Random Reflections Pt15

61. People must take great pleasure in messing up retail restrooms, because they do it so often. Can’t they just be nice? And the toilets are there for a reason, with handy flushers attached…one should make use of both. You’d think they’re proud of the bodily functions the rest of the world is possessed of, they feel the need to display them so much. Idiots.

62. It’s amazing to me how people stick to things that are proven to be bad – tobacco, for one. Even in the 1700s they were saying “A cigar is a fire on one end and a fool on the other.”

One of the things I learned as I started to become a programmer is the almost tautological wisdom “If it doesn’t work, stop doing it.” I will get nowhere in programming if keep doing things that don’t work, simply because I like them or I think they SHOULD work.

Prohibition of items and edibles is an example, if you know what I’m referring to and I think that you do. It hasn’t worked – ever. Not since its inception. Not at any time in recorded history. It’s been proven again and again that you cannot fix people by making it harder for them to buy certain plants and certain configurations of metal, wood, and polymer. Yet year after bloody year, they keep banging away at it. It’s OK. We won’t point and laugh. You can STOP now.

63. I love this line from The Libertine. “I will be frank from the commencement. You will not like me.”

I’m going to say something that will make you not like me.

In my humble opinion, and that’s all I have, men should not have to pay one penny of child support until they have a say in whether or not their significant other can have an abortion. See, it goes like this. If the mother doesn’t want the baby and the father does, the mother can kill his kid. If the mother wants the baby and the father doesn’t, he’s forced to pay (usually) unnatural amounts of child support for 20 years. The father is screwed either way.

So, we should level the playing field. All or nothing, for both sides.

64. The political candidates this year are real *edited*’s. I’ve written both candidates, TWICE, with some simple, non-confrontational questions (not stuff like “When did you stop beating your wife?”). I have not heard one thing back from either of them.

In the past, Congressional candidates have walked through selected neighborhoods to meet their (hopefully) future constituents face to face, maybe get a read on their important issues. Nada. Not a’tall. Nothing. I’ve met one candidate this year, and that was for state rep.

I sense a growing disconnect between us and those above us. Having an election isn’t worth a tinker’s damn if the people we elect don’t listen to the people they’re elected to govern and represent.

65. Every election year, though more often during presidential election years, we get a bunch of air-head celebrities in print, on radio, and on TV, trying to convince 18-20somethings to vote.

I’m sorry for being mean here, but this needs to be said. If you’re dumb enough to be convinced by a rapper with more gold in his mouth than resides at Fort Knox that voting is cool and will make you appear intelligent and attractive, then the country is better off without your vote. You are not possessed of the required intelligence to exercise your civic duty responsibly. Go back to reading your SI and tabloids. Move along, nothing to see here.

Seriously though folks, if someone can’t decide to influence their country’s future without celebrities appealing to their vanity, are they really smart enough to vote? Really. If they can’t make the decision without the it-boy/girl telling them how attractive voting is, what’s their vote worth? Not crap, in my opinion.
Being young and the average product of public schools, they’d probably vote a straight socialism ticket anyway.