Oh well, another November has come and is more than half gone. This Monday (tomorrow) is my 5th anniversary at work. Whoppee. Can\u2019t say that I exactly love my job. I\u2019m not even sure that I know exactly how to do it. Somehow I\u2019ve gotten enough done and avoided most trouble over the past 5 years. But the rules can change overnight in the crazy world of urban law enforcement. For now, it pays the bills. It\u2019s all somewhat like a song by Steely Dan \u2013 a bit dark and cynical, but with a good beat to it. In fact, a line from a Dan song sums the whole situation up quite nicely: \u201cI don\u2019t really care if it\u2019s wrong or if it\u2019s right, but until my ship comes in, I\u2019ll live night by night\u201d. (I work a regular day job, but there ain\u2019t many windows in the whole place, none near my desk; so it might just as well be night while I\u2019m there.)<\/p>\n
I still listen to a rock radio station most days, but I can\u2019t say that it\u2019s like radio was when I was a kid. Back then, there was almost always a song that you had to hear, that you could hardly wait until they played it again. But now, hardly any new tunes get my attention. I did experience an exception to that last week, when WDHA started playing \u201cHow Long\u201d by Hinder; it\u2019s a new song and a new group. It has a driving sound and angst-filled vocals, with dark choral harmonies in the background. But I had no idea what the song was about. So I looked up the lyrics on a web site, and here\u2019s what it\u2019s about: boy loses girlfriend to a guy he knows. Boy gets very upset about it. Ex-girlfriend tells ex-boyfriend that she still wants to be friends. Ex-boyfriend gives ex-girlfriend the finger. End of story.<\/p>\n
Well now . . . . . there\u2019s a new idea for a song. I guess that the standards are lower these days. But to be honest, a whole lot of guys can probably relate to it. It never quite happened to me, but millions of girls have told ex-boyfriends who they dumped that they want to be friends. And most ex-boyfriends play by the rules and say \u201csure, we can still be friends\u201d. But deep down inside, the animal in you wants to make a disrespectful gesture. So Hinder is probably going to sell a lot of records with this one (oh, yea, wait . . . . . they don\u2019t sell records anymore; it\u2019s CDs and downloads). <\/p>\n
On the more civilized topic of scientific research, I read this week that new astrological observations tend to confirm the notion that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. These observations also indicate that the mechanism through which this is occurring is a mysterious force that somehow increases as the universe expands. The more space there is, the more repulsion there is between anything within that space. Eventually that repulsion overcomes the attracting force of gravity, and things start flying apart. If this theory is correct, then eventually the universe will expand itself into nothing but a fine thin dust. Everything that happens now \u2013 the shining of stars, the formation of planets, the emergence of life, the recording of songs about ex-girlfriends \u2013 is all just a temporary effect on the way to the big rip. It\u2019s up to us, and to maybe a handful of other planets where sentient life has emerged, to give the Universe any meaning it might ever have. Let\u2019s hope that the other planets are off to a better start on that than we are!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh well, another November has come and is more than half gone. This Monday (tomorrow) is my 5th anniversary at work. Whoppee. Can\u2019t say that I exactly love my job. I\u2019m not even sure that I know exactly how to do it. Somehow I\u2019ve gotten enough done and avoided most trouble over the past 5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}