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My father would call me a bleeding heart liberal. Perhaps he would even go so far as to call me a socialist. Apparently, socialism is too extreme of a political ideology to discuss with Americans, so rather than try to defend noble causes like national health care, disability & unemployment insurance, or welfare programs, I’ll casually foray into a much simpler topic: religion.

Religion serves us well doing only one thing: answering spiritual questions. Religion should not be a governmental policy, as that would be a theocracy. Religion should not require full immersion of self to the organization at large, as that would be a cult. Also, religion should not be used as a rationale or justification, as that would just be asinine. How often do we hear those around us use religious texts to justify one thing or another?

“Gays can’t get married,” hardcore Christians say, because “the bible forbids it!” They will always have some scripture quote ready to defend such a statement. Of course, there are a number of things forbidden in the bible. One of my personal favorites is Deuteronomy 23:1, which says, “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.” But only a chapter prior to that, in Deuteronomy 22:13-21, the good book summarizes the procedure for a honeymoon. Specifically, if a man does the dirty with his new wife and “hates” her, that the burden of proof that she was a virgin lies on the father of the bride. Should he not be able to provide adequate proof that his daughter was a virgin, the girl must of course be stoned to death for the folly she had wrought to Israel.

Yes, I know that this is an extreme example of some of the content in the Bible. But it just goes to show that if you’re going to take one thing to be moral guidance, you have to take it all. Morals are flexible and highly reliant upon the social contexts they’re needed in. Murder, for example, is the ‘universal wrong’ that we all can relate to. It’s wrong to kill other people, right? Of course, but that’s only because we universally agree to that. Since we don’t want others killing us, the social contract forbids us from killing others. This is codified and enforced through law. Here’s another example – it’s wrong to run a red light. If you run a red light, another car can collide with you and someone could be seriously injured or killed. Of course, this example breaks down under scrutiny. A traveler on a lone highway arrives at a red light. They come to a complete stop, look both ways, and realize that there’s no one around for miles. They proceed through the light. Was this immoral? Does the fact that the vehicle and traffic law specifically forbids such an act completely summarize the “rightness” or “wrongness” of that situation?

Some people use religion for extreme purposes. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is an example of an organization that uses extreme religious beliefs to justify a number of things. Not to be confused with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS herein) is the polygamist sect of cultists that you’ve probably heard of in the news recently. The state is cracking down on them for child & spousal abuse, polygamy, welfare fraud, reckless abandonment, and child rape. Polygamists, you see, need more females than males. That tricky little catch called “nature” pretty much ensures a 1:1 ration of males to females. How do the members of the FLDS handle that problem? They expel the young boys by driving them out hundreds of miles away from their cult town, and leave them on the side of the road. If you want to read an even more interesting discussion of this article, check out the Fark thread associated with it. The church is a front for dirty old cultist men that want to rape young girls and be immune from the law. If there is an afterlife, you can be sure they’ll all burn in whatever form of hell there is.

With so much extremism out there, it’s hard to find a religion to settle in with. I for one choose to define my own spirituality, and who can say there’s anything wrong with that? Religion at best can answer questions like, “Why?” Leave questions like “How” to the secularists. The Christians, the FLDS, the Scientologists, they’re all spooks. Not the followers, but the leaders. Please people; let your religion be a guide for life, and not an instruction manual. Everyone is different, so respect their beliefs too – until they are involved with pedophilia, pedophilia, or tax fraud (for Catholics, the FLDS, and Scientologists respectively).

If there is a higher being, I’m willing to be that he respects good will towards your fellow human beings and a strong will for self improvement more than he respects fundamentalism and sectarian extremism.

Like this table top, we’re all interconnected. Let’s stop treating each other like crap; “god” will appreciate it.

I’m in a peculiar mood; one where I feel like I’m always taking a number when people have other things to do. I apologize for the unintended existence; I merely was trying to continue being. I didn’t think it would be so inconvenient for some of the people close to me.

When I don’t have anyone to be around, I do things like create SLAPM. When people are around me a lot, I spend most of my time off the Internet just hanging around. I’m slowly starting to question which is really more personally fulfilling. Sure, people are great when you’re feeling lonely. But once that is satisfied, seeing people can become more of a pain then they are a pleasure.

The one thing that bothers me the most is dishonesty. Like when I tell some random creepy guy at the post office, “oh, sure, I’ll write to you” when he gives me his email address and asks me to explain how to make money by selling bootleg CDs on Amazon.com. It doesn’t have to be verbal; people can lie with their expressions and body language. Like when I walk around at work like I have a smile electro-statically stuck on my face. I’ve already been criticized for being too straightforward and sometimes tactless when dealing with people. Maybe I should just swing the lie meter a little bit higher and I can convince myself that I like doing what I’m doing.

What I’m doing is lying. There are so many ways that I lie every day; lower than a rug, I lie. I lie to myself and convince that sometimes, things don’t need to be fixed. There’s one big thing that needs to be fixed in my eyes, but there’s no way in hell that I’m going to just pour my heart out about it on the Internet. Because the point isn’t that something’s been slowly eating away at me – the point is that I’m letting it eat me away by pretending that it’s alright.

I definitely have to do something about it though. Today when I was running, I practically yelled at Joe when we talked about it. Joe is too cool to let my attitude about things faze him though (and that’s honest, Joe’s the man). It just made me realize that some of my fears are grounded, but a lot of them aren’t. Every time I think of myself from an external angle, I picture Peter Griffin from Family Guy, doing something stupid on a sensoric and idiotic whim.

There are definitely things in my life that need change. One thing that needs change is my attitude to the world. I’m both hurting people around me with my attitude, and being hurt by the attitude that comes back in response.

Sad as it is to say, I think I’m too jumbled to even remember where I was going with this. So if you are in my life and you find me to be such a huge farking inconvenience, maybe you should go fark yourself, and whoever your friend is, they can go fark themselves too.

But there is good news from this week — I passed my drug test. For those that are interested, after some rather callous behavior on my part, I was able to successfully pass a SAP-10 urine screen from Quest Diagnostics after 16 days of abstinence, 3 mile runs on alternating days, heavy consumption of water, the use of GHF Fast Flush citrus drink (a real steal at only $18 per bottle, compared to some brands), and nightly consumption of two to four drinks of beer. So, I was doing some things right, like abstaining from the intake of toxins and engaging in regular aerobic exercise, but I also was still drinking small amounts of beer on a daily basis (doctors recommend two per night, by the way). I honestly will have to credit the successful result of this test to the GHF Fast Flush drink because of the time frame involved. According to calculations, it should have taken me at least another 16 days on top of the 16 days I had already abstained, barring other factors including individual differences in metabolism and what not. Remember though, that drinking a bunch of water right before a drug test will likely make you fail on the grounds that your urine is a) too clear, in which case the collector will reject the specimen on the spot, or is b) lacking Creatine because your urine is too dilute. The GHF drink contained Vitamin B12 (a whopping 400% of my DV, actually), and a few hundred milligrams of Creatinine Monohydrate (which gets rapidly metabolized into the form of Creatine that urinalysis labs measure for). All the drink did was fool the analysis cutoffs for dilute urine, and note that they didn’t actually “flush” me out. I should be clean by now though, considering I’ve still been abstaining, and my exercise routine has only become more intense since I started it. Pretty soon I’ll be running marathons.

The mother of these birds built her nest in a spot where it could easily be reached. Naturally, since my family doesn’t generally hunt wild fowl, we let them be. Not before I snapped this incredibly cute picture of one of the baby birds waiting for its mother to drop some food into its mouth. A fourth baby, not pictured, sadly fell out (or was bumped out) of the nest and its status is currently unknown. Such is nature, I guess.

Last night, Geneva and I had a craving – the kind of craving that can be satisfied only one way – with a delicious spicy chicken burrito from Taco Bell.

With all the funds that Taco Bell has poured into advertising their line of spicy chicken products, it’s no surprise that I assumed that the Nanuet location would carry the variety of burrito that we desired. Alas, the standard commercial disclaimers applied in this instance. Taco Bell, as a franchise based business, apparently didn’t require all of its locations to carry the spicy chicken. So, although the Nanuet location didn’t carry it, some Taco Bell, somewhere, did. I ended up offering to drive to the Taco Bell in Montvale.

Pulling into the drive thru, we excitedly asked if they had the spicy chicken burritos. “Yes we do,” the drive thru box clamored back. “Yes!” we exclaimed excitedly, before placing our order. The employee announced our total and asked if I’d like anything else, but before I pulled away from the menu, I wanted to just confirm that they accepted credit cards. I know that many fast food locations other than Taco Bell don’t accept credit cards, but seriously, just about every place within a 10 mile radius of New York City does. Of course, this story wouldn’t be penned if they accepted credit cards, because that was only the beginning of the journey.

We waited to exit the drive thru, being trapped since there were cars both ahead and behind us. I got the idea that I could get some money from the ATM at my house (that stands for Affluent Tired Mother, who was certainly in-bed as all of this transpired). When we arrived home, my mom gave me $20 and asked that it last me a while. I agreed, since after all I was getting paid for the first time the coming Friday. We rushed back to the Taco Bell to alleviate our hunger, with cash in hand. Pulling back up to the drive thru at 10:55 PM, and seeing the prominently lit “Drive Thru Open” sign in the store window, I pointed out that, “we barely made it!” Of course, if this Taco Bell was like others, it would be open later than that, but that’s aside from the point here.

We didn’t make it, but not because we arrived after 11 PM. My car’s clock is not fast, for the record, as it synchronized perfectly with my cell phone’s network clock and my laptop’s clock (which is synched with Windows time). This Taco Bell closed five minutes early. Leave it to New Jersey to screw up Taco Bell. Furious, I called 1-800-TACO-BELL seeking justice. The first call had barely started before my cell phone unexpectedly dropped the call. I was put back in the queue when I called back, but oh, how it was worth it.

I spoke with a gentleman named Larry that was more than happy to hear about my experience. I started off, of course, mentioning that I absolutely love Taco Bell and have likely spent hundreds of dollars there this year alone. I proceeded to also mention that, of course, I knew it wasn’t his fault, but that I just wanted to vent about it to someone in the company to see what they think. After telling him the story, he agreed wholeheartedly that the store management erred in closing early. After hearing about that, I of course mentioned that I could care less about Pizza Hut, but loved all the other YUM Brands (including KFC, Long John Silvers, and the A&W Restaurants). He was extremely helpful, and completely restored my faith in the customer service policies of Taco Bell.

He offered me vouchers for two free meals, which I gladly accepted.

And, I likewise offered him more business for Taco Bell in the future. Not that he’d ever gain from that, aside from maybe the satisfaction of knowing that he made someone’s day. But still, the moral of the story here is three-fold: first, that if you run a business, especially one that markets another company’s name, you can’t just close down before regular business hours because you feel like it. Next, that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, both on my own part, and on part of Larry the customer service representative. He was so friendly, helpful, and responsive that he completely mended any emotional rift that the experience had inflicted upon me. And finally, that if you are upset about something that someone does to you, don’t try to get even as a first resort, just try to find out what you can do to make it right.

Larry made it right, and I will remain a loyal customer to all YUM brands except Pizza Hut, of course, which for all intensive purposes is the red-headed (literally) step-child of the YUM corporation.

So for once, I had something nice to say about a company on this site, thus proving once again that I’m not just a bitter short guy with nothing better to do but type about how he feels like companies exploit him. Because in fact, there are plenty of positive corporations and organizations, and it’s just a matter of finding them and being loyal to them – because if they’re good companies, they’ll stay loyal to you as well.

Today’s random image is a shot of ferns growing on the side of the road on Tweed Boulevard in Blauvelt, NY. I always thought that ferns were cute for some reason, and of course because I think they’re ‘cute’ I’m going to incur an incredible amount of flak from my readers. Well you know what? They’re cute. I’m having a good day, let me appreciate nature.

Towards the end of January, INeedAttention.com carried an article about Pizza Hut and how ridiculously overpriced they were. I hadn’t been back since, until last night – though you may curious as to why I decided to return, first, I’d rather discuss the circumstances around another incident that happened in January.

David Banach, 38, lived in New Jersey with his wife and children. He lived a rather plain life by most standards, working as a fiber optic cable tester. He owned a green class III laser which he used in the course of his job. The “class III” designation indicates that it’s more powerful than the traditional laser pointer that you’re used to seeing people use for presentations and being annoying in move theaters (those are class I). On the evening of December 29, 2004, David Banach was in his backyard with his daughters and apparently pointed his laser into the sky. He did the same thing again on December 31, 2004.

The problem was that a plane flying overhead at 3000 feet reported that they were ‘blinded’ by some source of green laser light on the 29th. On the 31st, a Port Authority helicopter was flying around Teterboro airport looking for the source of the light, and surely enough, they saw the beam and traced it back to its source. Within minutes, swarms of local, state, and federal authorities converged on the Banach residence and questioned David Banach. Within weeks, it was announced that he was being charged under the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act, if you recall, was sponspored as anti-terrorism legislation. So considering statements made by the FBI indicating that there was no connection to terrorism, I’m a little bit confused as to why exactly he was charged. To quote, “Last month, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department sent a memo to law enforcement agencies saying there is evidence that terrorists have explored using lasers as weapons. But federal officials have said there is no evidence any the current incidents represent a terrorist plot.” If you’re interested in reading the actual complaint filed against David Banach it is available here.

So, why the title “eat your heart out”? Two nights ago I saw something that everyone in the New York Metropolitan area has probably seen a number of times. I saw lights pointed in the sky, rhythmically moving around, all to signal that something big is happening. It’s not the bat signal, it’s just a truck that has four incredibly intense rotating lights and a generator mounted on the back. This particular night, it was set up at the new location for Paul Miller Toyota in Monsey. I followed the light to its source and although I wasn’t interested in buying a car, I did have a rather interesting conversation with the operator of the vehicle. He told me that it cost as much as $175 per hour to rent such a vehicle and pay for his salary. “The company is huge,” he said, “We’re all over New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania; it’s big business.” Of course, remembering the David Banach case, I had to at least ask if he thought the devices worked. Did they draw people in? How far could people see them from?

“I’ve had people come on a clear night and tell me they saw it 40 miles away.” The man obviously had a great deal of experience pointing lights in the sky, and I believed him just because on Thursday night, it was overcast and even a tad foggy, and I was able to see the lights from Nanuet, when they were being shined all the way from Monsey, a distance of at least five miles.

I would be hard pressed to believe that David Banach’s class III laser, with an effective output power of 5mW, could have been even remotely comparable in output power to the intense lights mounted on the truck pictured below, especially considering that they required their own generator. The Register has published a collection of accounts that even explain that David Banach’s laser would have been nearly completely diffused at 3000 feet, one explaining that the beam would “produce a spot 8+ meters in diameter”, adding that from that distance it would “look like a very weak lamp”. The incredible power output by the truck, however, I believe would probably be more blinding, especially considering that it’s so bright that you can literally see the cohesive column of light reach up to the clouds.

The truck discussed above, putting out light so intense that it produces a solid column of light reaching to the clouds

So the David Banach case is a bunch of bull; another sacrificial lamb being slaughtered to remind us that the government can do what it wants, when it wants. Must it be so? The only hope for David Banach is that a jury of twelve of his peers might acquit him when they hear the technical details behind the case. Of course, I think that with all the resources of the federal government that it’s unlikely, although not impossible. It’s important not to forget that our system is unfair right now; you’re guilty until proven guilty.

But moving on to a lighter subject, the article published about Pizza Hut included a calculation of the smallest slice of pizza and how ridiculous it was. I only returned to Pizza Hut last night because I was given a coupon for a free large or extra large one topping pizza. Between that, and the breadsticks that I paid for, I paid only $2.96 for the entire meal. Of course, it was worth that: Pizza Hut sold me a pizza that contained a slice even smaller than the smallest on the last pie! The slice pictured below measured 5.5″ on its longest side, and about 2″ on it’s curve. Now, assuming that 5.5″ is the radius of the circle, that would make the circumference of the circle equal to 2*pi*r, or 34.5″. Considering the arc length was 2″ in this slice, or about 5.79%, we can safely assume that the slice pictured here has an effective angle of about 20.9� (5.79% of 360�). We can then calculate the area of the sector by using the formula A=(n/360)*pi*r², where n is the number of degrees of the slice.

Using the above calculations we arrive at a startling figure. Look at the slice below, sure, it looks small, but…

This slice had a total surface area of only 5.5 square inches! The slice that was mocked in the last article was 163% of the size of this slice! Pizza Hut, you really need to wise up and realize that this is bad customer service. I’m glad that you lost money on last night’s transaction, because your business practices are underhanded and embarrassing. Pizza Hut, you are a shame to pizza all around the world – it’s no surprise that your offices refuse to offer comment on, or even acknowledge, this article, but believe me it’s egg on your face.

English critic John Ruskin coined the term ‘pathetic fallacy’ to describe the way in which nature reflected the events in a piece of writing. For example, dark clouds are overbearing and bring bad fortune with them. Today was no exception to this rule.

Work was fine, although I apparently left my lights on in the morning and thus arrived back to my car to find that it wouldn’t start. For owners of cars that have anti-theft devices in their stereos, if your battery dies, make sure that you don’t attempt to enter a ‘lock code’ if you’re not sure that it’s the right one. About a year ago, my battery died, and I ended up spending $70 or so to have Mitsubishi reset my stereo – all because I though I was uber-l33t and could hack my stereo code. In any event, the security people at my place of work luckily had a jump-starter on hand and so I was able to quickly get the car going again.

On my way out, I bumped into two people that I had happened to meet in my first two days of work. The first, a fellow intern, was waiting outside along the second, an agent that ironically enough had been one of the key people involved in creating the job position that I was working in 12 years prior (the gentleman referenced here had been chosen to select a software package for the organization; the package he chose became the software that I test). They quipped about my need for a jump starter as I walked in and out of the building. As I walked into the building to return the device, one other gentleman who was standing with the others jokingly asked, “Hey, now that your car is going, can you take us to the train station?” Now, I figured that he meant the train station in Tarrytown – which of course is right down Route 9, literally being only a tenth of a mile out of the way for me. Surely enough that was where they were headed.

They were apparently late for their train and were waiting for a cab. Although I didn’t get them back in time for their train, I did save them a couple of dollars, and made double use of my vehicle, which of course made me feel great. That was just about the only thing that made me feel great today. Work was somewhat of a headache. It almost feels like people are talking down to me no matter how simple the subject. I think they’re offended by my obsession with efficiency. For example, today I asked a supervisor if I could use PDF to submit a paperless report to her. In the future, she said, that might be a good idea. In the meantime, though, she’s having me go through 180 pages of color printed paper and perform tests on various functions in their software. To get a better understanding of exactly how much it really costs to print 180 pages of paper in color, consider this: at a mere 5 cents per page, that’s $9. Figure that being nearly half a ream of paper that it’s another $2. It cost $11 to give me 180 sheets of paper that I didn’t want. At the very least, she should have printed it on both sides to save the other 90 sheets. Consider all the effort wasted creating that paper. Waste makes me mad. Waste not, want not, right? Not to mention that because I was testing software on a computer, if I had not been forced to multitask between a computer and a stack of unbound papers, I could have written down my notes faster, and in a less sloppy way. I’m testing software; everyone involved has a computer – why are we wasting so much paper? To put it in a different way, why are we wasting so much money?

If I was only complaining about waste today, though, I’d consider myself lucky. Aside from the fact that I think that no one really cares about me now, I think that I’ve done a terrible job caring for the people I should have cared for all my life. Today was my father’s birthday, and I didn’t get him a gift (yet). I’m going to. But aside from the fact that I was too selfish to get him a gift despite all he’s done for me, I saw my grandmother today. She is in stage five of Alzheimer’s disease. She kept asking my brother when he was going “back to Italy”. In fact, she thought that my brother was her father at Easter time. The thought of cognitive decline frightens me greatly. It was so hard to see that she was slowly slipping away, and I never realized how bad it was until it was too late. Today, she’s completely incapable of even holding a conversation, and there’s nothing I can ever do to get the grandmother that I knew back. Sure, she’s still there physically, but mentally, she’s practically a vegetable. She was wearing three dresses and a nightgown, for example. When she spoke, it was hard to follow because she’d slip between English and Italian without warning. My father just would nod his head and agree and laugh to most of what she said. For months I’ve wanted to believe that it couldn’t possibly be the right way to talk to her. I want to really believe that if you just say the right thing, she’ll understand.

But it seems more and more like she won’t, and there’s nothing that I can do to change that. I’d give anything in the world to be able to – not just for my grandmother, but for anyone in her state. I don’t even know if she’s suffering, because one moment she’ll look sad and the next she’ll look fine. But deep down inside, I think that she’s sad that I didn’t go visit her more when I was younger. Each time I talk to her, she asks when I’m coming next, and reminds me that I never come to visit her. It’s like that’s the one thing that’s ingrained into her deep down that she’s holding on to.

I just wish that it wasn’t.

My grandmother, me, and my brother in the kitchen at my father’s house, celebrating my father’s 53rd birthday over some chicken parmagiana and some hearty discussion.