Author: Sammy G

It’s that time in life when I need to pick up a new bad habit. Due to circumstances, nothing seems more appetizing than beginning a drug addicition. To date, I’ve never smoked a cigarette or taken an illegal drug. But it’s never too late to start destroying my life via a helpless, ugly relationship with small pills.

Since turning 30 I’ve realized life becomes more interesting because people are more interesting. Socializing and interacting wth people my age carries far more interest because older folks have responsibility and what I consider “contribution implications”. My friends are no longer talking about hot bars and latest flings but issues and social trend and grown-up stuff.

However, after months of doing the couples-nights and weekend social entertaining, I still feel stagnant and dull. I never walk from these gatherings feeling enlightened and challenged. Thus, I need to begin a terrifyingly addicting drug habit for two purposes:

1) Make other people more interesting 2) Make me more interesting to other people

I’m not into health and happiness. I’m into eccentricity.

Anybody got some good suggestions? Also, I need drugs that can be concocted at home. Ideas that fall in the “meth” vein are good. Basically, I don’t want to have to get sold-out by some flaky street pusher who’s looking to score snitch points by turning in Mr. Sammy G Suburban Whitey to the cops.

A couple years back, McDonald’s and its marketing agency were successfully sued for rigging the Monopoly sweepstakes game. This broke my heart because my college time was spend like this:

5% Academic Studies 45% Girls 50% Collecting McDonald’s Monopoly board pieces in the hopes of winning a Dodge Viper, the Grand Prize, and driving it with Weed across the country.

So last week, McDonald’s announced that as a stipulation of settling the class action lawsuit (I know I wrote that McDs was successfully sued but everyone knows they were guilty regardless of whether they settled or received a verdict) they are holding a new Instant Prize Giveaway to reconcile with the unhappy people who were cheated before. This new game gets rid of board pieces. The new Giveaway says that we could be one of 15 lucky winners to receive $1M. All we have to do is show up and be standing in a McDs between 3/5-3/7. That’s it. No board pieces.

An “Entry

Ted is a new discount air carrier that’s owned by United. I went to their website to see if they service Minneapolis. They don’t. So, since they’re new, I wondered if they have plans to expand here. I wrote their customer service the following simple, straightforward email:

“Message: Is Ted coming to Minneapolis anytime soon? Thanks!

Sam”

The following was their response. Raise your hand if you are wondering why United is going bankrupt?

“Dear Sam,

Thank you for contacting us. You ask about our route structures and schedules. Basically, this is what happens. Domestic and international route structure teams regularly analyze scheduling commitments with these questions in mind: Are we using prime resources effectively? Are airplanes and flight crews working in the most cost-effective and efficient manner possible? If the route structure and scheduling teams determine that revised schedules provide greater opportunities for airplanes, crews, and United’s route structure, they make the required changes. For our customers’ benefit, United needs to work efficiently and cost -effectively, and remain competitive as well. We appreciate this opportunity to be of assistance and look forward to serving you.

Best regards, Nancy Castro Customer Relations”

Bunch of wack-mobiles.

— Sammy G

To top it all off, it’s my state House Rep that introduced the bill last week. The guy lives 1/2 mile from me.

I’m so excited, I already left voice messages with all DFL party members sitting on the Human and Health Policy Committee.

Please, please, please, please….ratify that sucker!

Of course, the Hospitality lobbyists are stepping it up, protesting the ban, saying it will depress sales.

I’m pretty shocked by an article appearing in today’s New York Times Magazine. One the featured essays tried to support the notion of a rebounding economy by downplaying the loss of jobs in major sectors and demonstrating a growth of jobs in the hidden US service sector. Specfically, the article stated that the Bureau of Labor & Statistics tests job losss in such sectors like manufacturing, technology, and engineering to cheaper overseas providers, instead of honing in on jobs gained in masseuses, spas, and manicurist shops.

I’m not joking. The article referenced the American Massage Association when it spoke of the tripling number of registered masseuses and spa employees. Yes.

I first thought it was a largely-sarcastic article using the ludicrous as a way to demonstrate that we’re not only losing jobs in important sectors to overseas but that the trillion-dollar trade deficit isn’t getting reduced in the process. I thought the article was eventually going to end on the ideal that we’ve got to stop giving training and financial support to service jobs that don’t help in producing buy-end goods that can be exported. Instead, the article was dead serious, and really tried to use spa growth as an indicator that there is NOTHING to worry about. That even though other countries are picking up jobs from our manufacturing and software development, those people here who lost those jobs can always find work giving massages.

I figured the editors of the NYT were on crack for letting that thing run. I can’t wait to see the number of Letters To The Editors ripping on the author. How can she seriously write that we’re not too worry because the invisible hand of market demand is pushing us from creating tangible, exportable goods to become personal relaxation experts? How many Shiatsu professionals vs. automobiles are we importing from Asia?

The cause for alarm is that by losing jobs to overseas we’re stuck with having to win clearhandedly in fewer sectors, including education, medicine, science, technology, and entertainment. The latter is crucial, I think, because it what gets shoved down the throat of the rest of the world. It’s what marks the US imprint on the foreign household and street level. God help us if the US is really turning into a country of masseuses. 🙂

Sam

Not to rekindle our previous debate regarding same-sex marriage, but I’d like to rekindle our previous debate regarding same-sex marriage…

It’s one thing for President Bush to state his personal views on same-sex marriage. It’s another to deliberately gather the press corps to express his support for amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Whatever happened to separation of church and state? Yes, this “moral decay”, this moral decline, this moral miscontrsuct, is based on Judeo-Christian views. There are plenty of people out there in the conservative majority who feel that same-sex marriage violates decency on moral ground, but I believe this springs from religious tenet. The major religions hold up the Bible/Testament and point to it, shunning same-sex marriage.

Terrible.

Because, last time I checked, we live in a country where religion technically has no impact on our legislative and judicial agenda. Amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage is ludicrous, and having a President advocate for it lets me know that he’s someone who is comfortable alienating the populace and estranging the minority. This country is based on inclusion (“give us your tired, your poor”) and accepting all persons of culture, faith, etc. is what makes us strong. Yes, we compete internationally on our intellectual developments, our science, our management, our engineering, our medicine, and our military. But there’s a foundation of inclusion underneath it all that taps into the collective power of people who bring their talents to the table. Excluding blacks because of prejudice. Excluding women from voting. Excluding foreigners because they talk and look different. Amendments to our Constitution and additions to our laws are based on “inclusion” not on exclusion. Have we learned nothing from our past?

The last 25 years shows that our economy is beseiged by globalization. The barriers of the world have been torn down. Do we want to start building cultural barriers at home? Alientating people is the worst thing this country can do, economically and socially. Whether I believe in homosexuality isn’t the issue. The issue is whether our laws are explicity written to protect the minority and ensure their place beside the majority in the pursuit of happiness. And anyone at the top of the political food chain who wants to step up to the microphone and express his sentiments of alienation in election year better be prepared to face a harsh rebuking.

This reminds me of former Presidents who shunned racial integration, who laughed at women in the workplace, who mocked the inclusion of external cultures into our mainstream. People didn’t have choices before. “You don’t like it, then leave our country. Oh, you can’t? Well the deal with it.” Well, now people have choices. And creating a society which tells people that they’re not welcome is awful.

Besides, it’s a state issue anyway. Right? Right?

I’m not applauding the latest RIAA tactic, but I think I may be sliding over to their corner.

About six months ago, a friend of my roomate, who lives in LA, was tagged by RIAA with a file-sharing lawsuit. RIAA did a “John Doe” lawsuit because the complaint was filed against an IP address with the ISP provider, rather than directly against a human identity. The ISP has to forward the suit to the individual and then provide RIAA with the person’s name. Anyway, the roomate’s friend was freaked out to get a serious lawsuit against them, especially considered that it was friends using her Internet connection to swap files.

**Sidebar — what if someone is out there in the neighbordhood hijacking my wireless internet connection and swapping files and I get sued? RIAA can’t physically prove it was me swapping files, right? Can they search my hard drive?**

Anyway, the friend ultimately had to settle. Sort of like many of the other teenagers out there who are having to settle. Just goes to show that your home-based activity can become publicly available.

So the point of this entry was to say that I think I’m in corner of RIAA. They are an association protecting the sound recording industry and have decided to sue people who are allegedly stealing their members’ property. I may not be in favor of the tactic and the public relations decision but I understand the rationale.

Before everyone response with “invasion of privacy”, let’s just recognize that the RIAA is successfuly suing people, so there’s some judge somewhere that affirmed RIAA’s assertion that swapping files is not protected under an home-intrusion defense. We don’t know the law but we know it’s working for RIAA right now. I think that I might be interested to see how long the suit siege continues.

I wonder if there’s some kind of application that let’s you trade files while blinding your IP address or the file type/title to the ISP…

I’ll stop typing now.

Sam

**Apologies if this isn’t the proper place to put this request**

Looking for help in putting up an e-commerce function on the direct-to-consumer website. Does anybody have any experience with this?

I was about to pick up authorize.net for the credit merchant clearing service but apparently I also need a shopping cart provider (i.e. miva, oscommerce). This is way over my head. I’m good with the HTML scripting but I have no idea how to drop in a full-service e-commerce engine into your typical $20/month web host provider.

I don’t know what I need to do to keep all the functionality (product review, shopping cart, clearance) integrated within my site’s framework. Help!!!!

Thanks in advance.

www.skype.com

I need someone to set this up and skype me.

Free P2P internet telephony, anywhere in the world. Skype is labeling themselves as the first P2P telephony provider, avoiding any form of traditional circuit router.

I’ve been using Vonage as my voice-over-IP provider for the past five months. It’s neat being able to call anyplace in the U.S. at anytime for $40 a month through my ISP. But the idea of having a P2P app that enables people to contact each other directly, with better then regular phone quality, for FREE, is way cool.

Seek me out as sam_graber as a contact, interface is the same as any IM program. Make sure you have a VOIP microphone set up first!

Sam

My original point wasn’t that including “bearing arms” didn’t make sense at the time of Constitutional Drafting (it definitely did make sense given the circumstances). My point was that if the Framers had access to a crystal ball that let them see how outrageous the gun-death toll would eventually become, “bearing arms” might not have been part of the Constitution.

I’m against the individual ownership of guns. I don’t need them to feel personally safe or equalized. And owning them and weilding them as an individual ensures great risk.

Here’s why: in the global sailing/cruising coterie, there’s an industry rag called “Cruising World”. Everyone reads it who dreams of sailing around the world or is actually active in sailing around the world. There’s always news from the latitudes that discusses dangerous areas to cruise. These include the coastal waters of Columbia, Yemen, Africa, etc. As part of these articles is always the terrible, sad story of cruisers killed by pirates or drug lords. As it always turns out, the cruisers aren’t killed for their boat or personal possessions. They’re shot the minute they decide to pull out a gun from below deck.

In the international waters of no-holds-barred, you get killed when you pull out a gun. Every cruiser knows that owning a gun is the surest way to get killed. Owning a gun under the pretense of equalization is subscribing to the arms-race fallacy that led to the U.S.-Soviet buildup: peace is only attained when through a balance in firepower. What’s worst is trying to gain superior firepower because cruisers can only provoke. Many stories of boaters pulling out big canons and scaring off pirates temporarily until all the pirate cavalry comes in.

This is in international waters. At home we have laws and a somewhat higher standard of criminal conduct 🙂 But the truth is set in my mind — I don’t win by owning a gun because I don’t set the field equal, I only provoke. To me, the gun is an instant death instrument, not a sense of security or protection.