WTF does it mean if someone is LOL with their BFF?

I hate all of these little abbreviations. Can't people just write in English anymore? People are even starting to speak in these nonsense. I can't make sense of half of it.

Science fiction writers used to imagine that the English language would change over time, for all sorts of odd reasons. Some thought that we would all learn some kind of multilingual shorthand to communicate with people from other countries, and that we would either add a lot more foreign words to English or perhaps give up speaking English altogether. Some thought that we would shorten words or phrases to conserve oxygen.

I don't think any of them predicted that the language would change so quickly because of idiot teenagers sending text messages.

I hate cell phones and people who talk on cell phones a lot. Cell phones for doctors and other people who needed to be reached quickly in an emergency was a good idea. Having an emergency phone in case your car breaks down is a good idea. Having a phone so that you can call for help if a date goes bad is a good idea.

Having a phone conversation with one person while you're supposed to be having dinner with someone else is NOT a good idea. Having someone from work trying to call to say something that can wait till business hours is NOT a good idea. Waiting till the last minute to tell people stuff just because you can probably get their cell phone is NOT a good idea. Making a phone call while you are mere inches away from me in a public restroom is NOT a good idea.

So I already hated the cell phones. Now I'm getting the nonsense abbreviations in my emails, from adults. If someone wants to say something, why do they need to type IMHO? I've already forgotten whatever your opinion was while I'm trying to figure out what is an IMHO.

BSG joke

My brother loaned me his Space: Above and Beyond dvds.

I think I know why the blond Cylon on the new Battlestar Galactica is number six.

He's a real nerd, and he played one on TV

Who is on first?

Will Wheaton is on first.

Okay, it was not that funny, but it was sort of like that.

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2007/02/you_can_count_o.html

Anyway, I think Will Wheaton blogs in his sleep or something.

Or maybe he was in a transporter accident, and there are now five of him, and they all blog on a regular basis.

When I take over the world, everyone will be a single parent

I was going to start a new blog to talk about how I would fix things if I had a magic wand. But I have several blogs already, and I've hardly used this one at all. So I'll just make the when I take over the world stuff a section of this blog.

I wasn't sure which of the take over the world posts to start with. Recently I read someone else's blog, and she was talking about being a single mom. So I guess I'll start with that.

Every once in a while, I hear that someone has a plan to pay people to volunteer for a sterilization procedure. A mathematical formula would determine how much of a potential financial drain your future children would have on society. If you agreed to be sterilized instead of having these children, the government would pay you a percentage of the estimated tax money saved.

Sounds great to me. I don't want any kids anyway. If someone offered me a free and safe permanent method of birth-control, I'd probably take it. If someone offered pay me to do it...wow.

Of course, I like to think that my high I.Q. would prevent me from being paid much money. On the other hand, my low personal income would also be factored in, and the two would probably cancel each other out. But if I'm offered any amount of money before I'm too old to have children, I'm going to take it.

Not that it will ever happen. I like the idea, but everyone else seems to hate it. And I really don't get most of the arguments. Like a bunch of poor people will go and have the procedure, or a bunch of black people will go have the procedure. So what? What if a bunch of poor black people willingly go have a sterilization procedure done and get paid for it. A bunch of other poor black people won't go and have the procedure. That would forever put an end to the discussions about welfare moms cranking out babies to get more money. If some people were really doing that sort of thing, and you offered them something like this instead, wouldn't they take the easy money up front?

Several years ago I read a book, and I can't remember the name of the book, or even who wrote it. It was a woman, I remember that much, so I want to say it was by Anne McCaffrey or Vonda McIntyre, because that was who I was reading at the time. Anyway, in this book all the people were legally allowed custody of one child. Period. But they had sole custody. There were no custody fights and arguments about visitation or how someone thought their child's other parent wasn't raising the child right. You have custody of one child, and everyone else back off, including the child's other biological parent.

Wouldn't that just solve all kinds of problems? Custody of children is decided before they are even conceived. If a couple gets a divorce, there is no custody battle. If the custodial parent wants to pick up and move to Alaska, that's okay. There is no arguing about how much child support the non-custodial parent will have to pay, because there is no such thing as child support. If you can't afford to take care of a child yourself, don't have one. You and you alone are responsible for that one child.

Which is not to say that you couldn't have custody of one child and live with someone who has custody of another child. You could raise them together, share living expenses and all of that. For that matter, you could live with ten other people who have custody of ten other children, and raise them all together and share living expenses and all of that. But it would be very clear who had custody of a particular child, and who had the final word on all things concerning that child.

There were a lot of things in the book that would probably never work in America. In the book the custodial parent paid the other biological parent for creating the child. In general, women were paid more than men per child. On the other hand, in an individual's lifetime, a man could father many more children than a woman would be able to have. In the book, the main character's custodial parent was paid to be the biological father of over three hundred children, but he still owed money to the biological mother of the child he had custody of. Paying someone to have sex with you, even for the purpose of creating a child, is still prostitution. And it might seem too much like babies for sell. We don't buy and sell people anymore.

There are other things that did not happen in this book that I would also think about. If you have bad genes, besides paying someone of the opposite sex to help you create a child, couldn't you also hire someone of the same sex for the same purpose, so that the resulting child would not have your bad genes. And since I don't want any children anyway, could I sell my legal right to have custody of one child to someone who would like to raise more than one child?

A lot of things will be different after I take over the world.

I am not dead

I just thought I should say that. I noticed that it had been a while since I posted anything. So just in case you were wondering, I'm not dead.

I have just been busy with other things.

And, you'll be happy to know, that I intend to post something on the other blog tomorrow, just as soon as I've had a chance to look it over. So check back tomorrow. Thanks.

Okay, so I'm not dead, but I am dead tired, so I'm going to bed now.

BSG discussion

Not much to say about last week. Except that I went to dinner with some friends, who were swearing a lot because Battlestar Galactica is moving to Sundays.

Then someone made a rude joke about Caprica Six. He said she should have named Caprica Five.

You figure it out.

That was followed by someone deciding what the remaining five Cylons were called.

I'm not going to explain that one either.

Battlestar Galactica Boxing

I am the lone holdout among my friends who liked the original show better than the remake.

Still, I am watching it.

So Saturday we are all talking about Friday's episode, and I'm not talking that much because a.) that show isn't my favorite in general, and b.) I didn't think that this was a particularly good episode. But they all thought it was great. And then they were debating about whether or not it was filmed recently. Did they film the episode after a bunch of fans wrote and complained that they didn't get to see what happened when the New Caprica colony was first started? Or did they plan this episode so far in advance that they filmed parts of this episode last season?

Well, I didn't say so at the time, since no one asked me, and I really don't care enough about the show to interrupt them, but I have to say that it was none of the above.

I think they filmed the flashback scenes last session, as part of the season finale. And then after they shot those scenes they cut them, because they were boring. And then after all those fans complained that they didn't get to see what happened when they first went down to the new settlement, they filmed all the boxing stuff around the flashback scenes in hope of making them seem exciting.

So they gave the fans what they asked for, and they got to save money making a cheap clip show.

Whatever.

At least next week's episode looks interesting.