You're Complaining to the Wrong Person

Is the American dream to go to college? Is it to be better off than our parents? Or is it just to perform the act of going to college so you can have a degree in whatever suits your fancy and then waiting for society to clap you on the back and start handing you paychecks?

When I was finishing high school we all received an interesting piece of paper that listed the average starting salaries for various college majors. Being a nerdy math nerd and very much wanting to be an engineer I was pleased that engineering degrees equaled pretty sweet starting salaries. Also, being a nerdy math nerd, I didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about those liberal arts college majors that yielded careers with less than half the starting salary. I was thinking, of course, more about buying cool stereos and fast cars with the shiny new job my degree would get me. But, as it happens, the same job that did, indeed, bring cool stereos and fast cars (and, coincidentally, one fast car with a very cool stereo) also enabled me to do crazy things like support a wife and kids and pay the light bill (as my parents called it).

Now I see this on the Internet:

Are you really going to complain to those of us with common sense, or really just sense enough to realize that a degree in Classical Studies with a minor in Latin is the facial tattoo of college degrees? It all but guarantees you won't ever pay federal taxes because you'll never earn enough money to have to pay them.

The American nightmare isn't people unable to find a job with a degree in Classical Studies. It's society not informing our youth that your job prospects will be nearly zero if one has a degree in Classical Studies. Remember all those horrible TV shows where the mean parents told their kids that they won't amount to anything with an art degree. Well, what they really meant is that you can still be a great wife and a great mom, but you're going to have to do it on a minimum wage budget. And that will suck.

By the way, I went to high school with liberals. Near as I can tell they're still liberals and they voted for Obama. Career choices? Doctors, nurses, lawyers and engineers. And still some of the most creative and wonderful people I have had the honor of knowing.

Thank You Sgt. Pepper

Until I was about 11 or 12 I lived in a monaural world. A world of clock radios and 13" black and white TVs. We had a stereo, but it was usually only used at Christmas for a stack of Firestone Christmas albums.

Then one time I was spending the weekend at my dad's and asked if he had any music I could listen to. So he gets down this record and cues it up. Then he hands me a pair of huge '80s over-the-ear headphone and changed my life forever. I like to think that it wasn't just the experience of hearing true stereo for the first time, but also hearing one of best albums ever recorded by the Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.



From that point on I consumed music. I also yearned for better and higher quality systems for my listening pleasure. I didn't have much money, but I used my strawberry picking money one summer to buy a huge boom box and even got a Walkman for Christmas one year. I've plateaued nicely on the equipment and haven't gone the way of some audiophiles. Either I am not one, or managed to let my finances dictate that area of my life. It pains me to report that the integrated amplifier I bought when I graduated from high school has finally bit the dust. And the tweeters on the Polk Audio Monitor 5Bs I bought with my friend Eric the first time I drove into the Portland area without grownups have tweeted their last.

Fortunately, I am not without:

Rotel RB-985 THX-certified 5-channel power amplifier
Rotel RSP-1066 Surround Processor/Preamp
Polk Audio RT-8 tower speakers
psb Alpha Sub-Zero 6 powered subwoofer

Funny thing is I had the amp and speakers long before I had the preamp. While the cinema performance was excellent, the stereo was flat and dead. That all went away with the 1066. Now the whole set up sings in both 2- and 5-channel.

Last thing I listened to in glorious stereo (and loud!):

"When Will You Die For the Last Time In My Dreams"
-Polvo, Exploded Drawing
1996, Touch & Go Records

#OccupyMatt

Protest in Hotel Room Verges on Violence

18 October 2011

Goldsboro, NC - A single man protesting against debt and crony capitalism has threatened to take himself outside for a "good old-fashioned Southern butt-whooping" over what he believes are serious breaches of personal responsibility.

"Matt has not made the best financial decisions and my debt is the direct result of those decisions," said Matt, oddly referring to himself in the third person. Matt cited his own desire for a fast car and a house as examples of not living within his means.

"Rather than carefully considering all the implications of home-ownership, such as lack of mobility and the expense of maintenance (those gutters don't clean themselves!), Matt bought a house near the peak of the housing boom," said Matt. "Now I'm stuck with a mortgage to pay and live more than an hour from work."

When asked why he still makes the payments on the house despite owing more than it's worth, Matt replied, "When Matt borrowed the money he agreed to pay it back. None of the loan documents implied that it was no longer necessary to make payments when it didn't feel good."

"Matt needs to bail out Matt," said Matt regarding a solution to the problem. "When Matt lives within or, even better, below his means the situation will correct itself. We even expect surpluses over the long-haul."

Traveling Sucks

Some random thoughts on traveling in this day and age:

• Young(er) people don't know how to turn off their fancy smart phones. (Hint: putting it in airplane mode is not turning it off. Turning it off is turning it off.)
• An $8 fruit and cheese platter that sounds ridiculous on the ground is a luxurious feast halfway through a 4-hour flight
• If you have a bladder the size of a walnut, request an aisle seat
• Zone 2 people don't like having to wade through a crowd of zone 4 and 5 people to board the plane
• Your bag will come back around; no need to bowl people over trying to get it. It's called a carrousel for a reason
• I will shed no tears when you have to check your suitcase because the overhead bins are full after I paid $60 to check my bags at check-in
  
• No one has to use the lavatory until the seat belt sign comes on
• No one has any problem calling the bathroom a lavatory because it's on an airplane

Naming It

For years and years I have had an aversion to certain sounds like other people chewing or typing. My reaction went beyond annoyance. I used to share on office with two other people, one of whom typed very fast on a very "clicky" keyboard. I could not stand it. Most of the time I worked with my headphones on to drown it out. If I couldn't do that I would literally panic. All I wanted in the world at that moment was for the sound to stop. If I could have I would have destroyed her keyboard or jumped out a window. It was absolute fight or flight. Fortunately the office had a door so I used that to get away and calm down.

When I would express what was happening to me people would just say I was being anal or over-reacting. But I don't think so. I have researched this on and off over the years and recently I discovered a name for this: misophonia or selective sound sensitivity.

The first time I read an article describing my symptoms and giving them a name I wept. My condition didn't go away, but at least I knew I wasn't crazy. Okay, I am crazy, but crazy with a name is much better than just crazy.

The NY Times recently featured the condition in an article and it was on the Today Show.

If you're curious, there's more information here.

What it's All About

I saw a most horrific sight today when I dropped off my daughter at school this morning (and just for the record, I'm not one of those helicopter parents; we live across the street and I work from home so it's pretty convenient). Standing in front of a line outside a classroom was a first or second grade girl with a T-shirt proclaiming in huge lettering:

"ENOUGH ABOUT YOU LET'S TALK ABOUT ME!"

It made me throw up a little in the back of my throat. If my daughter wanted a shirt like that I would buy it just so I could burn it in front of her while casually explaining that, indeed, it's not all about her after all. Are we as a society so desperate to build up our children's self-esteem that we clad them so? How pathetic.

I want my kids to know that helping others, listening to others and thinking about others can be more rewarding than being helped, listened to, or thought of. My daughter is at the age where she should start being less selfish and think outside herself more and more. Giving her a shirt that encourages the opposite is deplorable.

It's going to be an uphill battle; me against society and the media. Last week I went to Corvallis and watched my beloved Beavers lose in OT to FCS Sac State. When I told my daughter that the Beavers lost she asked me if they got a trophy.

Sigh.

Comfort Math

Here is what a recent slideshow on a news website had to say about food-borne illness in the US:

"Did you know that 1 in 6 Americans gets sick every year from eating food contaminated with pathogens: Bacteria, viruses or parasites? It’s a serious health problem that sends tens of thousands of people to the hospital every year."

Camplyobacter and toxoplasma and listeria, oh my! (And don't forget the old stand-by Salmonella!)

Hmmm.

Immediately I was struck by the vast difference between "1 in 6" and "tens of thousands." Clearly not every person that gets a food-borne illness does or even needs to be hospitalized. That said it makes for a nice comparison between getting sick and getting so sick that a trip to the emergency room is warranted.

First, 1 in 6 is 0.1667 or 16.67%. For a US population of approximately 312 million this is 52 million people. That seems like a lot, and it is.

But compare that to tens of thousands. Let's go high and use 90,000 (any more than that would be hundreds of thousands, right?). That's 0.029% of the US population and a not much more significant 0.17% of those who get sick in the first place.

So 1 in 6 might seem dire, but we've all revisited a meal or two over the years and are still kicking. What it comes down to is that you're as likely to die in the car getting to the restaurant than from eating the food when you get there. See how math can actually be comforting? Sort of.

Interestingly, the article said absolutely nothing on preventing food-borne disease. So here's a handy link to the CDC page.

Is That What You Think?

Sometimes a person can betray their true feelings by what they say.

Recently Rep. Rand Paul put out a budget deal that would reduce our national debt by some $6 trillion over the next ten years. Needless to say, not everyone's pet project or program was spared. But as I understand it Social Security went untouched and Medicare would be changed to a state block-grant system.

The reaction from the left? Seniors and children will die. Seriously. By some predictions, some 80,000 people would die under Rep. Paul's budget.

Is that what the left really think? That should this (relatively) fiscally conservative budget pass that the average American would shrug and let even one person die? Shame on them.

Father Jonathon Morris said it better than I can in a recent op-ed:

"It is fallacious logic to posit that seniors will not get meals if the federal government doesn’t send those meals to them. The federal government is not the only, and certainly not the best, caretaker of people.

In an imperfect society like our own, there is certainly a need for a government safety net for people who have no other way of getting quality, basic care. But the starting point of a federal safety net should be the support of families, neighbors, church and social groups, communities, and local governments (in that order), as they take care of their own."

Fighting Sucks

But only because it gets you into trouble.

When the movie Fight Club came out oh so many years ago I was a young(er) single man with more than my share of testosterone. The idea of having an outlet for what I saw as everyday, normal man-rage was very appealing.

Now I'm no longer young, but I've noticed that the rage is still there. It's that fight itch I feel when I read a book where good fights evil, or I read a news story about the bullied putting the smack down on the bully. We live in a civilized time but some of us were just wired for a different time. I can so easily imagine myself in boiled leather and chain mail with a nice two-handed broad sword across my back. And using it.

Instead my battle is the professor in the Prius going 60 in the fast lane and my sword is my 225 horsepower versus his 12 squirrelpower. Short of running the guy off the road (don't think this isn't a temptation), I have no outlet for the frustration that builds from this day after day. Maybe I should take up karate to give me both an outlet and a way of controlling the anger. Either that or start a fight club in my basement.

You're Not Fast

I drive fast*. It's just easier that way.

That being said, I have a message for those of the human population that don't feel as strongly as I do about the sanctity of the fast lane:

70 mph in the fast lane when the speed limit is 65 is not fast.

I don't care how many semis you think you need to pass before you let me by. You're not going fast.

I know you're all worried about getting stuck behind some bozo going 69 mph, but believe me, your frustration at going 1 mph under your randomly selected cruise control setting is nothing compared to the aneurysm you're giving me from going 5 mph below my thoughtfully selected cruise control setting.

*Note that I DO NOT speed in residential areas. If you are speeding on my street and I happen to have a live grenade handy, you will need extensive repairs and possibly several months in the hospital.