inherently different

Archive for September, 2008

My computer is dying. I have a bunch of computers, but this one is the computer that is like that favorite pair of shoes… comfortable and well-known. I am buying a replacement on monday, but this one will be sorely missed.

It seems that I missed a few days. I had some posts lined up, but they weren’t even close to ready for prime time so I held them back. I have taken on two new clients in the last 72 hours and have been knee deep in prepping myself to get the jobs finished before the end of the month. That could mean I will be posting less, but I will attempt to push out a few posts when time permits.

On another note, my team has a “must win” game coming up on Monday against the Jets. If they lose this game, and there is a very real possiblity that they could, the season is essentially over. With Denver playing its best football in years, they seem to have the AFC West championship in their sights. Let’s hope Brett Favre has his worst game as a pro come monday night.

So I am minding my own business and I overhear a conversation between two 20-something women at Starbucks. I was doing a good job ignoring them, but then the first waspy woman said this about Megan Fox:

Shrew 1: Ugh, she disgusts me. She tries to hard. She’s such a beautiful girl yet she feels the need to act like this. Sad.

(I chuckle to myself, quietly, I thought out of earshot, but she turns to me and says…)

Shrew 1: Beg your pardon?

Me: A woman, confident, decisive and opinionated disgusts you? Interesting.

Personally speaking, I would like to see more women behave this way (i don’t think she is trying at all to be honest)… the more prissy, chaste, and conservative women behave, the longer they will be considered the “weaker” sex.

Shrew 2: There’s a difference between being classy and opinionated and classless and opinionated. She, quite obviously, is the latter.

Me: I don’t really see what Megan Fox does or says that can be considered classless… in order to be classless, you would have to debase yourself in such a way as to render yourself inhuman. From what I have seen reported, the worst that can be said about her is that she speaks her mind and she was photographed with her hand on her boyfriends crotch in what should have been a private moment in a public place.

I guess it all depends on how puritanical your views are… is Madonna classless? Is Vanessa Hudgens? Since both of these women have said and done things that would fall within the realm of “classless” based on your example.

Women who are strong, opinionated and are not willing to conform to puritanical views of womanhood will always be considered classless by those who have very little regard for equality. A woman should NOT be held to a higher standard than a man in my honest opinion.

Shrew 1: Yeah, because grabbing your boyfriend’s package for a few seconds in public AND in front of a photographer no less, is sooo classy.

Me: And showing your breast during a dance routine is classy… as is having your bikini ride up and expose your breast when playing at the beach…

Is it classy to give your sig other a kiss on the mouth in public? To hold hands? To place your hand on their ass? If a man does any of these things, is it classless? I think either you’re either jealous or simply unable to measure a person’s worth without attaching gender bias to their actions.

To me this is less about Megan Fox and her public misdeeds and more about wanting to find reasons to denigrate her for behaving in a way that upsets your puritanical views about how women should and shouldn’t conduct themselves. Which is made even scarier by the fact that you are a woman and dressed like a $2 hooker in Bangkok.

If women want equality, women should be the last people to cast stones upon another woman, whatever her faults. Enjoy your coffee, hope it goes a long way toward waking you up to reality.

Remember OJ? Now some Vegas prosecutor wants to make up for the travesty of justice that was his original murder trial.

As O.J. Simpson’s trial on armed robbery charges kicked off Monday in Las Vegas, the prosecutor looking to put the former football star behind bars—possibly for the rest of his life—urged the jury to make this the “final chapter” in Simpson’s infamous and, in recent years, sordid story. – E!Online

I know that OJ probably murdered Nicole, but he was acquitted of all charges by a jury of his peers. Which means he is innocent of the charges from a legal standpoint. What I find rather scary is that a prosecutor is aiming to give him a life sentence, seemingly, to make up for the fact that he was found innocent all those years ago.

I think OJ is a douchebag, but he shouldn’t be punished for crimes for which he was found not guilty of committing. It scares me to think that a prosecutor is finding a way to put him on trial in such a way as to circumvent double jeopardy laws. While this prosecutor isn’t trying him for murder, he wants the jury to use their knowledge of his past legal troubles in considering the new charges against him. Sneaky and scary.

Again my team loses in the closing seconds. Clearly the gods of football want San Diego to move to a new city in 2009. I didn’t even watch, but when the score went to 21-3 in favor of Denver, my brother text messaged to say simply, “Pathetic.”

In other related news (news being losing), Starbucks is still getting a bad rap from all corners. The various reasons to hate starbucks include:

1. Starbucks is a corporation, and all corporations are bad.
2. Starbucks drives out small, independent cafes.
3. Starbucks coffee is not shade grown, or as it is known, fair trade coffee.

Of course, the problems that any successful organization suffers are usually directly proportional to the value proposition offered by the competition. In other words, people hate starbucks (and find reason to hate them) simply because they are successful.

On point one above, any idiot with no more than three years of college has more than likely, been infected with social consciousness. It happens. As such, they tend to think that any corporation has done evil deeds (sold their soul to the devil) in order to become successful. Starbucks has made a number of concessions in its rise to the top. Among those concessions necessary to deliver a cheaper, more consistent cup of coffee, Starbucks has had to find cheaper sources for its product. Because they are one of the largest buyers in the world, clearly they have the ability to purchase in bulk, thereby necessitating a grower or distributor that can meet both demand and price considerations. This practice of course results in points two and three above.

Point two is true with a caveat. Starbucks does indeed tend to put small, family-owned cafes out of business. The reason isn’t because starbucks is hell bent on world domination (that is just a happy by product), but because small, family-owned cafes tend to be rather pricey for two reasons… their overhead is incredibly high and they cannot buy in bulk sizes that will result in cheaper coffee bean prices. Plainly put, small, family-owned cafes have to fuck your pocket book in order to exist. As an aside, I believe that smaller, family-owned cafes tend to breed the world’s largest fucktards as well as nurture elitism in all its various forms.

As to point three, there is no denying that Starbucks is puchasing coffee from growers that have clear cut forest in order to grow more coffee. While not optimal, coffee grown in large fields on deforested land is no better or worse than coffee grown in the shade. Some might try to say that the field grown beans require more work, and chemicals to produce than shade grown beans. This is true, but with a caveat. Shade grown beans are more expensive simply because of their rarity. The growers of such beans would like to keep it that way specifically because it allows them to charge more for product that is no better or worse than field grown coffee. When in doubt, follow motivation… in this case, why do smaller, shade grown coffee growers put such effort into demonizing Starbucks? Cause it prevents them from raping the consumer.

I like Starbucks. I like them because they make a decent cup of coffee, at a reasonable price, and they do it consistently accross every storefront.  I know that if I enjoy the cup of coffee from the local starbucks in Kihei, I can be assured that I will like the cup of coffee in the starbucks in Poughkeepsie. There is comfort in consistency, AND THAT above all else is why I prefer coffee from starbucks over some gourmet, shade grown, over-priced coffee served by an elitist, cockslobbering, hatchet-faced douchebag with two nose rings and a fallout boy tee shirt.

Some random thoughts that have been rolling around upstairs…

Why is it that women want equality, until there is a bug to kill?

I am often impressed by how stupid people can be. It seems no matter how often I think, “gee, this is the dumbest mother fucker to ever walk upright!” someone comes along that is infinitely more impressive in their stupidity a few moments later.

This coming election is notable for the simple reason that after November 2008, at least ONE white house barrier will be broken.. we’ll either have a female or a minority in the seat of power.

A public message to Katy Perry, “I hope you fail as a pop star soon… if for no other reason than you’ll then be forced to pose nude in playboy before your youth is wasted.”

Possibly the one major boon and bane of living in the age of computers and technology is the death of the private life. Just about anyone’s life can be captured and broadcast for all to see with or without their permission. The age of the Paparazzi has begun and until someone does something to dampen our appetite for the lurid details of celebrity lifestyles, chances are things will only get worse.

The defining moment, the moment when privacy was no longer the right of every citizen, was the day Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, were killed in 1997 in a high-speed car crash while being followed by paparazzi in Paris, France. The fact that immediate legislation was not enacted globally to prevent hordes of paparazzi from following their celebrity targets in such a way as to endanger the lives of everyone around is a small indication of how powerful the photo agencies and gossip sites have become.

These days, it seems that there are few people who are not interested in celebrity. From news of Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan’s latest misadventures, or wanting to get all the inside scoop from the set of the latest movies, to wanting to watch random strangers compete for cash and prizes, technology gives fans unprecedented access into the lives of the people we are interested in. Ultimately, anyone who buys into the culture of celebrity in any way is responsible for Diana’s death… and the deaths that are sure to come in the future as a result of paparazzi frenzies.

I am of the opinion that anyone who buys a magazine that features candid shots of celebrities, watches an entertainment/gossip show on TV or watches any reality based television show is contributing to the problem. When you buy a magazine or watch an entertainment news show, you are in essence voting with your hard earned money… telling the major media outlets that any method employed by gossip journalists, photographers or videographers is ok. Even people who watch such reality tv as Survivor or Big Brother are in essence contributing to the problem, because they enable the fame whores who seek out fame through these shows as well as popularizing a show (that gets its money through selling advertising) that creates fame whores (or faux-lebrities as one wit has labeled them).

The only answer that I can see is if the US enacted legislation that made it illegal to capture the private moments of anyone without their consent. At the very least it would prevent situations that endanger the public such as what happened to Diana from ever happening again.

Some day common sense has to win out over common curiosity.

So over the last 3 months I have learned how to install, configure and design Joomla-based web sites. Joomla, for those unaware, is a content management system. A content management system is ideal for sites with a lot of content or content that changes on a daily basis. I have built a complete and fully functional joomla site for one client now, and I am working on a second.

From a design/development standpoint, joomla allows much more control for the end user and client, but very little design control. You’re kind of locked in to certain parameters, but ultimately, it is much more useful than a straight HTML site.

Yes, I know… my inner nerd is leaking out. I apologize in advance.

The good: It is another beautiful day in paradise. A balmy 80 degrees at 9:18 am.

The bad: I have a lot to do, but no motivation to do any of it. Including billing my clients for work done over the last 2 months. To do the billing I have to sort through 6 dozen emails and pull out the relevant data.

The ugly: The client whose billing I need to sort out is a non-profit and the work I have done is being billed at substantially less than my usual hourly rate. At this point, it is almost not worth billing the client because it would take a few hours and I wouldn’t get paid for it.

My auto post didn’t post last night. So, in addition to having to deal with the almost debilitating depression brought about by my team losing the opener (to a clearly NOT SHITTY nfc south team), my streak of consecutive days of posting came to an end.

Eh, no worries. I will continue on as though nothing happened. If nothing, I am good at ignoring things…