Blurry, Unfocused, and Incomprehensible (also, Revelations)

I feel systemically unproductive and useless: as in the way that you imagine that those people who sit around and watch TV all day must feel. Jon's having a foosball tournament. I should have gone. He didn't call me back. So I watched scenes from the illegal copy of "Napoleon Dynamite" that he burned me for Hanukkah. I think that well over half of my friends either don't celebrate Christmas or celebrate Hanukkah instead. In fact, I can only think of a few people that do celebrate Christmas, or maybe I'm just exaggerating. But that's beside the point. In the past two minutes I just had two... well, since we're supposed to be in the holiday spirit, I'll call them "grand revelations".

Revelation the first:
I spent about 80 seconds reading some random blogs to which I have links on my site. It's absolutely unbelievable how appallingly awful and putrid AND nausea-inducing some of this writing is. Consider this: consider how indescribably worthless of a job I did writing that first paragraph. Now consider that the penmanship that went into that paragraph is probably better than the majority of the broad spectrum blog entries on the web. It seems like I'm repeating myself... have I written about this before? Probably, but that's not the point. The point IS, however, that I am a bad writer, and as a bad writer I am still better than most people of age similar to mine, which means that anyone who spends more time reading blogs of multiple people between the ages of 0 and 18 than they do the newspaper--or any other work that has actually been published, for that matter--is almost as stupid as me, not to mention becoming even stupider as the time goes on. You see, I actually write this godforsaken tripe, which, even if it were good, would still imply my stupidity per what I like to call "stupidity by association": which eloquently segues into more run-on sentences and ellipses:

La Segunda Revelación:
In the past several months, I have been making failing attempt to secure a free iPod from www.freeipods.com. Since craigslist no longer allows people to post advertisements for iPod referrals, I have to rely on trying to convince my friends and family who possess credit cards that this is not actually a scam. Needless to say, this is quite possibly the most futile enterprise on which I have ever embarked. I was feeling reflective and contemplative today, so I pondered the odds for this offer to succeed. I admit that in my enthusiasm to get the free iPod, I may have overestimated my ability to actually successful refer 5 people. Dad did sign up, for which I am grateful, but I think that beyond him and my mom there was a grand total of about zero people who would actually do this.

At the same time I figured out how www.freeipods.com can afford to offer free iPods! It's pretty brilliant actually. If every person who signed up for it actually completed the offer, then the site would go broke. Most people, like myself, probably get a few people to join and complete an offer, and then they either give up or forget about the whole thing. So rather than get 5 completions of offers per iPod, the Gratis Network probably gets somewhere between 10 and 20. At this point, they probably have a good chance of breaking even, especially considering their excellent publicity. Brilliant! Why didn't I think of this?? The only forms of capitalization on intrinsic human laziness that is more pure is the television. I think that the wave of the future in technology will focus on capitalizing laziness. We must be living in the future.

As I was saying, this contemplative mood involved a grand revelation. I realized that this iPod opportunity is a total waste of my time. I would have much better luck investing my money wisely and skimming off a few hundred dollars from the profits to buy and iPod. So that's what I'm going to do. Seriously this time. I already closed out and transferred one of my money market accounts to a new company, resulting in an increase in interest rates from 1.14% to a little over 1.9%. Once I get access to the AAII website, I can work on some stocks. It's just so difficult to find a stock that's worth buying, especially with my complete lack of experience. Despite what my closest advisor tells me, I think there's a method to the madness other than randomly trying stocks and watching them fail until you have a good idea of what NOT to do. But at this point, my instincts in the stock market are about as keen as a dead naked molerat.

As for the iPod, it's not that I don't have the money already, it's just that I have this irrational hatred of spending except on items of total necessity. Somehow, if I earn enough money beyond what I had before I wanted something, it somehow psychologically legitimizes my spending. Maybe it's because my net worth has not fallen below the initial level. Also, I find that I'm much more comfortable spending money that involved either very enjoyable work or no work at all. When it comes to spending money earned while doing something very awful, like trimming pyracantha (from Greek "puracantha" - fire + thorn), which I thankfully have never had to do, I am very protective the money. My theory is as follows: Since I don't have a steady income, I remember the occasions during which I make or receive money. So, when I spend money to purchase an item, I first psychologically associate an event and it's pains or joys with a quantity of money, and then the quantity of money is associated with an item that I purchase. So getting mauled by pyracantha, for instance, could hypothetically become associated with my new iPod. Gods, what an awful thought. Let's hope that never happens.

Die dritte Enthüllung:
While I'm at it, I may as well add a third revelation. I was staring at my Mom's laptop a couple of weeks ago. All things considered, I was probably on vicodin at the time. Anyway, I realized that being a DJ wouldn't really entail that much work, and the earnings could be significant. Take our dances at school for instance. We pay $300 to have a DJ play for 2-3 hours. I was talking to Jon about this, and I think it has real promise. If we undercut the competition by about 30%, scrimp on superfluous things like lights, download the top 10 downloads from the iTunes music store every few weeks, and split the profits 50/50, we could probably make a decent amount. Jon's dad is a lawyer, and he has a coworker who deals with copyright cases, so we could iron out all of the legal stuff pretty easily. Plus, I think that the record companies aren't as stringent on DJs as they are on radio stations. With that said, two problems remain. We would need a little venture capital: a few hundred dollars for used speakers, a receiver, music, and lights. We could probably split the financing easily. Also, we could let people give us CDs from which to play their favorite music, and while it was playing we could rip it to our hard drive. The legality seems a little sketchy, but I like it. The other huge problem is just who exactly would hire our services. We need an "in", so to speak. While tackling this problem, let me digress into a short anecdote. About six months ago, Leeor's younger sister had her bat mitzvah, and they hired this DJ and had this big extravagant party (in a Protestant church of all places). Anyway, to say that we (Jon Kadish, Dan Szymkowiak, and I) were "invited" to this fiesta is a possibly a mild overstatement. Actually, we just sort of showed up and dragged Leeor to coffee/tea afterward. But that's irrelevent because we supplied useful labor and assistance while we were there. Jon and I were reflecting on this experience while discussing our disk jockeying future, and he made the observation that we could get our start bat/bar mitzvahs. Collectively we certainly know enough people who could benefit from that kind of a service. Futhermore, Leeor could probably connect us with plenty of people directly since his sister is about 13 or 14 and probably has loads of friends having bat/bar mitvahs. So that's the plan. We have the resources, the legal advisor, and the high probability of operating at maximum PPF. The only thing that could be lacking is requisite knowledge of this more modern music that people probably would want. Leeor might know something... I certainly don't, and I doubt Jon does either. Then again, that what the iTunes top 10 list is for.