Culture Decay

A Quarter Saved is a Quarter You Can Shove Right Up Your Ass

2012-02-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

Like any self-respecting ceorl, I live in an apartment complex. I do not have a washer and dryer in my dwelling. Fortunately, there is an on-site laundry facility.
To operate the appliances in this facility, one must insert five US quarter dollars per use.
Fuck the hell out right out of that.
Today is Sunday, which I've discovered is National No-You-Do-Not-Get-a-Fucking-Quarter Day. On this day, businesses everywhere act as one to celebrate their right to dick with their customers.
For example, banks celebrate this day by simply being fucking closed. They realize that it would be too convenient to be open when people are not at work and therefore able to travel to their business. Who knows how many customers will start just showing up at convenient times if they start doing business on Sunday. They would have a goddamned riot on their hands!
Plus, there's pressure from religious groups who apparently believe that if you work on Sunday, Jesus will come down from Valhalla and cut off your foreskin.
That's some scary shit.
Other businesses who sell things besides money don't find it quite so economically or religiously viable to remain closed on Sunday.
I was shopping at Fred Meyer today buying an assortment of goods I could likely find cheaper elsewhere were I to give a fuck. When I arrived at the register to make my purchase, I inquired as to whether I could get a roll of quarters cash back. The teller replied that no, she could not sell me a roll of quarters, but if I went down to customer service, they could maybe sell me one.
My mind freshly full of fuck, I asked if there was more or less than a 50% chance they would sell me one.
She wasn't sure what the probability actually was, so I completed my purchase and made my way over to the customer service desk.
"Excuse me," said I, "I was told you might be able to sell me a roll of quarters. Is this true?"
"No, we don't sell quarters here," the service person replied.
"Oh. Well, chance can be a cruel mistress I suppose. Good day."
OK. So they don't allow ceorls to just walk up and demand quarters. Fine. But since when does exchanging one amount of money for an equal amount of money constitute a sale?
Hi, I have a Granny Smith apple. I will give it to you if you give me that Fuji apple. Done. Was that a sale?
No, it was a goddamned trade. If I said, "Will you sell me that Fuji apple for this Granny Smith apple," you would probably think I was trying to offer up the Granny Smith for the right to buy the Fuji apple.
So I collected my ass and walked on out of there.
I went to a local laundromat, sure they would not be participating in National No-You-Do-Not-Get-a-Fucking-Quarter Day.
Imagine, then, the paroxysm of chagrin that befell me when I realized that at this particular establishment, every goddamned day was National No-You-Do-Not-Get-a-Fucking-Quarter Day.
They're pretty committed to the principle behind National No-You-Do-Not-Get-a-Fucking-Quarter Day.
When I walked in, I made for what looked like a change machine. However, at first glance it appeared to be a machine that turns $5 bills into $1 bills. "Well, that's a pretty goddamned ridiculous thing to be taking up space in the universe," I thought. "I should take a closer look to see if I've finally lost my grip on sanity and am currently spiraling into the bottomless maw of madness!"
Nope, this was not a change machine of any kind. In fact, it was a machine that allowed you to insert money, and receive in return a plastic card that had credits on it that only work on their appliances.
"Well, shit on a syphilitic baboon!" I thought. "That's completely unrelated to why I came here!"
Sure enough, this was the only kind of money-changer they had. At least Jesus could recognize them by their uniform should he become enraged at that particular establishment.
It was at this point that I figured I should probably go home and peel my dick with a potato-peeler, which would make acquiring quarters a secondary concern and therefore not my active focus of thought.
Not one to give up before going absolutely batshit bonkers, I had the bright idea that if I found a vending machine, I could insert dollars and receive quarters if I hit the return button.
The first vending machine I found appeared as though at some point in the past it accepted bills, but a metal plate replaced the orifice that would normally accept my shitty dollar. Like the stump of an amputee, it mocked my senses with the reminder of functionality lost.
The second machine just straight-up ate my dollar and would not give me any kind of refund when I hit the return button.
It was at that point that I succumbed to the spirit of National No-You-Do-Not-Get-a-Fucking-Quarter Day, and made my way home.
Fuck quarters. Seriously.
Fuck them right to death.

Motivation

2011-07-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

I'm in need of motivation.

My life has been up in the air for a while now, and I need to get my shit together.

I need a life coach that combines the ideal motivational aspects of Richard Simmons and the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.

"Come on! You can do it! I know you can YOU LAZY, CROOKED STACK OF MONKEY SHIT!"

I've been having a great time exploring my youth. Being single is a much better experience this time around than it was last time.

I attribute this to the fact that I've made some great friends over the years who I appreciate very much. When you have the stable things in your life ripped out from under you, it's nice to have people help you up and show you that it's possible to live without those things.

I think ultimately the big difference is that my attitude has changed significantly in the past few years, and I find it easier to get along with people. There was a time I was an epic prick-face capable of great feats of dicketry.

I'm having a fucking blast hanging out with friends, going to the bar, going to shows, partying and engaging in acts of profound irresponsibility. It's like I've taken a time machine back to my early twenties. No, I was working and going to college while simultaneously hating the shit out of people who had the time to party in my early twenties.

It's like I've taken a time machine back to someone else's early twenties.

As great as it is to live as free as a debt-slave can be, there are some realities I have to face:

1. I live with my fucking parents.

2. I live with my fucking parents.

3. I haven't so much as looked at a single apartment even though I can afford one.

4. I live with my fucking parents.

5. I need to pay off my debt.

6. I need a cooler car.

7. I live with my fucking parents.

8. The more time I spend partying (and recovering from partying) the more the responsible part of me suffers.

9. I live in Aurora, Oregon with my fucking parents.

I really can't give my parents any shit. They've been very cool. It was their idea for me to move in, and we really haven't gotten on each others' nerves so far. Granted, I am not home most of the time, but it's pretty painless to deal with.

I'm starting to think I should tone down the party. The other day, I woke up bruised and bleeding for no good reason. That was a pretty good wake up call.

At least I didn't wake up face down in the dumpster with my butt bleeding and a dollar bill stapled to my chest.

This time.

I very much want to get my own place. Living with another human being is not an experience I wish to repeat anytime soon.

To make this happen, I need to get organized and be more responsible.

Aw, little Andrew is growing up.

"Way to go! You can do it! You got it, YOU DISEASED SACK OF TAMPON MAGGOTS."

Basic Information

2011-07-07T00:08:00.000-07:00

You are, as we speak, browsing the internet.
Which browser are you using to view the web page?
Did it take you more than five seconds to answer this question? If so, then I'm sorry, but I'd sort of like it if you were condemned to a fiery, horrific death.
Don't be offended. I've seen religion promise worse for less.
I work technical support over the phone, but I'm not one of those super-cool ninja-reps that can remotely control your computer. I'm one of those underpaid, cynical reps that digs grooves in his flesh and grits his teeth while you struggle to open an email attachment.
Most of the time it's not so bad, but other times nuclear weapons don't seem like a terrible invention.
I understand that most people are not technically inclined. But if you're to the point where you need to call another human being for help with your techno-majigger, it's important to--at the very least--know what it is you need help with.
So often do I get this:
"Thanks for calling ACME. My name is Andrew. How can I help you?"
"My ACME won't work."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Which ACME product do you have?"
"Uhhhhh...it's an ACME...I dunno. Does it matter?"
"Yes, I assumed that's why you were calling me and not some other company's employee. But we make literally thousands of different products that can be used for anything from church-building to alligator rape, and they all have unique names that identify in some small way what they are and what they do."
"Oh, hang on, let me get the box."
"The name, model number, and serial number are all physically printed on the device in characters from the alphabet of your first language."
"Oh, OK, I found the box. It's an ACME Bandit 983."
"Oh. You have an ACME Bandoleer 983. When you say it isn't working, could you possibly be more vague?"
"Why certainly. Let me start driving, switch to my bluetooth headset, adopt a foreign accent, and become extremely impatient."
"Wonderful sir. I'll just go fuck myself. Thanks for calling ACME."
It boggles my mind that people will make the effort to find my phone number to call me for help before they've even determined what the fuck it is they own. It's as if they, like the Nazgul, require only a name and a general direction toward which to direct their wrath when something breaks.
"SHIIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEE! BAAAAAGGIIIIINSSSSSSSSS!"
*moments later*
"Thanks for calling The Shire, my name is Frodo. How can I help you today?"
Fuck.
The world would be a very different place if they would teach basic troubleshooting skills in school. Granted, I might not have a job, but it really is pathetic how helpless some people are when it comes to technology they use and rely upon every day.
Here's what I will ordinarily do before calling tech support:
1. Figure out what I have and what I'm trying to use it for. I can usually skip this step because I'm not an ignorant cock-tool.
2. Formulate a coherent description of my problem.
3. Enter that description into Google, along with the name of the product I'm using.
4. Spend some time on forums and support sites determining if there is a common solution to my problem.
5. Attempt any possible solutions.
6. Swear with loving creativity.
7. Determine whether my device is under warranty in the first place.
Seems simple enough.
Maybe I'm overly bitter today, but it's justified. I had a customer who swore up and down that he was using Internet Explorer 7.
It turned out he was using motherfucking Safari.
I'm not sure I'll ever trust another human being again.

Truth Assassin

2011-07-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

At last, you cry, a Culture Decay post about the decay of culture.
I SAID CRY.
Anyway, so the Casey Anthony verdict was delivered today. I'd say I don't give a shit, but I do on a frequent enough basis to wish my body could develop an alternate means of processing food.
Meh, fuck it. I don't give a shit.
I've got a pretty good reason not to give a shit, I guess. Whenever these cases get a ton of media attention, I can't help but think that attention is misplaced. After all, considering the events taking place in the world at large, is it really that important what happens to one woman who may have murdered one child?
In the news today, a troupe of elite guerilla soldiers raped and murdered every man, woman, and child on the continent of Africa AND IN OTHER NEWS, A TUBE OF USED LIPSTICK WAS FOUND IN CASEY ANTHONY'S CAR NEAR SOME TISSUE THAT CONTAINED HER DNA.
...stay tuned for slack-jawed commentary from Greta Van Susteren.
Is this really how information is prioritized and delivered in this country? I can turn on the news and hear a thousand opinions on Casey Anthony/OJ Simpson/Donald Trump/Michael Jackson/Mike Tyson levied in rich, baritone voices. But does anyone talk about the things that actually affect our lives?
If a congressman demonstrates what a ridiculous sham his marriage is/most marriages are, pundits will screech and growl with outrage. But if an executive of a pharmaceutical company quits to work for the FDA, serves that company's interests during his employment there, and then leaves to be re-hired by his original employers, not a fart of a whisper is uttered.
I increasingly feel that the world is bringin' on the buttrape, and that the end of the previous clause should be sung in the style of Def Leppard.
The approach of these buttrapes is largely unheralded, butt-rock or no.
Have money in the bank? Not as much as you did five seconds ago due to inflation. News? Meh.
Ever seen a coherent explanation of what inflation is or why it happens on a major news network?
Nah, that stuff is too confusing for the average American.
So many important bits of useful information are lost amid the cries urging us to moral outrage over immoralities made irrelevant by the worst of our deeds.

Dreams

2011-07-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

The mind is a horrifying place.
I learned this recently while I was sleeping. Or more correctly, immediately after I finished sleeping.
It is fully bizarre to me that after my brain shuts off my consciousness and disconnects me from the world, it synthesizes a nonsensical alternate reality from the pieces of information I've fed it.
What is the purpose of this? I realize that science has some things to say about the subject, but it's a fun question to ask rhetorically. It's like my brain eats the sensory information I feed it, digests it, then craps out the fermented leavings into my consciousness.
Most of the time, I'm at least somewhat aware that I'm dreaming. I've never really been good at lucid dreaming, but my dreams are mostly non-sequitur enough for me to not to confuse them with reality.
But last night, this was not the case.
Last night, I experienced a dream that seemed very real. This happens from time to time. I'm sure everybody's experienced that heartbreaking dream where you finally earn the promotion you've been lusting after, only to have it dashed away by the rude onrush of reality as you awake. Or experienced the relief that comes after waking from an argument with a loved one that had gotten out of hand.
This was one of those dreams.
This dream left me in a very powerful emotional state that caused me to question many of the decisions I've been making in my life. I awoke with a great many conflicting emotions that I was not prepared to face.
Regret. Humility. Pain. Failure. Love.
I've since come to the conclusion that it was only a fucking dream, but for a while this morning after the nausea faded I found myself wondering about its significance.
The emotions I felt were very real, even if the stimuli that prompted them were not.
It's as if my brain presented me with a hypothetical to see how I'd react.
I did not expect my reaction.
I'm a little bit confused about what it all means, if anything.
I realize that there is no intent behind what I experienced, whether benign or malevolent. Random chance ensures that some synthetic realities I experience will be more authentic than others. But yet I'm left looking for something to blame.
I have a hard time with the idea that I can feel that devastated and inadequate by accident.

Kidnap the Past Lyrics

2011-05-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've found myself sifting through the wreckage of my broken life. There are certainly some wonderful fragments to be unearthed.
There are also a few turds to bury.
This blog, for example.
No. I like my blog.
Fuck you, rhetorical me.
The band I was fronting most recently, Kidnap the Past, has blown up. It is my experience that awesome things tend to do that. I guess it's better to blow up when you're nobody than to fizzle out when you're somebody.
I spent a good amount of time writing the lyrics for the band. I followed a particular pattern:
1. Choose a person I hate.
2. Write down a list of 10-20 things I hate about that person.
3. Write a short essay from that person's perspective justifying their behavior.
4. Adapt the content of the essay to the song's melodies.
I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I actually thieved it from Maynard James Keenan.
I wanted to put these somewhere somebody could read them, since it seems that they are not destined to be heard amid the thunder of double bass and the shrieking of distorted guitars.
So here they are. Feedback is welcome and encouraged. I've always had trouble writing lyrics.

Bear False Witness

I've done it;
I've won.
They have great confidence in me.
I play a special part.
I show them what they'd want to see
If they would open their eyes
But their lives have no transparency.

I'm here to hold their attention from
The things that matter most to me.

Not here to rock the boat.
Not here to break the mold.

Not here to scheme and spin.
Just here to make sure you fall in.

Behold a friendly face.
Flesh-mask of everything you hate.

Caught you sleeping
Caught you dreaming
Safely slumbering
Can't feel anything
Got your reasons
Your distractions
Don't say anything
Don't explain yourself to me

Not here to rock the boat.
Not here to break the mold.

Bear false witness, blind the eye.
Take your hope. Make it mine.
Search and seizure, peek and pry.
Take your hope and make it mine.

Not here to set you free.
Here to attract your eyes to me.

Behold a friendly face.
My smiling eyes will keep you safe.

I'm here to hold your attention.

Is it working?
Good.

My Example

The sight of you is difficult to stand,

But I forgive you anyway.

Bide my time. Sacrifice.

Meek and feeble, lone ascetic, notwithstanding, my example cheapens and slights you all.

Come be anointed.

Grant me in return a smiling countenance, an outstretched hand, your open legs and rapt attention.

Lift up my cup.

Drink of my wine.

Breathe of my pipe.

Open your mind.

Do this so that my wisdom may fit inside,

Take root and seed a thousand lies to make you mine.

And when the meek ascend I may in time collect what's mine.

Liar, adulterer, and charlatan, you cry.

I smile, for you expect to be deceived, and I am not to blame.

I weep, for you have come to me confused and have no one to blame.

Understand that I am a vessel of that which came before.

Absorbed and made a part of me those things which came before.

I cannot do this by myself. It's just too much.

Desire stirs inside my mind; becomes my crutch.

But I bide my time...

Meek and feeble, lone ascetic, notwithstanding, my example cheapens and slights you all.

I smile, for you expect to be deceived and I am not to blame

I weep for you have come to me confused and have no one to blame.

You cannot deny me that which I've sacrificed away

I have nothing left to lose that you can take away...

That right belongs to me.

Small World

The world has grown and it seems as though
I'm getting smaller all the time.
Afraid to wonder; afraid to know.
Afraid of failure.

Afraid no one will remember my name when time has taken its toll.
Afraid forever will vanish away all the marks that I've clawed on the walls of this hole.

I deny these enormities and build a world that's just my size.
Flourish in isolation.
Magnified by comparison.

In this world that I have made
I cannot be ignored.
Have no choice but to witness me...
Stay with me forever.

If I desire anything, it's to keep you here with me.
Bathe you in my radiance until we both are dead.
In a world that's just my size, I'm the only thing you'll see.
Bathe you in my radiance until we both are dead.

Stay inside...
Live in here with me.
Stay inside...

I deny these enormities and build a world that's just my size.
Flourish in isolation.
Magnified by comparison.

Don't you dare tell me secrets.
Don't you dare.
Don't you dare.

Is it insanity? Control what you perceive.
Is it insanity? Close your eyes and make believe.
Is it insanity, yourself to deceive?

Is it insanity?

Rusted Generation

A cloak of niceties to hide my shame.

My smiling teeth show through like the spokes of a stuck wheel

'Cause I am just a ruin left rusting in the rain.
The voice of obsolescence, still speaking for a
Generation now imprisoned in flesh no longer willing
Struggling for acceptance...

If you say a prayer for me to comfort you
I'll lay a curse on you to comfort me.

And I've found my fantasy
These creatures different from myself
So free of pestilence
But not for long...

Lay my burdens on their minds
Twice the weight for half the size
Dig their graves to bury mine
Lay my burdens and my failures on the backs of those whose dreams have not been shat upon by time.

My rusted eyes know you.
You're the joke among the ruined ones.

Heart of Villainy

I have witnessed man indulge the heart of villainy.
I have seen the cruelty of his intentions.
I have seen good men torn apart by chance,
And demons made gods by treachery.

Seen this and more.
Found nothing sacred.
Done this and more.
No sign of justice.

This world takes from me...
This world takes from me...

I've seen the decay of strength unsung for fear of pride.
I've damned everything.
Condoned everything, yeah, yeah...
This world weakens me.
This world ripens me, yeah, yeah...
This world steals from me,
Even as I give myself to it.

I've lived to lay my hands on so much of the world.
With my waking eyes beheld a nightmare.
Everything I touch steals a part of me.
I'm left wretched, poorer for these gifts.

Onus

2010-08-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

I was on my way home the other day from my brother's house in Aurora when I approached a traffic light. The light regulates traffic at the intersection of Ehlen Road and the Hubbard Cutoff. I was on Ehlen Road heading toward the freeway when I noticed from afar that a car waiting had just gotten a green light going the same direction I was.

The car proceeded through the intersection, and the light changed back to red.

Soon, I too was waiting at the same light. After the preprogrammed delay, the light changed and I was permitted to advance through the intersection.

I realize that this is a rather mundane occurrence, but there is a detail I haven't mentioned from which I draw significance.

From the time the first car was permitted through the intersection to the time my light turned green, there was zero traffic on the perpendicular street. Nobody crossed the intersection, nor were there any cars approaching. I would argue, therefore, that there was no reason for the light to change.

And yet it did.

This happens every day at an untold number of intersections across the country, and it happens because engineers and planners have designed our infrastructure this way.

It works that way by design.

And as I sat there waiting for the light to change, I wonder if those engineers had calculated and accepted a certain amount of unmitigated, anti-establishment rage in their design.

I imagine it never crossed their minds that I'd be sitting there in my little red pickup steaming with intense frustration that the country we've hewn from earth and flesh is a backward, borderline-retarded place.

You might be having trouble understanding how I could become so angry about something so simple. Fear not; your intelligence is not lacking. I was only able to reach my conclusion assisted by cascading array of personality disorders.

Let's find out why I'm upset.

What happens when a vehicle stops? It's such a trivial question, but do you really know? When you step on the brake, you engage a hydraulic mechanism that pushes a horribly toxic fluid through a system of piping to actuate a device that closes two slabs (themselves composed of horribly toxic materials) onto a rotating metal disc. The friction between these two surfaces creates the force that ultimately stops the car.

The horribly toxic brake fluid stays put, but the friction between disc and slab causes both to erode. This creates brake dust. I'm sure everyone has had to clean this from their wheels at some point.

By stopping the vehicle, we've done two things. We've increased wear on the brake components, and we've polluted the environment with toxic dust.

Sounds awesome enough so far, but I'm not done.

What's the other logical consequence of stopping a car at a stoplight? Well, ladies and gentlemen, that car is going to have to speed right back up if the driver is going to get to his or her destination.

Why am I concerned about this? Vehicles achieve the highest fuel economy and lowest emissions when they are cruising. All the engine has to do is counter wind resistance and mechanical friction, and the car's momentum does the rest.

But to accelerate from a dead stop is a different story. To overcome the vehicle's inertia, the engine works extra hard. In manual-transmission vehicles, the clutch must be engaged and therefore eroded.

When an engine is under heavy load (especially at part throttle) the fuel economy and emissions are the worst. The engine has to burn more fuel because it is doing more work, and as a consequence of combustion, more heavy by-products are expelled through the exhaust.

Let's recap and compare. The government has a system that requires a stop. Stopping increases wear on a vehicle's moving parts. Stopping releases toxic dust into the environment. Stopping (and subsequently accelerating) reduces fuel economy. Stopping increases vehicle emissions. Stopping increases commute time.

Allowing a vehicle to keep moving maximizes fuel economy and minimizes emissions, and decreases commute time.

It sounds like it's a good idea to mandate as few stops as possible, both for the motorist and the environment. I know that secretly you love going to Les Schwab to get your brakes checked, and that you love chatting up the gas station attendant, but you have to admit that vehicle ownership would be cheaper if you had to make fewer stops.

So am I outraged by the mere fact that the inefficient traffic infrastructure has increased my vehicle ownership costs? Not entirely.

There is, after all, the environmental component. And that's where the rage hooks start to slither out of the darkness to twist and contort my mind.

Or, alternatively, my ballsack.

Anyway, we talked about toxic brake dust laden with copper compounds and asbestos, and we talked about heavy molecule emissions from increased engine load. Right? Right.

Anybody remember this? This is legislation dictating that auto manufacturers must improve fuel economy fleetwide by 2016. By that time, every manufacturer must have an average fleetwide rating of 35 MPG.

Now, don't flip out. I think it would be a good thing if cars were more fuel efficient. However, I take issue with the government stepping in and telling a private corporation it needs to make concessions for the environment when its own infrastructure is a joke.

I hate to make a Reductio ad Hitlerum, but I think it's a bit like Nazi Germany stepping in to condemn the eugenics programs we had in the United States prior to WWII.

The government should not be stepping in to force automakers to make their products more efficient. The government should educate its citizens properly such that they can choose appropriate products to buy. They will cease making bad products if nobody buys them. Granted, the government has dropped the ball on education, and people are retards, so there may come a time and a place where regulating industry is acceptable or even necessary, but not right now. Why? The government collects money specifically for the purpose of road infrastructure creation and management. Because it collects this money, it has a responsibility to deliver said product.

Their product is not environmentally friendly, for the reasons I've explained above.

Rather than doing its job and delivering a working product, the government puts the onus on automakers and consumers to build and buy more expensive products.

Before the government starts regulating companies and people, it should first regulate itself. This way, it's not fucking around with the economy and personal freedom. But I guess it's easier to put the burden on private industry, since they can actually get shit done. The government has to do basically nothing, yet it gets the credit for furthering environmental causes.

Need more proof than stoplights that the roadways are inadequate and environmentally destructive? Drive through a city during rush hour. Do cars cruise freely down the highways and flow like water through intersections?

No. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. Go.

I can't even begin to calculate the fuel savings and emissions reduction that we would see if the roadways worked properly.

Apparently the government knows that cars spend too much time stopped, because it chose to subsidize the cars that shut off when they stop rather than reduce the stopping problem itself.

Getting poor fuel economy from sitting in traffic caused by inadequate infrastructure? Buy a hybrid car, and the government will even pay for some of it! Yay!

Why not spend that money improving the infrastructure?

They have motion sensitive cameras installed at intersections that take my picture if I run a red light. Why can't they have a motion sensitive camera that controls the traffic lights? Right now they use magnetic coils in the concrete to detect your car. That's what those circles and diamonds you see at intersections are. Why not replace those with more modern technology? I guess it's more important to penalize motorists for running red lights than to make lights safer and more efficient.

Can the technology not keep up with intersection traffic? I have a hard time believing that, since for $199 you can buy an attachment for your Xbox that can map your skeleton and track its motion.

For your goddamned Xbox. For two hundred dollars.

Dare I mention that out of every 100 barrels of oil the United States uses, about 50 of those are used by the government?

For me, it's like having the fattest, most disgusting unwashed slob I've ever seen telling me I need to go on a diet and take a shower.

Designed to Make You Suffer

2010-07-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I observe things, I get the feeling of an underlying malice. I suspect that many of these feelings cannot properly be justified, and are a result of my artfully developed cynicism. But I have them nonetheless.

Sometimes when I see products, I will become annoyed simply because they are being marketed to people. I will instantly dissect their marketing approach, often in conjunction with the viability of the product. It is as though I happen upon a tripwire, and sneer in defiance of that which hunts me.

My favorite things to hate within this category of odious things are those products which are old but have new marketing schemes. "Yesterday's technology--today!" I cry, raising my fist and contorting my face into a lopsided grin. Allow me to bullet two examples I've collected:

Verizon FiOS and Comcast xFinity. These services advertise fiber-optic technology as though it were invented yesterday by genetically engineered geniuses in some mathematically-superior Asian country. I understand that the way they are implementing it is new, but I suspect only because they have exhausted their marketing ability for the older coaxial technology. I might be impressed at their implementation if fiber-optic cable wasn't used in the sixties by NASA. I might be impressed if fiber optic cable hasn't been used for internet traffic since the dawn of the internet.
Modern Automobiles with Mechanical Valve Actuation. This is a bit technical, so if you're not a car person, you may get lost. But I'll try to keep it as friendly as possible. Your car (unless you drive a mazda rx-7 or 8) has a crankshaft and a camshaft. The pistons are attached to the crankshaft, and when a cylinder fires, the piston gets pushed down. This turns the crankshaft. The crankshaft is attached via a chain or timing belt to the camshaft. The camshaft has lobes attached to it that push valves open to fill the cylinder with air/fuel or push exhaust out. Now, anybody who has owned a car with more than about 60 thousand miles on it has probably had the experience of replacing the timing belt. It's expensive, and usually time-consuming. Whenever I see a car that markets itself as a technological achievement, my mind instantly about-faces and shits all over the sentiment. Why? Because despite what gadgets or safety features they've gimmicked for this marketing year, that car has a mechanically-driven camshaft. What's the problem with this? Well, the technology behind it is older than fucking dirt. And there is a viable alternative that has existed for decades. The mechanical camshaft linkage causes so much strain and friction that it limits the maximum RPM of the engine. In my pocket, I have a cell phone with a processor that can perform more than 200,000,000 operations per second. Why are we still building cars with mechanical timing mechanisms that are parasitic on engine performance? We can easily switch to computer-controlled solenoid-driven valves that put no drag on crankshaft operation. These valves could be manipulated with greater precision than mechanical valves, leading to improved fuel economy and performance. They also completely eliminate the need for costly timing belt maintenance. Why am I pissed about this? There are vehicles in existence that use this technology. It's not a new concept. It's been used in superbikes and in formula one racing. Instead of building engines that are more reliable, require less maintenance, perform better, and get better fuel economy, we get hybrid systems that use a dinosaur-engine to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy and then back into mechanical energy. This is a wasteful design, but everybody thinks it's great because the marketing for it is so good.

Why do we get yesterday's technology today? There are probably lots of reasons, but if you want the most important one, all you have to do is think about it in terms of profit.

We don't ever see dramatic leaps in consumer technology. We see gradual change. Why? Because each incremental step between product A and product Z represents an opportunity to make a profit. The technology to make product Z often exists shortly after product A hits the shelves, but why make a better product when you can string people along from step to step, selling them incrementally better products year after year?

From Toyota's point of view, it would be silly to produce a car with a camless engine. Everybody is so fired up about green technology that they'll buy whatever crap a commercial tells them is environmentally friendly.

If Toyota revolutionized the consumer gas-powered car by releasing such an engine, they would essentially be limiting their returns. The cars would last longer and require less maintenance, which means fewer opportunities for Toyota to sell people new cars and mandatory service. With no timing belt to wear out, how would the service center get people in the door?

This isn't a problem with Toyota. It's a general problem of the producer-consumer relationship. It's just far more profitable to manufacture cheap products that last a few years than to make quality products that last a lifetime.

Imagine being able to buy something that was worth a damn. You wouldn't have to throw it away three years later. This would mean less strain on the Earth's resources and less waste ending up in landfills.

It probably won't happen in our lifetime. Our debt-based capitalist economy relies on constant growth to function. We can't have economic growth without a plethora of shitty products for people to buy and throw away every few years.

I'm having difficulty understanding the point of all this.

On a somewhat related note, we've been to the moon. Why does it cost $600 for an ergonomic office chair? It seems like every fucking chair I sit in is designed for short people, and instead of offering me lumbar support, it encourages my back to curve forward. Look at this shit:

See the space between an appropriate posture and the actual seat-back?

There's that imaginary malice again. We have the technology to make fucking chairs. Maybe they just act like they don't know what the fuck they're doing so people have a reason to get health insurance: dealing with chronic pain from sitting on shitty products.

There's my prediction for the future. Drowning in a sea of obsolete plastic and steel while suffering from preventable health problems.

Somebody call Miss Cleo.

My overall health

2010-07-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been making a significant effort to improve my overall health. I suspect that this, like all human action, is motivated by an implacable fear of death.
In the near-term, though, it's because I'm sick and tired of feeling like crap on a day-to-day basis. For a long while there, I was depressed and lethargic. My thoughts were fleeting and difficult to control. My mind felt foggy and unfocused. I was beset by demoralizing chronic pain in my neck and shoulder. My eyelids would twitch spasmodically. My digestion was unreliable and often violent, like the father of a poor family. More to list, but this isn't a pity-party.
I still experience all of these to varying degrees (re-read that last bit in an Al Sharpton voice for instant amusement). But I've made a few changes recently that have made things a whole lot better:

1. No foods or beverages with added sugar.  This was a hard one to accomplish. While I was working at Uptown music, I would get Dutch Bros. nearly every day. Allow me to elaborate. My drink of choice was a Double Torture, which is unequivocally bad for you. It has five shots of espresso in it, and light and dark mocha syrup. It got to the point where I couldn't function without having this amount of coffee and sugar.
When I worked at the General Store, I would drink a Rockstar every day, sometimes in addition to coffee. I would regularly drink vitamin water to alleviate the frequent hangovers caused by stress-drinking. While both of these beverages contain beneficial substances, they also contain horrible amounts of sugar.
I certainly know people who consume more sugar than I used to, so I didn't immediately recognize that I was doing something excessive. Because I avoided candy and soda, I never thought of myself as a sweets person.
I began reading up on the harmful effects of sugar after I decided I hated being plugged into my body. Big surprise: insulin is a very important substance when it comes to proper body function. Big surprise: your body isn't good at dealing with refined sugar when it comes to insulin production. Think about it. Where in nature would a hunter-gatherer find sugar in the quantities the average american consumes every day? Honey? Fruit? Not even close.
I won't regurgitate all of the info that I've amassed here for the sake of brevity (and reduced effort). Long story short, I try to avoid added sugar. Are there exceptions? Sure. I'll bend the rule for things like BBQ sauce and other condiments, and sometimes for the occasional treat. I still eat fruit, since it doesn't have enough sugar in it to really fuck you up. Plus, fruit contains substances that somewhat neutralize the effect of sugar. I don't drink fruit juice, however, because it contains a higher concentration of sugar.
It hasn't been so bad since the withdrawals ended. They were semi-intense.

2. No artificial sweeteners. This was easier for me. I've always been uneasy about sugar substitutes. For years my standard retort was 'I'd rather have cavities than cancer'. And I still would choose sugar over Splenda any day.
Aspertame (also known as Nutrasweet) causes neurological problems, and Splenda was developed on accident by a lab that was experimenting with insecticides.
It's kind of a crock of shit, really. When most people want to lose weight/get healthy, they realize that excessive sugar intake is an obstacle. Fortunately for our corporate masters, the first thing they turn to is a substitute. Most of the time, you can buy the same product that was making you fat and unhealthy in a sugarfree form, allowing you to feel like you're doing something positive without actually changing your lifestyle.
Clever marketing, but it keeps folks from realizing that it's not their sweetener that needs to change, it's their lifestyle and their propensity to eat sweet things. It's really not that bad going without sweetener. There are plenty of beautiful flavors to savor (read as Al Sharpton again for a chuckle). Once you get used to them, they are every bit as rewarding as tasting sweet everywhere you turn.
Imagine you're a pre-civilized human. How often do you get something super sweet? You probably eat fruit all the time, but what about something as sweet as sucrose or Splenda or Nurtrasweet or high-fructose corn syrup?
You'd probably eat it about as often as you felt like outrunning a shitload of bees.
Anyway, the difficulty here is retraining my taste buds to like things that aren't sweet rather than turning to a deviously-marketed alternative.

3. Limit ingestion of pesticides and preservatives.  Amanda and I would love to buy organic all the time, but it's really fucking expensive, so fuck that. The way I look at it, even if a chemical is not harmful to my body (even though I'm sure most pesticides and preservatives are), my body has to do additional work to remove it from my system versus eating untainted foods. And I hate doing work, especially if it is additional. Matters become more troubling if you body cannot actually dispose of a chemical.
I used to eat things like hot pockets all the time. Ugh.

4. Avoid bleached/enriched carbs.  This is a preference I developed shortly after moving out of my parents' house, where white bread was the bread of choice. I was watching that Jillian Michaels show the other day, and she said it pretty well. I can't remember the quote, so I'll paraphrase. "What do you think they bleach the flour with? That's right--bleach. You want to go to the laundry room and drink a cup?"
Not really, Jillian.
"When something is enriched, that means they add vitamins back into it. That means you're eating a bunch of useless crap plus vitamins that were probably there in the first place until they turned it into crap."
Well said.

5. Avoid processed vegetable oils.  I honestly don't give a shit about the fat content of what I'm eating, as long as it satisfies my other requirements. My body can metabolize fat. It just has a hard time metabolizing it in addition to the chemistry set I used to eat on a daily basis. I cook in real butter or cold-pressed olive oil, and it tastes great. Any vegetable oil that is not cold-pressed will spoil due to the heat generated when it was pressed. That breaks down any nutrients it might have had. Do you want to eat those fragments, just because they have fewer calories?
I sure don't.

6. Drink purified, mineral enriched, fluoride-free water.  This one is a bit controversial, because fluoridated water is generally recognized as a good thing. Well, no. First of all, I have issues with the government administering drugs using the water supply. This is the United States, not some third-world country. We brush our teeth with fluoride toothpaste here. We don't need to get our fluoride from the water.
Secondly, the fluoride they put in the water is not the pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride you find in your toothpaste and mouthwash. It's hexafluorsilicic acid. Haven't heard of that? That's probably because you don't operate a fertilizer plant. If you did, you'd have a whole lot of this stuff lying around, because it's a fucking waste product of fertilizer manufacture.
The aluminum industry also produces fluoride compounds as industrial waste.
All of the dental benefits of fluoride are topical. Therefore, there's no reason to ingest it.
But they put it in the water, so shouldn't it be safe even if there isn't any reason to drink it?
I don't think so.
Fluoride goes right past your teeth when you drink it. You absorb it into your blood. The place fluoride tends to accumulate is the pineal gland. This is a tiny gland in your brain that regulates sleep patterns, controls the onset of puberty, and probably a lot of other things that we don't understand. Anyway, it's not separated from the body by the blood-brain barrier like the rest of the brain. So the fluoride tends to accumulate there.
Know anybody who has a sleep disorder?
Oh, almost forgot. There was a study a while back that showed that fluoridated water decreased IQ in lab animals and humans.
Oh, almost forgot. The USSR experimented with fluoride as a means of pacification.
Oh, almost forgot. Fluoride is almost as poisonous as arsenic.
I grew up in a rural area drinking well water. I didn't start drinking fluoridated water regularly until I moved to Keizer. Is it a coincidence that I began to lose clarity in my thoughts after moving here?
Maybe, but I don't like the idea that it might not be a coincidence, so I'll refrain from drinking it.
I also don't like the idea that when fluoridation was originally implemented, the main research group lobbying for its safety was the same group that defended the safety of cigarette smoke and asbestos.

So that's what I've been doing. Oh, I've also been taking a multivitamin and fish oil supplements. I still feel less than optimal, but I definitely feel better.
I've got some more health stuff to talk about, but I'll save that for the next post since this one was ridiculously long.

In Brief

2010-07-12T16:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of things.
1. Best Buy
I recently took a trip to Best Buy to purchase a simple thing that would compliment other things Amanda and I had purchased there.
The item in question was a 90 degree HDMI adapter. I recently mounted our television on the wall, and clearance with a standard cable is an issue. I had looked for these briefly online, and was expecting to pay somewhere between six and fifteen dollars.
When I got the the store, all I could find were fancy pivoting and swiveling adapters (versatile solutions for your HDMI adapting needs, I'm sure). These were $29.99 and $34.99, respectively.
I can't imagine why I would need to optionally alter the angle at which my HDMI cable emerges from the back of the television, so I asked the sales associate if they had any fixed-angle adapters. You know, like the ones other stores sell that work perfectly fine for my application.
Nope, just the fancy ones that have additional and useless features.
I really wanted to leave the store with an adapter, so I considered buying one. I couldn't do it.
I had already paid $50 for the cable I was adapting, which is ludicrous to me. Especially since I didn't have the option to buy a cable with one 90 degree end in the first place. As if I'm the only person who has ever wall-mounted a television.
A television purchased at Best Buy, using a wall-mount purchased at Best Buy, connected to a PS3 purchased at Best Buy.
You'd think there would be a cable at Best Buy that would allow all these things to live in harmony. But no. Whip out 80 bucks for a digital cable and adapter, report to the broom closet, and receive your dry-rape.
To add insult to injury, I walked around the department for about 20 minutes looking at cables and adapters (which are not all in one central location) before someone 'helped' me.
The experience took a strange turn at checkout. Amanda bought a case for her iPod, and the cashier asked her if she would like her receipt e-mailed to her.
My face squeezed out an expression somewhere between consternation and disgust, and I asked the cashier why someone would want an e-mailed receipt. She said returns are only possible with a receipt, and it was a convenience feature to ensure the possibility of a return in the event of a lost receipt.
I suggested that if they had the capacity to e-mail customers their receipts, they should also have the capacity to store those receipts in a searchable database for the duration of the return period (at least for rewards members), which would accomplish the same goal without having to collect additional customer information.
The cashier didn't have a retort for this, of course, but I felt the need to say it anyway.
The answer she should have given to avoid such a criticism was "in the event that the item you purchased could be written off your taxes or expensed to a company account, an e-mail receipt could easily be printed off or forwarded to a third party."
I might buy that one, but it still seems odd for a consumer-oriented store.
What a strange fucking experience. All I want to do is buy a fucking adapter, but I have to wade through a lake of social and corporate shit-vomit.
And I walked out of the store soiled and empty-handed.
2. Some Guy and his Fucking Dogs
So there I was, sitting on the edge of a dock with my feet in a lake, casually eating sunflower seeds and reading an irritating translation of Crime and Punishment.
Along comes a hairless primate escorting two dogs. He leads them into the lake, where they swim briefly. He then leads them onto the dock, directly behind me. The dogs shake themselves vigorously, showering me and my book with lake water, mucous, and freshly rehydrated urine crystals. He then proceeds to lead them back into the water. Meanwhile, a thousand violent thoughts course recklessly through unrelated parts of my nervous system, paralyzing me with outrage.
He allows his dogs to swim briefly again, and leads them behind me a second time.
Again they shake.
I couldn't think of any way to retaliate that would satisfy me without a 100% chance of arrest and incarceration. There were witnesses, you see, and young children. Besides the legal consequences, I don't think it would be appropriate for children to watch a man whose arms and legs had been freshly amputated and cauterized have his intestines devoured through a slit in his belly by his beloved dogs while he thrashes with futility against his bonds.
Perhaps if Rodium Raskolnikov were there, he would have been able to concoct a detached scheme to repay the man for this offensive deed. But he probably would have just bitched a lot and then fucked it up somehow.
The man did not apologize either time, or even recognize that a discourtesy had occurred. I would have been fine if after the first shake, the man apologized for his dogs. The second time, I yelled "for fuck's sake" loudly, stood up, and glared at the man, but he was already on his merry way back up the dock. I have a hard time convincing myself that he was simply an oblivious old dick-muncher rather than a malevolent old cock-smasher.
Either way, damage is being done to dicks.
What should I have done? Maybe I could have faked a seizure and attempted to extort an out of court settlement, claiming falsely that I'm allergic to dogs.
Then again, I could have shouted after the man, and said something. But what would that solve? He was an older man, probably in his late fifties. If he'd gone that far in life being that inconsiderate, chances are the defect was permanently wired into his brain. Forcing a confrontation would likely only escalate the situation. If it didn't, the man would probably apologize, walk away, and do nothing to alter his behavior.
He would walk on through his life an oblivious, inconsiderate sack-gargler until the day electrical impulses cease coursing through his miswired brain and compelling his limbs into action that pisses me the fuck off.
It would please me very much if a large Nordic man would smash him and his dogs with a hammer.

Escalation

2010-06-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been unemployed since January. This is mostly because I don't think I should have to work for a equal or lesser wage than I did before I had a college degree.

And partly because I'm phenomenally lazy.

Anyway, it's gotten far past the point where I feel like I'm taking a break. The last hellish job I had surely left me deserving of respite, but it no longer feels like a vacation. It feels a lot like regular life minus 40% of your previous earnings, plus lots of spare time, and constantly feeling like you have to justify every action that doesn't result in employment.

Sure, I've done some work on the side to help make ends meet. I produced a demo for my brothers band, which can be found here. I was part of the sound and lighting crew for the Keizer Iris Festival, which was very rewarding.

But something has to change soon. I just sold a guitar to make rent.

I thought about asking for my old job at Uptown Music. I'm just not a very good salesman.

Lately, my parents have begun to pressure me to go back to school. And I'm impressed, actually. Their arguments are pretty good.

"You're here," said my father, gesturing horizontally. "You got to this level, and you've looked around and found there are no jobs here." He gestured lower, saying, "You don't want to take the jobs down here. And you aren't qualified for the jobs up here." His hand rose above eye level. "You either need to find something down here, or go back to school so you can get something up here."

Well put, old man.

They even offered to pay for my entrance exams, which is very nice of them.

In a perfect world, I'd love to take them up on this offer. I love school. But the thought of borrowing a hundred thousand dollars is a lot like the thought of dick cancer.

It's not just the money, though. I understand that the jobs I could get with a professional degree, in theory, could pay such a debt.

Why am I worried? Well, it seems like everybody is going back to school. I'm worried that in a few years and $100,000 later I'll be in a job market that's oversaturated with other people with professional degrees. I think this is a legitimate fear, since it's already starting to happen.

Higher education used to be a meritocracy of sorts, but now it's become a tool anyone can buy that allows them to do a certain job.

Pay the quarter, ride the ride.

Somewhere along the line, someone figured out that you can make money off the common man's desire to get ahead in life. You can make money off the desire of a parent to give their child a better life.

This fucks it up for everybody. When everybody has a college degree, having it becomes irrelevant. It becomes a prerequisite, the same way high school was a prerequisite twenty years ago. Except I'm not left thousands of dollars in debt after receiving my high school diploma.

I get the feeling that somewhere, someone is saying, "We know we can get them to buy higher education. People are desperate. But can we get them to buy law school? Can we get them to buy a Master's Degree? A Doctorate? I think so. I think people are that desperate." Are things really bad enough right now that people are willing to gamble a hundred thousand dollars toward an uncertain job market?

They are. And I'm thinking about doing it. Because that's what everybody else is doing. It's escalation.

Someone tell me I'm crazy.

A True Patriot

2010-06-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Sometime during election year 2008, I began to notice more of my friends, family, and begrudged acquaintances saying, "ZOMG Barack Obama hope change down with Bush a new beginning yes we can". It was as though they were reading the hastily organized shittings of a madman who had eaten the new testament, civil rights propaganda, and Green Day's liner notes.
I began hearing that he would end the war in Iraq and provide the country with health care. It was said that he would shake things up in Washington and fix the economy. There was talk that he could bench-press 400 pounds and had once killed a bear with shark-arms in a knife-fight.
Despite my best efforts, the man had become a concept in my mind. Of course, if I believed the people around me, Obama would have been somewhere between Jesus and tits on the continuum of good things in the universe.
Eager to shore up my belief that the world was capable of producing only evil, I sought to flesh out the fantastic skeleton my peers had vomited into my consciousness.
OK. I'll admit that for a moment I had hope. But as I'm fond of saying, hope is the bastard child of ignorance and delusion.
Obama's campaign was largely contingent on his ability to convince people that he was different than George W. Bush. Fortunately for him, he's a young(er) rich black guy. As far as most people are capable of caring, that puts him worlds apart from an old rich white guy like Bush. Hillary Clinton was at a huge disadvantage, being an old rich white lady. She was different in fewer aesthetic categories.
It was difficult at first to get around all the 'sweet mother of god I'm so different you should vote for me because I'm different and I'll change things and when things are changed they'll be different and I'm different so I'll be a change when I'm elected' bullshit. There wasn't a whole lot of political history to indicate which way he was likely to swing. Sure, there were campaign promises. But just look at George W. Bush, who was originally elected on a platform of limiting government spending. Just fucking look at him. He looks pretty funny. Like the missing link had fathered him from an incestuous relationship.
Anyway, one of the things that happened during the Bush administration that I was most upset about was the passage of the Patriot Act. Maybe I'm different than everybody else, but it's a big deal to me that the government can read my email, listen to my phone conversations, read my text messages, pull my purchase records, pull my library records, and generally invade my privacy whenever they want without consent or warrant.
Naturally, the first thing I checked was Obama's voting record on the Patriot Act. He wasn't in office in 2001 when it was originally passed, but he was in 2005 and 2006 when it was renewed.
So far he's voted to renew it every time. Sure, there have been 'compromises' and 'alterations' over the years, for which he likes to pat himself on the back, but it seems ridiculous to make minor alterations to a monstrously vague bill that should have never been passed in the first place rather than let it expire and replace it with something we actually want and need.
His justification for voting for the patriot act was thoroughly laughable, too. In a nutshell, he said he'd vote against renewing it, banded together with some like minds to propose alternate legislation, failed at that, then ended up voting for it because that's what everybody else wanted to do and it was better than nothing.
Way to shake things up, bro.
Between this and his failure to adequately address any problems with our monetary system, I was compelled at last to say, "Oh".
I predicted that he would win the presidency in March or April of 2008. Based on what I had seen, though I saw no reason to vote for him. I saw no real change on the horizon. Instead I saw my rights continuing to diminish while my liabilities increased.
A year and a half after he was elected, I don't feel like things have changed much since Bush. There is more spending than ever, the deficit continues to grow, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' persists, we are now involved in a war in Afghanistan, and illegal immigration is still an issue.
Oh, and the Patriot Act was renewed again this year. They didn't amend it, and in fact renewed it by inserting it into a completely unrelated bill. Good thing we heard a bunch about that.
Way to shake things up, bro.
I don't think I'm as alone now in my distaste for Obama as I was in 2008. Most polls are showing more Americans disapproving of him than approving. Most polls would also indicate that I'm 437% more smug about it this year.
It's pretty simple, really. People vote for the best salesman, because charisma is more important than ability or credentials.
It doesn't matter, though. We would have been fucked either way, considering the only other choice was Methuselah and Bambi from the republican party.
Just to clarify, I didn't vote for any of them. I don't believe in endorsing something simply because it sucks less than something else that sucks.
At this point, it's pretty obvious that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was spot on:

"It might not even have made much difference to them if they'd known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

[Barack Obama] was amazingly good at his job."

Lady Bloga

2010-05-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

From what I can remember, the very first statement of opinion I uttered about Lady Gaga was that I, ironically enough, did not want to poker face.
Fortunately for me, the bartender thought I was talking about her, and calamity ensued with hilarity in its wake.
Sometimes life is funny.
Oral acquiescence aside, my knee-jerk reaction to Gaga's rise to fame was bafflement. At first I couldn't comprehend why anyone would like her. Then I remembered, with severe anguish, who people were.
Ah yes, people.
From a musical perspective, her thumping dance beats and vacuous lyrics are enough to make Bach and Wagner tear their dicks off in protest. I'm not sure if they would need to stuff their torn-off dicks in their ears, or if the horrible agony of member-loss would overwhelm their consciousness and drown out the Italian intruder.
It might, but it wouldn't stop the nightmares.
People, yes people, do not care that they are receiving an inferior product. They don't know enough to care. When it comes down to it, people want colorful, shiny images to watch and music that's easy to dance to. They want thumping beats and catchy hooks. Based on these criteria, Lada Gaga is the perfect entertainer. There's no reason to be mystified.
She is what people want. She sells. This is not an accident. She would likely agree with this, but for different reasons. She once said, "I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I've made it my goal to revolutionize pop music." She sees herself as a modern-day Madonna, and hopes to have a similar impact.
I, on the other hand, see her as blatantly derivative of Madonna, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Christina Aguilera, and others in terms of image.
Ouch.
Her statement could still technically be true if she presented a revolutionary musical product. I hate to break her heart, but I've heard auto-tuned vocals set to electronic instruments and digital drums before.
I understand that it is impossible not to be derivative in modern music, and I don't expect people to perform miracles. Nor do I hold avant-garde, structureless noise in high esteem. I just think her statement, in light of the nature of her product, shows that she counts on people having a cultural memory shorter than Wagner's dick-stump.
Despite her uninspiring compositions, she seems to be a legitimate musician. But people don't like legitimate music. It makes them think. And everyone knows thinking is for queers.
So what's a composer to do? "When I'm writing music, I'm thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage," says she.
Yeah.
As much as she would like everything to seem completely deliberate, it doesn't take a brain scientist to realize that the video for the song Telephone has absolutely nothing to do with its lyrics. Or maybe there's a connection I'm missing between a prison full of Trashionistas and being unable or unwilling to answer your telephone in a loud club.
That's it, I'm dropping my composure for a second. Watch out. Why in the BURST-PUSTULE LUBRICATED, DISEASED FUCK does someone need to write a song about something as trivial as a person's cell phone habits?
OK. Deep breath.
The only way I could respect the content of her lyrics would be if she told me in confidence that they were entirely satirical. That would make me happy. We could have a good laugh in private about how the slobbering masses pay money for their own indictment.
After all, if stupid people are part of the necessary furniture of the universe, isn't it practical to take advantage of them? I'm not sure, but it's something I struggle with.

Misinformation

2010-05-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

At this point, I've accepted that lies mortar the bricks of our society. I feel like important truths are whispered as a guilty pleasure, their orators confident that the cacophony of misinformation around them will overwhelm and destroy what they have uttered.
I suspect that if someone shouted the truth, their words would meet a similar end.
I've hardened myself against the psychological onslaught of our political system. I find it mentally exhausting to listen to exchanges between politicians. To even catalog the fallacies, rhetorical devices, and psychological tactics at work in such an exchange would be a task unto itself. It might be fun sometime to pick a 'debate' and post a blog detailing the underlying structure, which I envision as a clandestine, eldritch necropolis full of scheming sub-humans tinkering with brutal snares and engorged arachnids enjoying the envenomed, web-wrapped innards of unlucky victims.
Nah, that makes it sound too awesome.
Anyway, one of the super-powers I gained from my philosophy education was the ability to recognize manipulative language and intent. I can generally tell when tactics are employed, and more often than not grasp their purpose.
This helps me to avoid mind control rays and saccharine nectar laced with Zoloft.
Hyperbolized awesomeness aside, my education in logic, psychology, statistics, and philosophy helps me avoid the snares that more gullible folks might trip.
Unfortunately, even armed as I am, my enemies delight in finding creative new ways to infect my mind with bullshit. And although I can tell when I'm being manipulated, my spider sense does not always tingle when someone passes on misinformation he sincerely believes.
Today, I had intended on writing a blog about the ads I still see soliciting donations for Haiti. Ads for humanitarian causes irritate me for various reasons, and are blog-worthy in themselves. I especially hate ads that prey on my sympathy, because I'm an emotionless husk embittered by my failures.
I could blog on about these ads and their ilk and not be starved for material. However, my true motivation to pursue the topic came from a conversation I had with my father. My father and I, despite our differences, share many things in common. Among these is our complete lack of white guilt, despite our legendary whiteness. I feel no responsibility of any kind for my race. My ancestors on my mother's side emigrated from impoverished European countries after the abolition of slavery, and I have enough native american blood on my father's side to receive tribal benefits, should I seek them. These realities aside, I have issues with the very idea of responsibility for deeds over which I had no influence.
I made some offhand comment about the situation in Haiti. We bantered a bit, and he told me an interesting story. He told me that Haiti was a French colony populated by African slaves who worked on indigo, sugar, and tobacco plantations. He said that when the French abolished slavery, there was an uprising on Haiti in which the former slaves massacred their former masters and every white man on the island. Following this, there was tension in the United States over the safety of freeing its slaves. He said they feared a similar uprising and this is why there was so much opposition to abolition.
He told me that after Haiti won its independence, it ran its sugar cane and indigo industries into the ground, bankrupting the country. After this, the United States was nice enough to rebuild the country's economy and infrastructure. Their industry failed again, after which the United states rebuilt it a second time.
I thought this was a pretty interesting story. I was going to blog about it.
Too bad it's not true.
About twenty minutes into my research for the blog, I realized that I'd been had. There are elements of truth in his story that make it just plausible enough to be sold to people (like me) who are unfamiliar with Haitian history. These elements were carefully massaged into a spin story to make it seem like the Haitian people are violent, ungrateful failures. The 'massacre' was really a revolution in which more blacks than whites died, fought only because the French sought to maintain control of a colony that had declared its independence. The United States 'rebuilding' their economy was really an occupation in which we forced citizens to build modern infrastructure.
My father believed this story, and that's why I found it convincing. I suppose I should have learned from previous experiences to keep such tales at arm's length.
I am deeply disappointed in myself for not reacting with skepticism. I went on to tell the same story to a few of my friends (of course naming the anecdotal source), effectively spreading the misinformation. These people have my apologies.
I am unsure of the original source of these lies, but their regurgitated vapors reek heavily of Fox News. I know my father is a viewer.
The ease with which information can be manipulated leads me to believe that training in critical thought should be a large part of our education curriculum. But those who would manipulate us would never allow this to happen. They know their lives depend on it.

There Is Nothing Tackier than Grief

2010-04-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, bumper stickers have never struck my fancy. I find myself drawn in general to understated, elegant aesthetics. Bumper stickers, therefore, stand out as a garish interruption of the flowing lines and curves lovingly crafted by the vehicle's engineers. Furthermore, I fear that if any of my opinions were reduced to a sticker-sized one-liner, they would be taken out of context or misunderstood.
Some bumper stickers are amusing. When I was in high school, I had a bumper sticker that said, 'Stupid People Shouldn't Breed', a statement with which I shall forever agree.
Of course, I left that car in a parking lot overnight and it was set on fire. I must have offended someone.
I learned my lesson, and thenceforth my cars have remained unadorned.
I recognize that my distaste for cluttered, jarring slogans on brightly colored pieces of paper is not unanimously shared. I am nevertheless tempted, perhaps as a result of years of philosophy courses, to universalize the axioms which govern my life.
And when I see something like this...

...the nerves that connect my eyeballs to my brain begin to tie themselves in knots.

Why would anyone be motivated to advertise something as ordinary as having a family? I begin to think, Wait, you mean to tell me you had sexual intercourse with someone? Multiple times? In a manner legitimized by religion and state law? And following some of those occasions, a biological process was initiated that constructed a hybridized replica of you and your partner? I hadn't realized that such a thing was possible! You should truly be proud of such a unique and historic achievement!

As if I couldn't tell you had a large family from the size of your car and hips!

Normally I wouldn't care that someone had pride in their family. This is a normal thing to have. However, when I am trying to drive, I have to deal with enough tragically flawed humanity without someone trying to draw my attention to something I could give two shits about.

To draw my attention is to invite my criticism.

I think it is this plea for attention that bothers me the most about bumper stickers, though I hesitate to make it an issue of safety. Attention is a necessary commodity in traffic, to be sure. Most accidents occur because of inattention in some form. Anything that draws attention away from the act of driving must surely detract from driver safety.

But for me, the issue of my safety is secondary and slight. The idea that people need to take things that have a defined purpose in their lives and transform them into billboards for their identities bothers me more.

One of the things I learned in college was that if someone looks particularly interesting, chances are the most interesting thing about them is the way they look. The sad reality is that we're conditioned in many ways to construct our identities out of things that we buy. I guess it's no surprise, then, that when people want to show you who they are, they show you by displaying the things they own.

This is wrong. And clearly I'm not the first person to be bothered by this idea. Chances are, when a person gets done telling you what job they have, and what they do for fun, and has finished showing you their personalized possessions, they have nothing left to say. They simply don't know anything else about themselves.

So they advertise their identities with their cars and clothes and hair and nails and music, because without those things, they are basically nothing.

And by extension, if there is nothing external to represent an aspect of themselves, it can't be valid.

Hence:

I know you've all seen these stickers. Here's what I tend to think when I see one:

Is your car somehow a monument to your loved one? Did you buy the car with money you inherited from that individual? Did that individual's life insurance pay for the car? Could you not afford a gravestone or urn? Does that mean the person is buried under your car? Did you have the person's ashes integrated into the car's subframe? Was that person an automotive engineer, and this car his final achievement in life? Do you breathe through your mouth? Were you conceived on purpose?

I am offended at the implication that grief is not valid unless you own something that advertises it. Or that a car does more honor to a loved one's memory than the impact he had on the lives of those around him. But I guess you can't buy that at a store and show it to people.

Cultural implications aside, there is an issue of proper diction here. It is assumed that when 'in loving memory of' appears on an object, it really means '(this monument stands) in loving memory of'. We see this phrase on gravestones and urns. It is not something that belongs on a car. It doesn't even make sense.

Plus, I wouldn't want the responsibility of driving around a monument to a loved one. What if the car gets totaled? What if it's your fault? Have you besmirched your wife's honor? If you drive around with a broken tail light, will people think less of your dead father? Should you worry that people will think that you should have bought a more expensive car to commemorate the life of your son?

These are troubling questions.

I interpret the necessity of asking them as a sign of coming crisis.

Cats!

2010-04-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

I've never been much of a pet person. Domesticated animals tend to irritate me. I am often irritated by the very qualities animal admirers would call 'endearing' or 'cute'.
There are those who would compare their pets to human beings in terms of intelligence, wisdom, compassion, empathy, etc. I will gladly make the same comparison, but with a human being that has been inbred such that he is misshapen, stupid, stunted, and lacking the ability to communicate using abstract language.
Like your mom. Oh, snap.
Anyway, my disdain for pets is no secret to the casual observer. I purposefully deny them the attention they are conditioned to crave, which leaves them confused in a way their primitive minds can never resolve. It is hard for me to respect something so misshapen that it looks like it would beg for death (small dogs, as an example), especially when it scurries to me yipping and gesticulating aggressively for the opportunity to catalog my odor.
Some would say there is simply a culture barrier between me and pets. Pets have no culture. Neither is there a communication barrier, for these animals haven't the capacity to communicate anything in the abstract.
I understand that many people enjoy their pets very much, and I don't wish to diminish that in any way. My dislike of pets is not the full topic of today's post. I merely wanted to talk about my feelings a bit, in hopes that the following discussion won't be perceived as out of line.
On several occasions since moving into our current home, Amanda and I have been awakened by the sounds of crying children haunting our dreams. Upon awakening, we realize that these sounds are not our subconscious guilt tormenting us from unreachable and alien parts of our twisted minds. When we wake, the sounds continue.
There are no babies in our home. Well, unless you count the crawlspace. But that's a matter for the feds to sort out.
The neighbors have small children, but they sleep on the opposite side of the duplex. The sounds come from right outside our window. The sounds, we found out, are not from a crying child.
They are from cats that fight and fuck in our lawn.
I don't own any cats, and neither does Amanda.
Why are they fighting and fucking in my lawn?
I performed a brief mental analysis of my lawn as a suitable place for fighting and fucking prior to moving in. I found it less than ideal for both functions.
And what is the deal with these sounds? I never knew that cats could make such annoying sounds. They are grating at all the wrong frequencies. They are prolonged, and produced at significant volume. They make me wish I was deaf from inbreeding, like nearly all white cats with blue eyes.
From what I have seen as an impartial observer, cats fight in a horribly inefficient manner. Most of the fight is posturing and making atrocious noises, with both cats trying to look and sound larger than they really are. When and if it actually comes to blows, the cats bat each other with their claws for a little while, and then run away.
People do this too, I suppose, but not usually right outside my window. And most of the time substituting hands for claws.
It would be nice if both cats could just weigh themselves and show the results to their respective opponents. Then they could say things like 'Egads, man! I had no idea you were so much bigger than I am. I shall politely decline your invitation of fisticuffs, and make expeditious my egress from your territory. My apologies for intruding'.
As if the fighting and fucking (I'm not even going to describe the fucking) weren't enough, Amanda recently started a vegetable garden. This garden has nice, loose soil that is great for growing vegetables. It's also a great place to dig a hole to put your shit, apparently, because that's what they do.
I guess word has gotten out that our back yard is a prime digging and shitting spot, because the incidence of fighting has increased dramatically recently. Presumably when you're a suburban cat, having an easy place to shit is high on your list of priorities.
We've tried a couple of humane home remedies to discourage the cats from this behavior, including putting pepper flakes in the soil and running out in my underwear half-blind and confused swinging a broom.
The cats seem only mildly inconvenienced by this behavior.
What is a man to do? As far as I'm concerned, these animals are pests. I find it vexing that I can go to any grocery store and purchase five kinds of poison for ants and rats, but nobody would even dream of trying to market cat poison. I guess cats, despite their potential for being pests, have achieved such a venerated status in our culture that they get a free pass on such behavior.
Now, I wouldn't have any reservations about putting out a nice saucer of antifreeze for all of them to drink. I don't view these animals any differently than I do mice in terms of my 'moral' obligations. I'm sure there's at least one person out there that would disagree with this view, since some of these animals wear collars.
This leaves me in a difficult position, since in Oregon I can be sued for any harm I do to someone's cat.
As far as I know, the law gets a little bit fuzzier (if you'll pardon an unintentional pun) on a cat owner's responsibilities. Allowing your cat to cavort outside your neighbor's window isn't exactly neglect.
I feel like there is an inequality here that I can't put my finger on. My neighbors' cats are allowed to be pests without being considered pests.
And I am forced to use humane tactics against inhumane opponents.

It Costs Money to Be Alive--Shelter

2010-04-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

It wasn't long ago that our ancestors were nomads. When you hunt and gather your food, it makes sense that you should have to follow it. So they did.
Somewhere along the line they must have decided that they didn't like being nomads, because they invented agriculture and started staying places. Well, it tends to rain in places where crops like to grow, and the sensation of being rained upon is at most times not pleasant.
Our ancestors, luckily, were thinkers. Rain tends not to fall through things, so they started to put things between the rain and themselves. These devices became more and more sophisticated over time. Exit the sticks-and-mud lean-to. Enter the structurally efficient concrete and steel skyscraper.
Today, we have the technology to engineer structures with mathematical efficiency to conserve materials and enhance strength. We can construct artificial substances that have incredible ratios of strength to weight.
But when I look at the houses here in suburbia, I see that they are a bunch of pieces of wood nailed together on top of some hardened chunks of mud with a layer of tar on top to keep rain from leaking through.
And they're asking hundreds of thousands of dollars for them.
Am I out of line? Does it not seem arbitrarily expensive to live somewhere?
Perhaps this is why I have reacted violently in the past when insects or rodents have invaded my living space. Surely I am disgusted by their appearance and ability to transmit disease, but this is not my true contention. I think I am embittered by the cost of my dwelling, and do not wish to share it with blissfully ignorant creatures intent on making themselves at home while I foot the bill. Goddamned slinking freeloaders.
I sometimes long for a more primitive time. Before there were so many people, it must have been easy to find a place to live. I imagine you could just wander for a while and happen upon a prime spot. I guess the concept of ownership comes in handy for when other people happen upon your prime spot and wish to take it from you. Maybe simpler times weren't better times.
I've never had the financial might to purchase a house. Well, most people that do buy houses don't have the financial might to purchase them. They instead ask the possessors of our wealth (the banks) to buy them, under the condition that they'll, like, pay them back, man.
Is it a coincidence that shelter--something everybody needs--is so expensive?
It's interesting to think, though, that when many people say they are 'buying' a house, they really mean that the 'seller' transfers responsibility for his debt to them, the 'buyers'. The house is really being sold between banks, if it is sold at all.
Because of these strange ideas, I get the feeling that homeowners are nothing more than glorified renters.
Sure, one can argue that plenty of people pay off their homes. I still contend that despite this, they are not the true owners of their homes.
Consider the property on which homes rest. I find it very disturbing that property is as expensive as it is. But I understand that it is a limited commodity, and that the market will determine its price. I can accept this on some level. What I cannot accept is that even if I pay the hefty price to 'own' this property, I am not its true owner.
Why do I say this? Because of property taxes. If you do not pay your property taxes, the government can and will take your land from you. Does this sound familiar to you? Because if I don't pay my rent, my landlord will evict me. At least I didn't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the right to lease my property from the government.
I understand that governments require revenue to function, but surely there are other ways.
I began thinking about these things after a friend told me he was planning on leasing property from an Indian reservation on which to build a home. The idea sounded very strange to me, and I asked him why on Earth he would lease the property his house is built upon.
It sounded strange until he told me what I just told you. It sounded strange until he told me that the cost of the lease from the reservation was less than the property taxes for an equivalent piece of American soil.
It's almost paralyzing thinking about things this way. Whether I choose to rent or buy, I'm still paying somebody for the right to dwell somewhere. It costs money to be alive.
Does anybody question whom we owe for the privilege of living?
If you follow the money, it flows somewhere. And those who dwell where its currents converge are not there by accident.

The Wind Will Expose Your Poor Moral Choices

2010-04-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting experience yesterday in the parking lot of my local Safeway. As I was parking, I noticed that someone had neglected to put away their shopping cart.
I, of course, experienced my normal, unmitigated outrage at such an affront. Those close to me have no doubt heard me rant on about 'making mockery of iterative procedure' and 'the tragedy of the commons'.
Or at least heard me mutter dejectedly like a creepy old burnout.
Anyway, it was particularly windy yesterday. As I was noticing the cart, it began to roll. It was propelled by a wind gust as it accelerated toward a Honda Civic. It struck the car with great intensity. Its back wheels lifted off the ground from the force of the impact.
I exited my vehicle, and began to walk towards the car. The cart rolled away harmlessly, revealing a nasty, misshapen dent in the side of the Honda.
I, of course, wrapped my hands around the cart handle and rolled it to the nearest cart return. It was fifteen feet away.
Now, if I had noticed a dent like that in my vehicle and found a shopping cart in close proximity, I would immediately be filled with paroxysmal, impotent rage and bloodlust. I would be worried that the sheer directionless magnitude of my anger would cause the nearest living thing to die, its feeble mind engulfed by the tempest of my thoughtfire.
I had put the cart away because I didn't want it to do more damage. But I wonder now if I should have simply left it there.
The cart struck the passenger side of the Honda, making it likely that the owner will not notice the damage until some later time. But maybe it was best to leave all the evidence in place, in hopes that the owner would also become enraged.
Maybe all I've done by putting the cart away is to prevent the birth of another crusader against shopping cart carelessness.
Maybe someone left that cart there to galvanize the populace by showing them the destructive power of an unattended shopping cart. Maybe I've unintentionally thwarted the master plan that could have ended this madness once and for all.
Nah, that's stupid.
People should just put away their fucking carts.

It costs money to be alive pt. 2--Cars

2010-03-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

In an effort to illuminate the scuttlings of the various parasites that come to feast upon our needs as consumers, I've prepared a familiar example--the modern automobile.

I suppose I'm lucky that I've never financed a vehicle before, but there have been severe moments of temptation. There were even times that I sat at desks in offices with salesmen to negotiate the terms of the sale. But each time, I was scared away by the sound of clicking mandibles and sucking proboscises leaking through the poorly insulated walls, and the thought of a thousand swollen carapaces fat and green with my wealth.

I've always thought it was interesting that I cannot simply buy a car from the company that manufactured it. Instead, the company opts to sell the car to a dealership from which I'm expected to buy. It seems stranger still that dealerships are franchised, but then subsidized by the manufacturer.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Although dealerships are not directly owned by auto manufacturers, they are basically paid not to make a profit--at least on the vehicles themselves.

From what I understand, the markup on a new vehicle from the dealer is in the neighborhood of 2%. From my experience as the manager of a failed business, I can tell you that this is not enough to keep the business running. Add this to the fact that many dealerships buy their vehicles on credit from the manufacturer, and you begin to wonder how they make any money.

Well, partially because they are subsidized by the manufacturer. This subsidy is called a "hold back" and is generally another 2% of a given vehicle.

Perhaps this is enough to cover the interest the dealer pays on his inventory. But from where comes the real profit?

Financing. Well, not directly financing, but trafficking (spelled thus to bring to mind connotations of the divvil) with financial institutions.

You see, rare are the dealerships which offer financing in-house. The financing is done by the masters of the craft: the banks. The dealer sells the financing contract to a bank, and he does so in a very interesting way.

Dealers finance in greater volume than a consumer, so their interest rate tends to be lower for a given transaction. Rather than passing on this lower interest rate--let's say 6%--to the customer, the dealer gives the customer 7.5% financing and keeps the difference.

So far we have the manufacturer, the dealer, and a bank making money from this transaction.

But the scuttling doesn't end there.

The state, of course, will require that I license and register the vehicle, and I will have to pay to obtain proof that I own it. But there is some necessity in this.

Additionally, though, I will be required to insure this vehicle if I mean to drive it on public roads. Isn't it interesting that you're required to buy something from one company simply because you bought something from a different company?

I understand that the cost of an accident is prohibitive to most normal folks, but what if I'm independently wealthy and can afford to pay for things like automotive repair and wholly frivolous torts? I still have to buy insurance. Wouldn't it be nice to own a business that sold a product people were required to buy? Insurance companies apparently think so, because they are expanding that business model.

Let's go back and keep track of who is making money. Firstly, the automobile manufacturer is making a profit from selling its product. The bank is making interest from the dealer who often buys inventory on credit. The dealership is making money selling financing to customers. The bank is making money twice now, because they are collecting interest from the dealer's purchase and the customer's purchase. The insurance company then makes money protecting the product the customer couldn't afford in the first place and can't afford to replace.

I like to imagine this process would be more friendly to the consumer if auto manufacturers simply owned their own showrooms and sold their products directly to customers.

But that would prevent the banks and dealer franchises from profiting from the sale of a product someone else built.

It is as though they can smell money changing hands, and have convinced themselves they have a right to feast whenever it does.

It costs money to be alive.

2010-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling lately with feelings that I'm imprisoned by my financial obligations. My payments against my student loan and credit card debt approximately equal the amount I pay for rent.

Because of this, the prospect of finding a job carries with it all manner of parasitic conditions. I must earn enough to pay for my living expenses and debt combined. It is generally expected that college graduates earn more money than high school graduates, thereby justifying the great expense of education.

Unfortunately for me, there are no ads in the newspapers requesting the special skills that are honed during the study of philosophy.

Imagine, "ACME Corporation is seeking a highly-skilled philosopher to cast doubt on our most cherished ideals in an attempt to find meaning in our business practices. Ability to convolute any issue is a must. Ability to construct a paradox related to ACME's existence preferred. Excellent mental health benefits."

Surely there are things I can do with a degree in philosophy, but those things are limited, and involve even further education. The prospect of piling more debt upon my already formidable heap to eke out a living conditioning perfectly good human beings to also be a financial failure does not appeal to me.

I have to do something, though. It costs money to be alive. Especially in the United States.

When I think about it, I realize I've been doomed into debt since before I was born. This sounds a bit dismal, but it's true. Consider the inflated costs of healthcare. The hospital bill that resulted from my birth was quite a bit more than my parents could afford at the time. But, it was paid in the same way that most people pay for such things. Their insurance covered it.

The hospital paid for their staff and for the materials used to deliver me, tacked on a profit, and sent correspondence to my parents' insurance company. The insurance company paid the hospital, but the money comes from somewhere. And insurance companies are not charities. The amount of money they receive from policy holders exceeds the amount they pay out in claims.

I suppose I could go on, and talk about how the banks also made money from these transactions, but it's clear enough as it is. Without me even being able to make a decision, more than two businesses made money off of my very existence.

It seems obvious that if the cost of healthcare were lower, the insurance company would be unnecessary. If healthcare costs were lower, perhaps people could simply pay for the services the hospital provides at the time they are provided.

I'm simplifying, of course, and there are many reasons things are the way they are, but I feel like my above example is a pattern in life.

It seems like fixtures in life are arranged in such a way as to maximize the amount of money that can be made from them.

Examples to follow.