I Hate U2

Bono says, "I do try to avoid it. If I hear our songs on the radio I tend to turn them down. Not because I don't like them or believe in them. Actually, my voice annoys me. I always think I could have sang it better.

Me too, Bono, me too.

Women Hate Pink

Because it's not the color of pink that women hate, according to the study, so much as the fact that pink is "a gender cue" that triggers a "defensive response" among women.

When women wrote an essay about gender, just 42% of them said they would donate to ovarian cancer research. When they wrote a gender-neutral essay, 77% did. And those who saw a pink ad about breast cancer were significantly less likely to say that they'd contract the disease than those who saw an ad with neutral colors."

News flash, ladies: if the real world was "gender-neutral," we wouldn't be talking about breast cancer in the first place, we'd just be talking about "chest cancer." Or, more likely, "testicular cancer." Jesus. You could have told us this before we wore that hideous ribbon!

Ok, so maybe I shouldn't expect much here, considering the source is Gawker. But the overuse of quotation marks, the inaccurate description of color as a means of women hating each other, and the comments focused solely on which ethnicity should actually attempt to wear colors such as pink and yellow, makes me just sad that the point of the entire study was ignored.

Women hate pink. As the interview by one of the researchers explains, it is more that the use of pink has been pushed over the last century as a gender marker of femininity, and the reason women rebel against it is that in the context of such a campaign as Breast Cancer Awareness, pink is a terrifying omen. Pink signifies that it isn't just a cancer that could happen to a faceless population, but that every woman out there has over a 10% chance of developing the disease. When faced with that, most people will do the obvious and run from it, not embrace it. It's a natural instinct to flee from something that you are scared of. And whether it be a noble idea, such as raising money for research or something as base and ridiculous as pink handguns aimed at women, the influx of such a now-generic color that is considered gender related is cause for a vast amount of women to despise it.

I'll be the first to admit that I do not like the color, and when faced with the exact same material about breast cancer in a neutral color I would be more likely to respond. Perhaps if we started a campaign for prostate cancer for men that was color coded in blue and let it run for decades, men would have the same disgust.

Very Important Pet Pet

Driving home, this van was in front of me at a light. This really, completely epitomizes everything I hate about Plano. Half the world struggles to have clean water and enough food to fight off distended stomachs, while here in Plano, rich yuppies pay a king's ransom to have their animals groomed. Worse still, they can't even be bothered enough to climb into their own Lexus's or Hummers to drive to the pet spa(w) next to their own luxury salon, they have to have someone come to them, because anything else might be misconstrued as actual work that has absolutely no pedigree of privilege.

Sure, I have a lot of luxuries as well. I waste money on frivolous things all of the time. But I fully believe that if you are willing to own something, take care of it yourself. Raise your children, take care of your pets and plants. When you have enough money to have a live-in nanny or gardeners, at some point in time you go from enjoying the feeling of ownership that is earned by effort to the ownership that is just to own.

Also, the garishness of the van's design really bugs me with the bubblegum pink and the super-ridiculous dog hair accessories. And the spelling of Spaw is like nails on a chalkboard, or having your knee touched in a way that causes the heebie-jeebies. Yes, that is really what this post is about.

Oh, and the top of the van had the VIP part of the name with an asterisk that VIP means Very Important Pet. So the name of the company is Very Important Pet Pet Spaw. And we wonder why our nation comes in so far behind all others for education. Rich white people teach children this is correct grammar by reinforcing through giving money to the dumb company owners.

It is a very good thing I don't have children, my soapbox is way too large and I would have problems letting them be around the dumb that I see every day.

AKA I'm Dumb

It's terrible when it is a beautiful day like today. High 76°, nice wind, perfect weather to go out and enjoy at a nature preserve or a lake or somewhere similar. Unfortunately, my increase in running lately gave me shin splints. This is what happens when you try to be healthy. And no, replacing cycling with a much less impact sport such as cycling doesn't feel anywhere as nice as running.

So rather than enjoy the nice weather, I sat inside most of the day and accomplished nothing. Yay!

Plastic Bags are Saving the Environment?

The plastic bag industry, which has been killing marine life with its products for years, is marketing itself as an endangered species in need of environmental protection.

That’s right — the plastic industry’s renamed itself the “Save the Plastic Bag” coalition. And it’s arguing that the California Environmental Quality Act — which requires environmental impact reports for projects and plans that may harm the environment — applies to plastic bag bans! The industry’s saying that cities and counties must be required to conduct time-consuming environmental impact study to see if banning plastic bags could be bad for the environment.

The biggest reason the plastic bag industry is stating that they are helping the environment is that if plastic is banned, everyone will turn to paper bags instead, further harming the environment. Because of course, banning plastic, charging for paper would never force people to change their habits and carry a few bags in their trunk.

Seriously, just go buy some Flip and Tumblebags. Sure, they are nylon instead or organic cotton/bamboo, etc. but they hold 25 pounds each and smash into a ball the size of a small fist. I take a few of these everywhere I go and use them for everything from grocery shopping to carrying my lunch to work. I am in no way hindered by the lack of plastic bags, and don't require paper either. I hate it when big business decides the best way to fix their issue is to sue instead of just accepting that maybe they are the problem instead of the solution.

Can Atheists Be Parents?

In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes' right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes' "high moral and ethical standards," he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that "no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience." Despite Eleanor Katherine's tender years, he continued, "the child should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being."

How does the judge not see how illogical this statement is? Religious parents are just as influential over the beliefs of their children, so this statement is completely ludicrous. Don't praise the morals of someone and then deny them rights because their beliefs do not mirror your own.

Ooops

I made a mistake of setting up an expandable text for the one post in which it was needed. Turns out Blogger only allows them in code, so I seem to be temporarily stuck with the rather annoying 'read more' that gives nothing new.

Who knew a Livejournal concept could be both so helpful and annoying?

On Second Thought...

American's are just plain stupid. Manual of Style (Spelling)

I hate living in the Bible Belt.

First, let’s acknowledge that Texas has stopped talking about seceding from the nation long enough to get in the renewable energy game. But wait, what’s this? Texas’ RPS is not a statewide mandate of a certain percentage (for example, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Oregon all have RPS’s above 20% by 2025) of their total power use, but is a meager goal of 5,880 MW of power by 2015?! Well shucks. For the state that consumes 12% of ALL THE POWER CONSUMED IN THE U.S., you’d think they’d want to be a little more aggressive than making less than 1% of their power clean and renewable. I mean, this creates non-exportable jobs for a state that has incredible wind and solar resources. You’d think they’d be all over that action.

Of the Mayors Climate Protection Center I am disappointed that out of the DFW area, there are over 20 of the larger suburbs that have not signed onto this program.

Also, there is this wonderful reason to love living here:

Please?

Anyone have a copy of Photoshop I can have? I have not redownloaded a cracked version since I reimaged the laptop a few weeks ago, and getting one for a Mac is a pain in the ass. And I'm poor. But trying to use Photoshop Express online is taking forever. Every save is about 30-60 seconds, not counting load time for each option. And it lacks things like filters, which is really not helping. But, it is free.

Biggest issue is that when you upload 350+ photos at a time, and then try to manipulate/correct them, it is not just a task for the night. It is a task for the week. Or, technically, a lot more. Assume out of those 350 shots, I decide only 1/3 of them are even worth looking at. Giving a scant 90 seconds per shot of both correction and save time, that equals out to 10500 minutes, or 7.29 days. I know with real Photoshop I could knock it down to about 3 hours or so.

And yeah, my camera is not fantastic. I might take grainy shots, have a hard on for architecture, skip 2/3 dimensions, and never even have anyone actually look at anything I shoot, but damn it, I do devote some time to it.

So, anyone, feel free to help out.

Ridiculousness

Judge rules TV essential, awards damages

"Without it, how can the owner watch the beautiful women on 'Big Brother,' the national news broadcast or a football game," the judge quipped.

I was already against the pushing back of the digital switchover. This just cements how idiotic the people in this world are.

Waste

Luxury Property Blog looks at the most expensive Christmas trees ever! This one, in Singapore, featured 21,798 diamonds, 3,762 crystal beads, and 456 lights, for a cost of over a million dollars! How does that compare with a cut evergreen that costs as much to select, fell, and ship? You’ll also see expensive ornaments, unusual Christmas trees, the Europe’s “most pathetic tree”.

..via Neatorama

Reasons to Move...

"This was not a contest. This was a public survey. The process was not scientific," he said.

..I hate this place...

Reasons TV is better in box sets

So I finished season four of Lost tonight. We bought season one and watched it all in one clump, to see what the fuss was all about. We suffered our way through season two and the whole Michelle Rodriguez thinks she is a good actress phrase. season three brought the wonderful additions of Desmond and Juliet as regular characters, but still never answered a bloody question. All of season two and three were watched about a week later due to either taping on VHS (we're behind the times) or downloading every week. This season, not quite able to do either. As TV is progressing into the digital form, we get less and less channels to show up on our bunny ears. Which, overall, is still more than needed as we really do not watch much television to begin with. PBS still shows up most days, while everything else is starting to end up dubbed over in Spanish. downloading seems to not work as well anymore as the main people to download torrents from seem to be addicted to putting everything in zip/exe format, which would be fine except that Macs cannot open those files. So this has been a season of watching abc.com episodes and suffering throught the terrible speeds, haltings and 'limited'
commercials. At least it is free.

Back on track, I finished the most current season tonight, and truthfully, I was left wanting. Not cliffhanger, need to know what happens wanting. Just, you know, wanting it to have been better. Wanting it to have a more decisive ending. Wanting it to NOT BE BLOODY PREDICTABLE!!!!

I like the flash forwards. I think since it started going that way it is a great way to wrap up the series, which has left than a full season to go. I like what it being described, and the course the show is taking. I like the subtlety of chess thrown in, as if everything is game possible to win, rather than everyone just being pawns. I'm more just so dissatisfied the ending being exactly what I predicted in the beginning of the series. Way to cliffhanger.

Seriously, though weirder, it is starting to get to Battlestar Galactica predictable. Doesn't mean I will not follow through to the end, just means predictable.

My Mortgage is Too High

So this was the ad I was subjected to when checking my email this morning. I question what the marketing genius who thought this would be a great ad was thinking. The best I can figure is that they are banking on the idea that I want to click the ad just to make the scary woman's face go away. This is what kind of model you get when they allow Sims characters to start using crack. Or the artists that create these kinds of heads. Not sure which.

Now the Fat Security Guards Can Avoid Exercise Even Easier!

So now even the "Asset Protection" security guards at Target fly around the parking lot using Segways. I'm not sure if this is a new policy for the comp-any, or just a special perk of living in hoity-toity Plano. Either way, it's utterly ridiculous.

Coding Should be Easy

damnit. have a new design all set up for this but can't get the coding right for the background to display correctly. need to go back and refresh my css knowledge. b/c i have time for this.

Another reason laws putting limits on the tubes is bad

Britain Copywrite law makes no sense

What kind of sense does it make for someone to be arrested for linking to things that have already been placed online? Why is it that the corporation is totally in the clear, but the guy who strcitly provided the linkage goes to jail? And hell, half the time the clips didn't even load on my computer. Not sure if it hated Macs or if it hated Safari, but eihter way, this is bullshit. Jeeis Cantrell and Black 20 evidently just made someone in charge of ridiculous charges aware there was a tite doing this. Hey! I'm linking to a news article! Arrest me!!!

Badly Convoluted Grammar

"The female likes imitating others and competing with them, they usually only put forward the principled request, and ask the designer to make the plan first, then carries on the revision, when they satisfaction then constructs, they also can emerge the new idea unceasingly in the construction, constructs while revises, has the possibility in the end also not not entirely as desired."

I want to know where the writer of this article learned English. And burn the place down. Gotta love the smoking cigar that has nothing to do with the article.

Morons vs Grammar Nazi

From an email today: "We are loosing business".

Seriously, this has to be one form of kryptonite for me. It makes me want to jab my pen into my temple and perform a self-lobotomy. Or manhandle a dictionary down the throat of every fool who misuses this word. Click the picture to see how I am not alone.

Also reminds me of the other old comic.