urthenrampage

 Apparently I'm pretty good.

Greed:	Very Low
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Low

Discover Your Sins - Click Here

 Just got word of an entry-level web design job up in saratoga that I think I'm qualified for. With a car it's a pretty reasonable 30 minutes. Not perfect of course but I'd just be happy to have a job. The bus schedule to saratoga is about 2 hours, however, and might not run early enough for me to get there by opening. But I think I have a plan.

My parents told me that once I get my license, my dad was considering giving me his car. Its an old but dependable used car, perfect for me since I don't care and it would be cheap to insure. I want to ask my parents to bring up the car asap. If I get the job, I'll tell them I can start in 2-3 weeks. In that time, I'd use the car with whoever's around thats over 21 to practice driving until I feel ready to get my license. I think the major reason I'm having trouble getting practice time in is that people are (understandably) reluctant to let me drive their cars. If I had my own, however, its no risk to them. Once I have the car, I can easily get the license, and I can more easily get a job. Then I'll finally be a realistic person. Also, get a better haircut, but thats beside the point.

Thoughts?

For some reason I feel strangely compelled to clear up the air regarding certain bread, peanut, and fruit based meals, vis-a-vis, PB&J.

In the attempts to further this cause, I present the following as my standards for true peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

1. Crunchy is the only kind of real peanut butter. Creamy is only acceptable if no crunchy is around.
2. Cutting the crust off the bread is unacceptable for anyone over the age of ten years old.
3. If the bread is cut, it shall only be cut along the diagonal to allow for maximum edge-munching.
4. Thou shall not start in the middle, soft part of the bread. No matter how tasty it is, it should be left for last for maximal enjoyment.
5. When making the sandwich, put the peanut butter on first, then the jelly, so not to get jelly in the peanut butter.
6. Jelly is to be refridgerated. Peanut butter is not.
7. There are more flavors to jelly than just grape and strawberry. Try them.
8. One sandwich is a snack. Two sandwiches is a meal. Three sandwiches is a ultimate champion status.
9. Always be sure to spread all the way to the crust, or it will not be tasty.
10. Stealing another's PB&J is punishable by death. Sharing your PB&J, however, brings you close to godliness.

As always these rules are open to debate and discourse should you not agree.

I get knocked down. But I get up again! Ain't never gonna keep me down.

I just gotta remember that being alone isn't a character flaw. I'm doing pretty good, right?

Right.

Pissin the night away...

Everytime I open my mouth, the exact opposite thing that I wanted to happen, happens.
If I close my mouth, nothing that I want to happen happens.
It seems the only time I can get ahead is if I'm alone.
A depressing future if there ever was one...

 .... and I don't feel like fixing it anymore. I just want to leave, and go somewhere thats not in global news every 10 seconds.
Not the UK, their police are fucking crazy.
Not Canada, they are pretty good, but in danger of becoming US Jr. anytime soon.
Maybe australia, but they barely missed the "Entertainment industry fucks your internet up the ass if they feel like it" law.
I'm thinking... maybe Norway? Belgium? Holland? Sweden? 

Average number of Americans killed by terrorists per year since 2002: 15.
Average number of Americans killed by peanut-related allergies per year: 50-100.
Estimated number of Americans killed by cigarette-related diseases, diet and lifestyle issues, and alcohol poisoning combined by the end of this year: 650 thousand or more.

(source: http://www.counterpunch.org/goekler03242009.html)

Estimated number of Americans who are willing to give up their basic freedoms for security against terrorists: 150 million. (And dropping, fortunately)
Estimated number of Americans convinced nuts are OUT TO KILL US: 25 million.
Estimated number of Americans trying to save each other from cigarettes, diet, and alcohol: Only the crazy ones.

I'm all for you destroying your own bodies, but don't pretend it's not a real danger. You know what? Fuck terrorists. Bring em on. Pussies. Yeah, you heard me. I'm more afraid of a McDonalds. (And for the record, I'm not very afraid of McDonalds.)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 

I believe there are three kinds of people in the world, and I think most everyone should be able to agree on this.

1. People who want to skim by with minimal effort but get compensated like they did more.
2. People who want to do things and get compensated in kind.
3. People who don't care about compensation for all they do, so long as they have food and a place to stay.

Now, this is a bit of a generalization, but you can apply it to almost everyone.

Level 1 is the lowest strata, and that type of person can be applied to all heights of society. From the bottom-dwelling welfare leech, to the glitzy executives of failing businesses who claim they really need that extra ten million dollars in bonus because, come on guys, running a business in this economy is super stressful, and obviously their problems are more important than the working class'. These types of people are the ones that need to get cut off. Be it a $1,000 a month welfare check or $10,000,000 a year severance package just for showing up, these people do not really earn the money they make. Lets be honest: No one person needs a 8-figure a year salary and businesses could be much better off if they stopped throwing it around like it was actually worth the waste. Whatever happened to a work ethic? Two or three times working salary is one thing... twenty to one hundred times strains the boundaries of "their work earns it." This strata also encompasses pompous or corrupt government officials, quite possibly a worse breed than those who spend ten grand on a dress they will wear once. There should be none of these frivolous, self-entitled people in a well-functioning society.

Level 2 is the average joe. Get up, go to work, come back home, watch some television, and do it all again the next day, get paid at the end of the week. These are the gears of industry, of progress. Without them, nothing we do would be possible. And far be it from me to say they are uneducated, in fact, far from it. These people are everywhere: Teachers, nurses, bus drivers, janitors, lab techs, engineers. Their positions are not to be downplayed. This even covers many middle and even upper management positions, there are plenty of good, hard working people out there in all levels of business, not just the factory floor. Not everyone can lead and shape the world, someone has to follow and these people do it gladly. These are the backbone of modern civilization and without them we could not exist. This is an honest position to be in as long as you are working hard and not asking for more than your share. I wish more people were proud of this fact.

Level 3 are the visionaries, the volunteers, and the leaders who care more about the people than themselves. They don't want riches, fame, or power. They simply want to make the world better. If it weren't for the fact they need to pay for food and shelter, some would refuse compensation all together. An entire society of these people would be difficult and unstable at best, but a sprinkling of them shifts the dynamics towards change and improvement just enough to keep up our progression through life and civilization. Lately, however, there have been fewer and fewer of these people. We need visionaries to dream up brighter futures. We need volunteers to break through limitations of funding or capital. We need leaders to see whats ahead and take our hand to bring us there. These people should not need to be showered with money or gifts, their true compensation is the legacy they leave behind and the name they make for themselves. These are the people that give the world hope.

Be hopeful. Be positive. Believe in something. Try to at least get to #2, do your part in the world, whatever you happen to be good at. Don't tear things down just because you voted for the other guy. If someone is trying to fix the world, don't work against them out of spite. Negativity will get you exactly where you think you're going: nowhere.

Trust me on this.

 Now THIS is an article. It presents the arguments, for both sides, clearly and without bias. It represents the needs of both sides well and does not attempt to incite an emotional reaction. It has an excellent tone. American journalists could take a page out of this reporter's book.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,611582,00.html

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

 Yeah, he's no longer on my "cool" list.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1158654/Sean-Connery-faces-court-accused-profiting-3m-loan-friend.html

Screw the majority. I don't want to be sane. Everyone thinks their sane, but the more details we learn about each other, the more insane we all get. Humans have such a group-think mentality. If other people think one thing, then it has got to be correct, right?

Wrong. That thinking gets us justifying genocide, slavery, racism, sexism, and homophobia. It causes us to hold on to false truths like sun rotating around the earth, bacteria being a myth, or the world being flat.

But what does it get us? A sense of belonging? The ability to more easily identify the truth?

Jeez. You people sure cling to rediculous things.

Let me tell you, the truth is what YOU make of it, not everyone else. If you disagree, then be proud of it. Don't go along just because people will think you are wrong. You just propagate the lie.

Being scared, to me, is basically being a traitor to all the work humanity has done to rise itself from the dark ages.

Fear is old. Primitive. It controls you. It cannot help you. Fear can make friends fall apart, strangers to yell, nations to go to war for insane reasons. Fear has the power to make the most peaceful man kill if he lets it take over his mind.

So don't be scared. I ask you all, today, to let go of your fear. Tomorrow is a beautiful sunrise, and you can face it with inspiration and wonder, or you can cower from it like a timid child, lashing out against the unknown. Raise your faces to the light. Clear your hearts of worry, and doubt, and fear. Every human has the potential to be a shining star against a sea of darkness. Burn brightly, and make the world a better place!

 I wrote about 4 different iterations of a comment to outoforder2day but every one got off on a tirade about how much of a greed-fest capitalism is, so I'll just make a post. I used to think that the system could somehow be saved, but now I'm just looking for ways to make it crumble. We can only be really free by causing everyone to lose everything so we can start back from zero and not have big companies telling us when and how we can earn our money.

I'll just leave it at that, though I know you'll all disagree and quite frankly wouldn't be suprised if I find federal agents knocking at my door soon for wanting to destroy this sick and twisted joke you people call a society, but thats just the cruel, self-interested world for you.

Fuck money, fuck those with money, fuck those who want more money than they need, and I'd love to say I'm fucking through with money but I currently have a huge stack of college loans over my head and if I don't pay them, my mother has to and I could never do that to her. So I'll just stick with having as little money as possible for the time being. Its much easier this way.

I don't belong here, I'm just from some different world where I could just be happy and productive, and thats enough to get through the day.

I dare anyone to denounce this as "unfair."

 http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2009/01/26/daily79.html

"Zomg but mistar frittars tehy r rasponzable and wize frea-markit leedars whu ernd teh sebentyjillion dollrz!"

Yeah, how bout that free market folks. Hows that working out for you? Big business totally looking out for the general public interest? HAR HAR LETS BUY A 50K JET WITH PUBLIC MONEY!

Face it: The majority of big business leaders won't think twice to keep their own absurd salaries but fire hundreds of employees, then have the audacity to give themselves bonuses because they kept their companies in the black. On a related note: Who really needs anything more than half a million a year anyway? Unless you can show me that those multi-millionaires are donating upwards of 75% of their salary to charity (And I know, some do, but not enough) then they cannot be doing anything else but spending it on overpriced unneccesary crap like jets and cars and designer clothes, or even worse, sitting on it and proving exactly why the trickle-down tax cuts don't work. Just try denying it. Show me one reason anyone, be it manager, sports hero, or movie star, deserves several million dollars a year, when there are hard working people slaving away in factories to make their crap for a few hundred dollars a week.

Take away the golden chalice from the managers for a while and force them to live like regular people. Maybe it'll give them a change of heart, or at least maybe a heart attack.

I believe in the magical purple wizard. He lives up on a mountain overlooking our village, so he sees everything we do. He is an all powerful wizard and he loves us so much. Some people went looking for him, but they couldn't find him, which obviously means he is there and turned himself invisible because he is so powerful. He is kind and wise and we talk to him every day. Well, not really talk, but if we think about him really hard, we know he hears us, because sometimes he gives us what we wish for. Well, actually, he doesnt do that very much anymore, but we think hes just busy. We still think about what we want though, and it makes us happy, so it must be working. Better safe than sorry after all.

He created us, because there is nothing more powerful than him, so obviously he had to have created everything. Well, actually, there was a while before we knew the wizard was there, but anyone who talked about that time is burned at the stake for heresy against the magical purple wizard. Ok, he's kinda a dick sometimes, but he's not flooded the entire earth in a while, so we do what he says. Some people say he's a dick and we shouldn't like him anymore, so we burn them too, just in case. We don't want the wizard getting mad and blowing up our whole town for having them in it. Better safe than sorry after all.

There are a group of people around town who say they are the messengers for the wizard. Because they are so important, we make sure to give them lots of food and a really nice home. If we didn't they would go away and the wizard wouldn't listen to us anymore and they say that would make demons and locusts come and we would all be infected by the plague. Well, actually, the next town over listened to their messengers, and they all got burned by a volcano, but our messenger said thats because they didn't believe enough and they were not humble. So we give the messengers whatever they want and listen to them, they are very important and talk to the wizard for us every day. The messengers tell us to burn anyone who thinks they are wrong, or else the wizard will be very angry. So we do. Better safe than sorry after all.

The messengers tell us if we listen to them, we will never die, get sick, or have bad things happen to us. Well, actually, I broke my leg earlier this year, but the messenger told me that the wizard worked in mysterious ways and he had a plan for me. Wizards are really mysterious, so obviously the messenger was correct. I just hope his plan for me doesnt involve more pain, but I just want to do whatever the Wizard has planned for me. I don't want to mess up his plans for a beautiful world, he's been working on making the world not a be miserable place for almost two thousand years now and hasn't been able, so I figure I should help out. Better safe than sorry after all. 

When I was a kid I learned that if I was really good my entire life and I made sure to give our messenger lots of money so he could give it to the wizard, then the wizard wouldn't let me die but instead would bring me to his shining kingdom in the clouds. I asked why I couldn't go in right now, and the messengers said that I had to work here for them first, and if I disobeyed, they would tell the wizard and the wizard would instead put me in an unending fire under the earth forever. If we were good though, they promised I could hang out with all the dead people and we could spend eternity together. Well, actually, nobody's ever tried to come talk to us from either of these places, but the fire sounds pretty bad. Better safe than sorry after all.

A man once came to town and told us that the wizard didn't exist and we shouldn't listen to the messengers anymore, that we could be free and happy on our own. He told us that the messengers were just leeches who wanted a free ride. The messengers told us that he wanted to destroy our happy society, because he was a bad person. He said he was perfectly happy without listening to any wizard, but the messengers asked us if he could really be happy if he knew he was going to be burned in the neverending fire for not listening to the wizard. The messenger had a good point, because so many people believe in the wizard, he would have to be stupid or evil not to. Well, actually, sometimes I'm not happy having to go listen to the messengers talk all the time, and we sometimes get into wars with people who think there are other wizards, but I really don't want to go into the fire, so I didn't listen to the man. Better safe than sorry after all.

The magic purple wizard makes me happy to think of. Even though lots of other people who don't believe in him say they are happy, I know they are really miserable people and inside they are frightened of the wizard's unending fire, so they are trying to make us all go to the fire too out of spite. I am happy and the wizard gives meaning to my life and makes me a good person, so why would I give it up. Well, actually, the books the messengers gave us tell us to do some pretty bad things, but the messengers just tell us to ignore those parts. I am not afraid of dying because I know I will go to the beautiful cloud kingdom. Even though it involves a lot of work in this life, I have faith that I will be rewarded after I die.

Because an invisible, magic purple wizard high up on the mountain told us so.

Better safe than sorry after all.

 Ignorance is not stupidity. Being ignorant on a topic you should know or have a strong opinion on and not acknowledging or wanting to change that fact is stupidity.

Is it so bad that my default response to stupid people is to try and shame them in as broad a spectacle as possible, preferably in front of their own friends and company? If they are refusing to listen to facts and reason, then its pretty obvious nobody else can convince them otherwise, and I consider the best way to correct them is for the public to know exactly how dumb they are.c
I see a bright new world in our future. A bright world where we aren't terrified to correct those in power. A world where stupidity cannot hide, cannot linger, cannot fester under the guise of some mysterious managerial knowledge only those with six-figure paychecks can aquire. A world where we stand up to those that are stupid, and tell even our bosses, our managers, our politicians, that they are idiots. 

You don't like working with them anyway. Make their lives miserable. We can no longer stand by and accept our system of hiring people who are trained specifically to manage because then we get the disparity we are in now: The hard-working little guy makes the product, dedicates his life to it sometimes, but the second something goes wrong, they get sacked and the manager gets a fat bonus check for keeping the profits in the black. So its time to take a little back for us. Time to get pissed off. Rebel against those in your workplace you see dragging progress down. Show your co-workers what dumb decisions your boss makes. Go over their head, tell their bosses of their incompetence.

"oh but mistar frittarz, whut if i gitz fiyared!? i neez teh monies for mah supar imprtnt carz and haus n stuffz!!!1oneone"

First off, its your own fault you are in debt, but thats another story for another day. (Full disclosure: I regret my decision to go into so much debt to go to college, and don't want to go into debt for a car/house/etc) Secondly: Who cares about getting fired, your work is getting wasted on incompetence; this is a damn revolution and no great things can be done without risk of sacrifice. I call for a nation-wide strike on stupidity. If nobody works, you won't see the managers, the CEOs, and the board of trustees down in the factory making cars or whatever, will you? They'll flail about, asking for government intervention again, attempting to legislate how people can leave, maybe even get truely cruel and sever pensions, 401ks, etc to pad their own wallets to "survive" while still eating at expensive restaurants and sipping expensive booze. We'll be forced to make do with each other, and it can lead to that bright world I was talking about. With only competent, skilled workers who were looking to progress and not just live the high life, we could make truely world-shaking organizations.

But if the managers took off? They can be replaced from within. It doesn't take a Harvard MBA education to be an effective leader. Charisma and inspiration are personal traits, cultivated and nurtured throughout life, and those are the people I want to work with. Too many are substituting money for happiness. Get the wool out of your eyes, people. I'd rather have a $40k job working with people I liked and respected than a $100k job working for idiots that make me sick.

A big problem is our collective obsession with wanting to become part of that elite rich upper class. We try and get tastes of it, going out to eat at expensive restaurants, buying fancy imported cars, living in large suburban houses. All of that stuff is inconsequential tripe compared to the staggering vastness of things we have yet to discover. Stop spending billions of dollars on organized sports, whos major accomplishment in the past century has probably been the jumbotron, and put it towards something more productive. (More full disclosure: I don't want to make video games any more, I think they are just as big a waste of time that I am currently getting over my mental craving for.) Entertainment is nice, but we get excessive sometimes. That $300 ticket to the latest hit concert, tournament game, or major Broadway musical could have helped fund a worthwhile research effort. Even worse if you paid a scalper, because by doing so, you only encourage them more, making you the stupid one. What is better: Seeing your favorite baseball star, or the possibility of seeing the REAL stars? If you are so earth-centric that you said baseball star, then I'd consider you a traitor to the human race.

If we're not being ingenuitive, creative, and far-reaching, then what are we? Sloths, stagnatly sitting around? For what!? Some so-called messiah to take us to a promised land where everything will be happy and good, so we don't need progress here on Earth? Someone else to go and invent the cool stuff so you can have more time to watch Nascar on your new flat panel widescreen? I'll be perfectly clear: There is no someone else. It's just us, and this is what we have. Lets see what we can do with it.

I got a bit off-trach, but it comes down to this: The people in charge of our money, our jobs, our very lives, are corrupt, inept, immoral, or some combination thereof. They are in it for the money, not progress, and they cannot obtain their vast sums of money without taking it from someone else. The only time they favor progress is when it allows them to get higher profits. They rarely have a love for the craft, for what they do, only a love for more and more money. They found a way to make a buck and they will wring it for all it is worth. Entrepreneurs create beautiful ideas that are sold out to venture capital firms who in turn sell them out to bigger companies who bastardize the idea, increase profit margins, and often fire those who actually gave a shit about what they are doing.

Let's collectively go show them: we want to put the power back into the hands of people who give a shit.

 http://buffalobeast.com/133/bigthree.jpg

Gotta love capitalism!

I've been seeing a lot of ads pushing lottery tickets / scratch cards as great gift ideas. What the fuck? I mean sure, for those one or two lucky people, its fucking awesome. Unless the person who gives it decides to try and take it back. But in reality? The person giving it to you is basically saying "Here's a gift statistically worth less than cash!"