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Ikea used to be my nemesis. They hate me. If I call them to see if something is in stock, they tell me it is when it isn’t so that they can get me on camera walking in happy and leaving sad. If Ikea were a guy standing across the street from me, I would stare at him angrily until such time as he walked away.

But now, NOW(!) Best Buy is my nemesis. They have quite possibly the absolute worst customer service by phone. It doesn’t matter which store you call, chances are you’re gonna be disappointed you did. Either you’ll get hung up on, never connected, get shoddy service from an actual human, or when you push buttons to go through the menu, the system will just ignore you. If you’re smart, you’ll call and just hang up right away. You get the same result, but you’ll save yourself the frustration of actually trying to accomplish something with the call.

If I ever get a chance to fight Best Buy, I’m going to poke it in the eye.

I live for arguments over illegal immigration. That, and reruns of Strawberry Shortcake. I’ve already stated elsewhere that illegal immigration is not a simple issue, but it’s worth mentioning again that the debate has been hijacked by nutjobs on both sides of the political spectrum.

In any event, I try and keep an open mind. My basic philosophy is that some immigration is good, too much is bad, and that most people migrate because they want to improve the lives of themselves and those they love. That’s admirable. But, at the same time, you can’t overwhelm the people who are already in the place with massive amounts of poor people. That’s bad for everyone.

Anyways, one of the stronger points against illegal immigration that I hadn’t heard much about until recently is the identity theft part. If employers are verifying that Juan Q. Public has a valid social security number, that means that he’s stolen it from a legal citizen. Nevermind that he’s a good guy everywhere else: he’s just screwed you and your credit history if you’re the victim.

Anyways, I mention this because it seems to get a lot more press now. Go ahead and support all immigrants if you wish, but you at least need to be fair to those who are being hurt as a part of the bigger phenomenon.

This is quite possibly the best thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life.

I’m not sure why, but I constantly think about death. Probably because I eat like utter and total crap, and until recently, hadn’t really exercised since about the 10th grade. I think it’s also because, as I near my 29th birthday, I’m starting to realize that a lot of what I do today is going to have a big impact on my quality of life when I’m older.

Death itself doesn’t really freighten me. One thing that atheism has given me is a calm about what death is: simply put, a release from consciousness. There is nothing to fear, because once you’re dead, you don’t know it. Throw my body into a ditch, feed it to homeless people, or blow it up over a group of people you don’t like on the fourth of July. I’m done with it, so do your worst.

What bugs me about death is that it leaves behind the living. The reason I need to stay alive is for those around me who benefit from and enjoy my existence (as crazy as that is). I look at my parents, who are both awesome people, and I really, really hate the idea of them passing on some day.

So why am I writing this? Because death is avoidable and it pisses me off that we’re not doing more to prevent it. It is within the reach of modern science to prolong human life substantially, and with the proper funding, it might be possible to extend it well past 100 years for the average American. And I’m not talking about Depends-brand 100-years-old either. I’m talking about being younger longer. Or more importantly, I’m talking about hot chicks staying younger longer. After all, Abraham Lincoln would want it that way.

Looking down the road it’s only a matter of time and money until they figure out how to postpone death nearly inevitably. It’s all a matter of chemistry and abuse, and both should be manageable. Granted, you’ll still be able to get run over by a retarded cab driver, but at least your hotter 50-year-old face will look better in the obituaries.

Regardless of how you feel about the American war in Iraq, about Islamic terrorists, about killer cows, or whatever, wouldn’t it be nice if all those hundreds of billions of dollars were going to keep the people you love around longer rather than trying to blow up more of everyone sooner?

If you hate your parents, you can probably skip this article. But, if there are people around you that you’d like to stay around longer, we owe it to ourselves to push harder for medical research on things like stem cells, nutrition, and disease prevention.

We might not want to live forever, but it would be nice to have an option. So, why don’t we stop killing each other and stop producing wasteful commercial items like deodorant and start devoting more time and money to keeping me alive longer?

There’s a pretty interesting article in a recent issue of Esquire by a guy named Chuck Klosterman. It’s called You Say You Want a Revolution.

The basic premise is that revolution is impossible in the US. That’s not to say that the President and other leaders couldn’t be killed or jailed, or that our houses of power couldn’t be stormed and taken hold of. Rather, even if those things happened, no one would know what to do about it.

So often in revolutions, someone gets shot at, and eventually someone takes control of the government until someone shoots at someone else. Klosterman notes, quite humorously, that there’s no real equivalent here: who, after all, are you going to shoot at? The police? They’re probably your neighbor. The military? Unless you live near a base, you never see military personnel, and even then, why would you shoot at the nice kids with the shaved heads?

No, more than likely, people will continue to update their blogs and talk angrily about how much politicians suck. (Kind of like what I do.)

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, actually. Since my younger, more idealistic days I’ve been pondering how a watershed change in government could happen, and I haven’t really figured it out despite literally minutes of trying. Unless some crazed madman storms the white house and threatens the country with nuclear destruction, I don’t think anyone would listen to him. The Secret Service would storm the building and kill him. Or, Congress could pass emergency legislation to handle the situation. Or, should the feds get entirely wiped out, we still have strong and well organized state governments. In short, wholesale revolution in these here United States really is impossible, no matter what your slightly disheveled anarchist friend says.

And that’s too bad. Even if we overthrew the government in favor of one that’s more or less like the current one, at least future governments might think twice about screwing with their citizenry.

(By the way: Raise the Fist, the site in the above link, is worth reading even if you don’t agree with most of what they say. You’ll learn a lot if nothing else.)

All the above notwithstanding, the closest and most effective thing we could get to revolution might be having a state or states secede from the Union. At least then those who secede could form a new government of their own making.

I’m not necessarily advocating revolution, but it would be a nice thing to have more responsibility charged to our elected leaders.

Or, perhaps we could pass legislation that lets us bump off one federal leader per year after a national election. The a-hole who writes the most pork-laden spending package or who kills the most [insert your favorite downtrodden group here] could be lined up on national television and put down in the interests of the Union. That would certainly be a lot easier than a messy secession, don’t you think?

Well, maybe it’s not awesome, but I do think it’s something we should start talking about in these here U Ses of A. How many people should be allowed to exist in one geographical area before we feel that we’ve overtaxed the resources available to us? At some point, we’re going to run out of oil, and then we’re all screwed. Is it really that terrible to suggest that there might be an ideal family size for our society, and having more children beyond that number is “detrimental” to the well-being of society? The more people that exist in a limited area, generally speaking, the higher the poverty rate. The higher the population and poverty rate, the more dangerous life is for everyone (crime goes up, disease goes up, traffic fatalities go up, etc.). If oil crashes, won’t this be magnified?

Last time I checked, our brilliant leaders in Washington weren’t providing much leadership in the way way of alternative fuels and nutritional improvement for society. According to its mayor, New York is going to be an utter crap hole in a few years, and other parts of the country already are or are getting there (have you ever been to Los Angeles or New Orleans?). Look at India, China, and many of the Middle Eastern countries. They have huge populations, the majority of which are probably under 30. That’s going to be a major problem in a few decades. Literally huge: unemployment, fires, revolution, anal rape, permanent rush hour, and so on.

If we were to implement population control, it might stall an increasingly decreasing quality of life in the US. And then hopefully, science will catch up with the socio-economic situation and we’ll all be better off, Jetsons-style: flying cars, houses in the sky, 7-course nutrition pills, and sexy robots in maid uniforms.

I know, I know: people will freak out if we ever tried to do something like this. But really, why does someone need to have 11 kids? It makes no sense in today’s day and age. Three of your kids are not going to die from skurvy, indians, or indian pirates with skurvy, so you don’t need to replace ‘em when they die. I swear to Bob though: if your kid dies fording a GD river on the way to Oregon, you are more than welcome to have another kid. Until then, keep your junk in your pants after kid number 2.

Your much more comfortable, lower-tax, pirate-free, oil-guzzling old age will thank you for it.

Why is it so bloody hard to find a hands-free device that I can hear over the noise of traffic? Here’s what I want:

1. A bluetooth headset

2.  The ability to turn the thing up until my ears bleed.

Is that so hard?

Lately, on my way into my job (as a Columbian drug lord), I see a billboard for the Charlotte’s Web film coming out in a couple of days.

Here’s a shot that somewhat resembles what I see, though it’s not exactly this one:

It doesn’t look like it so much in this small photo, but in the billboard it looks like the pig (Wilbur, I think?) has been shot in the head. It makes me laugh everyday. Like anyone would ever kill a pig.

I’m sure millions of other people have already written on this, and I’m sure people with actual credentials have published good papers on it, but I’m still independently puzzled at the way in which gay men and women often get socialized once they’ve “joined” gay culture. I’m of the opinion that if gay men did not so often have a gay lisp and “feminine” ways of acting, being gay in modern America would be far less of a deal than it is. Throw in some flamboyant pride parades, and I can see how the hicks can get in a tizzy.

In my opinion, the problem American society writ large has with the gay community is not so much the sex part of it, but rather is with the gender bending part that is so readily passed around as memetic currency. Ironically, I don’t really think society as a whole cares all that much about particularly “masculine” lesbians. When their men start wearing pink bandanas, however, and start lathering up their hot-pants laden bodies on rainbow draped floats, you start challenging a pretty big part of the American psyche: what it means to be male.

Granted, in a free society, we really shouldn’t care all that much about how our neighbor dresses, talks, walks, or whether he takes it up the butt. It doesn’t affect you or me in any meaningful, real world kind of way. It’s not like gay sex creates some kind of shock wave that shoots out across the neighborhood, ruining dinner for everyone and making dogs bark or garage doors open. Nevertheless, we’re dealing with human beings, creatures which are only slightly removed from all the rest of the aggressive, hierarchically socialized mammals out there. We’re all biological computers, and if you upset the programming too much, you get some pretty discordant errors.

Essentially, what I’m saying goes for all counter-culture groups out there. Who gives a damn whether some kid wants to wear black makeup and thinks he’s cool because he wears pants so tight he has an uncomfortable moose knuckle? So what if every other kid in his group looks just like him, ruining the whole “I’m different from you” subtext? The point is, the same (!) biological underpinnings that make wolf packs and meerkat families tick also drives our own society. Members of the group in nature who behave or look strange usually get booted out of the group or perhaps eaten. Fortunately, we try and restrain ourselves, but it doesn’t always work that way. I personally know 3 goth kids who have been killed for their pale and ironic flesh. Poor Gryphon, Raven, and Tenebrae.

In any event, I might wager good money that if it weren’t for the prevalence of the feminine gay man–whether real or not–in the collective cultural psyche, we might have a very different social landscape today. I’m not arguing whether homosexuality is right or wrong–if neural networks and their complex processes can in fact be right or wrong–simply that a pretty big social apple cart has been overturned in the way gay culture has approached masculinity and femininity. If it weren’t for such a heavy counter cultural bent, I wonder if society would even be debating gay marriage today, or whether society would have “allowed” it long ago.