Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sunday Morning Musings

What's the point of going then?  If you eliminate all the extras to save money on a cruise it will be pretty boring after a day or two and on my two cruises the classes were free and the gym wasn't.  The best part was that I lost weight even though I ate like a pig (one night all I had was 6 orders of escargot and a salad) and drank like a fish (by the third night the sommelier would be at my table as soon as I sat down) I never took the elevators and spent quite a few hours walking around the ship. The whole idea of a cruise is to relax and indulge yourself, not look longingly at what everyone else is enjoying.
If you're counting pennies, skip the casino, spa, specialty restaurants that charge extra, the gift shop, art auction, fitness classes, lattes in the cafe and cocktails at the bar.
It only makes sense that more strokes occur in areas of high fast food density.  Supermarkets with fresh fruit and vegetables are becoming harder to find in urban areas but fast food can be just a block away.  Thank you city planners.  When your only options are the joint on the corner or traveling several miles by bus to find a grocery store, most people will opt for closer to home.  An entree salad is not going to be the first choice for most young men since it costs as much as most value meals and will do little to assuage their hunger.  That being said, do people really eat fast food 17 times a month?  I don't do 17 times a year, the food is tasteless, packed with sodium, fat and sugar, and the french fries don't taste like they used to.
And Oklahoma City is of course not alone in its insatiable appetite for fatty burgers, salty fries and sugary soft drinks. Nationwide, on average, fast-food patrons have upped their monthly visits from 14 in 1999 to 17 last year.
And I am not giving one dime of my money to a corporation that denies worker compensation benefits to an employee by claiming that good Samaritan acts are not within the scope of employee responsibilities.  You would think that after having one of their outlets shot to pieces and 21 people killed they would be a little more compassionate towards an employee who was trying to prevent harm to a customer or a repeat of said incident.

Littering is a $1000 fine if you get caught in the state of California.  Too bad space doesn't have the same rules.  We have littered on the moon but the belt around the globe is becoming more hazardous as more satellites become just so much junk.  It should be a rule that for every satellite you send up, two defunct satellites must be destroyed safely.
The new debris adds to the growing amount of junk accumulating in orbit. Thus far the annoying objects have not had a major impact on human or robotic missions into space, but there are grave concerns for the future. At some cluttered altitudes, collisions are producing debris faster than gravity can eliminate it. If the trend is not reversed, one can imagine a time when it could be too risky or too expensive to fly spacecraft through the debris fields.
Uncle Pat is off his rocker again.  It's amazing to me that one can indulge in a racist rant and not suffer consequences in this day and age.  Poor schooling, few role models, trigger happy policing and no opportunities ensure that certain groups will have a difficult time getting ahead and blaming them for society's ills is foolish and shortsighted.  As one commenter pointed out Pat fixates on individual crimes while missing the crimes that impact thousands of people.
Should have come back at him with white crime: bankers and CEOs who commit fraud, cause millions of job losses which leaves hundreds of thousands with no health insurance; then some of the laid-off have a cancer diagnosed a year later than it would have been and they die when they would have survived had it been found sooner. Those deaths are a direct result of fraud committed by wealthy white people. Or you lose your job and have to put off brake work your car needs, then you have an accident and someone dies. These deaths all result from crimes committed by wealthy white people. Or your 401k vanishes, and you can't eat as well as you need to and you just die at 80 instead of the 82 you could have lived to had you been able to afford the diet you needed. The problem is, Buchanan and his ilk have a mind-set that "sees" crime in a particular way, they "see" murder as cause by a particular set of actions and NOT by other actions. This allows them to be blind to their own racism; they can't understand that the mind-set they have adopted allows them to "see" the responsibility one group of people have for the results of their actions but not see the responsibility a different group has for the outcomes of their actions. This is what it means to be racist. And I speak as a white man.
So the Governator is willing to accept stimulus money that other states don't want.  Good, let him take Louisiana's portion, California can use it.  One of the unpublished stories is that Arnie cut the In Home Support Services salary to $9.50 an hour from $12.35, a loss to me of over $165 every month.  I now don't earn enough to pay the rent, much less feed us for a month and there isn't a cheaper place to live in San Jose.  Then you add the effect of the sales tax and life has become that much more expensive.  I doubt the increase in state income tax will affect me since I'm obviously below the poverty level.  Way to go Arnie!  I wonder how much rent is in Las Vegas since it is one of America's emptiest cities.  Hmm, I actually found places within the budget. Wow, just about any place outside of California is much, much cheaper than here. Now if I just had the money to move.

BBB

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