31.8.08

Walk, you fucking lazy bastards.

I went with my fiance and some friends this weekend to an event one state over. He remarked that gas was about 12 cents more expensive there than it was here. One of the girls in our car commented: "At least gas isn't $4 per gallon."
My response: "That's like saying 'At least the dog only shit on the rug instead of rubbing it in'."

People who whine about gas prices are beginning to infuriate me because I know that gas will be $12/gallon before some of them give up their precious SUVs. I'm sick of polls asking people what gas price it will take before they change their driving habits, because I changed my driving habits when gas hit two dollars per gallon-- but it's not saving me much money, because I'm using half the gas at twice the price because peanut-dicks in H2s keep the demand high.

I used to drive like a lunatic. I knew exactly what manner of speed my car could reach on the low-traffic bit of highway between where I was and where I needed to be. Then gas started hitting 2 dollars, 2.20, 2.50. I told myself that fuel cost too much to drive inefficiently, and that I'd go back to driving like a bat out of hell when it fell back below two dollars.

Admittedly I still treat the speed limit as a suggestion, because going 55 on a flat road with no visibility issues and no other cars is fucking stupid, but I don't reach triple digits and coast the last few miles into town like I did then.

3 dollars per gallon? I don't visit my parents as much anymore, and I carpool when I do.

Almost 4 dollars? My car is staying where it is, I'm biking to my friends' houses and taking the bus to go grocery shopping. This weekend's drive could have been 4 cars with 2 people each, but we did it with one car and a van.

My mother has driven a little Geo Metro as long as I can remember. She buys extras, even busted ones from repo auctions, and she fixes them up to drive around. They get about 50 miles to the gallon. She's allowed to bitch about gas prices, because she's doing everything she can to conserve gas.

My father, on the other hand, drives a car that gets about half that. He insisted on visiting my brother recently, because my brother had left something at his house. Instead of mailing it for ~$20, my father drove here and back for about $40 in gas. My mother suggested taking a Metro; my father wanted to take a car with air conditioning.(My mother and I both roll our windows down.) He is not allowed to bitch.

If you drive a vehicle that gets less than 30mpg, without good reason*, you are not allowed to complain about fuel costs.
If you drive a Hummer or any sort of Hummer cross breed, an earnest discussion with your doctor will reveal amazing strides in penis enlargements, from pills to pumps to surgeries.

I'm angry that gas is a currency now-- When his car broke down, my father paid the guy who fixed it by filling up his truck. In high school, I paid for a friend's gas as part of flirting with him, like you might surprise someone with a CD you thought s/he'd like; now, a tank of gas costs more than a dozen roses.

Yes, gas companies raise prices because of looming hurricanes and whatnot, but they also raise them because they can. You'll note gas companies posting record profits this year-- I'm not talking about record gross income, mind you. Record profits.

Last time you drove by the gas station and said, damn, gas went up 10 cents this weekend, did you pick up an ad for a motor scooter?
Last time you filled up your car for the second time this week, did you map the distance from home to work to see whether it might be walkable?
Last time your debit card crossed your daily withdrawal limit because you got gas in the morning, did you swing by the bike shop?
Last time you debated not going on vacation because of gas costs, did you check your tire pressure, your oil, and your air filter?

I didn't think so. Suck it up, fuckwit, they've got no reason to lower gas prices when you keep buying it. Your whining is not part of the solution. You are not part of the solution. You're part of the problem. Shut the fuck up and do something about it, because I'm not going to pull over and help when I see you stranded on the side of one of those long gas station-less stretches of highway-- I will laugh my ass off instead.


*Good reason will be defined as "I live someplace where an SUV is actually a requirement to get out of my driveway" (this is true for one of my aunts), "I have more children than there are seatbelts in a normal car, including having someone sit in the middle of the back seat," (although I point out that this is your own fault), and "I only drive this vehicle when I have to, if I'm not hauling something then I drive an appropriate car."

29.8.08

Hi Pot, I'm Kettle.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7588435.stm

Wait, so, you're going to attack Obama for being too young and inexperienced in foreign policy... And then choose a vice president who's not even finished serving one term as governor of Alaska (previously mayor of a town of 8,000*), and is in fact younger than Obama?

Your vice president, who becomes the President of the Senate and furthermore becomes president in the event that your 72-year-old self keels over, has two of the main qualities you've been attacking in your opponent, except she has them even more so?

My god, you're really riding this Clinton-Obama cattiness, aren't you?


*(spokesman in article quoted as saying 9000, a 2004 census pegs it at 7,738, claimed here .)

13.8.08

Living and working in hellholes and paradise.

There's a saying about careers, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." I've got to add, "Work where you love, and every day is a vacation."

I've been on a camping trip the past week or so, followed by a few days of tooling around the city. And I loved them both.
Lucky lucky me, I work in a field where I can get a job nearly wherever the hell I want. I'm going to push to get my internship done out there, get my foot in the door for a long-term position.

I'm not one of those people who says that if you hate your job, you should just quit-- because I've had people say that to me (before my current job) and it's infuriating. While it's nice for a person to assume you have the requisite skills, it's not exactly sympathetic-- especially in the current economy and when one lacks things such as savings to fall back on.

But, I interviewed a career advisor the other day, and he told me what he says to get people to pay attention: If you work 40 years with two weeks vacation per year, that is 2,000 Mondays you will have to get up and go to work, whether you want to or not. His point is to be careful picking your major and make sure you go into something you actually like; my point is that it baffles me when someone comes home and bitches about work all day. Find something you enjoy about it, try to do something about it, pick up an other-field-you're-interested-in-for-dummies book-- don't resign yourself to another 1,950 Mondays of hating your life.

(The difference is that the unsympathetic fuckwads think you should turn in your two week's notice right now, damn the consequences, while I think you should start poking your other options.)


By the same tack, don't live somewhere you hate. Again, don't up and move with no savings or prospects, but don't resign yourself to waking up somewhere that's too hot, too cold, too liberal, too conservative, too quiet, too loud, too whatever. Right now? I like where I live, for the most part. It's reasonably liberal, has decent events, has a lot of hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you can get a pile of food for five bucks if you aren't afraid of trying something new. (How to tell your ethnic restaurant is serving authentic food: the kitchen staff the servers the owners the customers are the claimed ethnicity.) It does, however, spend six months of the year making me bitch about "What sort of crazy person lives here voluntarily?" as I languish in front of a fan or chip ice off my windshield. And I've found a place that has the attitude, events, food, and weather that I want. So I'm making my plans.

Upshot: If where you live or work makes you hate your life, then a change of venue is probably worth the effort, even if it's not advisable to move/quit right this second. Look around.

5.8.08

Money and lingerie

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7541675.stm

For male readers, the only difference between the bra pictured and one available at Walmart is that it says Polizei across the band. Admittedly there are no Walmarts in Germany, but the point is that there's nothing really special about this bra. If you read the article, it claims that they're like sports bras, butwith no underwires or clasps -- Two features not standard in sports bras in the first place.

One of my journalism professors, if we were stumped following a story, told us "Money, money, money. Follow the money until you find out where it's coming from."

3000 bras, plus the number of surplus or spares, + distribution, + R &D. I don't know where it's coming from, but I bet it costs more than distributing informational fliers suggesting female cops wear a sports bra under their bulletproof vest, perhaps one packaged with every uniform or vest.

This is just not an example of good journalism. The writer did not talk to people outside the PR department (Offhand, I don't know Der Polizei's policy on officers talking to press, but there are surely some lingerie store owners who might have something to say), which meant that no-one pointed out to her(?) that these are just normal bras, and didn't ask the #2 question on dealing with everything government/bureaucracy related: "Who is paying for this BS?"

(The number one question is always "Is it true?")

Seriously, who wants a bra with their work position printed on it, anyway?