Random thoughts on a cool night and sleepless Sunday

If Doug Krikorian could write a 70-inch notes column in the Press-Telegram sports section on random thoughts about his favorite restaurant and "The Jackie Robinson of roller derby" then why can't I?

… I spent the last few weeks shredding personal papers from as far back as 1999 and just finished today. I found a lot of things about my past – report cards and class schedules from Long Beach State I never opened, bills obviously – but miscellaneous stuff as well.

I almost forgot that I was a "Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges". If anyone has the 2000-2001 yearbook, check me out. And, if you can, send me a scan of it since I didn't fall into the scam and buy a book.

I had been shredding a lot of things before and would just stop. I just let things accumulate in storage and never got to it. A couple of weeks ago I bought a small desktop shredder and it stood up to the challenge of shredding two giant shopping bags of papers. It's a recommendation from me and at $15 at Target, a steal. (Not literally of course.)

… When I got home from work tonight I logged in to check my e-mail and on the front page of MSN.com was an article about which jobs were most depressing according to the U.S. Government. It's the same government that brought you "Iraq War II: This time, it's for money."

Eleven percent of personal care workers suffered from depression to lead all industries followed by the food/drink service industry with at 10.3 and in a tie for third health care workers and social workers at 9.6.

Engineers, architects and surveyors had the lowest at 4.3 percent.

Speaking from experience, journalists who work for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group (a subsidiary of the Media News Group) must not have been asked or else our numbers would have left every job behind.

And, if it weren't for the wonderful people I work with, I would be depressed about working in the engine room of the Titanic. As my friend James Melroy said, "It's the best worst place to work."

However, all this may change in the near future. Stay tuned.

… Also on MSN.com this past week was an article titled: "Sex and Marriage with a Robot? It could happen." In the article, researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands said he forecasts that by 2050 the state of Massachusetts would be the first state to legalize the union of man and machine.

When I first read the hyperlink on the front page of MSN, my first thought was what Homer Simpson said when it was recommended to his sister-in-law Selma to consider artificial insemination if she wanted a child. "Boy I don't know. You gotta be pretty desperate to make it with a robot."