My dad just has a way of putting things

I asked my dad if I could call him sometime soon and have him read me some numbers off his tax return that I need to fill out financial aid forms. (I figured I should email before I called because he wasn't likely to have the information immediately to hand.) This was his reply:

"You can call me, but give me lots of notice. My desire to gather together tax forms and read them to people is thoroughly under control, perhaps even too much so. Like the Buddhists, I lost concern for this worldly thing, but I went beyond them and got to the point where the idea of doing it annoys me.

"I don't know if you ever read George Orwell's 'Confessions of a Book Reviewer.' In it, he says the book reviewer knows there's a check for two pounds somewhere in the litter on his desk, but 'the idea of looking for it, or of looking for anything, afflicts him with acute suicidal impulses.'

"Once again the Buddhist ideal, lack of concern for things of this world, has been pushed past the zero point into the realm of hyper-rejection.

"This may be the West's greatest religious achievement. I like to think so. Or at least I like to think so more than I like gathering tax returns."

Stealth anniversary

Last time I checked, I could've sworn my birthday was a couple of months off. The other day, I realized it's now a couple of weeks off. It's gone and snuck up on me.

Now, what the hell am I gonna do about it? I don't want to throw a party or anything, but I'd like to do something nice with a friend or two. Can't think what, though, especially with the Tight Budget and all.

Virtual sticks and stones

OKC's got a few new personality parameters. Evidently they've determined I'm not terribly well-mannered, and also that I'm very uncool. In fact, they're more certain of how uncool I am than of how non-Republican I am.

Now the question is, just how are they defining "cool"? If they mean in a mainstream sense, I guess I can't argue and in fact should probably be proud. And that probably is what they mean--it's just that I encounter such a slanted cross-section of the people on the site, I forget sometimes that it doesn't just cater to geeks.