Deep thoughts, part 2

Another installment of the things I think about when I get bored. The previous post is here.

-I’ve always thought it sounds odd when people refer to someone who died horrifically as having “passed away.” When I read an obituary that says something like, “He passed away after his car was involved in an accident on the Interstate,” I think, “Nah man, that probably hurt a lot. His car looked like a crumpled up wad of aluminum foil. He got turned into hamburger, there was nothing ‘passing’ about it.” I assume this is why I don’t get asked to attend many funerals.

-Every place I’ve ever worked has been dysfunctional at some level, whether it’s employee infighting, shitty corporate culture, bad management, or something else. My current employer is probably the most stable but we still have those people here who sometimes make me question whether I’m working at an insane asylum. Every time I drive past an office park I look at all the buildings and say to myself, “Imagine all the fucked up shit going on in all those offices.”

-Am I the only one who is still “wowed” on occasion by modern technology? Like, we already take smartphones for granted but do you ever have a moment where you put aside issues like battery life and dropped calls and bad internet connections and think about all the amazing things it can do? When I was painting the house last weekend I was streaming my favorite Chicago radio station through wi-fi and at one point I just looked at this little device that can fit in my pocket, not physically connected to anything, and it’s pulling a radio station from 800 miles away out of thin air and I was just amazed by that. I know this makes me sound like kind of a hick but I think that’s wonderful.

-I don’t mind getting heckled when I go running but why do I always get called gay? I don’t have an overly “girlish” running form and while I wear running shorts, by the standards of running shorts they’re pretty baggy - most of mine stop about an inch and a half above the knee, so they’re hardly “short shorts.” What about that makes me “gay” exactly? Are these people just looking to insult someone and that’s the first thing that comes to their dim minds?