Retardidment: The Job Hunt

Here we go again with the bitter Rantings® of a man forced to stop doing the one job he loved and actually could do without serious consequences.  Yeah, that’s me, BrainRants®.  I’m tired of linking more than three times to previous posts, so I made a whole new RantsPage® to collect this assemblage of awesomehood.

A New Fucking Year

Hey… yeah… so check out the new, even-numbered, extra-day-having-in-fucking-February year!  I’d make up some cool onomatopoeia

Had It Up To Here

I’ve had it up to here.  In case you can’t see, I’m making a choppy motion a few inches above my bald head, which is about seventy-three inches above the floor right now while I’m wearing my combat shitkickers.  I found this photo on

Even More, More Shit That I Do Not Get

What in the sam hell is going on in this freaktastic world? Really… I cannot read the news without being barraged by smut-tastic or pimptastic or something resembling a scandalous portrayal of what we mere humans endure on a day-to-day basis here on Earth. Right? Why should I be scared to take in the

AutoTopic: What Does Wealth Mean To You?

This AutoTopic sat in the drafts for a while. Of course, the recent Mega Million lottery thing sparked some thought on the topic, and sort of enabled me to think about the subject beyond dreams of having

Making Sense Of Not Making Cents

I’ve been watching the ongoing trickles of news about doing something about the penny with mildly flaccid interest. In case you’re still bound up in Whitney (she’s still dead) or the latest nonevents from the ‘let’s pick the least-worst GOP zombie’ duh-rama, there’s renewed interest in figuring out what to do about

Ok, Let’s Fix Healthcare

I’m just going to assume that this will totally piss off the neighbors with the title alone. Screw you if you are thinking that right now, and you might as well

AA+

In spite of what the S&P downgrade has done – and will do – to my investments, as well as everyone else’s, I gotta admit that was a ballsy move.  Probably the best and most decisive action so far in forcing the government to fiscal responsibility.  Wow.  Somebody put those dudes on a Congressional panel.  Please.

I’m not the brightest light on the porch, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the ‘deal’ we got was no deal at all.  You can’t spend your way out of debt, and paying off a credit card can’t involve increasing the credit limit.

Right now I’m deliberately not thinking about my portfolio, instead just waiting to see what kind of sale prices I’ll be able to get on stocks.  As a buy-n-hold guy, this is like a Back To School Sale.  Everything’s marked down!

I also love the sputtering outrage now spewing from Congressional soup coolers.  They’re shocked – shocked I tell you!  And I’m laughing my ass off thinking of how one simple move demonstrated to these pompous buttclowns just how smugly misguided they were.  ‘Tea Party downgrade’ – nice scapegoating from John Kerry.  Note to Mr. Kerry: we didn’t vote for you once, flipflopper, and I don’t think we’ll do it again.  Sit down and shut up.  Also, did anyone else notice that Charlie Rangel is now apparently a voice of reason in this mess?  Seriously?  Note to Mr. Rangel: you nearly lost your seat because you’re corrupt.  Shut up.

One thing out there in the tripe our media produce is true: next year will be an interesting election.

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Update 8/9/11:  “It doesn’t matter what some credit rating agency says about our country”  … or words to that effect.  As the Dow promptly plummets another 600+ points.  Guess this is the ‘change’ you were talking about.  Who knew?

Great job, you FailTard, for being such an arrogant amateur.

Negotiation

Balanced approach my ass.  As so many online commenters have so truly noted, if we ran our household budget the way the government runs theirs, we’d probably be in jail.  If I had the ability to lie with a straight face that well I would have enjoyed a far more interesting life up to this point.  This crap continues because those engaged in it actually believe that a year from now we voters will have collectively forgotten this.  I am seriously considering becoming a 3rd party voter.

Apparently lost to the bloviating media is the comparison to the now-resolved NFL collective bargaining effort.  Good job, folks, at least I can sit down with a beer and watch a game this fall after checking to see how much value my investments keep losing.  Though I think unions are pretty much the equivalent of organized crime, at least they can keep their eye on the ball, so to speak.

Has Anyone Else Noticed…

If you’ve read my blog regularly so far, you know by now that I travel for the Army quite a lot.  More than Di prefers.  More than I prefer at this point – the charm has completely worn off the novelty of going somewhere I’ve never been before.  The saving grace is my buddy Fred, who never seems to tire of the fly-here, fly-there activity.  Of course, Fred doesn’t have to tote the luggage.  And he gets away with not wearing pants.

Anyway, it occurred to me today somewhere over western Kansas that air travel has changed.  Funny thing is, I think we’re all getting screwed.  First up in the Rant Parade here is the notion that you now have to pay for checking a bag.  Now, personally as an Army traveller I’m exempt from checked bag fees – win.  However, like everyone else suffering on the airplane, I feel the secondary effects.  Namely, everyone now crams all their stuff into the tiny littly rolly suitcases and claims them as a carry on. 

While I can’t blame folks for being cheap (that’d be pretty hypocritical of me), a lot of my fellow cheapies fail to correctly pick a suitcaselet that is actually carry-on size.  After the first twenty passengers board, the overheads are all completely taken.  Even worse, they’ve packed so much stuff into the mini-luggage that it’s density (and, as you physics gurus know, it’s weight) approaches that of Uranium.  Some more physics: the plane actually flies more normally if the luggage weight is consolidated in the belly, not in two long overhead bin stripes.

Most of this pain I avoid because my backpack fits under the seat in front of me.  What really chaps me raw is thinking of all the baggage fees airlines charge, claiming they can’t cover fuel costs and profit from a flight anymore.  Now, keep that thought in mind a moment while I transition to Rant Number Two.

Two years back, doing this same Roaming Gnome job, it was a rare occurrence that any given airplane would be completely full.  I often enjoyed “spreading out” into an empty seat next to me.  Since last August, I have been on 14 Army trips and have enjoyed ONE instance of an empty seat next to me.  Apparently the airlines are much better now at filling their seats. 

But wait!  The economy sucks!  Nobody can afford to travel!  How, then, are all the flights topped off with humans?  How come the airlines couldn’t work whatever magic fills every nook and cranny now back just a couple of years ago?  Now recall we’re being charged for that baggage, because “they can’t turn a profit” from the flights scheduled otherwise.  WTF?

Finally, I’d like to thank whatever evil gremlin in the booking system manages to put me next to the biggest, sweatiest, corn-fed hoss there is on my flight.  That is just wonderful.