Category: Uncategorized

…is that you need to tell the same lie every time.

I read this today:

Protestor Mike Anger, 29, told Nashville’s News 2 he left his home and sales job in Lexington, Kentucky to protest at the plaza.

“I just kind of put my life on hold for this cause,” said Anger, who has been arrested twice at Legislative Plaza.

Anger said he is unsure if he will return to his corporate job because it represents what the Occupy movement is fighting against.

The first thing that went through my head was, “Wow! This guy is campaigning against corporations, but the corporation he works for gave him a month off! And they didn’t fire him? What?”

So I googled him. Guess what came up?

An article from three days ago:

Mike Anger, 30, of Lexington, Ky., is an unemployed bartender with a 6-year-old son.

I guess “bartender” is kind of like “corporate sales job” but he’s still got the whole “I might go back to my job” vs “unemployed” thing to work out. One or the other, bucko.

And seriously, why did he leave his home and his 6 year old son to protest in Nashville when his home town has it’s own occupy protest?

This isn’t a protest. It’s urban camping.

I have this problem.

When people say things, I decipher their meaning based on the common meaning of the words they use.

For example, back in March we had a fence put in. We paid for treated wood (says so on the bill). We got treated wood (says so on the tags stapled to the wood).

The fence warped, so I called the vendor to have it fixed. They just called me about it. the conversation went roughly like this:

Vendor: Oh, it warped because the wood hasn’t been treated. You’ll have to pay for us to fix it.

Me: But I paid for treated wood.

Vendor: Yes, but….

Me: Did I not get treated wood?

Vendor: Well yes, but….water got in it because it’s not treated and….

Me: You just said I bought–and you installed–treated wood. What, exactly, was it treated for?

Vendor: I’m not sure…

The end of it is that I have to pay for the labor to fix my in-warranty fence. I’m thinking about using an obscure definition of the word pay, since they didn’t clarify they wanted me to give them money instead of cover them with tar. 

I still have no idea what the hell I bought when I paid for treated wood.

So here are the basic results of my experiment:

• Blood pressure is consistently lower
• I’m getting more tasks accomplished at work and at home
• I’m less combative in general.

That being said, it was a little weird the first time someone said to me “Hey, did you hear about [random thing on the news]” and I had to answer “No.” That’s abnormal for me.

A huge bonus came about week 3. I realized that I had not seen or heard anything from Barack Obama, Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi in three weeks. That made me smile.

I’m going to assume that Only Ones are still assholes, Democrats are still for Big Government, Republicans are still for Big Government That Grows At A Slightly Slower Rate, and the media is still lying about pretty much everything. Did any of that change?

I’m going to ease back into it, but I really kind of liked not knowing what was going on. I mean, I have a vague idea of what’s going on with the “Occupy” protests, but it doesn’t enhance my life one bit to know that people who don’t have jobs, but do have smartphones, laptops, and tents, are protesting the fact that their degrees in women’s studies didn’t get them six figure jobs.

BTW, what the hell happened to Rick Perry? He was the frontrunner when I stopped paying attention. And why does it seem to be a Romney/Cain race at this point? I got off the Cain Train when he said it was totally okay for local governments to ban religious orders they don’t like.

My father died in his sleep a little over two years ago. Two days before that he and my mother purchased a new home. After a couple of months my mother decided to move in to the new, smaller house and try to sell the old one. A couple of months after that, she rented it out.

Mom started driving dad’s Trailblazer shortly after he passed. He was a smoker so she had the interior professionally cleaned. A few weeks later, she had a dream about him and the next morning she found a pack of cigarettes on the driver’s floorboard. Weird.

I was talking with her last night, and she told me that her renters think dad “is still in the house. He mostly walks from the bedroom [where he died] to the back deck [where he smoked].”

I’m not the kind of person that believes in ghosts, but once is happenstance…

Not quite two weeks in to my little experiment, and my blood pressure has dropped from 155/91 to 120/71.

Correlation!=Causation, and all, but that’s pretty stark.

“Well that was dumb. You should be resistant to change like the rest of us.”

A trainer to a student, after the student relayed a conversation he had with a manager where the student said, “I love learning new things.” Student is now going to be learning so many products that there’s no way he’s going to be good at any of them.

It’s barely October!

Ignorance is bliss.

If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.

Both of these are true statements.

For the month of October, I’m going to avoid social media, mainstream media, IRC, and political blogs/podcasts. I’m going to try to see what my blood pressure and mood do if I just stick my head in the sand for a little bit.

I’m a little too angry-due-to-paying-attention some times and that causes me to make passionate arguments in ways that make complete sense to me, but are very off-putting to normal people. As an example, I recently attended an event where one of the lawyers who got the first iteration of Restaurant Carry declared unconstitutional. I asked him why they didn’t also challenge the new law allowing restaurant carry for off duty officers, and he said that police are (paraphrasing) “trained for that sort of thing.” I questioned him pretty harshly on what specific training police receive that pertains to that issue, and whether or not he would be okay with permit holders having that training. He basically responded that the only way he would ever be comfortable with someone carrying in a restaurant is if they are a current LEO, regardless of training. It was a similar line of reasoning I’d used before with other people.

I thought my arguments pointed out that the guy was just biased against citizens, since his base criteria was ultimately only who someone’s employer is. I was informed later by John Lott (yes, that John Lott) that my arguments came off as anti-police, suggesting police officers are not well-trained. That was absolutely not my intention.

When John Lott tells you your argument is a bad one, you listen.

So I’m going to try to be a “regular” person for a little bit. I’ll still be doing the debt-free blogging (those posts are already queued) and some tech news stuff, but I’m going to try to stay out of the politics for a little bit.

I imagine that–like Kevin Baker–I’ll be back to it quicker than I plan.

Once is happenstance.

Twice is coincidence.

There better goddamned well not be a third time. Like I said in the comments to the first post above, there is no brighter line than suspension of elections.

Long time real-life friend disavowedwithhonor went and got himself a blog!

Go check it out!