I’m not a democrat, nor a republican… and even though there were plenty of opportunities to call the former two presidents any number of names, I didn’t simply because there were better ways of displaying my frustration with their policies and missteps than by calling them names, including word play on the dumb.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but GW2 flew a F-102A… ever seen the inside of this aircraft? You can’t be dumb and fly a jet. If you meant that he made some questionable decisions based on his advisory group’s intel? Yeah… sure… but calling the sitting president of the United States names doesn’t sit well with me even if I disagree with his politics.

I consider myself a comparatively smart guy and I couldn’t fly a jet like GW2 did, mostly because my grasp of avionics is suspect at best. I just think that the former and current Presidents of the US deserves a modicum of respect… at least the amount of respect necessary to avoid calling them childish names. I’m a firm believer in taking the higher road… and while I enjoy making fun of people, probably more than most do, I still consider it bad form to call people names when I am trying to argue politics.

I can’t begin to count the number of times clients have told me, “It’s in the mail!” only to discover, weeks later, that the client did NOT in fact put your check in the mail. It’s aggravating for a number of reasons the least of which is that your client is LYING to you. It throws off accounting, makes you have to scramble to cover third-party contract invoices, and is just generally stressful.

In the past I’ve toyed with the idea of penalizing my clients who do not deliver on their promises, but being a private contractor means having to cut people A GREAT DEAL of slack because you want their business. For 2012, I made the decision to completely do away with paper of any kind in my business practices.

What this means is that aside from saving a few trees, my clients can no longer write me a check. All payments must be submitted electronically. If the payment doesn’t show up on the date it is due, I put a hold on the clients project, or take it down from my servers for failure to pay.

Now I am sure some of my clients will be unwilling to adhere to the new practices, but in those cases, they are clients I am willing to lose. On December 28th, all my clients will receive an email that informs them of the new business practices. They’ll be required to log in to the secure area of my website and digitally sign a document saying the understand and accept the new terms. If they don’t, they will receive an email the following week explaining that I’ve decided to void our contract (if any is currently in place), and that they can download their files from the server over the next 72 hours, after that time the files will be archived on CD/DVD and be sent via postal mail.

It may sound crazy, but ultimately I’ll be a lot happier and a lot more flush with capital.

If a bunch of people with arguably lower than average IQ were camped out on your property, non-violent or not, how long would you tolerate it before you started macing the morons? Protest? Sure… within reason and within a reasonable time frame.. but any protest longer than say 72 hours is no longer a protest, but an attempt to FORCE authorities into actively removing them physically.

One of the articles covering the occupy UC Davis situation had this tidbit:

“”I had my arms around my girlfriend. I just kissed her on the forehead and then he sprayed us,” he said. “Immediately we were blinded. … He just sprayed us again and again and we were completely powerless to do anything.”

Here is an idea.. you COULD have walked away when they asked you to leave… course, that means having to think rationally rather than emotionally. Most of these idiots are wasting their time.

Here’s the thing… What caused the pepper spray incident in the first place? Did the campus police simply walk up to random people and spray them? No. The people were asked numerous times to vacate their tent city. They refused. They collectively ignored the requests from lawfully appointed representatives of the property to disperse. They were warned that they would be arrested and steps would be taken to remove them physically, again they ignored the requests. Any REASONABLE person would see that there was an escalation of their methods to end the protest. The low IQ protesters ignored all signs that bodily injury was possible. Was the campus police reaction warranted? It is arguable since I wasn’t there and the only media reports seem to ask people who are associated with the protest. A reasonable person doesn’t expect to be maced obviously, but a reasonable person can be expected to follow the law as well as those trying to keep it.

I am all for peaceful assembly. What I am against is a military occupation of property. I think it really all boils down to common sense. These idiots are no better than the facists campus police who used mace to deal with peaceful protesters (though again, seeing video I can see quite a few protesters who were ANYTHING but peaceful).

I’m pretty liberal… but i just think there are more constructive ways to change the system. Most of these geniuses staging protests would be much better off using that energy and passion to get involved in government and change it from the inside than sitting with a bunch of slackers wishing things were different.

I also know that any woman who subjects herself to plastic surgery has bigger problems than getting older or fatter. When I see a woman over 40, I often find that the most beautiful of them have not had any surgery or augmentation.

Very often, when I see a woman over 40 who has had plastic surgery I see desperation not youth. It gives me the screaming heevie skeevies. It has become the standard belief, mostly through celebrity reinvention, that plastic surgery is normal and necessary. In my humble opinion though, plastic surgery should only be the last resort for the heinously maimed…I figure if you’re gonna look like you survived a chainsaw accident, you might as well have actually survived a chainsaw accident.

In those conversations, I often ask them if they have ever watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Every so often someone says, “Yeah! That movie was weird…”

More often than not, they’ll also say, “Stupid movie… I didn’t get it!”

And immediately I discount that person as being only an IQ point above invertebrates.

That movie is fucking genius. Someday I’ll meet someone who will mention they have seen the movie and they’ll offer their opinion of what the movie means and I’ll know I’ve found a kindred spirit… and someone who really fucking loves movies.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GiLxkDK8sI

As I have explained, I read a lot. At various times I have been bored enough to read religious tracts from the entire King James Bible to the Koran. I know what is in there and I know what the intent of the scriptures are. Some of the door-to-door types really have no understanding of what they are reading so it is relatively simple to really fuck them up with just a bit of literal interpretation. The door-to-door missionaries eventually avoided our house.

These days though, the fanatics are embracing the electronic age and posting their drivel on Facebook. It’s very difficult for me to avoid engaging these people. I know that many people need religion to avoid confronting the reality of death, pain, suffering, or calamity, but I don’t need them to write shit on my wall about their god. I honestly don’t care and not because I am atheist (I’m not… truth be told, I’m actually agnostic). Their belief system brings them comfort when something happens, great.. good for them. But I don’t want you to saddle me with your childish belief in fairies, leprechauns, angels or other supernatural beings that bestow good favor on those who believe.

More and more of my friends are falling into the whole “daily affirmation” thing where they post messages about god and good works in relation to their day to day. Many of these cocksuckers are no longer my friends if they keep it up more often than holidays or special occasions. When they do it on some random wednesday morning, I defriend them without a backward glance. I don’t want to have people attempt to convert me and I especially don’t want to see that folk lore inspired rhetoric appearing in my friend feeds.

Post about your drinking binge, your vegetable garden, or the heiffer you pulled at the bar last night so i can laugh with you or at you… the rest you can keep to yourself.

10 years later and I still think people are expecting the other shoe to drop. Just about everyone I know believes that something worse will happen in the coming years… and the sick part is, they’re probably right.