Observations of daily life in the past month:

A rant…

1 in 5 Americans (adolescent and adults) has genital herpes. I thought it was bullshit so I looked it up… it’s true.

Apparently I may have about 5 diseases that I didn’t even know about and I should talk to my doctor. I think we’re about 3 months away from the drug companies inventing a pill to manage everything, but a cure for nothing.

They’re even pushing drugs on your kids now. If your kid acts out at school a few times they immediately jump to the conclusion that they need psycho-analysis and the need to be on temperament medication. Little kids shouldn’t be depressed enough to need a pill. Acting out on occasion doesn’t justify giving a kid Ritalin. Maybe some kids need that stuff but there’s a whole lot of them that really don’t. We are creating a society of numbed out legal drug addicts.

You know, maybe they should invent a pill for making you a good parent. Then your kids will turn out fine and maybe all the world’s problems would start to turn around. (Who am I kidding, there’s no money in that anyway.)

Gas prices are heading out of control and adversely affecting everything else our consumer driven society needs to survive. Even the cheap shit we buy from China ends up on a truck at some point. I hear that even corn is going cost quite a bit more this season. Funny since the government is paying some farmers not to grow crops. Why not pay them to grow it instead? I skipped economics class quite a bit in high-school but more supply quenches the demand, hence lower prices, right?

And speaking of cheap china products, ever stop to wonder what happens to the global economy if the American economy really does tank? If none of us have any money, who’s going to buy all those cheap consumer goods?

The rate of pay raises is highly un-proportional to the increase in the cost of living – but that’s not news.  Business owners are encouraged by economists to offer pay raises based upon cost of labor, not cost of living. Cost of labor is a competitive wage or salary for the particular job an employee performs and the specific skill/capability sets that they offer to the organization.  It’s smart business sense to a point, and you really can’t argue with that. Everyone from you to your bosses are just in it to make money.

In simpler words… you make $9 bucks an hour… and yeah, we know you can’t really live on that anymore, but where else you gonna go?

But you can’t blame them much because the cost of running a business these days is retarded. I see firsthand the race at the end of the fiscal year to dump extra money to keep the business from having to claim huge profits.

Instead they buy new equipment (or buy themselves new trucks and give themselves large bonuses) to eat up the profit and write it off as a business expense. They trot a fine line between wanting to increase profits but keep it under the radar. Rarely do I hear of a company giving that extra profit back to the people who actually made them that money… the employees.  How about matching 401k or picking up a little more of the health insurance?

Maybe the smart people who are in charge don’t realize this but the key to financial success in this country is to have a solid and happy middle class who is confident in the economy and the value of their dollar. If they see that hard work returns more pay they’ll probably do it. If they feel like they’re doing well and their companies are doing right by them then they’ll spend more money. Since they’ll be well fed and happy and they’ll be spending all this money they’ll care a bit more about their jobs because they’ll appreciate them more. For once people might feel like they’re getting to share in a piece of the pie. Otherwise nobody cares and they’ll only work as hard as you make them.

Politicians during the debates this year frequently referred to the “average middle class family making $200,000 a year…”

Now let me just say that if my household combined income is ever proportional to the value of what $200k is as I’m writing this I’ll consider myself to be very well taken care of. I wouldn’t even consider myself to be upper-middle class… rather I think that’s more like lower-upper class. I can count on one hand the families I know that make that much money. I think money like that would actually warrant taking a phone call when I’m out of the office!

The service based economy has forgotten that its main purpose is to provide good service to the customer. Customer service is horrible in every aspect of our lives – even when it’s run locally by someone who actually speaks English. I asked my advisor about some classes outside of my major today and she couldn’t help me.  She didn’t even tell me who I should talk to. It was worse than asking a guy in the tire department at Sears about the cost of a new TV.

I can’t register for classes because I have a financial hold on my account. I have had to work nearly as hard picking classes and taking care of financial aid and loans as I have taking the actual classes.

I bought a house… I bought vehicles… I got a domestic partnership… I got married… none of that was as difficult as getting advisors and financial services people to just do their jobs right the first time. Need I remind you that I had to apply and be selected to pay them money so I can go to their school?

But if service sucks, the actual products aren’t much better. I lost at least an hour at work Tuesday on the phone making sure I didn’t void the warranty on a new $1300 machine controller that had loose bolts and nuts inside it. Rather than return it, they told me to take it apart and reassemble it, then call back if there was still an issue. Its only been a few days and now I’ll have to call back because, surprise – it’s not working at 100%.

Products today are terrible and I know for a fact that they are engineered to fail within 5 years so that you’ll just go out and buy another one. I think businesses want you to like their product but hate the service. They want you to be so discouraged in the service and repair of a product – or embarrassed that you’re still using something more than a few years old that you’d rather just replace it with a new one, and if that one sucks, maybe you’ll even go buy another one instead of returning it.

US death toll in Iraq was the highest in April that it’s been in 7 months.  How about a progress report – or is there none? You know how everyone says if we just pack up and leave now it will be a disaster… could it really be that much worse? Even if it was worse, I’m not so sure I care. If they can’t get off their asses and take control of their own pseudo-revolution and start to run their own country and government then screw them.

Media attention is focused on Reverend Wright, Barak Obama’s former pastor – like this is the first time a religious leader said some inflammatory stuff. Ever heard any of the Christian coalition members speak?  Why is this or any of the other political junk they spew out news? Why not spend more time informing the citizens of the policies and ideas of the candidates?

It really doesn’t matter anyway because all three of the possible candidates are shitty.  The only interesting people who had anything to say were never given a shot in the first place. If you vote at all this year it’s probably not because you firmly believe that any one candidate is going to make a difference. You’re either voting for an inspirational young black man who is a charming public speaker, a strong and independent woman who’s also a Clinton so that’s supposed to carry some weight I guess , or you’re voting for McCain because the thought of the other two makes you want to choke on your own vomit. You’re certainly not informed enough to tell me much about what any of these people propose to do once elected, nor can you honestly say you agree 100% that they’re really the best people this country could dig up… You’d probably do a better job yourself huh?

The American people are ignorant of their civic duty to select and keep in check leaders that will represent their interests. People fail to demand information to keep themselves knowledgeable of policies and decisions of their government that affect them on a daily basis. Instead they play politics or completely ignore everything. Many people feel that it makes no difference – nobody cares what they think, or they don’t think policy really affects them – well news flash, yes it does.

The same problems affecting the Iraqis lack of participation in government effects us ten-fold. Maybe that’s where they get it from…

So far the Iraq war has cost taxpayers $516,000,000,000 (billion) .

It has cost Rochester, NY $335,000,000 alone!

·  $4,681 per household.

·  $1,721 per person.

·  $341.4 million per day.

Taxpayers in Rochester, New York have paid $339.3 million for the Iraq War thus far. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

62,573 People with Health Care for One Year OR

635,256 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR

6,549 Public Safety Officers for One year OR

5,167 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR

55,370 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR

18 New Elementary Schools OR

1,929 Affordable Housing Units OR

118,570 Children with Health Care for One Year OR

38,659 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR

3,930 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR

5,100 Port Container Inspectors for One year

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

Democrats are a bunch of retards. They have no balls and they’re far too PC to be effective. The only thing worse than them is the lock step bible thumping republicans with no real concept of the term conservative – other than maybe in an uptight 50’s socially conservative way.

 Anyone who makes up their mind before they’ve thought about an issue, or who closes their mind and ears to debate and dissent has greatly missed the point of being an American and should be deported or shot.

I’ve come to find out that most people – if you can actually get them to sit still long enough to have a decent conversation about policy and issues we face as a nation are a lot more on the same page then the Washington ding bats would have us believe.  People wear a front most of the time pretending to subscribe firmly to one way of thinking or another. Why? Because it’s easier to do so.

I’m sick of our society rewarding failure and glorifying stupidity. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Turn on the TV for about  a half hour and then come back to this – that is if you’re even still reading it. I find most people these days are scarred of reading or they act like they don’t have the time.

We need to slow down as a culture and start thinking a lot more. Feed our intellects and brush up on our social skills. Think of how much different things were when we had to write letters by hand and wait for the mail. If your handwriting sucked you had a big problem. People thought carefully and wrote intelligently. They weren’t afraid of big words. They read the newspaper – and the newspaper actually reported news and spoke to you as an adult. They trusted your ability to comprehend facts used a reading level greater than that of an 8 year old. Being smart was actually something to be proud of.

If you want America to remain on top and you want some of the power to return to the hands of the citizens then you have to step up and educate yourself. If you see bullshit you have to call a spade a spade from time to time.

In my lifetime all I’ve ever seen is people just shrugging it off and getting a little dumber each year. You know what, it is obviously not working to our advantage.