.plan

Finally!  Though I’ll have to try to defer it for a couple months due to the state of work.  Oh well, it’s coming soon

I talk about this a lot in real life.  I always get sad when I see the automated check-outs in supermarkets/stores show up, or the APC automated package sending system at the post office so you don’t have to talk with/get to know your postal workers or supermarket clerks, or the Chipotle iPhone app so you don’t have to interact with people to order your food, or the death of the arcades so we can stop meeting new friends there and instead all escape and play video games in our own sheltered homes with either nobody or the friends we already know.  There’s so much technology out there trying to eliminate interaction with other people.  It’s quite saddening to me.

In my life I’ve had a nice friendship with a postal clerk, met a cool friend or two at the arcade, enjoyed pleasant relationships with my supermarket clerks, and I tell ya, I’ve had some absolutely wonderful and stimulating conversations with strangers in line at the post office.  I’ve even gotten a call or two from friends to report a date/great sexual encounter with someone they’d met in line at the post office just a couple days prior.  Surely all kinds of great friendships, relationships, and families have started there.  The APC is ruining people’s lives.  All this automated/do-it-at-home stuff is, and I don’t think most people even realize it.  Oh my god, don’t get me started on online classes.  Do you know how many people meet their significant other in a college class!?  Which college class was your significant other in?  Hopefully not the one that you took online instead. *sigh*  Why are so many so intent on creating ways to avoid other people?  Has society become so misanthropic?  I guess a lot of it is that damn capitalism.  Eliminate a job, save a buck, who cares about the fabric of society, look at this: $$$!

Anyway, I was agreeing whole-heartedly with Jackson Lee, a North Carolina man who told his story of starting his own record store/bike repair shop, when I was listening to one of my favorite shows, The Story, on public radio tonight.  I clipped the part:

is being built!!… in China :|  COME ON AMERICA!!!, we can’t just depend on Google for everything.  Remember when we used to be cutting edge? *sigh*

Anyway, it’ll cost China $5 billion.  /me gets out his pencil and puts on his elementary-school-student math hat:  Now, $5 billion to power 3 million homes.  That’s about $1.7 billion for one million homes.  America has about 110 million homes.  110 times 1.7 billion equals $187 billion…

…so, that would cost us $187 billion to do for all our homes.  The war in Iraq wasted $700 billion.  So, if we spent only 25% of that money on solar power here in the US, we’d have every single home powered for free.  Figure we use more electricity than the average Chinese home, and that construction costs are higher here, maybe that’ll push it to 50% or 75% of the cost of the Iraq war?  Hell, take that other 25% and start powering apartments and businesses since we’re done with homes, and since we’re still spending money on Iraq, maybe by the time that’s all done and paid for we could have had free infinite power for the entire country.  Are we running out of money to power everything in my math here?  Hmmm.. I have those Afghanistan war costs somewhere here…

Oh and by the way, this would reduce our carbon footprint by about a gazillion times!  Maybe we could all have electric cars, and never have to pay for the energy to run them - even less pollution!  You might not even mind paying extra for them, because you’d NEVER EVER HAVE TO BUY ENERGY TO USE THEM!!  The lord and earth would love it and say

Finally, they’ve not only seen the light, but they’ve used it!

The second coming of Jesus Christ might even occur due to such delight.  He might be like “Whattup, I know some of you thought I was supposed to come back when stuff was real bad or whatever, but meh, I had to use it now instead cause I just had to personally give props.  Word!” *poof*

But NO, we couldn’t possibly spend that much money on that!!  Are you crazy?

*rolls eyes*

I have a feeling that “we couldn’t even possibly spend that much money on it” even if there were no war.

Anyway go ahead China, let the clowning begin.  I’ve got my smile on and my eyes closed, ready for that pie in the face…

Kanye,

You are the biggest douchebag there fucking is.  You make it an embarrassment to be a fan of yours.  I had a backlogged post to finish about high regards for your 808’s & Hearthbreak album - deleted.  I was even going to buy that one and maybe future good ones, but fuck that, I am going to continue pirating your shit for the rest of my life.  I don’t even want to go to your concert anymore.  Lady Gaga should drop out of it too.

WTF were you thinking?  How could you do that to somebody, especially her in this situation.  I guess you just fucking shut off your hearing completely as to what the person is even saying up there because you’re just thinking about what stupid shit YOU’RE about to do, and it is some stupid shit.  You’re such a jackass.

Even the President thinks so, ouch.

Oh for the love of God.  Save watching this video for when you are already in a bad mood or sad.  Viewer discretion advised.

Via TreeHugger.

Right-wingers are up in arms over the President addressing America’s children in a back-to-school video.  They think he’s going to indoctrinate them into socialism (even communism according to some freaks), and some of these parents are having their kids not go to school that day.

My take on this is: if a sitting president has a positive approval rating, it shouldn’t really be a big deal.

Actual indoctrination of children that goes on all the time:

1. Making them say a pledge of allegiance starting before they can even write, when they don’t know what the hell it means.
2. Forcing a religion onto a child.

You’re an asshole.

Even more-so if you run that piece of shit between 10pm-9am.

I forgot to blog about this ordeal I had a month ago.

So I sprained my ankle real bad, crutch level bad (still not healed up). When it happened, I heard a crack, and it was worse than any other sprain, so I wasn’t sure if perhaps I fractured it or something. So I went to the Hospital (ER) to get it checked out.

I show up there, give them my insurance card, they type in my number, and? No Record! Yes, this is the first time I was using it, but that shouldn’t matter. No record, no record - FOR TWENTY MINUTES they wouldn’t admit me, as I stood there for half that time in pain on one foot as they fumbled around the computers and phones. Finally I just sat down on my own after saying “*SIGH* American healthcare” to the lady trying to sort it out, to which she responded “I know…” Anyway, turns out there was a mistake and my account was issued as a Northern California account, so then they kept assuming that I was from there/my employer is based there, which I told them I’m not and have spent a total of maybe one week up there in my life. They kept acting like there’s no way I’m right about my life.

Anyway, let’s observe the bullshit here. Not mentioning the making me stand there when they know my foot is injured/not believing me about anything/etc. The network: what the FUCK kind of system is that? When you have somebody from the same hospital/insurance system, with a card issued by the same hospital/insurance system, and you type in that number, it shows:

“No Record”

-instead of-

“Northern California Patient”

RETARDED!!! I mean how stupid is that? Totally ridiculous, it’s their own system/database. I was on the phone with them about this later on and they basically said they had no plans to implement something unified like that because the database would grow too large/slow with the size of medical records that get pulled up. I asked the guy how it’s possible that they’re able to look it up in customer service, and he explained that they don’t get the full records, just basic info. I suggested/asked why they can’t have a system where when they initially put in the number, it just gets the basic info, and then you can select “retrieve full record”, to which he had no answer yet no willingness to accept. At my follow-up appointment the staff said “We wish it was like that!” when I made the same suggestion. *EYE ROLL MAXIMUM*

They day after I sprained my ankle, me and Strange went to Blockbuster to rent a movie. I went up to the counter and told the man: “Now… at some point in history I had a blockbuster account somewhere in the United States…” He asked me for my driver’s license number, and found it immediately, updated my info, and I was ready to rent. The whole thing took about one minute.

Oh, by the way, the health insurance I’m lucky to have through my employer is supposed to be “really good”. Also, the care at the hospital, not very good. Among other things, it wasn’t until I was leaving that a random nurse on the way out noticed me walking funny with the crutches and showed me what the proper adjustments should be like. Thanks for making sure I’m all set, Kaiser!

Gotta love good ol’ Ed Schultz.  I agree with him on most things, and especially with both of these guys in the vid, but he also had me laughing pretty hard how he worked himself up and was going off:

LOL. Is there a word for cheering and laughing simultaneously? Oh man, if only Chris Farley were around to do an even more ridiculous version of it on SNL, he’d be perfect.

Ah, the conservatism/censorship (same thing) of Wal-Mart.  Good for Green Day.  There’s a couple really good quotes from the guys in that article, such as:

They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there.  We just said no.  We’ve never done it before. You feel like you’re in 1953 or something.

Meanwhile, violent gory R-rated horror movies (or even unrated versions) like the Saw series, and other movies ridden with cursing are sold there, along with firearms.

By the way, in case you’ve never seen WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price, .plan highly recommends that you do.  They got it on Netflix streaming.  My girlfriend introduced me to it, yet for some odd reason her extremely liberal ass doesn’t want to ever finish watching the last 15 minutes of it.