Hey, modern internal combustion engines are the worst they’ll ever be too! What a coincidence!

I could go for some mint chocolate syrup poured over vanilla ice cream. That would slap. Please make me lose.

Alright, here are the official stats: getting perfectly clean gives you the buff Cleanliness IV for 1 hour, which then degrades to Cleanliness III for 3 hours, to Cleanliness II for 8 hours, followed by Cleanliness I for 12 hours.

The time runs at a base rate of 1 hour per hour, but your environment may lead to the rate accelerating or decreasing. For instance, being out in the hot sun may lead to sweating which increases the rate to 1.25-4 hours per hour depending on how hot it is and your passive constitution score and buffs. Being in a perfectly air conditioned, filtered environment could reduce the rate as low as .5 hours per hour.

There can also be instant hits to the timer. For instance, being hit by a thimble of mud may take off 10 minutes at once, slathering it to to cover more skin will take off a larger chunk from the timer.

I’ll admit, I’ve not listened to much of Fountains of Wayne’s first album, more the others. They’ve been one of my favorites about as long as I can remember though. I tend to resonate with a new song of theirs every year or two. Do you have any favorites off their first album?

When I think of my favorite albums, they tend to have come to me at a time to hit me emotionally. There may be one or two songs that aren’t my favorite, but don’t detract from the whole. Oddly enough if I listen to an entire album I prefer it be a concept album, but my favorites tend to not have one cohesive theme. My favorites ordered by time include:

The Red Album by Weezer- My dad gave me the CD when I was in middle school, we’d jam to it in the car on the way to school, and when I got an mp3 player I’d listen to just about every song often.

Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd- Yes, this is a cliche. The one time I experienced ego death was on a heroic dose of LSD in college while laying in bed with an eye mask on listening to this album for the first time. I felt that I was in on a joke, that life was so vast and yet so short. I laughed, I cried, it moved me. I gave serious consideration to what I wanted out of life for the first time instead of only wanting some direction given to me. I listened to the album many more times after that when I needed a reminder of that experience.

The New Abnormal by The Strokes- This album came out at the start of the pandemic when I was stressing out of my mind at the state of the world. I loved the album name, I love every song off the album, they all felt relatable in some way, Spotify said I was in the top .5% of Strokes listeners that year. When one song comes on from my library I’m always tempted to play the whole thing. It’s great.

The Sonic Age by The Symposium- I think this is one of my favorites. I couldn’t name half the songs, but I found the artist and the album came out shortly after my dad passed away. I really like how rushed yet smooth and relaxed the album feels, it mirrored how I felt processing his death and I could just put it on and feel fine with not being fine for a bit.

In 10th grade, my best friend moved away and I realized I had very few friends left. I had spent middle school considering myself part of the “social outcast” group that didn’t really fit into any of the cliques. What I did was find the lunch table that other students I shared classes with and sat there listening to them talk. Sometimes all the seats were full and I sat at a different table, but eventually as I got to understand the people and dynamics at play I started chiming in a little more until eventually I was part of the friend group.

From there I felt more comfortable talking to more people, so I did until eventually in senior year there were folks saying hi to me while walking down the hall pretty frequently, I knew most people in my graduating class of 350 to some degree, and for some reason I was voted prom king.

I had the benefit of being in the same school district from grades 1-12 so I had had most of my life to that point to learn names, but my core advice remains the same. I became less awkward (or at least good enough at owning being awkward to not matter) by befriending new people, and I befriended new people by inserting myself into a friend group over time, and I did that by just being present and quiet until I felt comfortable enough to speak up more.

Well, I could care less, but I don’t care enough to determine exactly how little I could.

If he’s been a plumber for 40 years, then he obviously has a track record of not making enough mistakes to lose insurance.

Looking over the Saturday morning cartoons I grew up with:

The Batman

Xiaolin Showdown (this I remember the most fondly)

Johnny Test (It’s the epitome of Saturday morning cartoons, most engraved in my brain, probably bad actually)

Spider Riders (just for the opening song)

¯_(ツ)_/¯ I don’t know about others, but that’s not how I roll.

To add onto this, an ideology is an ideal to be strived toward, not a goal to be jumped to.

The first thing I remember learning in philosophy 101 is the principle of charity, which has been eternally useful during discussion:

1. Assume the other person has something worth saying
2. Questions of meaning come before questions of truth

I was fortunate enough to grow up firmly middle class. My dad sold car chemicals for a pretty good income. He and my stepmom (who also made good money in project management) explained the concept of golden handcuffs to me in high school, that when you start making a lot of money and get used to that lifestyle it’s tough to take a pay cut that takes it away. They didn’t seem especially happy or content to me so having a lot of money has never been a priority for me. I just want enough to get by and save for the future.

When I was scraping by on 28k a year slinging pizzas and delivering for the post office on Amazon Sundays I told my project manager uncle that if I made twice what I did at the time I would be fine. Now I do make 60k working IT for a school district where I can sometimes do some good, and like I had told my uncle I’m doing fine now. I have a pension, I can max out my Roth IRA, have a good down payment for my next car when mine kicks the bucket, and I’m lucky enough to rent a couple rooms relatively cheap from a friend who was lucky enough for their farmer parents to buy them most of a house, all owing me to save a few hundred a month for a house of my own. And I can still buy nice stuff for myself every now and then.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have an extra 10 or 20k for extra breathing room, but moving back to the private sector would suck, and I would probably just end up like my mother whose financial advisor literally tells her to spend more money. I feel very privileged to say this, but I just don’t think I could be bought at this point.

I really like them almost entirely brown, mashed up with butter and mixed with some flour, sugar, an egg or two and a hint of vanilla extract, all baked in the oven for like an hour.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying as well. I’m coming from the perspective of having worked at a chain pizza place for 6 years in the past and seeing drivers double check orders before leaving and sometimes having to drive back to deliver something they missed. I feel like that should be a reasonable expectation for Doordash drivers, but then the bag is sealed, presumably to keep the driver from messing with/eating the food, which also seems like a negative to me. If they can’t be trusted not to eat my food, how can I trust them to deliver it?

The driver could check that all of the stuff is there before bringing it to you. At the end of the day why should I care more about how the mistake happens than that it happens?

If I used a service that messed up my orders frequently enough to make such a statistic, I’d stop using that service.

Spending extra money for generally worse service to save a couple minutes of typing is actually the epitome of laziness.

I get rather annoyed when someone says “I have a problem” without any further thought shown toward it.

Sure, you don’t need to always have the solution, but if you have something worth complaining about then it’s something worth putting at least a little time and effort into thinking about solving before complaining. That reflection will often come through in how the problem gets put forward such that it’s easier for everyone to help find a solution.

I am really glad I went to college far enough away from home my folks wouldn’t visit on a whim, but close enough to drive back for holidays easily. And after I moved back home I have had a much greater appreciation for everyone and everything I had been away from.