Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Work, The Ultimate Deterent

People argue that the death penalty isn't a deterrent, not me, but other people. I think death is most definitely a deterrent, I try to avoid it everyday. My point is this, if you really want to deter people from committing crimes, start putting prisoners to work. Not like punch out license plates work, but mind numbing, demeaning, self-loathing, boss-is-a-fun-suck, kind of work. Apart from the gang rapes, stabbings, and gut wrenching nightly screams of terror, I imagine prison to be a paid vacation to a really really boring place, well, like prison, for example. However, if your average criminal was faced with the prospect of spending 9-11 hours a day processing TPS reports, scheduling meetings for the purpose of planning other more important meetings, fighting with IT people because your Outlook sucks and your printer is down because it doesn't play well with others, like coffee, they might chose to go legit and get a nice job at Kinko's/Fed-Ex. If going to prison didn't suck beyond all reason, I too, might chose a life of crime. Maybe something less awful like tax fraud, except I probably wouldn't go to prison, also I might accidentally be appointed by Obama. I would need to chose a crime that isn't horrible and won't scar my family for life. So drugs are out. Maybe illegal weapons sales.  But I would only sell to nice bad people.

In Space, No One Can Smell You Stink

So a bunch of people saw this big flash of light falling out the sky along the eastern seaboard. A number of people called into 911 concerned, like I would be, that we were in fact finally being invaded by Aliens. An official guy from the Naval Observatory said it was probably part of the Russian rocket recently launched, falling back to the earth. How thoughtful of the Russians to dump their flaming ball of space litter off the coast of our lovely Cape Hatteras. One would rightly guess it's part of an evil Russian plot to crap up our National Parks. The last bastions of beauty and deer meat we have left in our country. But I digress. The Naval Observatory guy's claim made sense, the flaming space ball was following the same trajectory that the Russian rocket's space junk would have followed. Ah, but not so says the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force said the fiery ball of fury was not man-made but did not specify what is was. Apparently the USAF is tracking over 19,000 items of space crap! Bringing me to my insanely genius point. Space is the new landfil! And why not? It's not like we have to look at it and it's not disturbing any fragile ecosystems or killing Spotted Owls. The worst you can say is that the mice on the space station might have an objection to flying litter, but who cares, their whole reason for being is a science experiment anyway, so flying litter might be a nice distraction from the zero gravity shock treatments and space lobotomies already being performed on their tiny little mice bodies.

Shooting trash into space is reasonable on so many levels. First, the stink goes with the trash, there's no stink in space, think about it. Second, no more landfills, and the only people that really effects are the Japanese who like to build airports on trash. Third, the premise is right inline with Obama's share the wealth ideology, or as Karl Marx put it, "From each according to their ability; to each according to their need." The Space Waste Elimination Redistribution Program, or SWERP, does exactly that. We, everyone living on the planet, are able to produce trash and will give it to Space who cannot produce trash on her own (meteors and asteroids don't count, don't argue, they just don't) and therefore has need for it, (yes Space is a woman, because it's dark, cold, and vapid, just kidding, it's really because she'll suck the life out of you in under 2 minutes if you aren't properly attired).

Trash is truely the only level playing field, absolutely everybody on earth has the ability to produce it, and does. The best part of SWERP is that because it's the redistribution of trash wealth it can be funded with bail out money, or with taxes, yeah! And it creates jobs, we are gonna need people to build and pack space trash pods and load trash rockets. It's a whole new industry. A sound solution to a growing problem that makes perfect economic sense.

Now in conjunction with this we need to think about how we're gonna clean up all the space crap that's already up there. I suggest a giant magnet or space net. Either of these things would work the only problem with the magnet is it will most likely attract satellites and The Space Station, which wouldn't be good. The net kind of has the same issue in that, like dolphins in tuna nets, it would catch things that aren't trash, like satellites and The Space Station. Another option is prisoners with butterfly nets and trash bags. We already have the prisoners and I'm sure butterfly nets could be easily aquired in mass, the trash bags are no problem. The one issue there is that space debris is usually traveling at speeds of over 1000 mph. It might tear through a butterfly net. So maybe prisoners with magnets? The details can be worked out later but it should definitely involve prisoners.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Not Ready for Prime Time

If Obama's just gonna read off of a big T.V. screen, why not skip to the chase and broadcast the T.V. screen? This solves a whole host of issues such as:

1. He doesn't have to break a sweat pretending to care about America.
2. It's less like lying if you read it.
3. Obama doesn't have to miss his favorite T.V. shows to give some boring speech about dumb stuff he doesn't really want to talk about any way.
4. Little kids can learn to read while getting brain washed.
5. Obama doesn't have to answer any icky questions from the mean old press.
6. It will prepare the public for the future of mandatory, daily mind cleansings.
7. Put the speech to John Williams Star Wars theme song, moving the text from foreground to background, and people might be lulled in to reading it, hoping that Star Wars is gonna start any minute. But then you should probably play Star Wars immediately following so people don't get pissed. That only works once.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Sticky Fail

Somewhere out there I'm sure there is a term for the exact moment in time when an effective process, great idea or all around awesome thing becomes the precise opposite of it's intended purpose, and begins to suck tremendously. Now I don't know what that term is, so I am going to make one up. The term will be called Sticky Fail, which actually segue's nicely into my point. I work in an office with computers and Microsoft Office and all that stuff that's designed to keep me efficient and productive. However, taking the time to learn how to use those programs is, in my opinion, a completely inefficient and unproductive waste of my time. So instead I use the Post It method of tracking and cataloging important pieces of information. My method is a simple and quick two step process, 1) if it's important for me to remember, I write it on a sticky, 2) then I take said sticky and put it where ever there is space on my desk. Unfortunately months of employing this simple method have resulted in Sticky Fail. I now have so many stickies plastered all over my desk they've become like visual "white noise." My eyes no longer register brightly colored little square shapes, but instead, my retinal sensors have become numb to the tiny paper assault of stationary neon cubes and subsequently require more aggressive stimulation to trigger a neural spark, such as airplanes or laser blasts. Anything short of a giant shiny flying object zipping past my window or a mushroom cloud hardly gets a sizzle of brain activity. My stickies are my enemies. They have no meaning. Add to that the fact that I no longer understand what the cryptic little messages, ironically constructed to save time, mean. So now, instead of having gentle little colorful reminders of all my important stuff, I've got an office full of hate squares, that when, actually having succeeded in being finally noticed, serve only to cement that dark feeling of dread preceding the realization that I just failed to do something SUPER important! But that's not even the saddest part. The saddest part is that I haven't come up with anything better to combat Sticky Fail. Suggestions are greatly appreciated unless they include any or all of the following:

1. If you actually worked, you wouldn't have time to mess with sticky's.
2. Hey moron, that's what the big calendar on your desk is for.
3. Clean off your desk once in a while and you might not have this problem.
4. You're fat, stop sitting around on your huge butt writing on post its and exercise!
5. Post its are bad for the environment, there bright irritating colors anger and confuse animals and homeless people. Plus, they're existence stomps a giant neon colored carbon foot print right on mother earth's heart. Bad, bad post its.
6. Only idiots use post its.

Friday, March 6, 2009

You're right, it's not fair

If you ever want to know if something is truly fair, ask a child, the younger the better. Young children have an innate ability to distinguish within a nano second if something is fair, more accurately, if it doesn't benefit them. I never cease to be amazed at how quickly they conclude my decision will screw them. As if the first one to call out "not fair" wins. Children force you to deal with this notion of "fair." You simply cannot avoid it. So since I am consistently being challenged on my idea of fairness, I decided to do a quick analysis to see if my "hope for the future" had a leg to stand on.

The definition of fair according to whatever dictionary google uses is as follows:

1. free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair decision; a fair judge.

Ok so this tells me nothing. With the exception of God, no one is perfectly fair. This doesn't however get me off the hook with my kids. They demand fairness, because they are under the impression, erroneously, that fair always benefits them, i.e. it's always good for them. But is this true? Is what's fair always what's good for them? The reflexive response would be, yes, what's fair must also, in all cases, be good. That's reasonable. It's not true, however, and a simple justice system scenario demonstrates the point. All criminal sentences are the same length of time, regardless of the crime, that's fair, according to the definition. It's unbiased by any circumstances of the crime, it's devoid of dishonest influences, and it can't be faulted for injustice, everyone is treated the same under the rules of fairness. Now, is that good? No, it's crap. It's a terrible ideology for exacting punishment and it doesn't work for parenting either.

Now, back to my kids. When my son informs me that it isn't fair that I get to stay up late and he doesn't, he is correct. It isn't fair. But it is good that he should go to bed before I do because he is still growing, needs his sleep and, more importantly, mommy can't relax until everyone is asleep.

This was a very productive parenting exercise. I discovered that I was right, which I already knew, but I needed to find the logic in the reasoning, because my oldest son requires an explanation that has more validity than "because I said so." An answer I think is very valid, but just frustrates him. Maybe I'll explore that concept next.