The Origin of the World

Once upon a time, back in the day, there were some engineers. With
their superior intellects and problem solving abilities, they soon
began to dominate the world.

They would create wonderful contraptions, market them, and build successful
businesses, of by and for engineers. The populous lived in awe, as
none could surpass their technical knowledge nor resist the lure of all these amazing inventions.


Life perhaps could have been good- the engineers, because they care
not of socializing with others or any other activities of that nature would
simply create magnificent creations, and leave them for the world to
enjoy and have fun. Many people rejoiced- all their needs were taken
care of by the benevolent engineers, and a life of ease was theirs as
the engineers did all the work, the people simply had to give all
glory honor and praise to the mighty engineers.

But alas, not all was right in the garden (o yeah, by the way, this
story takes place in a garden). A small contingent of the people
became disgruntled with the natural order of things. This band of
malcontents, were known as accountants, from the Latin*
“account” meaning trouble and “ants”, meaning “makers”. (* Latin in the metaphorical, not the literal sense)

“why should the engineers rule the world?” one would say. “yeah,
seriously”, another would reply. “why should they rule the world?”
another would say. “I already said that, idiot”, the first would
reply. “sorry, right”, the accountant would continue, “and why do they
get all the women.. .o wait, that’s not a problem… but still, its not fair!!!” .

And so on and so forth they would rant for days. Then, one day, the
engineers created a device that solved all problems. It eliminated
world hunger, achieved world peace, and tasted great in bean dip. The
accountants were outraged. “who are they to play god!?” The world was
practically perfect, and the accountants were jealous that the
engineers had achieved this.

And so they devised a plot to overtake the engineers. As it was, the
engineers kept track of their money in a fairly simple way- if they
got money, they counted it. They used this money to make new
creations then acquired new money from those and used that money for
more creations to follow, so on and so forth. A simple and wonderful system it was.

And were it not for accountants, and their transgressions to follow, we
might still dwell in that utopia today. But alas.. The leader of the accountants, Lucifer I believe his name, a man who wore only the finest snake skin clothing and shoes, went to the engineers and sought a meeting with their vice president of operations, Eve. Lucifer in fact had tried to become an engineer himself, but he failed miserably, so for spite pursued accounting. Lucifer slithered his way into her office and proposed an alliance between the accountants and engineers:
the engineers would share the power and glory with the accountants, and in return, the accountants would bring with them a new system for keeping track of the monetary
operations of the entire system. “but Lucifer”, Eve retorted, “the system we use is the
system that our founding engineers established for us, and they warned us
that any other system would ruin us.” “Silly eve”, Luke hissed. “Those old fogey’s did not know any better, they were engineers of the past- they were simply afraid that if you institute a new system, you will become greater than them and surpass their greatness. But I
promise you, this new system will be superior, it will be much more
EFFICIENT”

Yes, the cunning Lucifer well knew the Achilles heel of this engineering
organization. Eve’s eyes sparkled and grew large at the prospect of
gained efficiency, as any good engineer would. And that my friends
was the downfall. Lucifer proposed the new system, and poor eve listened
with complete abandonment of all rational judgment. All functioning intellect
was forfeited as she simply thought of the prospect of gained
efficiency, not thinking of consequences, wondering how they could have been so naive as to heed the advice of their forefathers and miss this opportunity to be more
EFFICIENT.

Lucifer knew his web was spun. Eve quickly took his proposal
to the president of the engineers, Adam. Adam so
wanted to heed the words of their forefathers, but he trusted the
judgment of his vice president, perhaps even a little too much, he was
rumored to have “feelings” for Eve, unacceptable for an engineer; alas, many a man has forfeited rational judgement for the sake of impressing a woman, and although he was an engineer with superior intellectual capabilities, he was still only human and could not hope but share her excitement. Within moments Adam made the call and the new system was in place. There was no grid lock or red tape in these times, the engineers ran an Efficient business and polices were implemented almost immediately.

And so every engineer in the place was given an accountant to control
the money and funding of every project. The accountants at first
helped the engineers, but soon removed their ruse and revealed the
true malfeasance of their plan. The engineers were no longer told how
much money they had, how much they created, or how much they spent.
The accountants created complicated charts, balance sheets and income
statements and other such, with math so complicated that even the most
intelligent engineer could not decipher. All money was placed in a
fund, and many funds were created, with restrictions placed upon them,
that money could only be placed in them at certain times, and
“adjusting entries” were made to make sure that you could never look at the balance in the fund and know how much money was actually there. Money no longer had any set value; Engineers would shake their heads in fear as accountants would ramble about the account balance being unstable, and the money having present values and future values and margins and adjustments and returns.

Projects could no longer be started or completed on time as the accountants searched through funds to find adequate money. And devices were no longer created great, as
the accountants claimed that they must use less money, and use lower
class material to keep the profit margins and stock holders equity up.

“But we never had problems before!”, The engineers would say. “yes”, the
accountants replied, “but you never viewed the long term equity or
factored in the future value of your annuity or adjusted your entries before either.”

Lost by the technical jargon, a phenomenon previously unheard of for
an engineer, the engineers would grudgingly return to their tasks, no
longer as enjoyable or rewarding. To top all the new “financial
institutions” in place, Lucifer himself added a personal touch- taxes.
Everything anyone did was “taxed”! for no reason at all, they all of a sudden had to give the accounts more money! This slowed the already slumped operations to an almost complete standstill. Buildings began to crumble, engines to fail. There were no longer
technological advances, all effort had to be spent modifying and repairing existing
objects. Problems which previously did not occur in the engineering
creations could never be resolved, as adequate funding was never
available. The accountants had effectively ravished the nation, and
there was no turning back. They implemented such a complicated system
that there was no getting out of it, the accountants were now a
necessity to perpetuate this system. The garden they all resided in,
once kept perpetually green by the engineering self propelled
fertilizing system turned brown and began to wither and rot. Lucifer
laughed at the plight he had created, knowing accounting would
forever dominate engineering.

Adam and Eve wept, knowing that the true honor and autonomy of engineering was forever lost, and they and their desire for greater efficiency without heed to common sense was the direct cause. Engineers were now dependant upon accountants, no device could be made without
their approval, no change made without consulting them first.

And that is how it is, I am sorry to break it to you. Rumor has it
that Adam and eve, their shame too great, fled the garden and
attempted to start fresh elsewhere. They were married, and had two
sons, Cain and Abel. Abel attempted to restore
the family honor by becoming mechanical engineer, and starting a new
company based upon the old system, but Cain was jealous of Abel’s ambition, and
further dishonored there family by becoming an accountant. In addition to the unforgivable act of becoming an accountant, he also killed Abel, and for a while, all hope was lost.

Many years later, a descendant of Adam and Eve, a young up and coming civil engineer named Noah crafted a plan to restore order to the world. He worked for years to earn the trust of the accountants, and was eventually running all the waterways.
He was crafty enough to use all the accounts tricks against them: His big project was creating a very large damn to control all the water, and by the marvels of engineering, he turned the accountants “depreciation” values into actual physical depreciation, and was able to build a damn that would immediately collapse as soon as the accounts depreciated its value to 0. Noah was quite an engineer. He was also secretly building an amazing boat on his own with smuggled and stolen quality materials, one of the few fine feats of engineering in this era.

He then flooded the entire world. He and his family sought
refuge in his well engineered boat as the accounting world was
destroyed.

I wish the story ended there, but alas, somehow his sons became
disgruntled and re-implemented the accounting system. I guess all I can say now is “to be continued…”

200 hours of your life?

I guess I can thank Trinity school for instiling in me a great sense of wonder; wait, instilling in me, or beating it out of me? forcing me to sit in a biology classroom smelling of fermaldehyde (and farts... trinity kids...) and just wonder about things and write them down when i couldnt think of anything and all i wanted to do was go eat...perhaps it supressed me... but i digress. I wonder, is digressing just wondering, on a tangent thought?

In any case, I was wondering how many people in the world have seen every episode of the Simpsons ever? Yes, all of them. 397 episodes, ~200hours of your life.

The thing is, i have probably only seen 5 percent of all the simpsons episodes. I missed out.

Did you know, that for a brief period of time, South Bend, IN (my alma mater)(literally... well figuratively) was the largest city in the country that did not have a local FOX affiliate.

Thats right my friends, there was a time when many of us in the lower income demographics did not have cable television, leaving us at the mercy radio waves (tv waves?) being transmitted through the air from towers to antenna (or coat hangers... come on, every family that grew up without cable had at least one television with a coat hanger some how jerry rigged to the back as a replacement for an antenna).

So we only had ABC, NBC, and CBS as networks with local affiliates broadcasting. FOX was a distant dream... a magical channel. To us non cable kids, FOX was like cable, one of those channels that must just be amazing all the time because only "rich" people had it.

Every once in a while, my dad would acquire(Ithis was before eBay existed) one of those huge, metal, airport style antenna to be attached to our roof, and then sent through "cables" through the roof into the house to be connected to the back of the television... like we actually hade cable tv... almost. It was it was like throwing a rope to someone is drowning, but instead of making it all the way to the drowner, it could only reach halfway... so then our rope just started shouting at the drowing victim. Our Televisions "cable" was trying to make it from the back of our television all the way to the magical cable tv depository from where (whence?) all the mystical mysterious channels emerged (henceforth?).

With those antennae, life was grand. We were able to pick up channel 9 (WGN) from Chicago fairly well, and this, while not having the alure of actual cable, did provide a nice option. and sometimes, if the weather was just right, you could pick up traces of a statick FOX 32 from Chicago... but it was really only just enough to hold it front of our faces that we didnt have it.


It was not until the mid 1990's that our local ABC affiliate (WSJV 28, for those of you playing at home) jumped ship and picked up FOX; there was a brief period when we did not have a local ABC, then very soon channel 58 showed up and moved us completely into the modern era: a city with all 4 networks broadcasting locally;

funny thing is to think about cities in the USA that still don't have all 4 networks ... south bend really is a medium sized town.
(I almost said "ironically enough", but decided "no, that is not irony at all", see previous posting here() that I have not reposted here yet from older version of aaronking.org website)


So, as a result, I did not have access to watch the simpsons really much at all when it first aired in 1989. I saw all the hype, all the Bart Simpson Tshirts saying "eat my shorts" and other such colofor euphamisims. by the time i finally got cable, i felt like it was too late to jump on (this was pre- TV shows on DVD) and catch up, and i was busy, and blah blah blah i really never felt the urge to start watching the simpsons.

and so for 20 years of my life this show has been airing, meaning it must be popular, meaning it must be smart... and as i have inevitable seen a handfule of episodes here and there, I know they have made some brilliant episodes. See here() for example, and episode where they explored a brilliant model of the universe with a homer caper gone awry....

So it made me wonder, "wow, i wish i would have been watching this show all along." I wonder how many people in the world have seen absolutley every simpsons episode ever? ___ hours!!! !!! years of your life!!!. I further wonder, of all the people who have in fact seen every episode of the simpsons ever, how many saw them new each season as they happened, and how many came in sometime in the middle, but went back and caught up with all of them via syndication or the DVDs?

To come in now, basically having seen none, one would have to watch simpsons like it was their job. If it were their job in fact, assume 40 hours a week watching the simpsons. it would take 5 weeks, and i jsut dont have that time to spare!

now, I will admit that my claim to as a youth was that I had seen every episode of Seinfeld ever. I came in sometime during the third season, becoming completely enamored with the style of humor, and promptly used syndicated episodes to catch up on all the earlier episodes. I even set the vcr to record them every day. I stil, somewhere in a closet have a box of the entire collection. I had every episode but one (the one where they all went to the opera and geore looked ridiculous in a tuxedo), on VHS.... i wish i could just trade them for the DVD's...

thank you trinity for my sense of wonder...
works cited:
http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/simpsons/100521

KING 4 COUNCIL

First of all, I am not just being one of those internet fools writing "4" in place of "for'; this is actually an intellectual double entendre, because he is running for 4th District Council in South Bend, IN. If you are in the area, go vote for him!!!

Website here:
http://www.geocities.com/g4king11/Page.html