The ParkingGarageSyndicate

I have an obscure taste for English words that have multiple-meanings, largely a result of being aware that people have a marked tendency to apply whichever meaning they personally relate-to to just about everything they read [something I call reader narcissism.]

Anyway, I noticed some time ago that internet-gamers always seem to latch-on the most insulting meanings for these terms without even knowing what the intended meaning really is.

This was an insightful revelation for me, so I began to "invent" compressed-phrases with multiple-meanings to titillate the readers' ambiguous curiosity.

I am a fairly competitive-gamer myself, so when inventing team-names I rarely if ever use one ascribed to an established [real-life] organization, mainly out of respect for names that may or may not be legally protected.

So I call my internet-team the ParkingGarageSyndicate--begging the questions:

1. Which parking-garage(s)?;
2. What kind of "syndicate"?;
3. Is there any REAL threat to me, my associates or family?

Just to answer some of these questions...

1. There are NO REAL parking-garages;
2. The syndicate is merely a loose-affiliation, and since there are NO REAL parking-garages, even the loose-affiliation is completely fictitious.
3. The only possible REAL THREAT is to a person's meticulously-nurtured imagination, but nothing more...and if your imagination somehow becomes damaged, I submit that the damage was done before you even knew I existed...giving you the weakest legal-footing you might possibly have to accuse me of ANYTHING.

In other words, if you can't accept that the ParkingGarageSyndicate is utterly-fictitious, it's NOT my fault!

--mattergy

Black Tuesday, Black Monday, Black Friday

I wanted to point out the actual meanings of some of the "Black" days-of-the-week in the American experience that are frequently misrepresented in popular thinking as being epithets of ill-character.


1. Black Tuesday was the fateful Tuesday in 1929 when the stock-market crashed, which was later seen as the start of the Great Depression in the third decade of the 20th-Century.

2. Black Monday is most commonly known as the crash of the NYSE and AMEX in 1987 that led to the subsequent mass-unemployment and "recession" of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

3. Black Friday, on the other hand (or the non-existent "third hand") is simply the day after Thanksgiving (always celebrated on Thursday in the USA), seen as the start of the annual Christmas gift-buying-rush for various U.S. retailers.

Now there is some room for personal-interpretation here, but I thought this bit of clarification might help a few folks think more clearly about why these terms are used.

--mattergy

Happy Thanksgiving--You Aren't Idiots

I've been informed that people often think I'm talking-down to them, because I inform them of oddities of Multiple Sclerosis of which they could not possibly be aware.

Being around too many voices, for example, is tough enough for highly-intelligent people--but if a person has NEURAL-DAMAGE, there are added problems that large-gatherings press upon that person that are unseen (except by others with similar neural-damage).

What I'm saying is that people WITHOUT NEURAL-DAMAGE have NO POINT-OF-REFERENCE as to the very-real phenomena being experienced by those WITH neural-damage (and shouldn't presume that they DO, no matter HOW CARING they might be).

By the way...I'm NOT trying to talk-down to people.

I'm merely stating the truth...which isn't so obvious to those who have gatherings on their minds.

I've had almost 5 years-experience living with the rigors of M.S. every minute of the day, so I would think most people would simply accept that I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
But every once-in-a-while, I run into someone who thinks he/she can really understand what's going on in the mind of someone whose experience is genuinely outside of their own...and I have to say CONCLUSIVELY that they "don't know what they're talking about."

This need to inform the NEURO-NEOPHYTE that he/she is in error/hasn't thought the matter through adequately, has gotten me ostracized from the most unexpected conversations...and during family-gatherings this can cause real arguments...or WORSE.

But I realize that this isn't unique to MY SITUATION, so I accept that others out there may have circumstances with which to contend that are equally (or MORE) stressful vis-a-vis the Holidays, so may you have a relatively-peaceful Thanksgiving, too.

--mattergy

The 3-Variable Problem

The title of this post is a pun on THE THREE BODY PROBLEM -- a well-known problem of determining exact measurements applying to gravitationally proximate bodies in astronomy.

Concurrently, the 3-Variable Problem(T M) is a loose allusion to ANY phenomenon wherein there are so many unknowns that no mathematical or logical solutions are even possible...regardless of the intellectual-capacity of the analyst/observer.

Although mankind has become extremely technologically-advanced, there are still SOME problems that are inordinately complex and remain unnervingly out-of-reach...like the cure for my own Multiple Sclerosis.

I personally appreciate the diligence of so many genius-neurologists who are seeking novel-treatments for the disease...but even neurological-geniuses are hampered by the inordinate complexity of human-biology--just the complexities of the set of genes that constitute the Major Histocompatability Complex (MHC) are enough to make the most intelligent people gag.

That is not to say that studying the MHC to find novel-treatments is a futile exercise, just that people should readily-appreciate how complicated the research into such matters ARE, and not expect miracle-insights overnight...even as technologically-advanced as medicine may have become.

--mattergy

DVD-Failure Due to Prolonged VCR/DVD Heat Exposure

Being (formerly) a fan of videotaped-media--I later opted for commercial-DVD because repeated use DID NOT CAUSE signal-degradation, even after years of use.

However, only recently did I discover (after a very expensive course in DVD-player replacement) that the source of my ills was in-fact Player-Defective DVDs...

Let me explain...

Sustained heat from the PLAYER (in this case because I have a nasty tendency of watching movies or TV-shows-on-DVD while drifting off to sleep) wrought havoc on my poor DVDs.

I realized after years that my DVD-collection was failing.

Granted, this took years to realize (like most folks I think of DVDs as being virtually permanent, with proper handling and cleaning).

But when I started "testing" my DEAD-DVDs, on my laptop PC, I found to my surprise that almost ALL of them still worked. The problem (I surmised) was that the sector on the DVDs that tells the player that there's a DVD waiting to be played: was damaged from excessive time-of-residence IN THE DVD-PLAYER.

Obviously, I found this hard to believe.

But this was only possible by testing the dead-DVDs in my LAPTOP (I'm fairly cut-off from all my former-friends-with-DVD-players for various reasons) and none of the NEW DVD-players I purchased will connect to the F-type (coaxial cable) connection on my 20-some-year-old GE-TV (without an independently-powered RF-converter...which I own but have a lot of trouble plugging-in to the vast number of UNGROUNDED AC-OUTLETS in my similarly aged place-of-residence [I've cautiously reserved the GROUNDED outlets for my computer-equipment]).

Anyway, who'd have thunk DVDs would fail by sitting in the TV-DVD- player for too long...yet still work fine in a laptop-DVD-player?

Remember, even though I'm a fairly well-qualified A/V-technician; having MS, I can' t handle excessive RCA-cables and move my furniture around like I used to...so this "trial-and-error" troubleshooting took a LONG time.

Oh well...I guess I'll have to rebuild my DVD-collection as my minimal Social-Security income permits...having neural-damage (even the non-cognitive white-matter) is a B****, even for a genius.

ADDENDUM/CORRECTION NOVEMBER 8:
I sometimes make errors in logic when there are multiple variables to consider...my 2 year-old DVD/VCR combo-player has since been discontinued by the manufacturer, so I also have to consider the possibility that the device itself has failed in an odd way: playing SOME DVDs without problems, yet rejecting others nonsensically, for no reason other than the DVD-player having developed an unusual read-error.

The possibility both that the player has failed OR some DVDs have failed is weighted toward the PLAYER having failed...but the PHYSICAL problem of replacing the PLAYER makes THAT problem rather undesirable to consider...so cognitively my error MAY BE a result of my unwillingness to accept inferior hookup-solutions (the added complexity of adding a separate RF-modulator) to solve a physical problem.

ADDENDUM/CORRECTION JUNE 11, 2010
Ultimately, it turned out that there WAS NO problem with anything but the Author's awareness that the entire industry had abandoned RF-modulation internally...necessitating a SEPARATE RF-modulator...that I had desperately been trying to avoid adding to my already-limited table-space.