Mutual Respect

There really is a war between the ages.  The old condemn the young for not respecting them.  The young condemn the old for not taking them seriously. It's been happening since humans first realized we aged.

I'm 35.  Not exactly young but not yet a senior citizen.  There's a brief moment in our lifetimes when we're in between the warring factions, the "middle" age years.  While it's tempting to pick a side, this period of transition between young and old can be used for much more.  It should be a time of reflection and personal growth.  Our time to look at young and old alike and not make the same mistakes billions of people have made.

First, let's understand that respect is earned.  It is NOT given to you just because you've lived a little longer.  Old people, don't demand respect from the young if you aren't going to give respect TO them.  You may not think the problems of teenager are as serious as your more adult issues, but they're serious enough to that teen.  Don't blow them off because you mistakenly believe they're too young to have anything worth contributing.  Remember, that kid you blew off today will be taking care of you tomorrow.  Keep on their good side.   Young people, you can't earn respect from your elders if you act a fool so learn how to be civil to others.  You will be treated in the manner in which you treat those around you.  Don't assume someone is less important or irrelevant because they have grey hair.  Remember, it's still their world until you reach their age.

Age does not lead to wisdom. Experience does and not every old person out there is wise.  If they were, they wouldn't vote Republican.  So old people, don't assume you're smarter than someone younger than you.  You've probably just had different experiences.  The world also changes constantly and the young are better equipped to keep up with it.  They are your most valuable asset when it comes to technology among other things.  Appreciate that.  Young people, you probably haven't had as many life experiences as your parents. Take the opportunity to learn from their experiences, both good and bad, as you can.  You'll still have to figure most things out on your own, but most parents really do just want to help you so listen to the advice before making up your mind.

The young fear getting old and the old are jealous of the young.  Neither side is perfect or better than the other, but both NEED eachother.  The old help guide the young and the young give the old meaning.

So think on that before you criticize eachother.

Your car's too big.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of the quad cab with the extra long bed taking up two whole parking spaces and the sidewalk.  Something that big should have to park in the back fifty where the big rigs and RVs go.  It's rude to take up that much space and dangerous to boot.  Ever try backing up when a giant truck is next to you? You can't see if cars are coming because their ass end is sticking out into the lane.  And they can never park them straight because they're trying to squeeze a watermelon in a parking space designed for an orange.

But the real question is why does someone NEED a large vehicle?  I think it's purely ego.  A man who's confident doesn't mind driving a Prius.  It gets him where he needs to go and that's the reason cars were invented.  Only a man with penis issues needs a Hummer.  Or a quad cab with an extra long bed.

It's bad enough we insist on super sizing our meals, our houses, our hair (if you live in the south).  Why do we need to over size our cars too? Are we really carrying that much crap around?  Then we have a hoarding problem.

It pisses me off when some trophy wife in her big SUV has the audacity to complain gas prices are too high.  If everyone traded in their gas guzzling SUVs and pick up trucks for compact cars or hybrids, the demand for gas would go down and so would the price.  As it is, Big Oil knows they can financially rape you at the pump because you NEED the gas.  Because you TELL them you'll pay anything by USING MORE GAS THAN ANYONE SHOULD NEED.

Because you drive an oversized car with 10 miles to the gallon - and that's a generous estimate.  That Hummer only gets like 2.

Ever wonder why car makers don't make cars with 50 mpg?  The technology exists, but Big Oil won't let them cut into their profits.

As for the moron in the quad cab with the extra long bed?  Parking spaces were designed for normal sized vehicles.  There is nothing wrong with your parking space.  The problem is your truck is too big.

Oh how much cleaner the air and happier the commute if more people used public transit!

But the hard truth is, there is no physical need for that SUV or quad cab with the extra long bed.  No amount of soccer games or safety concerns or towing capacity can justify it.  The need for a large vehicle is purely psychological, something for people with low self esteem to feel important.

That's all the desire for material wealth of any kind really is.

Stop being a loser.  Do the environment and your neighbors a favor.  Ditch the big vehicle.

Customer Service: You get what you pay for

Everyone's had a bad customer service experience.  Everyone's encountered that unhappy cashier who doesn't really care if they're particularly helpful or if you had a good shopping experience.  We bitch about it all the time.  Companies force feed "good" customer service techniques on their employees, brag about them in commercials.  Giving bad customer service can even cause you to lose your job, but we never stop to consider WHY customer service is as bad as it is.  What causes someone in the service industry to be rude or uncaring.

People in customer service, whether they are cashiers, waitresses, call center representatives, etc, are human beings that we treat like slaves, work like dogs and pay very little money.  If you worked like a dog and barely eked out a living, you'd be unhappy too.  If you knew your company thought of you as an easily replaceable, unvalued peon, would you care about their image?  No.  And you'd be unable to hide your feelings of discontent even if you cared to do so.

There's something that happens to a person when they become a customer.  Suddenly, they are incapable of seeing the person waiting on them as being an equal.  No, that person is a servant and therefore beneath them.  It isn't just rich people who are affected like this.  Even those in the service industry will treat their fellow service people as inferiors once they step on the other side of the check out line.  It doesn't matter the psychology behind this.  It's wrong and we should know better.

How many times have you grabbed the wrong item and insisted you be given the sale price anyway?  How many times have you knowingly made a mess at the convenience store coffee counter and not cleaned it up?  How many times have you not tipped your waitress or only left a handful of change?   How many times have you or someone you've seen yelled at their server?  Or threatened to have their server fired if they didn't comply with an unreasonable demand?  People take out all their frustration on cashiers and waiters.  You may not get to be a dick to your boss but you can be a dick to the girl in the drive thru.  Why are customers so nasty?  Because they know they can be and that the cashier or waiter will be unable to do anything about it.  It's a power trip.

Not all customers set out to be assholes, but there are enough of them to leave a bad taste in a cashier's mouth.  When you have a bad experience over and over again, you start expecting it and you become suspicious of every customer you meet.  If your cashier is apprehensive towards you, it's a self defense mechanism and you can hardly blame them.

But the horrible attitudes exhibited by customers is just one of the mental stress factors that negatively affect our service representatives.  The work is hard and the reward is very little.

Service jobs are by definition bad paying ones. There simply isn't any reason for it.  You shouldn't need a fancy college degree to earn enough money to survive on if you're putting in the work.  Service jobs are hard work, but they're paid like it isn't work at all.

Money is an incentive.  Like it or not, people don't get jobs because they want to help others.  They get jobs because they need money to have a roof over their head and food to eat.  The world runs on money.  You work for the money.  So if someone works hard and isn't paid accordingly, they have a right to be upset.

Minimum wage is slavery.  No one can survive on minimum wage.  And no one who works hard and makes little money is going to care that much about their job.  No one who is taken for granted is going to care about doing a good job.  They'll do just enough to KEEP the job until they find something better.

But low pay comes with other draw backs.  It affects the QUALITY of the worker too.  Workers with skills are going to go where those skills will be appreciated - to higher paying jobs.  The only people who voluntarily take a service job are the ones who CAN'T get anything better.  Low skilled, ghetto, stoners, etc.  The kinds of people who will never care about good customer service.  Or you get older, better educated people who have tried to find something better and failed who will never be satisfied with low pay work and will never care about it.

In essence, when it comes to the service industry, you get what you pay for either financially or with respect.  Until we're willing to treat our servers with dignity and pay them accordingly, expect bad service.  Because we've earned it.

Hostages

I don't know why we allow aid workers into war zones.  I know that sounds cold, but there it is.  We know war zones are dangerous.  We know odds are they'll be kidnapped by terrorists.  If you don't want to be a hostage and/or gruesomely beheaded, don't go to the places where that's likely to happen.  If you do choose to go anyway, don't have the audacity to assume your government should pay terrorists to get you back.  It's your own fault you're a hostage.

I know I sound Republican, but it's one of the only things they make sense on.  When you pay the ransom, all you're doing is encouraging more hostage taking and funding terrorism.  Can we admit that funding terrorism is not in anyone's best interest?  And let's be honest.  While ISIS may say they'll give their hostages back if you give them money, you have ZERO reason to believe they won't kill them anyway.  ISIS kills people everyday. It's what they do.  If you find yourself a hostage of ISIS, make peace with God and get ready to die.  That's the only thing you CAN do.

Go ahead.  Call me hateful.  Say if it were me or my loved ones I'd feel different.  If it were my loved ones, I'd hurt.  I'd mourn, but I still know my loved ones are going to die.  I won't expect or demand a rescue mission.  And if I was ever a hostage, I wouldn't expect it either.

Maybe aid workers should be issued cyanide caps?

I know what you're saying now.  We can't in good conscience not help people in need just because it's dangerous.  That's why we'll keep having hostages.  There's nothing wrong with wanting to save the world and I commend those who take risks to do that.

But we still have to be practical.  The ONLY way to stop terrorists taking foreign hostages is to either REMOVE the opportunity by removing foreigners from the scene all together or to make it NOT BENEFICIAL to take hostages by not paying ransom.   It's no use boo hooing or raising a fuss if hostages are taken, because they knew what they were walking into and should be prepared for the consequences.

I pity hostages, but I refuse to reward hostage takers.  We should know better by now that paying ransoms SOLVES NOTHING.  And if you're going into a war zone, you should be prepared to accept the consequences even the ones where bad things may happen to you.  And that's the real end of the debate.

Why celebrate MLK day?

Every MLK day I take a long hard look around my neighborhood and wonder why we bother to honor a man who's message is all but ignored by the black community.  I'm reminded of how black people fought for equality and once the laws were on the books, stopped.

Stopped?  You think that's crazy? You think the fight for equality rages on? You cry white privilege and Ferguson and say you're still oppressed.  I say if you're oppressed it's your own damn fault.

You won the right to vote and didn't use it.  You won the right to a fair education and didn't use it. You made  it illegal to discriminate based on race in every aspect of society, workplace, shopping malls, restrooms, you name it and then left it at that.  Black teens voluntarily sit in the back of the bus these days.  Every club you join is almost always exclusively black.  You still have separate churches, radio stations, BET.  Why? Integration works both ways.  How are you ever going to be equal to white people if you don't go near them?

But for every African-American who steps up and makes something of themselves or who makes the effort to take their rightful place in the world, there's 20 more who CHOOSE not to.

That's right.  CHOOSE not to.  Because being poor and black doesn't make you drop out of school if you REALLY want to go.  Poverty and being black doesn't force you to join street gangs or use drugs. It doesn't get you pregnant at 15.  It doesn't mean you have to settle for welfare.  And white people aren't forcing you to either.  You either want to do good or you don't, but only you make that decision.

If you don't like being targeted by the police then go BE police officers and CHANGE it.  If you don't feel represented by your government, go VOTE for people who will represent you.  Better yet, go BE a politician and CHANGE things.  You had every opportunity to keep moving towards equality, but YOU CHOSE NOT TO.  It's like once the 1980s came, you just sat there and blamed white people instead of effecting ANY change at all.  WHY???

Every time you skip school or commit crimes instead of trying to get an education and a career, you're bitch slappng Dr. King.   Every time you sag your pants instead of dressing respectfully, you're bitch slapping Dr. King.  Every rap song, every grill, every use of ebonics, every last wanna be thug is an insult to every one of your ancestors who fought to win you freedom and equal rights.

It's time to stop playing the blame game, get off your lazy asses and GO BE EQUAL.  Because you can do that now thanks to Dr. King and a lot of people just like him.  Will you?

By the way, white people marched during the Civil Rights Movement too and there were white people protesting in Ferguson.  Times HAVE changed when it comes to race. People ARE more tolerant. Yes, even white ones. Your attitudes may not have kept up, but that's your own damn fault too.

Stop oppressing yourselves.  Stop living in the past. Get up and be the change you want to see.  Go BE equal or stop whining about inequality.  Otherwise, you're missing the entire point of celebrating MLK Day.

Religion of peace?

I'm starting to get offended that Muslims keep insisting Islam is a religion of peace.  Really?  THAT'S the story you're sticking with?

I never see Jewish suicide bombers blowing up women and children in the market the way Hamas does. I never see armed Christian militants kidnapping little school girls and forcing them to marry their soldiers like Boko Haram does. I never see Buddists invading towns and killing anyone who refuses to convert to Buddhism or handing out pamphlets on the proper way to rape an infidel like ISIS does.  Atheists never hijacked planes and flew them into buildings like Al Qaeda did.  I bet Wiccans find Harry Potter very offensive but they never shot up the publisher's office or put a hit out on JK Rowling.  Je suis Harry?

There may be the occasional nut job, but no other religion on the entire planet has so many people willing to martyr themselves for their religion or has such an organized and continuous militant wing as Islam.  Where is all the violence coming from?  I don't know.  The Koran maybe?  Because it comes from somewhere.  I don't know what Muslims are refusing to admit to themselves, but I know what I see with my own two eyes and Islam is not a religion of peace.

Islam is oppression.  Mormons didn't shoot little Malala just for trying to go to school.  The Taliban did because Islam teaches that women are property and aren't entitled to know how to read.  Yes, Islam okays slavery.  The Catholic Pope doesn't have people executed for disagreeing with him but Islamic law says anyone who disagrees with the prophet can be executed for blasphemy.

And yes, Islam is a religion of war.  Jihad is just as much a part of Islam as Christmas is to Christianity and it is taught to millions of little Muslim children in millions of mosques all over the world.  How else can you explain why so many people born outside the middle east join terrorist groups IN the middle east?   They're recruited somewhere.  Church maybe?  Where did the idea of the martyr getting 72 virgins when they die come from?  From Saint Mohammad because Islam does say it's okay to make war on the infidel, i.e. non Muslims.  Look it up.

But you still say Islam is a religion of peace.  I say PROVE IT.

Why is it always left up to the west and people of other faiths to fight terrorists?  Why don't Arab nations take the lead?   Why aren't Arab nations sending troops into Iraq to fight ISIS or into Nigeria to fight Boko Haram?  Why isn't the Palestinian Authority doing anything to stop Hamas?  Obviously because they're OKAY with what these groups are doing.  By the way, the majority of people killed by Islamic extremists are actually Muslim.  They don't seem to care.

But you want me to believe Islam is peace so I want you to prove it, Muslims.  I want YOU to clean house.  Try stopping the terrorists instead of hiding them. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Pakistan.

Until Islam does more than just whine it's all the west's fault and starts actually doing something to stop terrorism, until Muslims stop empathizing with terrorists and wages its own little war on terror, I will not be convinced that you mean me no harm.  If you want me to believe you're nice guys, prove it and stop promoting terrorism.

Je Suis Charlie

A week ago, some jihadists got so offended at a French magazine's editorial cartoon criticizing Islam that they stormed the magazine's office and murdered 12 staffers.  Most people condemned it but way too many people are also defending it.  They say the cartoons were offensive and the jihadists had a right to be angry.  No one's come out and said the murders are justified, but you know they're thinking it.

And they're idiots.  Political correctness is bull shit.  You can't sneeze without offending someone.  But worse than that, it misses the entire point of freedom of speech.  Remember that pesky first amendment?  It doesn't just apply to you.  It applies to everyone.  Even cartoonists who make fun of you.

Freedom of speech is supposed to guarantee your right to say what you want even if someone else finds it offensive because to not be allowed to say it means you don't have the right to free speech.  Who decides what is free speech and what isn't?  No one can because what's acceptable to one isn't necessarily acceptable to others.  Who decides who gets free speech and who doesn't?  No one should.  Either everyone has it or free speech doesn't exist.

But people do every day.  Some basketball mogul says something racist and has his team legally taken away from it.  You don't have to agree with the comment but who the hell are you to take his business away for saying it?  He doesn't have the same right to free speech you do?

And it doesn't stop there. There's a whole host of people who are made to pay for saying something that isn't deemed politically correct and we're ok with it because we tell ourselves speech has consequences.  Yeah, you can say whatever you want, but you will be held accountable for it in the almighty court of public opinion.

So is that what happened to those murdered staffers of Charlie Hebdo?  They simply said something they shouldn't have and paid the price for it? If you killed everyone who offended you, there wouldn't be anyone left alive.

People are idiots.  They're going to do things and say things that you're going to disagree with, but if you value your own freedom of speech, you can't deny it to others because that sets a dangerous precedent.  One day it'll be your turn and it won't feel so good.

So ignore the idiots.  You don't have to agree with what they say, but you shouldn't try to stop them from saying it.  Feel free to criticize them for it.  Exercise your own right to free speech and say why you disagree with them.

But you can't kill them.  The men who murdered the staffers at Charlie Hebdo are dead now.  They took hostages and the French police killed them in a shootout.  Twitter is all a glow with the hashtag JeSuisCharlie as millions show their support for Charlie Hebdo, offensive cartoons and all.  Still other media outlets are now questioning their own policies towards what's offensive and what's not.  People are scared of being offensive so I guess the jihadists won in some way.  The fight for the right to free speech wages on.

Will we learn anything from this?  Somehow I doubt it.