Distance Stats

For fun....

Distance:

30 Chicago to airport
5,540 Chicago to Istanbul
391 Istanbul to Selcuk
230 Selcuk to Athens
652 Athens to Rome
149 Rome to Florence
313 Florence to Nice
362 Florence to Barcelona
530 Barcelona to Paris
542 Paris to Berlin
101 Berlin to Dresden
181 Desden to Krumlov
124 Krumlov to Vienna
244 Vienna to Krakow
579 Krakow to Copenhagen
192 Copenhagen to Hamburg
251 Hamburg to Amsterdam
133 Amsterdam to Bruges
(now)
256 Bruges to London
340 London to Edinburgh
340 Edinburgh to London
3,952 London to Chicago
425 Chicago to Pittsburgh

Total:
15,857 miles. Pretty much all of this assumes a dead-straight shot (except for the driving or I remember exact train partial stops, which is rare), so conservatively add 30% to this (wouldnt be surprised it's 40-50+ given how fucked some of my rail routes were) and it's 20,614.

The circumference of the Earth is roughly 24,900 miles. I must admit, I'm caught up on this stat even though it's completely meaningless (all miles are not created equal in quite a number of facets). For some reason, I want to say on this trip I traveled the equivalent of the circumference of the earth so effing bad. I'm 4k short. With all of the walking, intracity rail travel, cabs, getting lost, swerves, vertical travel, and bullshit, that HAS to take me to the promised land. I think I could legitimately argue for a 50% bump factor. This brings me to 23,800, over 1K short. FUCK. I NEED TO LOOP BACK THROUGH SLOVAKIA FUCK THIS.

I may be taking trip to Toronto and Baltimore before I start work, so maybe I can throw that into JD 1H2012 Trip of Dumbassery. That should put me just above the mark.

In any case, fuck this, and fuck you. I'm saying I traveled roughly the circumference of the world and I don't care it's based on dubious calculations and assumptions. This is how people get shit done. They stretch, lie, and cheat. That's how the world works and that's how I'm doing it.

Hay everybody it's Rant Wednesday

I've heard probably 10 people, at least, in my life either blatantly brag that they don't own a TV or at least mention that fact when it wasn't necessary at all. This shit drives me up the fucking wall.

I'm sorry, why should I be impressed you don't own a TV? I guess what you imply by that is you have such a focus of your time on superior intellectual activities that not a modicum of your time can be wasted on something as drab and mindless as something on TV. Or maybe you're too far off the "mainstream" to be entertained by something mass distributed. Or maybe you're a hyper-popular socialite. I'm sure the reasoning, or rather message, varies.

Rather than providing secondary or periphery evidence of a lifestyle or skill set, how about actually exude it? Or just blast it out. Fuck, I'd rather someone roll up into my grill, rip off some quote from Shakespeare, and say "betcha don't know which sonnet that's from, BIIIITCH." That is so, so, so much better than saying that you don't have a TV. Christ.

Of course there's a billion annoying expressions of insecurity and/or arrogance out there, but this one really gets to me.