarter fighting.  I would really like to try it out.

I guess if all else fails, I can always try and find a raptor.  Zombies are afraid of raptors.

Oh, oh!  Yaris has well-developed Yaris Beam!  How could I forget?

Choco’s Choco Beam isn’t fully developed yet, or it could be that she’s being stealthy and isn’t letting me know that she has full function of her Choco Beam.

At any rate, they’re both pretty smart dogs.  I’m sure they could be trained to unleash their respective beams to zap and/or fry zombies when necessary.  Maybe Yaris isn’t such a liability after all.  But she still wouldn’t be any good as a military dog.

This post was made possible by: Terry Border, Chris Hastings, Ethan and Malachai Nicolle, Matthew Taranto, the CDC, and zombies everywhere (the Western kind, not the Chinese hopping kind, more on that some other time).