Corporate profit before all else.

Certainly there will come a time when the "corporate profit before all else" mentality has to come to an end. The questions are: When and how are we going to get there?

As a younger, more idealistic version of myself, I used to think that I had a strong dislike for "corporate America" but didn't completely know what that meant. Now that I'm a little bit older, I realize that I still don't know what it means.

I remember standing in a corporate bookstore flipping through a copy of Adbusters magazine, but (of course) not buying it. (Aside: How can you justify buying something with the whole profit model based off of convincing you not to buy something else? Wait, isn't that how a large portion of our consumer culture works? "You'll certainly be happier if you buy this brand of dishwashing liquid instead of that cheap ass one that's sure to leave your dishes dirty and make you the laughing stock of the whole neighborhood!!!") I'm sure I stood there for a few minutes in my [brand name] sneakers also flipping through a stack of magazines about mountain bikes, cars, running and whatever else I was interested in at the time thinking about "culture jamming" and the destruction that corporations were causing the world.

I remember eventually coming to the conclusion that it's hard to walk the line between feeling like a socially conscious, responsible person and a complete hypocrite... and the days I feel like I'm more on the former side, it's just complete and total ignorance.

The fact is that it's close to impossible to opt out of the "system" and still survive. Even if you pick an area of focus and do something that you think is a better, more responsible choice like buying "organic" foods at the supermarket from smaller companies, chances are good those brands are now owned by giant corporate conglomerates that have snatched them up for the brand name and the increased profit that comes with them.

In this example, larger companies snatch up smaller companies with good ideas / market share / turf that they desire and then slowly kill them off internally, fold them into their massive corporate structure and then "downsize" or just grab the brand and/or patents and sit on them. There are hundreds of things that are done purely in the name of profit that are much more questionable or unethical than buying up your competition, but I don't want to turn this into a massive list / rant.

Now usually when people become outraged by something they clamor for "increased regulations" but that usually just makes things worse. Tying shit up in bureaucracy for years and trusting someone that somewhere up to half of the population didn't vote for based on the side they label themselves as or even just how familiar their name is. Then these "representatives" hopefully ignore their convictions, biases and contributors and do the right thing for the country and the majority of the people. Yeah. That sounds like *exactly* what happens. (/sarcasm.)

There have been some headlines in the past few years about "corporate personhood" here in the United States (in light of a recent Supreme Court decision regarding Hobby Lobby, contraception coverage by insurance and religious convictions) and how it's probably time that it's ended. Many of the comments about these type of articles tend to lead to the conclusion that if a corporation was actually a person it would be a heavy-handed, greedy, money-driven psychopath with no empathy, sympathy or conscience.

That's the whole game, though. If (corporate) profit drives all available choices, and every one of those choices is a bad choice for someone or something else, why not just pick the best choice for you and get on with your day? Why care at all?

Acknowledging this isn't me giving up. This is me realizing that just saying you don't like something isn't going to change it. It's time to break free of conspicuous consumption and unchecked corporate profit and power.

We need to find better ways of defining what it is that makes us happy and better ways to get there if we want to have any sort of a future.

• We need to figure out how to destroy the notion of corporate personhood.
• We need to take away incentives to destroy everything (the environment, people's rights and freedoms, etc.) in the ruthless pursuit of profit.
• We need to tweak the legal system to end frivolous lawsuits.
• We need to stop funding government organizations that don't have the best interests of the people they serve as their only reasons for existence.

Most of all, though, it starts with making better choices as individuals. Some things that will help:

• Stop coveting other people's stuff.
• Pick some concerns that you're passionate about to focus on (environment, local business, etc.) and try to work them into all purchasing decisions.
• Take a few extra minutes to consider whether you really need something when making purchasing decisions.
• Try to buy secondhand goods, when possible.
• Donate or sell things that you've accumulated that someone might make better use of.
• Look for more durable, locally made products as an alternative to the mass-produced junk at the local big-box store.
• Services aren't exempt, either. Find a local Credit Union to do your banking. Skip chain restaurants, haircuts, stores...

The more we can shift power (money) back into our local economies and businesses, the more quickly change will come.

The lazy days of summer...

Note: This post is going to be a quick recap of my summer. Repeat, this is just a gratuitous catch up post. There is nothing really deep here. I hope to revive my interest in this blog and trying to come up with more thoughtful ideas for it in the not too distant future, but until then, this will have to do. ;)

It always seems that even though I love the summer, I end up being pretty lazy for the majority of it. I end up sitting in the air conditioned splendor of my apartment and not wanting to do much of anything once I get home from work.

Even though it seems like most of my summer was spent sitting on my comfortable couch, with my girlfriend and our laptops, TV shows and books -- we did manage to do some fun stuff.

We went to the Seattle area for a week in the beginning of July to visit my girlfriend's brother, his wife and their son. We had a blast which involved a decent amount of fireworks, drinking, shopping, eating and attempting to stay cool. For a place that has the reputation of being drenched in an almost constant rain, it barely sprinkled only the last morning we were there. It was hot, humid and sunny the entire rest of the week. I learned that if a toddler says "I have idea." to make sure to hold onto the fireplace lighter that you've been using to light fireworks because it will be snatched out of your back pocket. Also, if said toddler comes down from upstairs with his hands behind his back, that there's probably something that he shouldn't have in those hands.

I also turned 30 at the end of July! It was nice and low-key, just like I wanted. My girlfriend cooked me a nice dinner on my actual birthday, her mother took me out to dinner at Brown's on the day after and my family had a BBQ on the day after that. So it was three nice days of birthday celebration, but nothing too crazy.

I purchased an Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook as an early birthday present for myself and to bring on our trip to WA. It was nice to be able to check mail, pay bills, look for things to do, check plane schedules at the airport, and more all in a tiny, portable little package. I think it was well worth the money I spent on it, even though the battery life (with the 3-cell battery) isn't great and I tend to use my Dell Vostro as my main computer when I'm in the apartment. The display seems bigger and usable than the 8.9" size suggests and it's been trouble free, so far!

I also read some decent books. I picked up a couple books by Christopher Buckley, No Way to Treat a First Lady and Little Green Men: A Novel after reading Boomsday last year. I recommend all three. They were all well written, funny and sarcastic. I also read Steve Wozniak's book iWoz, along with How Walmart Is Destroying America (And the World): And What You Can Do about It by Bill Quinn and Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom. I'm not sure if I'd recommend any of them to people unless they're interested in Apple and/or personal computer history, retailing or marketing and advertising, respectively... ;)

Last weekend we went to The Clark to see the Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence exhibit. There were a lot of interesting oil paintings, watercolors, pastels and collages there (between Dove and O'Keeffe) with one of the most humorous pairings being Arthur Dove's watercolor Happy Clam Shell next to Georgia O'Keeffe's pastel Slightly Open Clam Shell. The pictures linked above are from this review of the show by Judith H. Dobrzynski on the Arts Journal website. There is also another review for Wall Street Journal by the same author that was interesting.

I also spent some time last weekend doing maintenance on my car that I've been neglecting for a little while. I washed and waxed it and my brother and I put on Akebono ProACT ceramic brake pads, Centric rotors, McGard SplineDrive lug nuts, NGK Iridium spark plugs and NGK plug wires. Next it's getting new Bridgestone Potenza G019 Grid tires as soon as they are shipped to Firestone. (The size I need is on backorder.) The brakes are feeling good so far, the lug nuts are much higher quality than the ones they replaced and I seem to be getting a few more MPG with the fresh spark plugs and the reset computer. (Side notes: I didn't like the BF Goodrich Super Sport A/S tires that I put on last spring/early summer. They wore out extremely quickly and weren't worth the money that I paid for them. I also didn't have good luck with Gorilla spline drive style lug nuts. They only lasted one winter before the chrome was peeling off.)

I also decided to finally kill my MySpace account. I found that I hardly ever logged on and I decided not to keep it around for no reason...

There was some other fun stuff sprinkled in there but those were the big highlights... all in all it was a good summer.

On capitalism and conspicuous consumption

I've said before that I dislike capitalism but I've never really clarified or elaborated on that general statement here. However, I've been thinking more about it lately (thanks mostly to my boss) and I've edited my "shit list" on the main page of my website today to say "conspicuous consumption." instead of "capitalism. (why do we make so many shiny, awesome things?)"

I think this better reflects my views on capitalism than to just say that I don't like it and the many awesome products that it produces. I think that, as far as economic systems go, capitalism tends to be one of the better ones in practice, compared to other major economic systems that have been attempted. Human nature tends to completely kill any notion of the various socialist or communist economic systems. People aspire to improve their status in life as well as to strive to appear better than or, at the very least, to differentiate themselves from everyone else. This is where the whole notion of "keeping up with the Joneses" (which is also known as conspicuous consumption) comes in. (There are other proposed/theorized systems out there such as Natural Capitalism but they also seem to be compromised by human nature, as well.)

Pure Laissez-faire capitalism is an amazing system where the people who purchase products and services determine what is available (and at what price) by either purchasing or not purchasing that product or service until it becomes attractive or advantageous to do so. Competition between different providers helps to bring prices down and quality up among everyone offering a particular good or service. In this system the government (or regulators of any sort) should only step in to protect consumers from harm. (This system, however, is also not without it's own major drawbacks or problems... but that's a subject for another time.)

Our present system, however, seems to be a bastardization of that system where huge mega-corporations (economies of scale), government regulations/subsidies/taxes, price-fixing, monopolization/mergers/buyouts and intense advertising and marketing all are thrown in with a million other factors and shuffled up leading to a system that is unbelievably complicated but still called "capitalism".

Take that mess and factor human nature and the notion of conspicuous consumption into the whole mix we end up with a slew of products that people are led to believe will make others think that they're of a higher status than everyone else which leads to much more expensive (and exclusive) products (of no better quality) so that there can be something better still.

It's a vicious cycle that no one wins aside from the giant companies who sell us the crappy products (with the trendy brand name of the day) that are made in countries where workers aren't paid a fair wage with materials that are probably barely, if at all, different from the crap that you can buy at Wal-Mart. The only difference is that the one with the brand name commands a huge premium over the generic because we have been convinced to pay more for it just because of that brand name.

That is (part of) the side of "capitalism" that I dislike. I know that I (somewhat hypocritically) play into the whole system even just by purchasing anything that goes above and beyond just meeting my basic needs of food, water and shelter. Maybe I am a hypocrite because there are people out there that aspire to buy the products that I have, or things that are better.

I don't expect (or want) us to shift to communism. I don't want to have exactly what everyone else has, no more or no less, based on my needs. I want to be able to purchase the best quality product that I can afford and have many choices when I am shopping for something. However, I don't want to be bombarded with advertisements constantly. I don't want people to look down on each other because they don't drive a BMW/Bentley/Ferrari/Porsche or live in the biggest house in the best zip code. I don't want us to continue to pillage the environment in the relentless pursuit of bigger and better products and higher and higher profits.

I'm not sure how we can change the economy, government and human nature to achieve this... or if it's even possible... but that's how I feel about "capitalism". It's better than many of the options out there but it's not without it's own set of problems. Human nature tends to make these flaws worse as we exploit the flaws in an effort to make more money and be better than the next guy...

Staycation?

Does anyone else hate the non-word "staycation" with a fiery passion? Every time I see it written or hear someone say it I cringe.

Why can't people just say "We're not going on vacation to [insert some some far-away, probably tropical destination] this year. We're going to just go on a few short local trips to save [some money or the environment or whatever the case may be]."

Instead marketers, advertisers and other hype-masters have noticed the trend of people saying that they're not traveling as much because airfare and other vacation costs are increasing (on top of their day to day costs increasing) and are trying to make it seem hip and/or eco-friendly to not go on vacation by giving it a stupid name. Now that they've got your attention they can push long forgotten local destinations (that have lost favor to bigger, badder, more distant places) and new barbeque grills, slip-n-slides and inflatable pools on you for your awesome backyard "staycation" and you won't feel so bad about not going anywhere.

It's not a bad idea to stick close to home and do a few short trips or just have a barbecue by your inflatable pool instead of going on a long, far-away vacation if you can't afford it (or for whatever reason you have) but please stop calling it a "staycation".

Now that I got that little rant out of the way: I don't think my girlfriend and I are going on an actual vacation this year. We've already been talking about possibly doing an overnight or two somewhere on our week off. I'm trying to save money to pay off debt and to possibly buy a house while property values are heading down to more reasonable levels. I don't think it was the cost of gas (or anything like that) that made the decision for us. For me, at least, I think it was more a decision as to whether it was worth it to spend $1,000+ for a few days away from home or to use it for something more long term... and I think I'm at the stage of the game where I need to focus on the long term a little more.

The high price of cookies. Only you can end it.

I just came across the blog called Conditional recoil of a guy who I used to work with on a pretty much daily basis in my last job (through a link on facebook) and I think it's a great read. He doesn't have that many posts up there yet but the ones he does are the type of posts that make you think.

In particular, though, there was a post from last November titled "Where does it end?" that I felt I needed to respond to. If you know me, you'll know why. ;)

I agree with what he is trying to say which is basically that corporate America is hosing the consumers that buy it's products because in many cases they are. However in (slight) defense of the particular industry he picked as an example (and in turn, all other industries). There are many direct costs that people neglect to take into account when figuring out what things really cost. In this exact example:

* He didn't account for labor to bake, package, label and put out said package of cookies. (Plus don't forget the ever increasing cost of benefits for the workers.)

* Then there's the cost of the actual package. (Which due to energy and material costs, which you guessed it, are increasing.)

* Don't forget the energy to run the ovens and keep the lights, heat and a/c on. (Which also increases in cost from year to year. Are you seeing a trend?)

* Transportation costs to get the case of cookies from the warehouse(s) to the stores. (Fuel costs aren't going down, you know.)

* On top of all of that how much is your time worth? How much would you pay to not have to bake the cookies you'd like to eat? Your time and convenience are also worth money...

I'm not going to detail what it costs for the above things. Instead, I'm going to simplify the equation.

Companies ARE in the business of making money and that's exactly what successful companies do. The more money they make for their owners or investors the more successful they are and the longer they stay in business.

So the answer to the question "Where does it end?" is that it all comes back to the consumer. Things tend to cost what people are willing and able to pay. If there are people out there that are willing to pay $3.99 for a package of ready to eat cookies, that's exactly what they're going to cost.

[So now that we simplified everything down to the statement that things cost what people are willing and able to pay, I'm going to re-complicate it if you're willing to continue reading.]

All of the other cookie providers that are competing for your cookie purchase also know what people will pay. How the different businesses differentiate themselves is how they gain your business over the other competitors.

* They can charge slightly less on cookies and hope that you'll buy something else that they make more profit on while you're there. (How much profit is in a cup of coffee?)

* They can have a better location that makes it easier for them to get their cookies in front of you.

* They can advertise.

* They can play up the quality of their cookie and/or how they're freshly baked (and directly or indirectly that they're better than the other guy's cookies).

It goes on and on... but the end result is the same. You want the cookies, you don't want to bake them yourself and the companies that are selling cookies want as much of your money that you're willing to let them have.

The ONLY way to make the price of cookies come down is really just to stop buying them. If nobody is buying cookies the price will either go down to a price that the customer is willing to pay (at which point the customer will resume cookie buying) or the cookies will not be available any more if they cost more to produce than the customer is willing to pay. You'll have to buy the ingredients separately and make them yourself.

The things like the cost of the raw cookie dough or ingredients, packaging, energy, transportation, labor, benefits, etc. do factor back into the equation if you can lower the tangible costs of producing and supplying the cookies in order to get them back to a level where a lower price for finished cookies still leads to an acceptable profit for the company selling them. However, if we attempt to go down this path we'll see that there are many more deep "root causes" for why the cost of everything keeps increasing which makes lowering costs difficult.

* America's "energy policies" (if you can call them that) are a little bit frightening. I'm constantly reading stories about people fighting against wind turbines ("I don't want that eyesore in my backyard." and "What will happen to the birds that fly into them?") and stifling other promising energy production methods for other ridiculous reasons. On top of that there are the people who think we should take over the Middle East by force because we're entitled to drive gas-guzzling SUV's powered by imported oil. We need to find ways to lower the cost of energy and don't involve direct conflict (which costs a lot of money).

* The cost of health care and insurance really needs to be addressed. (That's enough about this one.)

* Property costs were rising at rates we're now beginning to see weren't sustainable. (Which leads to increases in cost for rents, leases and purchases of property which also leads everything to cost more.)

There are tons of issues... I really could go all day on this topic but I keep coming back to the fact that if you really don't like the price of something the only thing you can really do is stop buying it. That'll send a undeniable message that you're not willing to pay what the seller is charging. If others do the same then things start to change...

(Broken links removed March 24, 2010.)

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less

I haven't posted much up here lately. I've been very busy at work and when I'm home I've been keeping myself pretty busy doing things around the apartment. When I haven't been painting, cleaning or buying things for the apartment I've been reading a lot of books instead of spending as much time as usual on the internet.

One of the books I read last week is: The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz.

It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

The central idea of the book is that there are too many choices available for practically everything in our lives. In contradiction to what you might expect, this freedom of choice doesn't seem to be making us happier overall. Instead, we seem to feel overwhelmed that everything is a choice where there are a large amount of options that have to be considered. When all is said and done and the decision is made we tend to feel like there's still something better out there. (A lot of this also ties in to my views on how advertising promotes this feeling of never being satisfied with things that merely meet your needs because there is always something cooler, better or newer available.)

I found the book to be well written and somewhat funny at times and I blew through reading it very quickly.

For anyone who is interested, I came across a preview of the book. (Note: It is deliberately missing pages for copyright reasons but it should give you a little bit of a feel for the book.)

I also JUST came across a video of a Google TechTalk presentation by Barry Schwartz that I haven't had a chance to watch yet... but I thought I'd link it up here anyway.

Let's pass a resolution...

I was reading the headlines that I have set up in my gmail (as I have a tendency do) and I came across this story about how everyone is still all pissy about that MoveOn.org full page ad asking "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?".

I also have a tendency to pick out one little part of a story to get really pissed off about. That little part in this article is where they mention that the Democrats "passed a resolution 72 to 25 expressing its own outrage" on the ad. It seems like a resolution to express their outrage about the MoveOn ad is the only thing that they could pass, though, because they failed in passing "a bill lengthening the home leaves of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq" which seems to me to be a much more worthwhile pursuit.

Why are they busy saying: "Hey guys, lets have a vote to say: You suck, MoveOn!" when they should be working harder on the fight to pass measures that help to end this pointless war?

Now I'm waiting for the next MoveOn ad... Hopefully the next one will be targeted at the worthless sacks of hypocritical shit in the House and Senate.

I think this might be strike 3, MySpace...

I just saw this headline: "MySpace Will Use Member Info to Tailor Ads".

I understand they need to make money to survive. I understand that in order to make money they need to sell ad space... but to tell the truth I think I was just waiting for a third strike to be pissed off about MySpace for so that I would feel less bad about deleting my profile there. This latest "revelation" isn't even that big of a deal (most businesses use their customer's data to put products in front of people who are more likely to buy them) but I don't really have an excuse to keep my profile up on MySpace but for some reason I feel compelled to keep it there.

I've already gone over the fact that I hate the horrible layouts that many people have, I seriously dislike the attempt to block spam using "msplinks" and I'm not a huge fan of their "beta tracking software" for parents.

On top of those things, I don't use MySpace ever. I can't get to it from work so I only pop on at home for a minute here and there at home to delete the friend requests I get from bands I don't like and random non-existent girls with the same exact profiles but with different names and pictures. I couldn't be less interested in collecting slutty, fake girlbot trophy pictures as "friends".

The last time I actually used MySpace for anything it was to send a message to my brother. I didn't need to use MySpace, though, I could have also emailed him, called him or stopped over to his place to tell him. I have already taken down my one link in my profile (to my blog) in protest over "msplinks". So I guess there's really nothing left there aside from a list of things I like and a collection of friends that I know and/or have known in real life...

Is there any reason I should stay on myspace?

P.S. Google, you kind of suck, too... but I like Google search, Gmail and Blogger... so you'll escape my wrath this time. ;)

Everything tastes better...

...when it's from McDonald's ®. A study of 63 "low-income" preschool children by Dr. Tom Robinson, a researcher from Stanford University, suggests that advertising and marketing efforts of McDonald's ® have had the effect of making kids think and perceive that identical food actually tastes better when it's labeled with the McDonald's ® logo than when it's in a plain wrapper.

This doesn't surprise me at all. I think it's funny, though, because the author of the article linked above mentions that this is probably going to "stir more debate over the movement to restrict ads to kids." It probably will, but I'm of the opinion that there are so many more important things to worry about than whether kids think a McDonald's ® french fry tastes better than a generic one.

To me, the whole idea of banning or restricting advertising is ridiculous. The whole point of our capitalist culture is getting people to buy things. It seems like McDonald's ® is doing it's job well.

We really need to work on eliminating companies that profit from war... That's a more noble goal than trying to protect our kids from McDonald's ®. If you don't like that kids think McDonald's ® tastes good then don't let them eat there. It's not like they can go out and buy their crackburgers on their own. Problem solved.

[05/20/2026: Removed dead CNN link.]

The day before vacation.

The only thing worse than the last day of work before vacation begins is the first day of work after the vacation.

Today is the day before... and I'm already not looking forward to the day after because today is dragging along so badly. I have PLENTY of work to do but my brain is already partially on vacation. I'm trying to get the time-sensitive things done first such as setting up products for a store which is going to carry a new (to them) line of products the week after I return from vacation. A little under 5 hours left until I'm out of here!

Website updates: I've been messing around with scenebot.com for the past couple days. I've been trying to think of interesting (non-scam) ways that I can get my currently unused domains to make money for me instead of sitting there lifeless.

I thought about actually putting up local show (concert) listings (like I had initially planned) and selling advertising. I created a SIMPLE MySQL database and wrote some PHP to search it by date... but I decided that I don't really want to start a business out of it (mostly since I barely have time or money to even go to shows anymore) and I'm kind of thinking that isn't going to be easy for me to do all by myself. There's a lot of data to collect, update, search and display. Most of that data is already available other places... but I still think it would be cool to integrate them all into one website that has information on all of the good local venues in one spot... but in short, it's going to be a lot of work for not too much return. So, I think that project is dead yet again.

Now I'm trying to think of ways to work some of the PHP and the MySQL database that I've been messing around with into something for suburbicide.com. It has been fun/interesting to start to teach myself PHP. I miss being geeky and writing code and PHP seems like a pretty good way for me to ease back into coding again. It seems pretty easy to pick up and it seems to integrate well with HTML and MySQL and it works with my current hosting... I keep thinking I should teach myself something more cutting edge, though... especially if I eventually want to get back into web development. ;)

Strike two, myspace...

It seems that myspace is beginning a beta test of tracking software intended for parents to track what their kids are doing on myspace.

I'm going to lay out a few very rough ideas on why this isn't a very good idea which won't solve all that much. It's ridiculous to me that people would hand over permission for a huge corporation like News Corp. to have anything to do with tracking what they and even more worrisome, their kids, do online.

1) How many kids use their friend's computers? I know that when I was a kid most of the bad things I did were not at home where I knew my parents could catch me. Probably about 99% of the things I did that I shouldn't have done (including playing with firecrackers, lighting stuff on fire, smoking for the first time) were done while I was at friend's houses. What's stopping kids from just getting on myspace at their friend's house? Parents are better off telling their kids why they shouldn't do things than to just not say anything and then try to catch them doing something wrong. I can pretty much guarantee that they're doing a whole lot more than you can possibly even hope to catch. (Especially when it's computer-related. Many kids can outsmart their parents when it comes to anything on a computer.)

2) How do we know this program is not secretly tracking everything we do on our computers and reporting back to myspace's parent corporation News Corp.?

It has been reported that News Corp. was mainly interested in myspace to get information from its users in order to get better targeted ads in front of the primarily young audience that uses myspace but fast forwards commercials on their DVRs. See this quote from the article linked above:

"And most importantly, Myspace has detailed logs of its users' preferences, online behaviour and personal information.

That could help the company tailor what it does to the ever-more-discerning market which Mr Murdoch believes he has identified."

Now think about adding additional tracking information on top of all of the information that was already willingly given to them by myspace's users... scary!

3) When did we outsource the responsibilities of parenting? When did it become News Corp/myspace's responsibility to keep tabs on what your kids are doing online? What happened to sitting in the same room with your child on the computer and occasionally walking past? What happened to limiting time on the computer? What happened to telling your kids not to talk to strangers?

It's NOT ANYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY BUT THE PARENTS OF THE CHILDREN to keep track of what they're doing. People say "myspace is just giving them a tool to help" but when was the last time you gave that kind of power to someone who is trying to make money off of you?

*****************************************

I'm sure I could go on and on with reasons that this isn't the best idea I've ever heard... but I'm sure that people will still download it in an attempt to divert more blame and responsibility of parenting off onto entities that they can sue when something goes wrong...

Myspace... this is strike 2. I know you won't miss me as a user but I can only hope that I'm not the only one who doesn't agree with the direction you've taken.

Little excitement left in "green" movement?

A news story about the "green movement" popped up today on ABC's website today.

The basic premise of this article seems to be that the reporter feels that excitement of the "green" movement is basically over before it even began. The article seems to feel that many companies are jumping on the "green" bandwagon more as a tool to drive sales with little plan for the future or no desire to actually do any good.

There are a lot of points that were brought up that do make sense.

From my point of view, it is kind of crazy that people buy things based on a label such as "all natural", "organic" or "hybrid" without understanding the benefits, impacts or costs of what they're doing. It's more of a fad than doing something for a benefit. People are willing to pay extra for something that's labeled "all natural" or "hybrid" because that's the in thing right now. Actors and other pop culture "idols" spout off their ideals and people hang on their words and rush out to go "green".

I think we need to find a way to help people understand the impact of the things they're doing. Sometimes it's not better to buy a brand new hybrid to replace your well maintained '92 Honda Civic hatchback that gets 38MPG. It's not better to throw out all of your clothes and replace them with organic cotton and hemp clothes. Why do we have to spend extra money at the supermarket to buy organic tomatoes grown thousands of miles away when there's probably a farmer's stand or market close to where you live?

Things like this annoy the hell out of me but on the other hand, when was the last time I stopped at a farm stand for fruit and vegetables? Hmmmm...

I applied for another job today.

Well, I applied for another job with my current employer today. This one is called "Merchandising Information Coordinator" and basically it's the contact between the Merchandising side of the business I'm on now and the Advertising Department.

From the job description, it sounds like a decent job and something I'd probably be good at. I'm sure I can negotiate a small raise over what I'm currently making, too, but that's not as important as getting out of my current job before I go crazy.

I don't hate my actual job (it's nothing special or difficult) but it's not really challenging or engaging and I am completely tired of the department being in constant transition. I have the second most seniority of the office staff and I've only been here for two years and a few months. We have a new guy coming in the next week or two and I'm kind of afraid to see what's going to happen with that. Anyway, I don't see myself going anywhere if I stay in this department... so I'm not going to if I don't have to.

I think I've stuck around here this long because I like the company I work for overall and they have a great in-house IT department with a lot of great people but I'm starting to feel like the longer I wait for a job to come around over there in the IT world the less likely I am to actually get it. I just keep getting farther away from when I graduated from college in 2001. I don't have any IT job experience aside from my previous temporary job on a special project (where I did data entry, bug-checking and acted as a liaison between the IT and Merchandising departments) and a temporary part time job I had upgrading the POS network in a few of our stores.

I did started the State application process last week. I'm probably going to actually finish up doing that and taking the tests this weekend if I get a chance. As much as I like the company I work for, maybe I need a change of scenery.

Super Bowl commercials

So... who else thought that the Super Bowl commercials were LAME this year? I thought that there were only a couple that were a bit funny like Budwiser's - Rock Paper Scissors or somewhat original such as Coke's - Grand Theft Auto homage. It seemed like the rest were either commercials I've either seen before or commercials for TV shows that I would never watch. It seemed like some of the commercials were repeated quite a few times, too... which I thought was odd.

Also, while I'm on the topic of Super Bowl: What the fuck is it with the half-time shows? Who gets to pick who is on the half-time show? Prince? Are you kidding? No, really, that had to be a joke. What a HORRIBLE guitar, too...