The Major

Category: Blatherings

  • Thanks

    Dear Guy that Peed on the Toilet Seat,

    Thanks.

    Sincerely,
    Stuart Matthews

  • I’m Coining This One

    You can measure the change in your life by the change on your keychain.

  • Wha Happen?

    This pretty much sums up all that is wrong with the world: Parker Brothers releases version of Monopoly using debit cards instead of cash

    Seriously, who doesn’t love having a big ol’ wad of Monopoly cash?

  • Unnecessary Arguments, Part II

    Following up on yesterday’s post about global warming, I thought of another example of an unnecessary argument. This one has to do with gay marriage.

    Social conservatives sometimes argue that it is a choice to be gay, not something that you are born with. The liberals bite.

    It shouldn’t be about why someone is gay. It should be about equal rights alone. It should be about being able to marry any consenting adult, whether you are straight or gay, or even if the relationship based completely on friendship alone – a “life partner” type arrangement.

  • Unnecessary Arguments

    There are a few things that I believe in strongly enough where I think that the other side is just plain wrong. Global warming, for me, has quickly become one of those issues. Saving ourselves from rapid climate change must be one of our very highest priorities.

    Some of the arguments from the other side are absolutely absurd. They don’t have anything to stand on, so they just start making shit up. Even those that agree that there is or might be global climate change argue that if we were to do something about it, it would ruin our economy.

    And the rest of us give in to this argument. Not give in in terms of agreeing with it. But we give in when we even argue that at all. We let them change the argument. Now it isn’t about global climate change, it is about the economy. First of all, our footing isn’t nearly as steady when talking about the effect on the economy as it is when talking about science – things like CO2 emissions and temperature change. Even if it was as solid – What is the point? Our main argument is that we are putting ourselves at risk of massive flooding and millions of deaths worldwide. Who cares about the economy when faced with these prospects?

    This post inspired by this post on ThinkProgress.

  • Sonic.net is Awesome

    It is worth the (small) premium to get a good ISP:

    “We will not allow warrantless wiretapping or access to customer information.”

  • *grumble*

    Patience is a bitch sometimes. And so is only getting a few hours sleep, even for just a couple days.

  • Drunk Observeration of the Night

    A high five is not great unless it hurts.

    Furthermore, I will likely delete this in the morning.

    Maybe not. That may or may not have been added for comedic effect. I have Biff here reading what I type, and the combination of my typos and his drunken verbal screw-ups are highly…amusing.

    Done. (If I wanted to be artsy, I would say “fin.”)

  • News and Notes

    I think once or twice, I have started a blog post in this fashion. I think I have a lot of things almost worth saying, but nothing that is worthy of its own post. So I just start slamming my thoughts all into one post. Anyway, here goes:

    I posted my car for sale on Craigslist. I hope it sells soon. Because when it does, I am going to buy a mountain bike and maybe a new laptop. Also, I can “move on.”

    I really get a great feeling out of doing something correctly. I usually can’t do something correctly if I am rushed. So I have learned to not even try, sometimes, if I am going to be rushed. Today with my car, I was able to take my time and get this first part done right. I double parked in front of my apartment to take all of my belongings from the car to the apartment. Then I drove it down Van Ness to get it washed. $50 + $10 tip. Worth it for a good detail. I then drove it back to my garage and took about 40 or so pictures. You can see them here. Posted on craigslist…and now I just have to hope it will sell. Actually, if I don’t hear from someone by tonight, I will post on eBay or the paper or autotrader.com. But the great thing is that my legwork is done. At this point, almost all my work can be done from a desk.

    Moving on…Alyssa and I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” on Saturday night down at Santana Row in San Jose. It was a great movie. Gore covered everything: past, present, and future of the effects of global warming. past, present, and future of what is being done to prevent global warming. I think that a lot of “issue” movies miss out on at least a few of those things.

    I was honestly pretty amazed at the scope of our current problem. I didn’t realize that we were already so far in the deep end. But that doesn’t much change my outlook. I was already on Gore’s side, at least I would like to think, when it comes to the environment. One thing I would like to do, however, is take a look through the Gore-debunkers’ arguments just to see if they have any substance to them.

    I sometimes think that I am a bit too exposed to the liberal viewpoint of things and not exposed enough to the conservative viewpoint. And even if someone is a complete liar, you can still learn a lot from listening to them.

    On the way back to the city on Saturday night, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh. I have always thought that the guy spouted complete nonsense, but I gave him another chance. He failed. He spouted complete nonsense (except for one small rant he had about a Walmart issue). But even so, it was good to listen to him because so many other people soak this crap up, and it is good to know what the talking points from the other side are.

    The same theory goes with reading almost all newspapers. Even if you think that they are completely controlled by corporate America, you can still learn what corporate America wants you to think. And that is very valuable.

    Moving on (again)…I am currently reading ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman. I can’t really say that this book is a great read. But it is great in the fact that the main idea is so new to me, and it has gotten me thinking a lot. The main ideas are that workers are “wage slaves.” This means that they have the freedom not to work, but they will starve if they don’t. And they are being stolen from by the capitalists – they get paid much less than their work is actually worth. This is evidenced by the fact that there is so much excess capital to go to those at the top – those who did no actual work. I can’t really say that I disagree with any of this. But at the same time, a lot of what he says is stated as fact, when indeed it could use a lot of supporting evidence. I cannot complain about this too much, however, since this is indeed supposed to be an introductory book to anarchism. I would very much like to read more on the subject after reading this book.

    One way that these ideas are applied to real life is by thinking that – remember that guy that cut you off today? That was horrible, wasn’t it? Well where were you coming from when he cut you off? You were coming home from work. Your workplace where you spent 8 hours getting stolen from. So, yeah, that guy that cut you off wasn’t very nice. But if we’re going to get mad at someone, why are we going to get mad at that guy? Get mad at those who are stealing your hard work.

    Having said that…I would not say that I am an anarchist. I will have to read a lot more on the subject before that previous paragraph becomes something that I would care to defend fully. The field of Economics is pretty much the enemy of anarchism – I’ll have to do a bit of reading on that as well.

  • Yesterday, Today, and Other Things

    It was a long week. I had a few consecutive days getting five or six hours of sleep, and then I went to EFF after work yesterday to send out t-shirts and such.

    So I got home yesterday at about 2:30pm. Browsed the web for a bit, and decided to get some sleep at about 4pm. I told Alyssa, “OK, time to go sleep on the couch now.”

    “Why are you sleeping on the couch?”, she asked.

    “Because I won’t sleep long on the couch. And since it is Friday, I’ll be sleeping tonight anyway.”

    I figured I would wake up in a few hours and do something. So, I put on “Remember the Titans” and layed down. I didn’t even come close to falling asleep during the movie, so I went to sleep after it was done at about 6pm.

    I woke up, and the very first thought I had was, “Sweet, it is night time! I am going to go to North Beach and get some pizza and a beer.” Unfortunately, the very next thing I did was look at the clock and notice it was about 3:15am. Damn, another event missed because of my damn schedule.

    Oh well, I was still tired, and might as well finish out my sleep in my bed. I stumbled into the bedroom and plopped down. Wow…I love my bed. So comfortable. So much better than sleeping on the couch.

    I finally woke up again at about 7:15am this morning. Sweet…13 hours of sleep. That felt damn good. And I woke up early enough to get a good start on the day. A relaxed start, even. I just got back from the bagel store, and the bagels are delicious. Oh, and one thing I have noticed a few times is that the sell the Sunday paper AND the Saturday paper on Saturday. What the hell?

    Soon, the maid(s) will be here. This is the first time I have hired maids. My apartment could definitely use a bit more cleaning attention, but I usually keep it pretty picked up. I am hiring maids not because I can’t clean, but because I want my time back. It takes way too damn long to clean. So if this works out I might hire them every other week or something. It would be nice to get some more of my free time back. Because I sure as well won’t ever be able to find a good job where I work 30-35 hours per week. So I’ll have do other things to reclaim my time.