National Debt / Video Game Silliness

Wow. As a nation, we're going to have a deficit of almost half-a-trillion dollars:

The deficit will hit $482 billion in the 2009 budget year that will be inherited by Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, the White House estimated Monday. That figure is sure to rise after adding the tens of billions of dollars in additional Iraq war funding it doesn't include, and the total could be higher yet if the economy fails to recover as the administration predicts.

The result: the biggest deficit ever in terms of dollars, though several were higher in the 1980s and early 1990s as a percentage of the overall economy.

Even more interesting is this:

The administration actually underestimates the deficit since it leaves out about $80 billion in war costs. In a break from tradition -- and in violation of new mandates from Congress -- the White House did not include its full estimate of war costs.

Basically, the amount is higher but they didn't want to draw attention to it. So they left part of it out. Can they actually do that? What a mess. I sincerely pity whoever takes over the Presidency.

In other news, an upcoming video game called Fat Princess is making some people angry. It's essentially a game of Capture-the-Flag.Here's the twist: the flag is a princess who you can attempt to stuff full of food to make her harder for the opposing team to carry off. Sounds funny, and ultimately harmless.

Not everyone seems to think it's all fun and games. Melissa McEwan, a writer for feminist gaming website Shakesville, is "positively thrilled to see such unyielding dedication to creating a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative assholes."

Seriously, I think feminists do their best to always find things to be pissed off about, much like religious kooks. Moving on ...

New York passed a bill recently to help enforce age ratings on video games. Not a big deal to me, since the parents of children everywhere have already dropped the ball (or refused to pick it up in the first place).That's parenting for ya'; it's always someone else's fault/responsibility.

Here's the rub, though. Among other things, this new bill is going to give New Yorkers "an advisory council to conduct a study on the connection between interactive media and real-life violence in minors exposed to such media."

Again? How many studies on kids and video game violence do we really need to waste money on? There have been more studies done on the subject than I've lost managers at this hotel (and I've gone through a lot of them). You know what they generally find? Not a god damn thing. When they don't like what they learn, they typically use words like "inconclusive". When they're willing to accept their own research's findings, they use words like "no evidence".

The director of the New York Civil Liberties Union had this to say on the subject:

"New Yorkers do not need the state judging which video games are appropriate and which aren't. Parents, not government committees, should be responsible for making those judgments. If the legislature wants to reduce youth violence, it should fund educational programs to teach students conflict resolution skills."

I couldn't agree more. These motherfuckers need to stop wasting money trying to prove the same tired theory over and over again. The evidence isn't there. The bastards can always try a different approach ... if they're really so concerned about kids, violence, and video games.

Hotels Are Stressful

What a morning.

I found out that yet another of our large coffee pots is broken ... that's the third time in about a month and a half. Now we have 1 coffe pot to split between the breakfast room, the lobby, and the meeting room (when it gets rented). As a fantasy/sci-fi-reading skeptic, I'm inclined to believe that magic will not make this work, no matter how bad we want it to. My boss was not interested in buying a new pot the last time this happened, but now he's not going to have a choice.

Extra goodies this morning include both of my shift replacements calling in sick this morning, leaving me without a way out of here at the end of the shift. Here's the funny part: our boss wrote us a nice nasty note on the whiteboard about how we have to answer the phone. He says that if he calls and doesn't get an answer, the person on shift is going to get written up. Irony of ironies, this morning I can't seem to get him to pick up his phone ... hmm.

At least it's not all bad; I'm now officially working for Duncan (Pegasus Books) and Linda (The Bookmark) four days out of the week. My patience has paid off! Unfortunately, I'll have to talk about this a bit more in my next post (perhaps later today).

George Deserved His Two-Minute Warning

I was at the hotel, opening the package of newspapers we get every morning, when I saw the article. From that point on, I barely remember the rest of my shift. Suffice to say, it was a bad day. I felt like I should say something, but every time I sat down to write, I couldn't find the words. I think I have them now.

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George Carlin passed away last month (June 22nd).

Some people would say that George's best known bit is the infamous "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television". That's a fair claim, I think. Most people will remember him fondly for that, and I count myself among them.

George was arrested back in 1972 for disturbing the peace when he performed the "Seven Dirty Words" at a show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The case was dismissed later that year; the judge declared that the language was indecent, but Carlin had the freedom to say it as long as he caused no disturbance.

Carlin was one of my heroes, a man much smarter than most of us are ever permitted to be. He raised important questions for me about language and our much-vaunted 1st Amendment Rights. He made me laugh, and he made me think. Those are the two finest qualities in a comedian, and George was able to pull both off in spades. Carlin was a comedian who used his "Seven Words" bit to point out the ridiculousness of banning words.

Thanks again, George. You'll be missed.

"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war."
– George Carlin, Class Clown, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"

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THE NATURE OF OFFENSIVE WORDS

Can a word be offensive? What exactly is a word? A series of sounds, a sequence of noises that we recognize and process in our wonderful lil' brains until we can determine the word's intent or meaning.

The issue here isn't the word itself, but rather, the intent of the speaker. Can a person find alternate ways saying the same things? Naturally, and that's the beauty of language. What's the difference between using a dirty word to express oneself and using a non-vulgar word or phrase? Couldn't they both be expressing the exact same sentiment? Think of that sorely missed television show Firefly. Did any of the characters use words like fuck or shit or goddamnit? Nope, because the FCC would be a little upset. So what did they do? Well, as you may recall, they substituted made-up curse-words for the offensive material. Battlestar Galactica has done the same thing. So what's the difference between a character saying "Fuck!" and the same character saying "Frak!"? Only the noises that come out of their mouths; their intent and meaning are identical. The funny thing about this is that the FCC doesn't seem to care about made-up words, even if their meaning is identical to more offensive words.

So, let me ask again: can a word be offensive? I would argue that words are not, in and of themselves, offensive. Do certain combinations of sounds become somehow more offensive regardless of the meaning behind them? Only if we think the right (or wrong, in this case) combination of noises has some sort of potent Magical Offensiveness that cannot be duplicated by a made-up word with an identical meaning.

The Triumphant Return

It's been quite a long time since my last blog post, so let me give you all a quick photo-assisted recap. This'll be a chance for me to go through my old pictures, which I've been meaning to do for months.

I. THE CAT(S)

Our little cat has grown up. We did name him, incidentally, after one of my favorite comic strip characters: Hobbes. I think it suits him, but naming him Stinkums would have been good too. If only Ariel hadn't shot that one down ...

We nabbed ourselves a second kitty about three months back, and though the first few weeks were a little rough, the two of them have bonded fairly well (i.e. they tolerate one another's presence). Moments like you're seeing in the picture to the left are a little bit more rare, but I always manage to capture them with my camera.

Getting a second cat nearly killed us financially ... we ended up taking making multiple trips to the vet in those first few weeks. The new kitty (hereafter called Cookie) had caught a nasty upper respiratory infection while she was at the Humane Society, and despite our best attempts to keep the two of them quarantined until she was over it, Hobbes came down with the same thing. Cookie ended up getting her medicine in a dropper until she was better, but the vet told us that Hobbes was a bit too big to respond to the same medication. We were given pills for our twelve-pound cat ... you'd think the bigger cats would get the easy-to-administer medicines, to save our poor arms some clawing.

To make a long story short, Cookie recovered first, then caught it again from Hobbes as he was starting to get better. She was sneezing so hard and so often that we were noticing blood, so we took her back to the vet again for more medicine. Hobbes ended up going back a few days later when his eyes started became swollen and leaky. One vet trip would have been fine, but four seperate visits were a bit more than we had planned for. We managed it, but only with a great deal of juggling on our part. Both cats are happy, healthy, and getting a little bit fat (more on that another day).

Hobbes has gotten used to sleeping on the bed with me during the day. It helps me sleep sometimes when I'm having a hard time. There's something about a cat purring that konks me right out. For someone who never had cats before, Ariel says I've taken to it like a pro.


II. THE HAIR

I got myself a haircut (finally!). No more long hair for me!

Ariel had told me, "Please don't chop off all your hair! I like you with long hair!" I said it was too long, and that I needed a change.

I talked her into going in with me, and I convinced her to get one as well. She hadn't been to a professional since she was very young, but she was pleased with how well her cut turned out. I think we look good!

III. KIM'S GRADUATION

You know what? I'm going to give this one a separate entry, since I think it's important enough to warrant my undivided attention.

Steak-Eating 101

You're in a nice restaurant. You've just ordered a steak that is, in the most literal sense possible, perfect. You pick up your knife and fork, and are just beginning to cut a nice piece when the guy at the table next to yours blows his nose really, really hard. Sploop! Now your nice juicy steak, the most perfect steak ever crafted in a kitchen, has a nice juicy fist-sized snot on it.

Now what? You go and deck the guy, right? More than likely, you expect some compensation from him, or at the very least, an apology. Maybe you threaten him with legal action. The point is, you understand who's at fault, and you act accordingly.

You certainly don't leap up from your chair, stomp into the kitchen, and scream at the chef. You don't blame the waiter, you don't threaten to sue the restaurant, and you don't demand to speak with the manager about the 'terrible service'.

The exact circumstances in the above situation can vary greatly, but the rules are generally the same: You don't blame people who aren't responsible.

The hotel industry is in Bizarro World. Your neighbor is making noise. You don't call them up and complain, or threaten them, or curse and scream at them, or demand that they pay for your room. Nope, you call the desk clerk and chew him out for a half-hour instead. Fuck going after the source of the problem.

Another example of Bizarr-ho-tel-ness? Haggling over the price. Strange that you can go into a grocery store, find out what the price of something is, decide whether you want to spend the money on it, and then leave without a fuss. Whereas, with hotels, you go in, find out the price of a room, and then haggle and grumble and complain and whine and fuss ("But it's two-thirty in the morning! I'm not even going to be here for more than four hours!") ... and then rent the room anyway.

Imagine if Safeway got that sort of treatment:

CUSTOMER: "This gallon of milk is three bucks. Three bucks! I won't even drink the whole thing before it goes bad! I don't want to spend three bucks on that milk anyway. Can you go any lower?"

CLERK: "Uhh ... no?"

CUSTOMER: "I'm walking out the door, then! You sure you can't give me a better deal on the milk? I can't see the sense in paying for it if I'm only going to use a little of it."

CLERK: "Sorry, the price is three dollars."

CUSTOMER: "..... Fine! Screw you anyway! Fred Meyer's down the street has milk for two fifty-nine! You've just lost out on three bucks, asshole!"

Happens all the time in the hotel business.

My Morning At The Hotel

My hotel sets out breakfast at seven o'clock, which means I usually don't start making coffee until six or so. We have two large industrial coffee makers in the back room, and it usually takes me about twenty minutes to fill up all five coffee pots (the big stainless steel ones). It's an easy task.

Except for this morning. This morning, I've had a -teensy- bit of an issue. Evidently, some of our co-workers managed to break not one but both coffee makers yesterday. The problem is that nobody said anything to me about it, or even so much as left me a note explaining things. I don't even know who did it.

So, this morning I've had to run across to one of our empty rooms and borrow the midget coffee maker to make our coffee this morning. After twenty minutes, I've nearly got one pot filled. One out of five. If someone, anyone, had bothered to inform me about our broken coffee makers, I could've started this process an hour earlier. As it stands now, I'll be lucky to have more than one or two pots finished by the time people start showing up for the breakfast.

I feel sometimes as though I'm the only person here who actually tries to communicate with the other shifts. It's a frustrating situation.

Here's a couple more pictures for you to oogle while I'm off work. I'll try to write something when I get back. Enjoy!