SONGS THAT CAN JUST GO AWAY, part II

The second entry for this series will be Dave Matthews Band's "Ants Marching." Another song, while nothing wrong with it technically, I'm simply tired of. And yes, it's another one of those songs which has found homes on multiple channels of our store's MUZAK player. Please go away.


"Ants Marching" by Dave Matthews Band

Enjoy...or not...because I certainly won't be.

A MAN RESPONDS...

      This profile was recommended to me by another OKCupid user. The man's answer to the WTF female profile I posted back in September? You decide :-)

      While I don't agree with everything he's saying, I feel where he is coming from...that anger.

My self-summary

I'm tired of American women, their quest for perfection and their appraising me as if I were some piece of meat, or a sperm donor with a fat wallet. I'm tired of woman in their mid- to late-thirties thinking they will find a guy their age or younger to have kids with them.

DARK QUESTION...

      We were having one of those "fun" conversations at work and this moral dilemma was proposed: It's a widely known fact that people feel especially guilty about their first kill. They remember the face more, the details, etc. As time goes on and more kills are racked up, this guilt mostly goes away as they have become routinized. So the question posed was, "Since you know you're going to feel guilty over the first person you kill, would you rather that first person be an innocent or someone who truly deserved it?"

      I chose the innocent because, as a member of some sort of death squad (the scenario that precipitated this question), I know I'm gonna be doing a lot of killing and I'd much rather have nightmares about having killed someone who was an innocent than feel guilty about murdering a molester, rapist, thug, whatever. By the time you've killed hundreds of people or more, you'll stop feeling guilt at all but that first one will remain so I said I'd rather be able to justify the guilt than to feel bad that I feel bad for doing something which could almost be rationalized as just.

      How about you? :-)

SECRECY TRUMPS PUBLICITY...at least here

      I never liked the publicity behind coin collectors dropping valuable coins deliberately into circulation. Scott Travers is one of those people and even though he has never found out the fate of any of his drops, it bugs me nonetheless because of the timing of the publicity. I remember reading about this in a coin magazine too...he's surrounded by photographers watching him make those purchases. Now, he sets up a ruse that those picture takers are there for something else, but that's too much publicity at the time of the drop making it all too likely that this coin will not be spent around before being located but instead, will end up in the pocket of the vendor who received it. Certainly that would happen with me.

      I'm not against these drops, but I don't think people should be in on them until after they happen. If you need "proof", then watch the guy roll up the coins in question and deposit them (without suspicious photographers and videographers about) in a local bank. Who knows where they'll go and how long it will take them to be found. It's more interesting to me that way and it allows for a more realistic chance that this coin could be found by anyone rather than the vendor who received it right there and then. Hell, deposit them into a soulless CoinStar. Who knows where those coins get shipped? It really opens up possibilities.

      I used to seed coin rolls thusly as a kind of karmic thank you whenever I found something valuable to me in my till. Someone, somewhere has received some steel cents, wheat cents from 1909-1934, Indian Head cents, Buffalo nickels, Liberty nickels, and some Barber dimes and quarters. All well-worn, of course, but identifiable. I don't have the means to seed coins with considerable value. I've never seen them again nor have I ever expected to. Still, it's a nice thought wondering who opened a quarter roll and found a 1906 Barber quarter staring back at them. With the introduction of coin sorters in my banks, this has been very difficult to continue doing since these coins tend to get rejected as they are now underweight from being so worn.

      I just figure you're wasting everyone's time to purposefully spend valuable coins so obviously. Do it clandestinely and I think you'll achieve better results.

LINE OF THE DAY, part XX

From whatisbrain in this article on Gawker:

I feel like rather than using Schroedinger's cat to illustrate the principle of wavefunction collapse in quantum mechanics, we should update the example to "American retail store manager." While unobserved, the manager has the potential to be both simultaneously working and on break. When his boss goes to observe him, it is no longer possible for the manager to be in either of the two states, he must be in one or the other. He's either on break, meaning he is not attending to his duties, or he is working, meaning he is violating company policies. Either way, due to this act of outside observation, the manager is fired, just as a quantum system ceases to be a superposition of states when looked on by an outside observer. 

That is just beautiful :-)

SONGS THAT CAN JUST GO AWAY...

This might be a weekly post for a little while before devolving into a now-and-again one. Since the MUZAK player at work never goes off and the stations get changed frequently throughout the week, I hear a lot of different songs. There's a few songs I really like listening to (and trust me, it's a benefit to be working overnights - a time when the store is quiet and the music can be heard without difficulty) as well as some which I wouldn't normally listen to but can tolerate in the workplace setting thus expanding my musical horizons. And while the vast majority of the songs played I simply don't mind, there's a few which can simply go away. I might hate the song, but ideally, what I want this list to be is of songs which I know are technically good compositionally and maybe also lyrically but have (long since) become tired or otherwise frustrating to listen to from overplay. That's not to say songs I despise won't make this list, but I will try to keep them out.

The first entry I have for this list is "Shiny Happy People", a song which gets played on several MUZAK stations so it's hard to avoid. I think it appears on at least four of the stations played in the regular rotation our managers use. I don't think it's a bad song musically, but if I never heard it ever again, I would not feel as if my life were missing something. Embedding of the video has been disabled so click on the link below the one posted if you'd rather watch what R.E.M. released instead.

"Shiny Happy People" by R.E.M.

ODDS & ENDS

      I have a growing pile of discarded Facebook status updates that are no longer postable as the time for them has passed or they weren't funny enough or because I try to only post one depressing status update when I'm sad rather than like ten in-a-row over the course of a day so I don't worry my friends both real and Facebook-only.

      Here goes...

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

      I see pussy hair is making a comeback in pornography. I approve.

ON AUTISM AND EUTHANASIA

      I have my opinions on this matter. Those of you who know me surely know them already. However, I was genuinely surprised to have found this comment thread online after reading another article on the abuse of an autistic kid on Gawker. The comment thread of that particular site was typical gamut of how autistic kids need more help/cures/attention/blah blah blah which then devolved into people related their experiences with autistics and the occasional appearance of a troll who invited heaping, uncompromising scorn upon them. But it again left me with the question, why can't there ever be a serious discussion about what to do with autistics (and anyone like retards, pyschopaths, sociopaths, the insane, etc.) who are (naturally) incapable of (independent) lawful participation in society. It seems any instance I could ever find was like those in the Gawker article: trolls.

      However, I did stumble upon this thread on aspiesforfreedom.com and was surprised to read a five page discussion about this subject. Yes, it did become heated at times but I was genuinely impressed that it remained a discussion bordering on debate into the matter. The thread (read here) clearly does not support euthanasia as an option but refreshing in that it led to an open discussion rather than the KILL THE HATER type flame wars that I usually encounter.

      I want to discuss this thread at length but cannot do so now for want of time to compose. I think it needs to be talked about more, just as a concept...as a genuine debate since it is clearly a one-sided discussion in the general media. It's a dark and uncomfortable subject, but I would like it explored, debated, and a compromise forged if only, just because...

INTERESTING IDEA...

From BK Phil on Gawker talking about Congressional redistricting. Currently I am in favor of creating districts which are either (50% Democrat/50% Republican) or (33% Democrat/33% Republican/33% Independent) in an effort to both promote ideological competition and reduce extremism. However, this commenter proposed this idea which I admit I find interesting:

Ideally, the districting should produce an elected slate of representatives that has the same percentage Reps and Dems as the overall state does.


How about each party putting up one roster of candidates state-wide. Each voter votes once for party, and once for a specific candidate. The parties win numbers of seats according to what percentage of the party votes they got, and within their own rosters, those individual candidates that got the most votes get elected?

I'm sure my solution has problems too. I remember studying this stuff in detail in college and the simplest electoral tweaks have a mass of related consequences. Fascinating and maddening stuff.

What do you think?

IT'S ABOUT TIME...

      Since my fantasy of Congress instituting a deflationary policy and changing the mission of the Federal Reserve to kinda-sorta re-peg the dollar to gold at $42.22/tr.oz. ain't never gonna happen, I read half-heartedly and half-annoyed that a Congressman (and four co-sponsors) have proposed legislation eliminating the paper dollar in favor of a dollar coin in circulation. This comes on the heels of another move, made not too long prior, to simply terminate the Presidential Dollar program altogether because over a billion of these coins (and the Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony designs) are currently sitting unused in warehouses (not to mention hundreds of millions of half dollars). I can't help but think that this change of heart came about because Congressman David Schweikert, the bill's originator (and also a Republican), realized that terminating the Presidential Dollar program would mean that the nation would be denied its Reagan dollar in 2016 and they certainly couldn't have that! :-)

The full text of the legislation is here (enjoy your bore fest)

One of the steps involved would be the sequestering (and I'm guessing eventual melt-down) of the remaining Susan B. Anthony Dollars. They won't be demonetized, but they won't be allowed to circulate anymore either. This would make our oldest circulating dollars effectively the Sacagawea ones which started in 2000 and I can only imagine the wear and tear of the Presidential Dollars will causes many millions of them to lose their edge lettering and thus their date, mintmark, and motto(s) which will only ultimately help collectors of the future...nothing like a marked reduction in supply to improve upon the value of any collection.

While it would be nice to see the dollar coin circulating and it should circulate since its value is approximately what 4¢ would buy you in 1913 (the quarter-dollar being about a cent), I am of course annoyed that inflation has been allowed to take things this far. I know the elimination of the cent will happen in my lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen the year after the Presidential Dollar series ends. Congress could just order Lincoln put on the $1 coin and simulataneously get rid of the ever worthless cent. I do hope though, that Congress will also start putting an end to these multiple design per year coins. Pick a design and stick with it for a generation! Whatever happened to tradition in this country?

The idea is that the paper dollar would cease production no later than four years after the passage of this legislation (just in time for the end of the Presidential Dollar series I believe). The remaining paper dollars could circulate but their numbers would diminish and after a year, would be turned over to the Federal Reserve System as banks acquire them for destruction (much like bills over $100 are taken care of now). The legal tender status of $1 bills would not be denied, but their circulation would be effectively ended (though I'm sure they will continue to show up now and again in circulation). I can only imagine this will do wonders for the $2 bill, whose life has been severely limited throughout the paper money era. I wonder if strippers will be happy too, getting $2 bills instead of a fistful of $1s?

That being said, this legislation does not go far enough in my opinion. If inflation must be accepted rather than fought, then three things ought to be added to this legislation to fully modernize our coinage system:

1) Don't allow banks to order quarter-dollars. Instead, force them to order "fractional dollars". That way, half of their order will be quarter-dollars and the other half would be half-dollars. If Congress is annoyed at the money being wasted warehousing $1 coins, what about the hundreds of millions of half dollars also being warehoused?

2) While they are at it, eliminate the $2, $5, and $10 bills as well (8¢, 20¢, and 40¢ in 1913 purchasing power respectively) and replace them with $2½ (it's a traditional denomination), $5, and $10 coins...probably of a silver or billon silver alloy because I feel such high denomination coins would be subject to counterfeiting if made solely from base metals. I mean, right now the "golden dollars" have less than 6¢ worth of metal in them. I would not be surprised if they too become counterfeited once the $1 is eliminated. This is a problem England has been dealing with for some time now.

3) Eliminate the 1¢, 5¢, and 10¢ coins from circulation. The quarter dollar is the effective "penny" now. All coins below it have no significant purchasing power except in bulk and God be with you if you try paying for your groceries with a jar full of change! The last time I remember being able to use dimes in gumball machines was 1993 (and I barely remember being able to use nickels in 1982-3). I think you could buy Ramen noodles for a dime in 1998, but even that was when they were on sale. Rounding purchases to the nearest quarter-dollar would have little impact on anyone's life. And it doesn't have to be for individual prices. Stores can (and likely would) round an aggregate total. States wouldn't lose much in sales taxation since they get paid in bulk too (and with electronic transfers, you can still have your precious cents).

      People would complain about the weight of "all those coins" but the fact is, you wouldn't carry that many coins in the first place since they'd be too valuable to allow to bulk up like that in the first place. You'd spend them long before they got heavy thus allowing the coins to do what they were meant to do in the first place...circulate. Yes, I would mourn the loss of the cent, nickel, and even the dime because the cents and nickels are the oldest coins you can readily find in circulation (1950s, '40s, and earlier) and because dimes are the most likely denomination to still have a silver one pop up on you every so often. But with inflation having ravaged the purchasing power of our money...what choice do we have? Holding on to ever more worthless coins is not something we should be proud of as a nation. Pretending like inflation hasn't happened doesn't make it any less so. It's pathetic to have such worthless bits of metal exchange hands every day. Give our coins some dignity and more importantly, purchasing power.

ADDENDUM: As far as political motivations go...how convenient that the dollar bill would be entirely phased out in 2016...just in time for the Reagan dollar and the ramped up production which would be necessary to replace the dollar bills in circulation. All speculation of course... :-)

UNION EMPLOYER TUG-OF-WAR

      I've heard it said before that the time for unions has passed and more disparagingly, I've heard it said that unions exist to get the most money/benefits out of their employers for the least amount of work. Now I don't think the time for unions has passed. It may even be arguable that we need them now more than ever given the record levels of corporate greed and the massive pushes for "right to work" laws in this country.

      Right to Work, for those of you who don't know is more accurately described as "Right to Fire". Basically, the laws state that unions can't force, as a condition of employment, you to both join the union and pay dues to it. This is the "right to work" aspect of the law. Superficially it sounds good, but it really only exists to weaken the position of existing unions and to make it even more difficult for new ones to form. Right to Work laws promote leechism in future employees. In others words, you get all the benefits of union membership without having to pay into them. I personally oppose such legislation on the grounds that I feel the relationship between employer and employee is best protected by overreach. That is, if either side goes too far with demands, everyone loses.

      Now, if I take the statement, "Unions only exist to exact the most compensation out of their employer(s) for the least amount of work," I would say that it stands to reason that the opposite is true: "Employers only exist to exact the most work out of their employees for the least amount of compensation." For me, it is that tug-of-war between such diametrically opposed forces that a balance might be found which will benefit both parties. I heavily support the idea of unions if only because one employee stands exactly zero chance against a far better-funded employer. Only together can they pool enough resources to be a viable threat through which they can demand concessions. It is an admittedly simple argument, but that's roughly where I stand.

     For me, unions exist primarily as a force for justice...not for society at large, but in the workplace. They are a safeguard against abuses and a protector of employee loyalty. They force the employer to follow procedures rather than (sometimes arbitrary) dictatorial proclamations. They force the employer to treat his employees with respect. I really don't get how people can be so against that. It always strikes me as odd that people rail against teachers getting free health care and tenure...they want to take those benefits away from the teachers rather than asking the question, "How come I don't have that?"