On smugness and religion

So not to talk about religion, but I was at coffee a minute ago in my building and overheard some young, overly confident dude in a suit debating at (rather than with) some colleagues. They didn't really seem to care.

He was going on and on about how the Catholic Church is the true church and Catholics are the chosen people, how so many wars have been fought against the Catholic Church, how all atheists are smug assholes, and how the church has never, ever made a mistake in dogma. Of course, it's hard to say somebody else is smug when you just said your religion is correct and has never made a mistake.

And I'm kicking myself that I didn't ask what about that whole thing where the Earth is the center of the universe and Galileo was convicted of heresy for saying otherwise? Maybe you could make the argument that it wasn't officially dogma, but I mean, close enough.

Rant: I hate ads about surprise cars with bows

You suck, Lexus

So I hate ads about cars with bows. Supposedly, people buy a car for a loved one and surprise them with it, often involving some elaborate or (supposedly) cute trick, like kids opening a giant box or lifting a giant Christmas stocking to reveal the car with a giant bow. There's so many of these ads on TV, and they suck.

The entire premise is bogus. They're trying to make it seem like it's this common, normal thing, everybody gives surprise cars with giant bows -- but they don't. They're too big and complicated for that, there are so many decisions you'd need to make for it to be the perfect car for the recipient. It's hard enough to buy clothes as presents, but a car?

What if you spent $30,000 on a surprise car, but the person really wanted another car, or another color, or another year, or some other option you didn't get? You'd have to talk to the recipient endlessly about what they want in a car, and then it'd be pretty obvious that they're going to get a car, which would thus ruin the fun. You'd need to check all the different reviews of the cars too, but you wouldn't be able to tell or ask the person what the good things and bad things about the car are ahead of time.

And anyway, who spends $30,000 on a Christmas present? Or are they just marketing to rich people?

Why not just go to the dealership together and pick one out? The only time I'd ever think a surprise would work is for an old or classic car. This guy loves red '67 Chevy Impalas, so I bet he'd be happy with a present of one. However, all these ads are for new car surprises, not old ones.

The giant bows are also bogus. I don't think anybody actually puts a giant bow on their surprise car present, assuming they actually exist. And where would you even get one? There are some web sites, of course, but it looks like they're mainly aimed at car dealers. (Related, that website is for a company based in Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania. What a weird name.)

The entire premise is dumb. They're trying to create this fake tradition to sell cars. No thanks.

Awards Shows

So I don't really get the point of awards shows. What does or matter if a movie you like (or don't like) wins an award (or doesn't)? Is it validation? Do people subconsciously want to get mad about the awards, to complain? My roommate said she likes to see the dresses, so I guess that's something, but otherwise I don't get it. Like what you like.

Clothes drive me crazy

so clothes drive me crazy -- not wearing them, but the sizes. I asked for some pants for Christmas, and I got a few pair from my parents. My mom asked me if the 34" waist ones I have still fit, and I said yes, because they fit perfectly. So mom got me a couple that are 34" and a couple that are 35". Some of them work, some are super tight, and some (even the 35s) I can't even button.

What the hell? An inch is an inch! Everybody uses the same measuring tape! It's not like you're converting from metric to English, or UK pints vs US pints, or European sizes or something. And then sometimes the same exact type of pants vary greatly based on what color they are. Seriously?

Drives me insane. I'm just going to find one kind that fits and just buy 5 different colors of them and wear them until they fall off. Must suck even worse for women's clothes.

I hate pink antibacterial hand soap

so I really don't like the pink antibacterial hand soap they always have in the bathrooms at bars, restaurants, etc. It smells like a combination of gasoline and vomit and it the odor stays on your hands for hours. I can't believe that there isn't a slightly more expensive version that doesn't smell horrible. Unless the terrible stench somehow scares off bacteria or something. No thanks.

Violence in sports drives me crazy

so I just read about this: a player for the University Florida football team purposely gouged a Georgia guy in the eye. He got suspended one half of one game, against Vanderbilt, a pretty crummy team, so that's hardly a severe punishment.

That kind of stuff drives me crazy, these guys should get kicked off the team and/or banned from football. There was also a star running back for Oregon who sucker punched a Boise State player after the game and was suspended, but might be reinstated, and Albert Haynesworth for the Titans who stomped on a guy's face, and is still playing.

Now I like football, and it's a rough game. Big hits are OK with me as long as they're legal and serve an actual football purpose. This kind of garbage, however, really makes me mad, and it's insane that they get off so easy.

Here's the Florida video.

Morangate?

so apparently, President Obama said, off the record, to Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran that he thought Kanye West was a jackass after his outburst at the VMAs. And apparently (link here) Moran then Twittered about it. However, that isn't on Moran's twitter feed anymore, so he must have deleted it, as Politico reports.

Now to me, the main problem with this is not that the President thinks Kanye West is a jackass, but that Moran twittered off-the-record stuff. ABC said it was a mistake, so maybe it was honest. I would guess that Obama's remark was in response to some question about West, since both are from Chicago and all. But in any case, I think Obama's right, Kanye is a jackass, and I have no problem with Obama having an opinion about this kind of thing. I doubt he watched the VMAs, but the President being up on current pop culture events is cool with me.

Brainwashing

so I hear the President is giving a speech to America's schoolkids. Apparently that's a bad thing, as a bunch of folks are complaining about it. Honestly, it seems like people will oppose anything Barack Obama does. Here's what the President says the speech will be about:

"I'm going to be making a big speech to young people all across the country about the importance of education; about the importance of staying in school; how we want to improve our education system and why it’s so important for the country. So I hope everybody tunes in."

The Department of Education is circulating lesson plans to schools with questions and such:

The guide for pre-K through grade 6 suggests questions students think about during the speech, such as "What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do?"

The plan for grades 7-12 includes a "guided discussion," with suggested topics: "What resonated with you from President Obama's speech? What is President Obama inspiring you to do?"

The Cato Institute responds by saying

"It's one thing for a president to encourage all kids to work hard and stay in school – that's a reasonable use of the bully pulpit. It's another thing entirely, however, to have the U.S. Department of Education send detailed instructions to public schools nationwide on how to glorify the president and the presidency, and push them to drive social change."

Honestly? It sounds to me like they're asking about listening comphrehension -- what is he saying?

It's ludicrous. People need to take a step back and think for once, instead of this bizarre knee-jerk reaction to everything. This kind of garbage drives me insane and I think it's damaging the country.

Rant Time: Twittering

so it's rant time. A Bollywood star was held for hours at Newark airport, apparently because of his name. That's bad, obviously, and it shouldn't happen. He had to call the Indian Consulate to get them to vouch for him. He had just done some filming in the US on a movie called "My Name is Khan" about racial profiling against Muslims.

However, what made me mad was the response mentioned in the news article from another Bollywood actress, Priyanka Chopra: "Shocking,disturbing n downright disgraceful.Its such behavior that fuels hatred n racism.SRK's a world figure for Gods sake.GET REAL!!" Yes, it's shocking and unfortunate, but this guy is not a world figure. I've never heard of him. Get real? That Americans don't know a Bollywood star famous for mainly Hindi movies in India?

Obviously this sort of racial profiling is bad, but who knows the whole story? I don't and Priyanka Chopra doesn't. I guess Twitter is sort of a way to respond instantly, but sometimes you need to wait. Maybe he had the same name as somebody on the terror watch list, or maybe he was doing something to arouse suspicion. Then again, maybe it was just a dumb guard who saw the name "Khan," which is what Khan said. Nobody knows, for God's sake. The end.

Palin's speech last night

So I watched the Republican convention last night and I got pretty angry. Sarah Palin was just doing the same old Republican tactics - half truths, specious arguments, and flat out b.s.

For example, Obama is going to raise this tax and that tax. Yes, he is - on rich people. He's also cutting taxes on the middle class.

And according to Palin, we're about to win in Iraq but Obama is preventing us from doing so. Oh, really? The militants are about to lay down their arms, the Iraqi government is competent and able to govern the whole country, and we can remove our troops? That's news to me.

Palin also got in a dig at Democrats and San Francisco. You know what? People like San Francisco. They like it because it's beautiful, people are nice, and it's a good place to visit. Some (not all) Republicans hate San Francisco because gay people walk around freely, the city recycles, and they vote Democrat.

The one that makes me the angriest, however, is the constant implication (and sometimes flat out statement) that Obama and the Democrats are anti-America, put the country last, are defeatists, etc etc. As an example of this, Palin cited the fact that Obama made a speech mentioning a bunch of wars the US fought in, but never uttered the word "victory." What a stupid argument. Clearly mentioning World War II without saying "victory" means he is un-American.

I'm so sick of this crap. We have parties because we disagree with one another. Palin, McCain, Bush, Cheney, and some other Republicans seem to believe that if you disagree with them, you hate America. That's bullshit.

I hope that people see through the constant half-truths and nonsense, but you know what? We can't just hope, we have to put some feet on the ground too. We need to make some calls, talk to people, register voters, go to do door, anything. I'm going to volunteer for Obama - iif anybody else is interested, let me know.

Obama - Tim Kaine?

So there's been a lot of rumors about Obama picking Virginia governor Tim Kaine as his running mate. I'm not so enthusiastic about it. Kaine's a good guy and he's from the South, a swing state, etc, but I'm not blown away. He's not that well known of a guy nationally, he's also pretty young, doesn't have foreign policy experience, and just not super inspirational. I'm not sure who would be better - Bill Richardson? Lots of foreign policy experience there. Some governor? Good question. Whoever it is, I hope it's not Hillary. That would be a great example of shooting one's self in the foot. Or one's party.

Metal Detector Morons

so probably my biggest pet peeve lately is with metal detectors. People, take the crap out of your pockets before you get to the metal detector!

We have a bunch of detectors at work, and the security guards used to be pretty lackadaisical about checking - folks would beep and they'd just wave them through. Fox 5 did a big expose, some folks got fired and the Protective Services chief was suspended, so now they check more.

But what drives me nuts is the people who wait until they get right up to the front before taking all the crap out of their pockets. Then everybody else is just sitting there, waiting for Joe Moron to take his cell phone, keys, wallet, change, etc etc out of his pocket. Then he forgets to take his Bluetooth cyborg I-look-like-a-doofus earpiece out, so he has to go back through again.

Folks could have done all that 5 minutes ago when they were still in the middle of the line, but they don't, so it results in gridlock in the morning when everybody is waiting to get in. I'm sure people have been through a metal detector at least once in their life before, they shouldn't be shocked by this electrical device and forget how to function. The line was literally out the door the other day; it took ten minutes or so to get from the front door to the elevators.

Plus they still just wave you through if you beep.

Awesome photo by jasoneppink

so going back to my Scrabble rant, my friends/consciousless opponents just played "lex" and "zoa" in their respective games. Fuck that and fuck Scrabulous. Those are not real words!

UPDATE: and yet "ok" is not an accepted word!??! Zoa, Ut, Al, Lex, Zee, Donna, and Hoy are ok words, but "ok" is not. What the hell!

so I've been playing Scrabble (or Scrabulous technically) on Facebook, and I am really getting sick of it. I know it uses a list of words, but there are so many bullshit words in there. One of my friends used "zee" twice. Zee isn't a word! It's the letter Z. Letters do not have words, that's stupid. But since it had a Z in it, he got tons of points.

There are other ones too, like "hoy," an archaic word for a flat bottomed boat. Of course no one uses that word, but if you google it you'll find it, and of course it got used against me. But while "zee" and "hoy" are ok, "zen" is not, which is bullshit. People use zen not as a proper noun all the time. "That is very zen." Then another time somebody used "donna." How the hell is donna a word? I got pissed off at my buddy who used "zee" twice and "donna" and he quit.

There ought to be some kind of Real Words Dictionary for Scrabble. I'm sick of these bullshit words.

UPDATE: my friend just played "ut". UT is not a word!!!

so I like to send text messages. However, I hate my phone's T9 predictive text thing. For one, it doesn't have bad words. Instead I get "duck" and "shiv." Thanks a lot, Verizon. And when I type "hey" it always suggests "hew." Do people really use the word "hew" that often? Unless the phone is only used by lumberjacks, I doubt it.

It also doesn't do conjunctions well, so it looks like I have bad grammar: "Im going, dont know if shes gonna go or not." To add insult to injury, it suggests "dnot" first instead of "dont." Every now and then it'll suggest one with an apostrophe, but it seems random. And I just discovered today that if I try to type "emailed" it suggests "emailde" first. That's not even a word!

Maybe I just don't know how to use it, but it's annoying. And there doesn't seem to be a "learn word" feature, which would be useful for work and cursing. Duck Verizon.

so I almost got in a fight a minute ago. I was walking down the sidewalk from McDonalds, and a guy was coming towards me and my coworker. I moved to the left and the guy moved the same way, so we both had to stop. It happens a million times every day and nothing comes of it - somebody moves, no biggie.

However, this guy said "get out the way" angrily, which pissed me off. He walked by and I shrugged in the "what the hell" way, so he stopped and we argued a bit. He said I should have got out the way, do I think I'm special (or something to that extent) and I said he didn't have to be rude about it, excuse me would be fine. I said whatever and kept walking, and he yelled that I was a "trick," which is a pretty lame insult if you ask me. Might as well just call me a "boogerhead" or something.

It always amazes me how people act like assholes for no reason whatsoever. I guess this guy has to act tough to feel better about himself or to make him think he has control of his life or something. I probably shouldn't have raised my arms in hindsight, but whatever.

so it's that time of year again - my bi-annual "Spring Forward-Fall Back Is Stupid" post. And guess what - it's stupid.

I really don't see the point for it - it gets dark around 5 pm, meaning every office in the country has to turn on their lights earlier. It also means it gets colder, so everybody runs their heating more. It means fewer people go out shopping or to get exercise. At least the government decided to delay it a little longer this year, but they really should delay it indefinitely. It just seems like a relic of the past.

Wikipedia says "Adding daylight to afternoons generally benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours,[1] but it can cause problems for farmers and others whose hours depend on the sun.[2] Extra afternoon daylight appears to cut traffic fatalities;[3] its effect on health and crime is less clear. An early goal was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, formerly a primary use of electricity;[4] nowadays, though, DST sometimes increases overall electricity costs and peak demand." They also mention lower crime and more when it stays light later.

So there are tons of benefits to keeping it lighter later, and apparently the only benefit is to farmers. Hey farmers: eat it. Grow up and set your alarms early to get up an hour earlier. They always say the farmers' day starts when the chickens (or is it cows) wake up, so who cares what time it is? If it's dark out and a rooster is crowing, does it matter if it's 5 am or 6 am or 7 am? No. Farmers can get bent and deal with it.

so i found this website, Freerice, where you answer vocabulary questions and the UN World Food Program distributes rice to starving people. Sounds great right?

Wrong, it doesn't work half the time. I'll click on the right answer, and it'll say "Sorry, try again" and show what I clicked on. What the hell? "Grouchy" and I'll click "Irritable" and it says "Sorry, try again, grouchy=irritable." I can't find an email on the site, but they need to get this fixed! I tried it with both Firefox and IE, both have issues.

UPDATE: It works now. Donate rice!

so I don't know if I have terrible luck or what, but the Starbucks on New Jersey Ave NW sucks. There's usually a long line, which isn't really their fault, but it always takes forever for me to get my drink. The worst was about a month ago when it took at least 10 minutes to get my drink with a bunch of people behind me getting theirs first. After sitting and waiting then I decided to boycott the place in favor of the one at 7th and Indiana, which is much better. Au Bon Pain is closer, but their drinks are way too sweet.

Today, however, it was raining, so I went to the New Jersey Ave Starbucks - the joke was on me. There wasn't a line, but again, about 5 people behind me got their drinks, so I asked the baristas if mine was coming. One of them said "nobody ordered that," and I said "I did." So she made it and plopped it down without saying anything. I said "is this the pumpkin" and she didn't respond, so I said "Thank you very much" loudly and walked out. That place sucks.

so I went to the City Paper's Crafty Bastards fair this sunday, it was alright. There was some neat stuff, but a lot of it was too expensive for my bones (which admittedly are fairly cheap) and half the booths were cute monsters - stuffed ones, prints, shirts etc, of cute squids, ghosts, and various other monsters. Observe: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14.

But hey, it was fun and something to do. Just next time, fewer monsters, or at least more variety.