Category Archives: social

Math; Unknown Gender

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No update yesterday. God was said to have rested on the seventh day, so I tripled his run! This megalomaniac thing is really fun…

I went ahead and finished formatting all of the poetry to actually be able to load today. This might not mean much to you, but it does to me, I completed a project! I can’t even remember the last time that I ever completed a project that wasn’t work related. I did complete this one though, and that gives me a bit of spirit about completing other site related projects. Of course I am all out of steam for completing such projects for the day, so I will just blab on about various crap.

The previous paragraph was exactly as far as I got with doing an update yesterday. I started to do a bit of a rant on a subject that I was even bored with, and at length just gave up completely. There is no reason why I have to do this on a daily basis, especially since my readership at current is about three people. I would like to think that my decision to not post yesterday was a good one in the respect that since I knew what I was going to post was crap I just did not post it. That was a real first for me. Normally I just go by a ‘good enough’ kind of radar, and what I had written yesterday fell well below that line. Will this mean that I won’t post absolute crap in the future? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But, I did have that brief moment of clarity..

Now for a bitch, then I am not sure where I am going to go with the last segment. I know the topic, but my opinions keep changing even as I am typing this.

1=1, 100-99=1
This is something that really irritates me, possibly only becuase I work in retail, but I would still find it irritating regardless of my profession. Like the little bold statement up there says, 1=1. That is, of course a very obvious statement, but for some reason that truth gets distorted when persons (who must be way below average on IQ) that I am teaching how to use a cash register get involved…I don’t even want to go into the complex 2=2 theory with them, or they might just have their head explode and die on the spot….Then I would have to mop it up….Anyway….

An average cash register will give you a total at the end of a transaction. The customer will be required to pay that amount. For my purposes I am going to use 1 dollar. So, let us say that the cash register says, “Total $1.00” -that is american, of course and I believe that even if the total were in euros or shekkels the point would remain the same- The customer hands you a $1.00 dollar bill. You type in $1.00 then hit the cash/tendered/received/whatever key, the drawer opens and it tells you to give the customer no change. End of transaction.

Now we throw in the screwball. Let us say that in the previous transaction the cashier hit the 1 key, then accidentally hit the ‘double-zero’ key twice. That would mean that the cashier had entered $100.00 in cash tendered for a $1.00 transaction. This would be a horrible thing, if not for the fact that the register tells you how much change to give back. The register would tell you to give $99.00 back, if you have even a bit of competence you would not give any change back, and that is what will usually happen when a trainee is faced with this situation. Then their logic gets fuzzy…

A typical trainee reaction will be, “My register is going to be $99.00 short because I hit $100.00 and he only gave me $1.00.” My stock reaction to this (the fact that I have a stock reaction to this is a testament to the ineptitude of your average high school graduate) is, “Did you give them any change back?” The answer is always no. So the till is in balance, but I have to spend way too much time explaining it. Sometimes they are so scared that they will show up short that they leave a note for the boss, just in case.

I think that the way I explain it is pretty simple, but if you know of a better way email me, since they just never get it when I explain it like this:

The total amount of the transaction was one dollar. If you type in one dollar, the register adds one dollar to your daily total. If you type in one-hundred dollars, the register adds one-hundred dollars to your daily total, then subtracts the ninety-nine dollars from the total that it told you to give back as change. 100-99=1, 1=1, any questions. It seems so simple….

I watched a show today on the “The Learning Channel”. The particular show was Incrdible Medical Mysteries: Gender Unknown . The link to that page is there only because that is where I found the title of the show. The sad truth of it is that I would really have liked to have seen the same show on PBS. This particular show was about transgender babies and how they grow up. The channel that I saw it on (I thought) was kind of spinning it in a bad way for the parents of children who have this affliction. PBS tends to show the actual facts without trying to tug at the heart-strings.

If you had clicked on the link for the Learning channel, you would have seen that there was absolutely no information there about this affliction, only a time that it was playing. That was all the information that I could find on their site about it. I fired up google, and my opinion about this matter changed quite rapidly.

My first impression (from the limited information that I got from the show) was that the children who were born with a partial penis and one testicle, as well as an ovary and a fallopean tube, could function noramlly as a male or a female. The sad truth, it seems, is that the testoserone from the testical makes the body incapable of producing estrogen. That said, it means that if the trans gender baby has a testicle, and you remove it, there will be no estrogen or testosterone. Net result would be that the baby would then have to take pills for life to balance their inner system.

Prior to finding that last bit of information, I was thinking that it would be more aesthetically pleasing for the genetalia to appear to be either male or female. Then I read a few pages from this site , and I kind of don’t really know which way to lean on this now.

After having seen that show, and doing a bit of cursory searching on the internet, I was thinking that it would be in the best interest of the child to make him/her appear to look like a him or a her. I had based my initial intention on that alone. Yet, if that child was allowed to grow up and live with a 4cm penis and one testicle, as well as an ovary and a fallopean tube, then make the decision for his/herself later in life…What would the point really be?

I suppose that if you were able to take your choice of gender that would make you feel more in control. But, if you were born with half of each gender how or why would you ever choose in the first place? Pre or post-operation you are going to be someone that gets looked at all too often in the locker- room. It is human nature to be curious about the unknown. I would like to think, though, that we are open minded enough to accept someone who is a bit different…

I place way to much faith in humanity though…

Keyboard; Belly shirts

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Yesterday’s update was by far the shortest in the brief history of this site. There was no real reason for that, well there was, but I don’t want to get into it, so just believe what I tell you.

I thought that this new keyboard had been doing pretty well, and it has, but I am still having some issues with a lot of it. For one, my last keyboard tapered very slowly from the desk to the keys, this one is almost rounded on the way there, it forces my wrists to be higher than they usually are when I type, and it is a bit painful. Another involves the keys to the right of the letters. Instead of having the print screen, scroll lock, and pause at the same level where the F keys are, they are right down against the insert, home, and page up keys, then after the delete, end, and page down keys, the up arrow is right there touching the end key. I am sure this will not be that difficult to get used to, the only real problem is that when I try to hit the insert key, most of the time I get the print screen, since it is exactly where the insert was on my last keyboard. Similarly, when I try to page up I am getting the pause key, while when I try to page down I am getting the page up.

Makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have just gone ahead and bought the microsoft one, since if they continue to use their format, I bet all the other companies will soon start to do it as well -regardless of how non-sensical it is. As it looks now, I am literlly going to have to learn a new keyboard every time I am required to buy one. Makes me wish I had the means to just go buy about a dozen or so of this one so I would never need to, but, even if I had the means, I am sure that in two years there wont be USB ports on computers anymore so I would just have a dozen obsolete keyboards. Technology sucks.

The last thing about the keyboard that is giving me problems is that it is new. I am sure that everyone knows that when they are new you kind of have to really mean it when you hit a key. Once you have been using it for a few years just a gentle touch will get a letter on the screen, when it is new you really have to push down to get it. It doesn’t really affect my typing speed, as I am pretty quick in that respect, but it does affect my accuracy as I will often see that I am missing about every fifth letter, but by the time I see that I have missed one letter my fingers have already thrown up a few more. It is quicker for me to just backspace and re-write the few that I delete than to try to arrow key it back, then fix the typo, then arrow key it forward.
So, bear with me over the next couple of weeks as I am breaking this thing in, there will likely be a lot of typos, and as I have previously stated I do not have the ability to spell check. As I have also stated I do not proof read before posting. I fear that if I did proof read I would change everything all around, I think that would kind of cheapen the whole concept of doing this daily update in the first place. I am not entirely sure if it would actually be possible to cheapen the daily update itself, but I would like to think so.

One other thing regarding computers and this site. I keep forgetting to change my why I’m mad today, don’t care and fun to hate things. Of course this doesn’t really matter so much at this point, since my readership is pretty much only me, I just fear that I may not get into the habit of doing them every day if I continue to wait until the rest of this is written. It was my goal to make them thematically linked to what I had written here, and since I never know what I am going to write here until I sit down and get it about 2/3 of the way done I can’t really change them in advance. If I do continue to forget to update them I will likely do them first and then try to make this section relate to them, but I think that would not work nearly as well, as I seem to write better with a blank slate than I do with a particular set of topics in mind. That being said, on to the bitching!

I was originally planning to do something about Ded Bob today. That has changed due to unforseen circumstances.

Belly Shirts

Belly shirts are a wonderful thing, if you can pull it off. There is the problem. While I was out recently, I noticed a disturbing trend… Low cut jeans with belly shirts are on the rise, as well as the relative size of people wearing them…

I saw about 10-12 women with the low-cut jeans and belly shirts on the day in question, perhaps one of them had the body to pull it off. There was one particular woman (that my wife and I spoke of later) who looked like she was, or could have been, 5-6 months pregnant that was going for that look. It certainly DID NOT WORK. Another woman who was going for this look was pulling it off, kind of, from the front, but a quick turn-and-look revealed what looked like an inner-tube hanging over the side and back of her low cut pants.

Mind you, I am in no position to bitch about fitness or the state of the body, but I did quit wearing half-shirts when what used to be a six-pack had somehow transformed into more of a keg.

If one wishes to follow a trend, one should choose a trend that is more suited to them. If one is anything other than a teen-ager, one should keep in mind that the little whores like “Britney” will not be remebered in about like 11 seconds. The ‘muscle shirt’ from the eighties lasted only about three years. Spandex made their run in like two years (though to this day I would swear that every overweight single woman that goes to the laundromat still wears them). Mesh shirts have also gone the way of the “Dodobird”. Todays fashion is tomorrow’s ‘faux-pa’.

My solution for this is simple: Become one with the Shadowtwinian’s. After that you can do as you please. I run a pretty loose religion over here, I am open to any input, as long as you don’t have 68 pounds of ass and gut hanging out of a pair of jeans and shirt that fit you back when you were like seven…

Valentine’s day; Jesus making your rental decisions

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That’s right, it’s Valentine’s day. This is, of course, the day that amatuer lovers do their best to make up for an entire year of neglect with a box of Russel Stovers. If your wife/husband/significant other is good with that, you have done well. I, unfortunately, am not in that situation. I did like I do every year. I waited until the actual day so that I could go and buy some flowers and a card at the shop down the street. I have done this every year since I met my wife and it has always gone smoothly. This year, for some reason, it all went to hell.

There was a “view historic Florence” event going on in town (Florence is where I live BTW) and that meant that there were literally thousands of people in town to visit. That is in a town with a population of like 3500 so it was a big deal. Most every business in town stays open late when they have this event, since the people are here to see the historic buildings, and almost every building on main street is over 100 years old.

For some reason the pharmacy (which is also the flower shop here in town) closed down early on a day that was both Valentine’s Day and the Historic tour of Florence day. This is the one day of the year when the businesses here in town are guaranteed to hawk their crap for twice the normal price, why the pharmacy would have chosen to close early escapes me. There are two draws for their goods. One being the tourists who will ‘literally’ buy anything that has the word ‘Florence’ on it, and the other being that people who have yet to acquire their valentines gift will pay any price for a flower (since we wait until the last minute and pay double so that we can give our wife fresh flowers).

I always pick up a card at the same time as I buy the flowers, since I would rather wait in line once than twice. End result: I have no flowers, no candy, no card, for my beloved on Valentine’s day. I would like to blame the local Rexall for not being open late enough, but, I could have picked the gifts up earlier. I mean, the best gift to give your Valentine is always flowers that you have been hiding in the trunk of your car for the last three days, right? The outside temperature here has only hit 71(Fahrenheit) in those few days, but the inside temperature of the car has made me actually turn on the air conditioning since it was so damn hot. So, that would mean that I could not have realistically hidden chocolate or flowers in my car, but a card? Christ, I am going to buy next years card tomorrow since I feel like such an ass right now.

Why is it that I can always have a birthday present, christmas present, anniversary present, hell any present at all a few weeks before the day, but when it comes to valentines I am always last second? I blame it on the flowers. This is the one day DESIGNATED to give flowers. If I give flowers on say May 7, they are easy to get, and they are far less expensive than they are this time of year. I guess I will chalk this all up to experience.

A quick note, why it is down here I don’t know. Once again Flux, has helped me overcome a few virtual problems. Well, they were real problems, but in the virtual world. My only prayer now is that he never like needs a kidney and tries to look me up to see how truthful I was about that ‘if there is anything you ever need’ statement, yet by that time I think the Shadowtwinian reign will be in place, so I will be able to pick any of a thousand from my stable and order her to donate the kidney. (pretending to be a megalomaniac is fun!)

I actually have multiple bitches today. I am torn between doing all the bitches now, or saving some bitches for later. I know me well enough to know that I am gonna do just enough bitching to really get me in the mood to bitch, then I am going to go to bed, and in the morning I will no longer care. So, I must Bitch forth.(I think that might actually be an original phrase BTW).

First Bitch

Where I work I am sometimes required to receive applications for home rentals from people. When I am the one receiving them, there are a few questions that the owner of the said home would like for me to ask the potential renters. I do ask the questions, mostly basic like; “How many in your family?”, “Do you have any pets?”, “How did you find out that this house was for rent?” it is all that sort of mundane crap when I ask the questions.

One of the people who spoke to me about the house had a wonderful response to the ‘how did you find out the house was for rent?’ question. She said, and I will quote “JESUS told me to call.”

It is not my intention to doubt any religion, but, I would think that the son of GOD had a lot better stuff to work on than making sure that you got into a house. I could be wrong, and I may burn in hell, but, MY GOD, how can you possibly believe that? So Jesus just goes from town to town trying to hook Christians up with good homes? Making sure that the people who happen to live in the United States have beautiful homes, while totally forgetting about the fact that he has left the entire population of Africa to die from a horrible disease?

Back to the original point, though, I am pretty sure that it was the ad in the newspaper that made her call that number. Whether Jesus made her read that number is certainly open to debate.

Taxes

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Following with the theme of not getting a damn thing done to get my stories posted, I decided I would go ahead and do my taxes today then get to the site work. That turned out to be a bad idea.

Taxes, in general, are not really that difficult. I mean really, it is just a bunch of numbers that one must throw into a form that looks much like a spreadsheet. I would think that any chimp could do their own taxes, unless they are one of the chimps who make a lot of money and are personally in charge of thousands of employees and the such -they probably go to H&R Block-. Though I really doubt that if you were to look at Bill Gates’ tax forms it would say that they were prepared by a glorified kiosk in a SEARS store. I guess that is why CPAs actually have jobs.

While doing the taxes this year I realized that entire point of them is to crush the ‘american dream’. I mean it is your goal to be successful and to have your worth appreciate annualy, yet, the more your worth appreciates the more taxes you have to pay. I am not talking about a billionaire who has to pay 250 million in taxes, because honestly if you have a Billion dollars you either inherited it or made it on a good idea followed by the labor of the lower class, I have no sympathy for you.

What occurs to me is that the whole taxing system is more of a direct inverse of the ‘american dream’. I will elaborate. If you make really good money (and I mean really good, like sports star, current musical artist, wealthy investor), they tax your earning to like 40% and that is just the Federal tax. That was the reason why there was such rejoice from investors when the Clinton Administration got the bill passed to make some long term stock sales only taxable at 28%. It is difficult for me to understand the way that actual law works (as their are a lot of resrictions and qualifications that must be met for it to be possible) but, I do understand the rejoice. If you had a million dollars in stock, then sold it and had only 600,000 dollars that would seem pretty harsh. If that same stock could qualify for the 28% rate, you would have 720,000 dollars. That is a 120,000 dollar difference, quite a hefty chunk of change.

Who else gets taxed at a rate of 40% -or hell even 28%- for federal tax? Only the very, very wealthy. I have capital gains that I had not yet paid taxes on and I did have to pay a huge amount on those gains, but that was not nearly 40%, were I to move up a couple of dozen tax brackets I may be in trouble. Though if I were in the league of the 40% payers I guess I would have so much money that I really would not give a damn. Actually, I bet I would be totally pissed off still, but my reasons would be different.

The cash cow of our society seems to be the lower class. Now, I know that the lower class is the class in the most need of support, but, if you make less annually than you get back on your taxes I think there may be a real problem. If you have a minimum wage job where I live and work a 40 hour week, you will make just a tad under 11,000 dollars in a year. That is not very much money at all. If you are that same person, and have a wife and a few children there would be no way that you could possibly support them on that income. So, the government steps in and puts them on programs like WIC, Foodstamps and Welfare. Then, they do not take any taxes out of their pay, to help them support their family. Then, when the tax time comes they are giddy with excitement to find that they will be getting over 2,000 dollars back (I use the word ‘back’ to mean that that is the amount of a ‘refund’ check that they are sent, but since they paid no taxes it is more of a gift).

I am not saying that we should just let poor people starve, or that we should kill the rich and distribute the money among the lower classes. Nor would I like to live in a Socialist economy. I just think that the money that the middle class puts into the pot should not be so easily squandered. The very, very rich are the only people that matter in Washington, the only reason that laws get passed is because of them. The very, very poor people get programs to pay for everything from their house to their food, their car, etc…

I am now going to go into speculation, with absolutely no proof to back it up, and no desire to actually research the subject. I am betting that a single woman with three children and a 12,000 dollar a year job actually makes more money than a woman with no children and a 25,000 dollar a year job. By that, I mean that through government programs giving her assistance for all the necessities, if you add up the total of all of the benefits she is getting and add them to the base 12,000, then add the tax check that she is going to get, I am pretty sure that it would be more than 25,000 per year. The woman making 25,000 a year will have to actually pay in taxes over the course of the year about 7% in that tax bracket I think.

This is going nowhere, as usual. This is exactly the reason that I hate doing taxes. It always puts me in a foul mood. Having a foul mood, and a forum where I can post anything I want without fear of repurcussion is not necessarily a good thing. That is, I bet it sure makes me sound like an ass.

It is not that I think that our tax money should not be used to help the poor, just that I would much rather see it being used for things like Passive Birth Control for single mothers who are on welfare. Programs to search out dead beat dads and force them to pay the child support that they are required to. Maybe even paying for daycare for the single mothers to go to school – even if only a trade school- to educate themselves so that they can get better jobs and become self-sufficient.

The way the tax money is being used now it is perpetuating the problem. The programs that are in place make it so that an uneducated single mother (or father for that matter) will never really have to go without food or shelter. If the money were used to offer programs to help the people better themselves, as opposed to just being hand-outs, it would do a lot to help stop the cycle -at least slow it down-. There are statistics that show that children who grow up on welfare are far more likely to end up on welfare, and that makes since, after all, that was the only way they had ever lived. Similarly, teen mothers’ children are more likely to be teen mothers themselves.

I better stop now, this is just a train wreck. Someone remind me never to do my taxes before I sit down to write anything again.