September 22, 2006
Does anyone hate the myspace bulletins besides me? I guess they are ok (but just barely) if you are planning a party and want to quickly send out the when and where or some other sort of information you need to get to a bunch of people quickly. (Because the phone or email is just too time consuming in this crazy age we live in.) But this is not, I repeat NOT, the place to post your thoughts on love or relationships or sappy inspirational drivel. That’s what blogs are for. Like this! If I want to get on my soap box, I post it to a blog, and if someone has nothing better to do than to read my random brain drippings, they can click on the link and read it. But I wouldn’t presume to think that my rants are going to be of interest to anyone else in cyberspace. So I don’t try to force feed them to everyone in my friends list by posting a bulletin. But even if I did, at least it would be an original thought. Not something that has been forwarded around the net 70 million times. It’s bad enough that I have the same list of “10 things I should think about the next time I see a homeless person” in my bulletins six times, but it’s even worse that the person who actually took the time to compose this list is someone I’ve never met. I might actually read it and give the message some thought if it came from someone I know and care about. Or maybe, and this is just a maybe, I would respond to and forward one of those surveys if the questions actually gave some insight into the person answering them. But all I get are “what was the last thing you ate?” and “what was the last song you heard?” I don’t give a crap what’s the last thing someone ate and I doubt anyone cares that I had nachos and an IPA a few hours ago. Of course this is just my opinion, I could be wrong.
P.S. Forward this to 10 people you know and fortune will smile on you tomorrow.
Posted by Kurt under Social Rants | Comments Off
September 19, 2006
The other day I was thinking about what a totally useless letter “q” is. Put it at the beginning of a word and it makes a “kw” sound. In the middle or at the end, a “k” sound. So why not just use “kw” or “k”. Like “kween” or “Irak“. If it wasn’t for the “ch” sound we could do away with “c” as well, replacing it with “s” or “k” as needed. Like “kat” or “senter“. That way there would be no need to remember if it’s a hard or soft “c” and the stupid rule “i” before “e” wouldn’t need an except clause. The “x” is also totally useless. It can be replaced by a “z” or “ks” as needed, as in “zylophone” or a “kardboard boks“.
i don’t get capital letters either. they really don’t serve much purpose. the period designates the end of a sentence so what’s the point of the capital at the beginning? and as far as proper names, that’s just ego boosting if you ask me.
And as long as were house cleaning, here are a few other things that would be on the chopping block if I were Grand Poobah of the universe:
- 4am – 7am
- Tuesdays
- All works by Danielle Steele
- Lite Beer
- The month of March
- Democrats
Posted by Kurt under Generic Rants | Comments Off
September 9, 2006
Anyone besides me ever wonder why bologna is round and bread is square. I mean come on, your eating a bologna sandwich and every time you bite a corner you get nothing but bread. American cheese singles are not much better. Sure they are square but they still don’t fit your bread. If you use your tetris skills and a knife you can make 1.6 slices fit pretty well, but you’d need an advanced engineering degree and a slide rule to figure out how to slice your bologna to fit right. Now I know what you’re thinking, just cut your bologna into squares and discard the rounded edges. Sure that would work but that’s not the point. That sort of thing may be fine for third world places like Canada or France, but this is America. We have sent people to the moon. We invented the atomic bomb. Why the hell can’t we have bologna that fits our bread. It’s like the hot dog thing. Beer is sold in six packs, and so are hot dog buns, but how many hot dogs do you get in a package? Eight! What are you supposed to do with the extra two? If you’re having a couple of friends over it works out ok. You buy three packs of hot dogs, four packs of buns and a case of beer and the math all works out. But if it’s just you and you want a late night snack of a half dozen hot dogs and a six pack, your screwed.
Now I’m not one to complain about stuff and not offer a solution, so here it is. On the bologna thing, simply make the bologna bigger. Making square bologna would be a major engineering feat requiring retooling of the machinery and major capital, which Oscar Mayer would just pass on to the consumer by way of higher prices. But keeping the bologna round and increasing the size by say 30% would make it reach all four corners of the bread and hang out the edges of the sandwich, which is always good. And it’s a nice compromise. On the hot dog thing the simplest way would be to sell hot dogs in packs of six, but that would be moving backwards. So, hot dog buns need to be sold in packs of eight (which I admit some now are) and beer should be sold in eight packs. That’s all I ask.
Posted by Kurt under Generic Rants | Comments Off
September 5, 2006
NPR’s “This I Believe” by Penn Jillette
I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word “elephant” includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.
But, this “This I Believe” thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by. So, I’m saying, “This I believe: I believe there is no God.”
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.
Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there’s no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I’m wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don’t travel in circles where people say, “I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.” That’s just a long-winded religious way to say, “shut up,” or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, “How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do.” So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that’s always fun. It means I’m learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
Posted by Kurt under Philosophical Rants | Comments Off
