Don't Stop Staring
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Oh poor poor Toyota.
posted on 24 Feb 2010 by Evan Andrews |
Hey look a smashed up Golf (or GTI, can't tell). How much you want to bet the driver of that car was just driving with the typical Volkswagen driver vigor? That, "I'm so much better then other drivers on the road because I have a Volkswagen" vigor? That's not what this is about though....
Toyota is getting a thorough ass whooping in the American media. Thorough. The government is pounding on them now too. A couple days ago the head of Toyota USA had to testify in front of a senate committee and right now the CEO of all of Toyota is testifying. I'm not watching it. I think it's bullshit. Here's why.
The auto industry of the United States is in the crapper. The government (against popular demand, of course) bailed out General Motors and Chrysler just so that we could watch them go bankrupt anyway. Ford made an enormous financial gamble a few years back which allowed them to succeed and prosper while the other two were drowning. So good for Ford, you know how to make proper autos. But the other two thirds are crap. A company in a free market goes bankrupt because because they make bad products that nobody wants to buy. In an international free market sometimes those better products come from other countries. Like Japan and Germany.
Now, I'm no Toyota fan boy, I just bought my second Ford, but consider this. Toyota owners are some of the most boring people you could ever meet. Either that or they don't know crap about cars other then Toyota is a safe buy. WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT SAY, THAT BIT RIGHT THERE? That people who don't know anything about cars decide to buy Toyota's? It speaks of reputation obviously. In a free market, reputation is just as good as advertising. Better then advertising if you're dealing with anyone half way intelligent. Toyota owners are also some of the happiest owners of automobiles that you can find. As long as you maintain them properly (as you should with any car you own regardless of make) the things won't break. They're unkillable. You see so many old ones on the road, being driven by perfectly normal people, for that very reason. The English car show Top Gear tried to kill a euro-market Toyota Hillux pickup truck. They only had a mechanic with basic tools to act as 'medic'. This car started, with the work of basic tools and ignition fluid after such outrageous things as being submerged in the ocean and placed on top of a tall building that was shortly imploded. Oh, it was also lit on fire. 'Nough said?
No, there's a game here. There's an agenda here on the government/media's part. Company executives are being interrogated by a senate committee and officers of Toyota parts suppliers are being raided by federal agents of the FBI. It's all also covered very, very well. When the government bought out General Motors and Chrysler it meant that the tax payers (except not really) now own significant parts of those companies. I can't think of a better way to try to steer buyers away from the import brands then by publically crucifying one. The guidelines of the recall on the 9 Toyota models go from 2005 to present and brand new on the lot models. Pardon me, but we're just finding out about a five year old 'problem' now? I thoroughly believe that there could be a problem with some of these vehicles and Toyota has been nothing but honest, open and expedient about finding a solution.
No, Toyota is taking the beating that they are because this is the best advertising that can be done against them. The government and in turn the media are trying to shake consumer confidence in this Japanese company that for the past few years as been the number one retailer of autos in the United States, over the big three domestic companies. Scare the consumer into staying away from them. Maybe they'll buy American? Why not? It's worth a try eh?
Fuck that I say. Keep buying and driving Toyota. The problem is probably legit but it has been so thoroughly sensationalized that I'm having trouble taking it seriously now. Toyota is like "Yo, bro, we're fixing it!" while the government is like "Hey man, I think you rapped my daughter as well, we're going to bet you till you're dead then keep beating you more!". This whole show trial crap in front of the senate with the company executives is just a blatant waste of tax dollars but it has the point to scare us. Still a blatant waste.
Keep in mind the Firestone fiasco in the mid to late nineties. I still remember hearing about that. Ford Explorers equipped with Firestone tires had this curious problem of their tires shredding and causing accidents a lot more then that is supposed to happen. My favorite case however is a book written by Ralph Nader in 1965 called Unsafe At Any Speed. He brutalized the American auto industry as a whole for building unsafe cars, especially General Motors and their Chevy Corvair.
So that is the history. A history of American companies having tons and tons of problems with their cars. There's other instances too. The Ford Pinto was liable to explode if rear ended. The Pontiac Fiero liked the spontaneously combust because of a wiring issue. Toyota has been very, very clean for the past 20 or so years and now all of a sudden they're the automotive anti-christ? Please, I think something fishy is afoot here and it's by no fault of Toyota, except for maybe the fact that they sell really really well.
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You dumb bastard, that's how history is going to remember you now.
posted on 18 Feb 2010 by Evan Andrews |
Joe Stack...1956-2010, is going to hell now.
Nobody in their right mind can call him a martyr after what happened today. While he targeted one of the appropriate institutions that had essentially ruined his life, the people working inside of that building did not directly harm him. This is easiest to explain with an analogy. Who would you prosecute in a genocide? The holocaust for example. The men who gave the orders or the men who carried those orders out? A military institution and a government/business institution have one thing in common. The people at the top give the orders while the people at the bottom unknowingly carry them out. The people Mr. Stack killed and injured today are people who are no different then him. Middle class, regular folk. Trying just as hard as him to make a living, maybe not in as much financial fuckery as he was stuck in, but still. This is one of those sad instances where, in aiming at the proper institution this man only just ended up harming people who should be united with him, against the system.
His life, problems and ideals have pretty much just been summed up in one act of terrorism. To understand you have to read his suicide note, so nicely posted (in what I hope is it's entirety minus some edits for language) Link here:
It's lofty rhetoric is certainly socialist and almost communist. It should be easy for the mass media to hold it in front of the public and tear it to shreds for those two reasons. 'Socialist' and 'Communist'. Two immensely dirty words in the United States Of America. Dirty words because they are not completely understood. Further more they were used to scare the public from the end of WW2 on into accepting an enormous military budget. Sadly, with the whole 'communist' threat over we're now fooled by the 'War on Terror' into maintaining the most powerful, unnecessary and clearly ineffective military in the world.
What really stupefies me is that it's a safe certainty to guess at that Mr. Stack was not the only person who felt this way about the IRS, the government and the system. There has got to be hundreds like him, if not thousands. Their peaceful and level-headed protests and complaints just go unheeded by the mass media in this country. Everyone knows who runs the media, look at fellows like Rupert Murdoch FYI. As Stack put it in his letter, the media is run by the same 'thugs' that run everything else.
This man wasted potential with terrorism. He's no hero or martyr because he killed people no different from himself. I think I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life. The reason is very simple. This man could have channeled his grief and crushed spirit into something very very productive. He was clearly a very intelligent man. That intelligence channeled properly and productively could have produced a voice for the disgruntled and angry. His grief and frustration channeled properly should have been used as an instrument to cut through the red tape of the mass media and connect with other people of like mind, as well as clue the rest into what is going on.
Instead, he blew it. Don't celebrate Joe Stack, for you will be celebrating the death and injury of innocent life. Instead use his awful example as a reminder, you aren't the only one out there buddy. Find others, connect with others. If you can blow The Man's spot open to the eyes of the general public peacefully, without flying your airplane into a building and killing people, you'll get a hell of a lot more of a good reaction. Possibly the beginning of a movement that will bring about some real change. Sadly though, for now, Mr. Stack blew it.
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The Shoplifters Guide To A Clean Conscience.
posted on 15 Feb 2010 by Evan Andrews |
I'll start this out with a story. Was at a Wawa downtown with a friend the other night. How Wawa works is you order your sandwich, get a receipt, pay for it, they stamp your receipt and it becomes your ticket to get your sandwich once it's made. SO, you have to stay in the store after you pay to get your food. Catch my drift? So my friend get's her sandwich, walks to the cookie/donut/muffin cabinet and takes out a handful a sugar cookies. Then she beelines straight for the door. Outside she's confronted with a beggar. A homeless man. He, in true form, asks her and I for some money. Both of us only had debit cards, but she did something pretty awesome anyway. Those sugar cookies she stole, she gave them to the homeless man. Yo, that giant smile on his face when receiving those stolen cookies was legit delight. I was half proud of my friend, half angry that I hadn't thought of that!
Now, let me preface the rest of this blog by saying this: Shoplifting and stealing is still against the law in this country. It is a misdemeanor or felony charge if caught punishable with anything between a fine and some jail time. I am certainly not telling you to go right out and shoplift, I'm just saying that if you are going to do it anyway and want a moral stamp of approval then there's a few things you need to know.
A lot of people in this country have to steal food. Whether it's them who is hungry, or, as is the very sad true story, their children. Grocery stores in this country are run by, surprise, large corporations. A few like Walmart are multinational. What does the word multinational mean? Well all you really need to know is that they're billionaires. Nationwide food chains include, Publix, Winne Dixie, Walmart, Super Fresh, Genardies, Acme etc. There's also the smaller food markets, corner stores. Wawa, 711, soon on. When you steal from a large super market I would have to give you the thumbs up. Very few, like the Redner's Warehouse Market chain here in Pennsylvania are really 'employee owned' and I still think that's just a fancy way to say "if you work for us we give you very limited stock options! Isn't that awesome?!". Now lets look at food stores you may not want to steal from. There are very few places like Whole Foods that abandon what's been called 'The Woolworth' model of running their stores. That model can be summed up quite simply. Maximize profit by selling low quality products at a high mark up, AND pay your employees as little as possible. I have a friend who just started working at Whole Foods. She has precious little work experience, including no retail experience really. They started her off at (what has become the magical wage for this current generation of American young people) $10 an hour. That's pretty magical considering the state minimum wage in Pennsylvania is still around the neighborhood $7.50-$7.75 an hour. What the minimum wage means to stores like Walmart that fully employ the Woolworth model is that they don't have to start paying their employees anymore then that. What Whole Foods does (and Starbucks too for that matter) is that they try to pay their employees a 'living wage'. Other then the fact that it helps people get by, it also makes sound business sense. A well paid employee (anywhere) is more likely to do a better job, stay with the company longer and just generally be happier to go to work. Whole Foods (and Starbucks does this in their own way as well) also provides a healthy employee discount. Because places like them cost more to shop at, what they do for their employees is pretty much eliminate the mark up on their food so that somebody only making ten or so dollars an hour can afford to shop there. Basically there are few companies that actually care about their employees, not just say they do, but show that they do, so don't steal from them.
The subject of a regular corner store is a bit simpler. Wawa, a giant corporation with a pretty large profit margin should be stolen from where a one off mom and pop shop, family owned should not. The same goes for franchise businesses. 711's, most gas stations, etc. Basically, a franchise business is the rights to a name and to sell products that are bought by an individual or a family. Yes, they have to pay dues to the parent company for those rights. But essentially if you steal from a franchise chances are you are taking money out of the hands and food out of the mouths of regular people who are no less hard working and industrious as you are. Yes, either way the law says stealing is wrong. But stealing from an individual is more morally wrong. It's just the large corporations that have the money and the legal teams to see that the law is more properly enforced against you, the shoplifter. So naturally, if you must, don't get caught.
So far, the two political parties in this country have both professed to be pro small business, but their actions, whichever is in power have hardly proven it. Talking the talk and not walking the walk you see. My town for example has more then a few small businesses in it that I believe should be supported. We have a small hardware store here in town that is family owned. Small little outfit but usually they'll have what you need (if it's not fuck loads of lumber) and they're more then willing to help you out with any questions that a soft handed fool like me may have. Don't steal from them, or small outfits like them. Really, it's not cool. It's not alright. Lowe's is owned by Walmart. Home Depot is an enormous company as well. Steal from them! There's also the cigarette outlet and smoke shop here in town. It's a one man operation and has been since it opened a few years ago. Don't rob this man of his lively hood, as small as your potential thefts may be. Don't do it. He works hard. By working hard I mean that he sits in that store day in and day out, six days a week, making his living. He's not traveling to Dubai to party, driving a Bentley and living large while underpaid folk like you and I are toiling in his shop. No sir. He's working for his living, however large or small his living is. Go steal your blunts, pipe tobacco, whatever isn't behind a glass case from Smokin' Joes. Huge company. They've even employed a business plan of putting a store next to most bridges that traverse the NJ/PA border so that it's very convienant for New Jersey residents to drive across the bridge real quick and buy their cigarettes cheaper. Come on! No brainer here.
Now we hit an area that I'm really passionate about. Restaurants. Reason being, I was a waiter for awhile once and I fucking hated every minute of it, god dammit! I thoroughly believe in the mantra that if you can't afford a 20% tip then you can't afford to go out to eat! What seems to be completely forgotten among the general public of this country is that most wait staff at the vast, vast majority of restaurants and eateries make between $2.00 and $2.75 an hour and that's legal. They live, LIVE GOD DAMMIT, off of your tips. No body seems to really realize that though and the waiter or waitress has just become a brunt of jokes, abuse, harassment, etc. That's not the point here, so sorry, now I digress. Skipping out on your bill! Eat and retreat! I'm sure 90% of the people who do it don't realize the moral implications of their actions, and that if they did they'd feel fucking bad about themselves. A lot of restaurants are owned by large corporations too but there's one funny little loophole that doesn't apply to stealing from a corporate restaurant. When you skip out on your bill the company doesn't take the hit. No sir. Your server takes the hit. Out of their own pocket. Now as I had mentioned society seems to be polarized against the kind of people who end up being servers and bartenders. Alcoholics, drug addicts, college students, slackers, single moms, etc. This polarizing force has stripped these poorly paid hard working people of the respect and dignity that they deserve. DESERVE. So what if all of those titles happen to be true of a lot of people in the hospitality industry (yeah, that's what it's called, I've always hated that name)? The fact is these people do not deserve your disdain for one simple reason. Would you, Mr. Corporate Tool Box making a middle class income volunteer yourself or your children to do that job? No, you probably won't. So why do you have to hate on the people who do it? Somebody needs to bring you your steak and bottle of cheap wine you pretensions bastard, right? (Back to skipping out on your bill). So, if you skip out on a bill of any amount you are taking that money out of a servers pocket. Lets concentrate on two large groups of people who become servers. Single mother's and old women. You see old women between the ages of 50 and 75 working in dinners a lot. Now, if you're that age and you're working anything, you obviously need a job and can't afford that mythical American dream of retirement. If you're a single mother chances are you're working to keep your child fed and keep a roof over his/her head. You probably can't afford child care and probably don't get to spend as much time with your child as you would like. Working and parenting, especially when single is far more of a hardship and a struggle then most people give it credit for. Hell, I'll bet I don't even get it and here I am talking about it. So when you skip out on your bill you are taking medicine needed for survival out of an old ladies body. When you skip out on your bill you are taking food out of a child's mouth. If it's a big bill you're even jeopardizing the mother's chances of paying for her cell phone, car insurance or even possibly her rent. Good god think about the implications of that for a second. It's absolutely awful! Would you feel comfortable doing this to your fellow human being? Your grandmother? A child? No! Think things through first. NEVER skip out on a bill at a restaurant. (And please for fuck sake don't under tip. You just don't understand how disrespectful and dehumanizing that really is).
So there you have it. There are places, people (because large corporations have the legal status of people, did you know that?) that are okay to steal from if you must. But you really have to think about it and make sure you aren't stealing money out of the pockets and food out of the mouths of the helpless or the hard working folks who are no different from you or I, the 98-99% of the population in this country that does not control the wealth. That's us. We all work hard for our share of the cleanly scraped bones thrown our way and we shouldn't be stealing from one another. Instead it should be from those will all the wealth, all the money, who laud their services over us because frankly we need them to live. I'm still not encouraging theft or shoplifting. If you are caught you will be prosecuted whether you cooperate or not. You'll pay money you don't have and lose time that you don't have in jail possibly. So while I'm not suggesting doing it I'm just simply stating that there is still a morally correct way of doing it that doesn't hurt hard working people. The myth is that all stealing and theft do, but that's not true. Just don't make it a habit. Don't live on it. That in it's own is rather wrong. Instead be mindful of who you can help and who you could possibly hurt. We're all on the same plain, white, black. Employed, unemployed. Citizen, immigrant. Use this set of rules as a way of helping each other and not hurting each other.
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Sedition is still technically a law in these parts
posted on 23 Jan 2010 by Evan Andrews |
Okay, okay. The United States of America is really truly an empire. I get it. I know. Please don't torture this poor American citizen about it because he gets it.
Our navy is the most powerful on Earth. Our aircraft carries are floating airfields wielding all variety of defensive, strike, electronic warfare etc. planes. Nuclear power means they have an almost endless power supply, needing only to return to port for aviation fuel, ordinance and other consumables. Military power, with these ships can quite literally be projected anywhere on Earth. We have more military bases spread across the globe then anyone. The war in Iraq was imperialistically motivated by the need for the United States to control vast oil reserves. Think I'm a crack pot yet. It is fact that the Mexican war in 1846 was also motivated by imperialism. That war was a land grab. We (easily, because more American troops in that war died from disease rather then combat) wrestled Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California (I think Nevada too? Don't feel like fact checking) into our control. That was an enormous land mass rich with millions of acres of fertile farm land and natural resources. Indians too, but they were always just treated, and in the end, exterminated like vermin. Then there was the Cuban war in 1896. What really motivated that war was American merchants wanting to expand their markets. It worked. We got Guam, The Phillipines and Cuba itself. When we landed our military forces on Cuba we ignored the rebels who had been fighting the Spanish for almost a decade. We gave them no aid. There were no joint operations or joint intelligence gathering. The leader of the Cuban rebels was not even invited to Spain's formal surrender. While we let Cuba govern itself we did force a neat little back door into their Constitution. We forced them to accept an amendment stating that the United States can interfere in Cuban affairs in the preservation of freedom and liberty. Aka, whenever we wanted to.
With a history like this is it really so hard to accept that the war in Iraq is imperialism? Everything I stated above is cannon ladies and gentlemen. If you ask me to sight my sources come to my door step so that I can throw a few books in your face and insist that you read them.
That's not what really has me scared, thinking, planning and scheming a contingency plan for a possible disastrous future. In the 1980s the Reagan administration started something truly scary, and to me, this is the legacy of his presidency. He brought the conservative Christian right into near prominence and their wealth and power has been growing ever since. The United States is a non-denominational nation, even if the vast majority of it's citizens are Christians. For that little gift I'll probably always despise Reagan. Now fast forward to the 2008 election and Sarah Palin. Mrs Palin was quoted (before or after the election? I frankly can't remember) saying something along the lines of the war in Iraq being a crusade bestowed upon the United States by God. If I worded it better then her I'm not surprised. I forget the real quote but that is exactly what she said. I'm extremely disappointed that the press didn't make a bigger deal out of that, because it scared the fuck, and I mean Fuck, out of me. How the hell can you justify using such archaic wording, even in what is essentially propaganda, in this age of science, technology and enlightenment? It terrifies me to think that people would, could and possibly do believe that. You see, with religion, logic, reason and rationality go out the window. Poof. It's gone. You can use your deity to justify any number of strange and awful things, but only if you proclaim that it's the will of the deity. And if the right person says it, everyone else will believe it. That's a scary scope of power.
The evangelical Christian movement has been growing in this country for years and years. Gaining popularity, money and influence. Sadly though I think they're all the Christian equivalent of the Taliban. They just don't carry such big sticks. Boom sticks.
The way Palin talked and acted, as well as the kind of people who absolutely adored her lead me to believe that she's probably some sort of evangelical. The fact that such a person made it into an election is scary. The possibility of such a person wielding power in this country is scary. Part of what makes this country so great is that you can believe anything you want. Well let me try this on for size then. I believe that if this country were to ever become a religious state it would degenerate to the level of say, Iran. The rest of the world would no longer be able to take us seriously, we'd lose our ability for innovation and I'm sure an enormous plethora of other terrible and awful things.
Basically, I'm always slightly afraid, in the back of my head, that this future is possible. I'm planning on getting a passport real soon, not to travel but just to have one. The day this country becomes a religious state it dies. It won't be the same country I was born in. I will present myself to Canadian customs as a refuge. Look for me in Toronto or Halifax. Probably Halifax, for it's near the sea.
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What's Christmas time mean to me?
posted on 25 Dec 2009 by Evan Andrews |
Not much admittedly. The celebration of an event in a religion that I don't believe in. Also, consumerism. Awful raging consumerism. SPEND MONEY OR YOUR NOT PARTAKING IN THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT. Money that could be better spent else where, for more worthy causes. This argument however, as well as the complete and utter selfishness of the American public is not what I want to write about today though.
Today is Christmas day and I'm here at home spending it with my mother. She is my family, there is nobody else. I have a father yes, but he's down in Florida with my "step family". Don't get me wrong, they are all very nice people, but you have to understand that I would much rather be up here with my mother.
There's one other thing. Friends. With no real family to speak of friends take on the positions in life filled by brothers, sisters, or even cousins. Companions, advisors, even, almost, brothers.
I mean, yeah, I took this picture. I love it though for a real simple reason. It catches everyone having a good time. The drinkers drank and played beer pong, the dancers (me, sort of) danced and we all even had a snow ball fight a block long on a narrow city street covered in ice at two in the morning. It was a blast. Accented by the fact that everybody from afar is home.
That is me, Kell and Jon. Kell is about to graduate and sticking with her field will probably easily find a job in Charlotte North Carolina which is a huge banking city. Jon, if he gets into a grad program for teaching at the University of Pittsburgh will be living out there semi-permanently, at least until the summer of 2011.
In a way this is life telling me to light a fire under my own ass and hurry up and get that bachelor's in social work that I, you know, really want. I am also going to really miss my friends though. Especially what with Ed going down to Orlando Florida next year to study music recording and production. Not that I don't have friends here, I do, I just won't have as many important ones. Yes, I totally am assigning a hierarchy of friendship to my friends.
And as a last little bit for now, Jon brought up something interesting in the car last night. It's the end of a decade! The last time this happened we were all too young to really care. Now though...well...it's something to think about for sure.
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(Please pardon the tittle, it's a bit vulgar) Science Fiction Gets Me Off.
posted on 17 Dec 2009 by Evan Andrews |
Tomorrow is Friday night and as I've said before that is irrelevant to me. I've mainly worked in restaurants since I became of age to work and the fact is that my idea of the weekend is whatever two days of the week I have off. Monday and Tuesday. Yes! I love Mondays! Really though, after I get out of work tomorrow night I have a car to drive and two options. Party? Or go see that movie Avatar.
Now Avatar had me excited since I had seen the first trailer however many months ago that I did. I just love science fiction. It is far better in my opinion then fantasy because fantasy will never be at all possible where what is depicted in science fiction could someday be possible in some form or another. Not that I'll live to see the day when interstellar travel between planets in our solar system or other solar systems will be practical safe and economical but I don't discount the sheer possibility of it. In fact I would venture to say that what makes science fiction fantastic are the tiny bits of realism employed in the sheer premise of it all. Realism that I think Fantasy lacks completely.
Now, I know the premise of Avatar fairly enough. I'm actually avoiding any reviews of the movie. For once I don't want to know what other people think of the plot or the characters, I want to go into it completely open minded, not having the faintest hint as what to expect. What sounds really exciting to me is the fact that, from what I've heard, no I haven't bothered to look up specifics and technical details, the movie is made completely in CGI. CGI is probably the best thing to happen to science fiction cinema. Star Wars, Star Trek etc did a fair enough job in the past with lighting, models and filming techniques but properly executed CGI just looks real. Lighting and shadow, textures, details, explosions, gun fire, all of that looks competently realistic today in CGI. I'll hold up season four of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica as an almost crowning pinnacle of what can be done. That was also on a television show budget and dead line times to boot! Now, Transformers 2, while a terrible movie looked fantastic, with a 250 million dollar budget of course. Counter point though is District 9. A movie with a 12 million dollar budget that made you really believe there could have been an enormous alien space ship hovering over Johannesburg at the date of filming.
So suffice to say, I really want to see Avatar. The kicker is that I am prepared and ready to go see it alone. I work late. My friends are busy. I'm not seeing anybody. What's wrong with going to see a movie alone? Well apparently it really is rather taboo. For some reason cinema is a social event. You go with your family or you go with a date. Nobody hardly ever goes to see a movie alone. It's weird considering I have not yet (not within the past four years anyway) gone to see a movie with friends or a girl and have not worried in advance about whether the movie will be good or not. In fact, it dominates my mind before the movie starts whether or not I'll enjoy it. Whether or not I wasted my money. If I end up enjoying the movie or not I could really care less about my company.
Those are facts. There is also this consideration. This is the consideration that could anger people a little.
We live in a money driven world. I live in the suburbs where you need a car to do such things as work two jobs and go to school. I need a car. While I'm reasonably confident to own another car by the end of January I'm not out of the woods yet. I still don't have this mythical car. So, while I may be selling my self short (which is not really for me to decide anyway) that no ladies I know and could be remotely sexually interested in will go to a movie with me that's okay. I don't want a lover right now anyway. "Why's that Evan?". Simple, and an ex girlfriend of mine summed it up simply and beautifully. We had a nice night of quizo out at a corner pub and we got to talking afterward about her current financial situation. I was sympathizing with her, because, well, I can really sympathize with it. So she said this in regard to money and relationships, "Pussy carries a steep price tag". While you think about it and get angry I'll repeat it for emphasis. Pussy carries a steep price tag. You have to pay for it. And if you don't well it'll trundle on along and find someone else who will. I'm barely fit for that brutal bidding match at the moment. Give me the car and second job and sure, maybe I'll give it a swing again. I'll be paying for the rest of my college in loans anyway, so fuck it. While I'm currently debating the existence of mutual love between two people, even though I know that in my own brain love exists, that argument is for a different day. All I'll say further on that topic is that I know I was once loved and I also loved, at least once. Those two occurrences quite possibly happened at the same time. This was way over a year ago now though. Yeah, that long.
My friends are working, partying or just away at school and I'm pretty ill equipped to smash (thank you Jersey Shore, for I now love the word "smash") because there is such a thing as monetary suitability and that's a test I can't currently pass. Therefore, if you really REALLY want to see a damn movie it is perfectly okay, by that argument that I just posted up there that you just read if you're reading this now, to go see a movie alone.
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Winter is in full swing.
posted on 12 Dec 2009 by Evan Andrews |
You know what that means right? It means I'm not doing shit and there isn't shit to do. I live in the suburbs for f's sake.
First off I really need to do something about winter foot wear because I really don't like numb feet. I also need to do something about ear protection. I went to Walmart (imagine that) at midnight last night (which was when I had a car) and I really couldn't find ANYTHING. It's like Walmart knows what the acceptable "style" is and then just brutalizes it with cheap material and poor execution. That's the only way I can explain it really. I know this will just make me sound like an ass but how can someone buy clothes from that store and not expect to look like a fool? It's really terrible. When I was a child my clothes came from Walmart and least to say, I looked poor as hell.
You got the same look from Hot Topic in my opinion. Remember that store? The crap they sell is just as cheap and shitty.
Now the order of the day during the winter is usually layering. I've been picking up sweater pull overs and flannel shirts at thrift shops every time I see something I like. It's not much, it's like two and two. They'll get a lot of mileage for the time being. I have two keifia scarves. The one from H&M is the thinnest. That's a black and white plaid pattern scarf. Then the other keifia is tan and white hounds tooth. That one is substantially thicker. For example, it's what I should have worn yesterday because yesterday was pretty brutal for these parts. I also have a nice kashmir traditional scarf. Really nice and soft.
Now jackets aren't really an issue. I have a few. The deal with jackets though is if you expect to be out in the cold for quite awhile then it doesn't matter how thick or awesome your jacket is, you need more under it. I'm holding the Christian Dior over coat for days of gusty wind or light rain. It's pretty competent in those fields. Now, for most other days I have my leather bomber jacket or my pea coat. That's really either or. Depends how I feel really.
Winter head wear now. I don't have much in range of that. All of my hats and caps don't really do much to cover my ears. I have a couple of knit hats but I have one issue with knit hats. I hate the kind where you have to fold up part of it so that it fits on your head properly. I also have a few of those floating around somewhere. There's a decent enough tan one that's double layered. I think what I'm going to do is take shears to it. You know, trim it up. I know how raggedy that'll look and I really don't mind.
I mentioned foot wear somewhere up there and completely forgot to address it.
I have a couple pairs of canvass shoes and they don't really do jack. I have a pair of nice old leather shoes that a pit bull named Biggs peed on. After that I really don't know how to wash them or anything. I have a pair of kicks as well. Not really winter foot wear. I guess for now I'll just be browsing the thrift shops in search of a real pair of shows. You know what I mean by a real pair of shoes. I don't know the name for them, just the "old style" of shoe. Boots as well. A decent pair of boots that aren't too worn out. The only conflict there is just that I really hate boots. Not sure what to do about that really.
For gloves I'm in luck. I have this thick pair of mittens that I stole from a friends girlfriend like, I don't know, a bunch of girlfriends ago. They're made of thick blue and teal yard and the mitten part slides back to expose your fingers. That's perfect using my iPod or cell phone while out in the cold. The iPod's touch screen only works with real genuine fingers and I can't operate the buttons on a cell phone without the use of my fingers.
I know I'm in the process of looking for a car but when you only have $2k or round abouts to swing it takes awhile to find something that is not a piece of absolute garbage. Even when I do finally find that car that is not a complete piece of garbage I still much prefer to be dressed properly in the winter. I still want to be able to function out doors, take the train down to the city and walk around places, you know what I mean?
Oh, I also bought my first Nerf gun. No, I didn't have one of those when I was a child. They standardized the clips, magazines an ammunition finally. I bought the six shooter revolver style gun with an extra pack of about 18 extra darts. It's brilliant really because as Tempo had said when you got one of those as a child you lost 4 darts and another one was defective, leaving you with only one functional dart. Now I can go out and buy the darts by the case. I can also buy a clip fed carbine, a 35 round drum fed rifle and a belt fed battery operated fully automatic mounted machine gun.
I'd rather have one Nerf gun over a thousand real guns. So, I'm going to start collecting these. With the car will come the second job and I'll be able to pick up the big guns.
Nerf/Rave/Ecstasy party. My house. Coming soon.
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You say one thing but you're thinking something else. Fuck you.
posted on 30 Nov 2009 by Evan Andrews |
9:45pm:Holy shit, my mother's coffee tastes like apples. Where did this come from? This is not how I wanted to start off my post.
11:51pm: The thoughts in my head are about as jumbled as the european prog rock I have been listening to, but not nearly as nice.
11:53pm: You know the legion of ex girlfriends you get along with? One of them invited me to her boyfriend's show at the World Cafe Live (where she works) on Friday night. Truth be told, it would be nice to have a Friday night off. Truth be told it would be nice to do something along the lines of "going out" on a Friday night. Truth be told, I would really like to meet her boyfriend Thom. She's a good gal. Not raw but the most honest of the ones I've come across. Her and Thom have been together for AWHILE, and have even hurdled the "living together" line. There is no part of this that I am anxious about. It 100% excites me.
12:07am: When determining whether you should put yourself in any situation you have to first estimate the level of anxiety you will most likely feel in that situation, based on plenty of factors of course. Now, since I just can't drink alcohol ever again the anxiety level I feel towards being around alcohol is surprisingly low. What drives the anxiety level up is the people who make up this social situation. If your estimated anxiety level in posed situation may exceed 35% of total emotional out put then chances are you should not subject yourself it. Well, by you I naturally mean me. I'm speaking for nobody here but myself.
12:12am: Now let's delve into the biggest perpetrator of this anxiety. For me it's resentment. Resentment leads to awkward, which leads to fear, which leads to anxiety. Now, I don't want to be that guy, oh, that fucking guy, who goes here. I'm doing anyway. Relationships, for me always just end the same way. Breeding resentment in me towards the other party. Justified or not. Repeat: Justified OR NOT, it happens and is something that is completely beyond my control. That resentment is what leads to said anxiety. Know it or not you lovely ladies of my past, you've all witnessed it. What wipes it away is small sporadic doses of completely healthy interaction, as well as time. It's essentially a clean slate called "The Present" which is no longer tarnished by the past. It takes me time to get to that point mentally. Now with my plans for Friday night, that clean slate called The Present came a long long, god I don't even know how long, long time ago for this lovely lady. Ergo the fact that I can shake a hand, give a hug, or draw back to the very present, sit here in front of my computer and excitedly anticipate a night of watching her boyfriend open for some ridiculous gypsy band!
12:26am: Even my favorite Christmas song has themes in it that are making me angry. Let me just generalize real quick. I despise this entire season, thoroughly.
12:29am: Tonight I got a soft rubber case for my iPod touch, to protect it of course. I was just changing a song on it and I got to wondering. With this silly new case to absorb all the shock, does that now mean that I can fling my iPod at small animals and stun them long enough to break their necks, cut them up and cook them? There is certainly not an app for that.
12:36am: Early on Facebook I wrote "My night has been so far characterized by awesome European prog rock, a caffeinated cleaning spree and a growing disdain for nice, friendly and happy people that I probably just won't kick all winter.". This is pretty much what I originally intended to blog about, so as of now (12:37am) I probably will not change the original title that is now about 3 hours old. Yes, I am disdaining and making up words against nice, friendly, happy people. In retrospect I should probably drop the "happy" part. It's far to easy when you're unhappy to disdain people who are but it's pretty petty. Fact of the matter is we all pursue happiness and it is nothing any of us should feel guilty about. Fact. This is more about friendly nice people. You know them, I swear you do. They try as hard as they can to get along and please everybody. Now let me tell you why I have a problem with this. Fact: We are judgmental creatures by nature. You tell me you aren't judgmental and I'll have a mind to tell you you're a hypocrite. We judge others for various different reasons. It's part of how we decide whether we like a person or not. Fact is, we can't like everybody. We just can't. We're humans, we'll always dislike SOMEBODY, for SOMETHING. We determine this by judging others. We also judge others on their actions. You're judging me poorly for lying and I'm judging you poorly for your flip flopping ideology. There's a theoretical example of how the system works. So lets not pretend to accept others anymore while we harshly judge them inside of our own heads. It's fake. It's soulless. It's hypocritical. I propose this very simple solution. I've been using it more and more lately. If you've judged in your head that for *insert reason* you don't like said person, give them the cold shoulder. It's essentially the least hypocritical and least offensive way to say "Hey, I don't really like you" and still save your own face.
12:50am: Now, are we all guilty of everything listed above? Of course. Do I include myself in the previous statement? You better believe it. So let's just take the basic parameter that we judge all people and find some way to work around this unavoidable fact of life without looking like a shitty soulless hypocrite. Have I been guilty of that in the past too? Totally.
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