Another one

Worth

“Something is worth only as much as people are willing to pay for it”. Basic economics. This has huge implications in Christian spirituality, but I’m not going to go there for now. Instead I want to talk about nachos. At work, I often like to go to Salsarita’s for lunch, where my meal of choice is the nachos. A few weeks ago, they had a scratch-off lottery style promotion, where you could win free chips, a burrito, etc. But win or lose, everyone had a coupon for $4.99 nachos (retail price is $6.50 or so). You would think I’d be happy; hey, cheap nachos! But instead it made me feel like I had been getting ripped off. If they were trying to steer us to the nachos, it must mean they are a high profit-margin item. Clearly they can comfortably sell them at $5, so I am a sucker to buy at $6.50. I got over it pretty quickly though, because hey, cheap nachos.

 

Tailoring

I was on a kick for awhile where I was trying to find some good dress shirts. One thing I learned is that, the cheaper the shirt, a) the more pins they put in to secure it, and b) the more likely you are to get stabbed trying to get the pins out. Also the worse the shirt, the more likely it is to be in my size (17 neck, 36 arms, feel free to shop for me).

 

But I also have found that the shirts that fit me the best are invariably the cheapest and made out of the most inferior materials. This is precisely what motivates me to want to make my own clothes. If I could just take the items that fit me best and reverse-engineer the design, I could recreate them in good fabrics and have a perfectly tailored wardrobe. This did not work when I tried to hand-sew a t shirt, however.

 

A request for advice: I have a couple shirts that were labeled “Tall”… apparently this means it fits like a normal shirt but is 12 inches longer?? So the question is, would it be ill-advised to trim the bottom of the shirt with scissors? What are my options here?

 

Line, please

Sometimes I hear people say things like “get out of here with those weak pickup lines”. Doesn’t this imply that things would be fine if only the pickup lines were stronger? What would be a suitably strong line? The thought amuses me greatly. But really, do ANY pickup lines work? As best I can tell, if you are good looking enough it doesn’t really matter what you say. And if you are homely, you will either come across as creepy or weaksauce.

 

Macho

Some words have been ruined forever, casualties of our changing culture. I am sad to report that “macho” is one of those words. Between the Village People and Randy “Macho-Man” Savage, no one who is seriously described as “macho” can be taken seriously. The closest you can get to respect is to refer to “machismo” as a characteristic of hispanic culture, but that only avoids being derisive on account of cultural sensitivities. What are some other words that should be mourned?

 

Confidence

If you are going to accomplish anything in the world, confidence is a must. Despite appearances, no one has everything figured out, and except within very narrow domains, no one really knows what they are doing. So to a large extent, confidence is a choice rather than an emergent property. I find there are 4 approaches:

 

0. Lack thereof. You are basically dead in the water, and must count on someone to go your direction out of pity, or perhaps they will take you under their wing as a mentor.

 

1. Fire and Anger. This is the “damn the torpedos” approach. Snarl at the world, consider all else inferior, and run over any who get in your way. This can be efficient, but is not healthy, will wear you out, and burns bridges.

 

2. Superior Product. Establish something that you truly believe is better than the alternatives. Let your creation do the talking and it’s brilliance will be recognized. Requires a lot of work and prep, you are only as good as your last idea.

 

3. Self-Worth. Even though you don’t have anything in-hand at the moment, you have seen enough come and go that you trust inspiration to come when it is needed. At this point you begin to flow with a certain grace, though your confidence can still be shaken by failures.

 

4. Transcendence. The realization that what needs to happen WILL happen, that your choices are but different currents in the same stream. Detach yourself from the outcomes and put value in the act of choosing instead (choosing well has nothing to do with getting a particular result).

 

Army vs. Retail

I’ve seen people say things like “working retail sucks. If this keeps up I’m going to join the army”. The clear implication was that armed service and working at the mall were roughly equivalent, with the edge probably going to the mall. Something is fundamentally wrong with this. Incidentally, I would not call myself much of a patriot, but I do “support the troops”. But my support does not come from belief in their mission, but rather for their service in the face of senselessness. I don’t know why people try to conflate the two so often, “saying we shouldn’t be in iraq is disrespectful to the troops!”. You don’t hear this so much now that iraq is unpopular (gotta love the public), but people now seem less grateful when I think they ought to be moreso.

 

Golden Rule

There is a stupid joke that goes “It’s the Golden Rule: the one with the gold makes the rules. ho ho ho”. Why is this considered funny at all? It’s a straight read of base human nature.

 

Voices In My Head

When I notice an attractive woman, about half the time I hear in my head the voice of Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite saying “she’s pretty good looking”.

 

Conservatives and States Rights

So I read a book about the Supreme Court, and have followed some good analysis of court cases, and it find it all rather disturbing. But my current hang-up is around “limited government” and state’s rights. Now excuse my naivety, but to me, being in favor of limited government means one supports limits on the government’s power, that individual rights are paramount. But instead what I see (mostly from Scalia and Thomas) is a desire to limit the federal government’s ability to put the brakes on overreaches from state and local governments. The emphasis is not on preserving individual rights, but on preserving the state’s ability to limit those rights. (Granted, I am using “rights” and “non-illegal behavior” somewhat interchangeably)

 

Why is there no faction that believes the government should have an active role in PRESERVING the freedom and independence of the individual? The left wants to use the gov. to control people directly, and the right wants to prevent national gov. from putting the brakes on local governments. I can’t think about this stuff because it just pisses me off. For whatever it’s worth, I think the stimulus is a bad idea (non-sequitur, which is a great word and lets you sound intellectual when saying something pointless).

 

Left Behind

In one version of the “end times” thinking, all the Christians get raptured up into the sky, and not long after the world pretty much starts going to hell. I haven’t seen it explicitly stated, but there is an implication that the removal of the Christians plays a big role in making the world worse (which is true if they are really “salt and light to the world”). But think about the world now… if all the people who talk about the rapture a lot were to disappear tomorrow, would the rest of the world feel worse off? On the contrary, I think a lot of people might be quite ok with it. This is both a tragedy and cause for cynicism. Christians, what the hell are we doing? Would anyone miss you if you were gone…. instead of being a depressive’s meditation, turn it around as a challenge. Love love love, be like Derek Smalls says at the end of Spinal Tap “we’ll make them miss us”.

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