Tag Archive for 'Rant'

Franchise haters

Published
by
Cody
on September 23, 2008
in Rant
. 0 Comments

I don’t get the hatred a lot of people hold towards restaurant chains and franchises, like McDonald’s or Subway. I mean, if you want to support your local burger or sandwich shop, that’s fine. But when you ridicule other people for actually liking places like that, that’s a pretty big problem. Personal choice and all that.

I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of thing before. I was walking into a Subway once when I was stopped by someone hanging outside the restaurant, who accosted me for going to Subway when there was a local sandwich place just a few doors down. I had actually gone to that shop before, but I had never noticed a significant quality difference between their sandwiches and Subway’s sandwiches. They tasted pretty much the same. The kicker for me, however, was the fact that I could get a foot-long at Subway for $5. At the local shop, the cost was $8 for a similar foot-long. I may sound a bit callous for saying this, but I’m not going to spend an extra $3 just to support a local shop. I’m going to go for the best value, and I can usually find that at chains or franchises (franchises that, ironically, are often owned by the mom and pop types of people).

To be perfectly honest, I suppose I can see the reasoning behind disliking chains. They undercut prices, which causes small, mom and pop places to go out of business because they can’t afford to lower their prices. But that’s capitalism. Competition inevitably results in there being a winner and a loser (or multiple losers). Eventually, a new competitor arises that can actually compete on the same level as the winner. It’s not pretty, and it’s certainly not fair, but that’s life.

Yeah, it’s harsh. Probably harsher than I originally meant it to be. But my main point is that if I want to get a burger at McDonald’s instead of that place down the street, that should be my choice. I shouldn’t have to deal with people pestering me about it.

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No more Palin

Published
by
Cody
on September 15, 2008
in Political and Rant
. 0 Comments

Can I just say: please, I don’t want to hear anything more about Sarah Palin. I already know she’s a horrible pick for McCain and I certainly know I won’t be voting for that ticket come November. Yet I’m still subjected to every detail about her life, from her religion to her children to her hunting hobby. Seriously. Stop focusing on the negatives of Sarah Palin and focus on the positives of the other candidates, namely Barack Obama. Or even third party candidates. They can’t get exposure if everyone’s too busy complaining about Palin and McCain.

Ugh, I can’t wait until this election is over. I doubt the country will be better off no matter what candidate, but at least I won’t have to endure the barrage of mudslinging that accompanies every major election.

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It’s been a while

Published
by
Cody
on August 3, 2008
in Rant
. 2 Comments

Wow, I kind of haven’t been updating this at all. Strange, considering I couldn’t stop posting while school was in session. There’s not a lack of stuff to get irritated about, that’s for sure.

I do have a bit of good news, however. Washington state has abandoned the rather short-lived party ballot primary system, where voters would choose which party (Republican or Democrat) to vote for during the primary and only vote using that ballot. I don’t even know what the original reasoning for that method was, but it’s been dumped in favor of the new “top 2″ primary system. Now, voters can vote for whoever they want on the primary ballot, regardless of party preference. The top 2 vote-getters in each partisan position then go on to the actual election.

It’s a much nicer system because it allows people to vote for the people, not the party. It used to be that if you wanted to vote for a Republican governor in the primary, you’d also have to vote for Republican senators, representatives, attorney generals, etc. Now, you can vote for a Democrat governor, a Republican senator, and an independent attorney general all on the same ballot.

Of course, the choices haven’t gotten any better. The majority of the people running for governor this year are either complete nutcases (one guy wants to ban cars) or more concerned with attacking their opponents than telling people what they would do as governor (seriously, this one guy used his entire statement to rip into the incumbent; nothing in there about his positions on the issues). Ugh.

At any rate, I hope to start publishing more updates to the blog. I’ve let it go so long, I posted once in the entire month of July. I really need to start getting indignant more. I must be losing my touch.

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Knee jerking at its worst

Published
by
Cody
on May 27, 2008
in Rant
. 0 Comments

Imagine you’re watching TV and a commercial advertising donuts is one. A famous scarf-wearing woman is talking about the donuts. The commercial ends and life goes on. Most people would think “Mmm, donuts” in a very Homer Simpson kind of way. Not Michelle Malkin. Oh no. She sees a terrorism apologist in that commercial. Why? Because the scarf kind of looks like a Muslim headscarf. If you squint.

Believe it or not, I’m not making this up. The Boston Globe reported on a Dunkin’ Donuts ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a scarf that bears passing resemblance to a keffiyeh, a traditional male headscarf in Islam. I don’t see the resemblance, but that could be because 1) Rachael Ray isn’t a Muslim guy, and 2) it’s not on her head. But that’s just me.

Michelle Malkin (and others) looked a little too far into the ad and immediately thought “terrorist!” Apparently, the keffiyeh has come to symbolize “murderous Palestinian jihad”, mostly due to Yasser Arafat. The mindless mouth-foaming of Malkin and her fellow conservative bloggers resulted in Dunkin’ Donuts pulling the ad.

Alas, I can’t find the video anywhere online. But the Globe article has a good picture of the scarf in question. To be fair, keffiyeh’s have indeed become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, but I honestly don’t think this scarf looks anything like one. Similar pattern, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean anything. Two objects can look similar without actually being the same. It’s pretty simple, but I guess you can’t be an ultra-conservative blogger (or a Fox News commentator) without drawing false conclusions.

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It’s not just guns

Published
by
Cody
on May 24, 2008
in Rant
. 2 Comments

While browsing through Reddit today, I came across a news story about an 18-year-old actor in the upcoming Harry Potter movie who was fatally stabbed. Sad stuff, really. He was protecting his younger brother from some maniac with a knife who was stabbing a lot of people outside a bar. The article then went on about knife attack statistics and how much of a problem stabbing is in Britain.

That got me thinking. In modern times, Britain has restricted use of firearms since 1903, banned automatic weapons since the 1930s, and finally went all-out and banned handguns in 1997 after a brutal massacre the year before. As a result, shooting deaths have stayed fairly low. After all, if you make it impossible to get firearms legally, only people willing to break the law will be able to get them. That’s a reasonably small amount of the population (7% of the homicides committed in 2005 and 2006 involved guns). Even so, I am against gun control that gets too strict. To quote the overquoted: guns don’t kill, crazy people with guns do.

At any rate, the British don’t much have to worry about people getting shot by their neighbor. What they do have to worry about, though, is getting stabbed by their neighbor. Guns are far from being the only lethal objects around. The average person has access to plenty of dangerous things without having to get a gun. Steak knife? Check. Blowtorch? Check. Automobile? Double check.

It seems to me that banning guns doesn’t solve the underlying problem, which is, of course, people getting killed by other people. Banning knives wouldn’t help, either, since a person could use a sharpened screwdriver. Banning screwdrivers wouldn’t help because there’s always the last resort of bare hands. Problem: you has it.

Since I’m not a psychologist (even though I did take that animal psychology class in college), I won’t go into great detail, but from a layman’s point of view, it looks like it would be more productive to address the why of homicide, instead of the how. In other words, figure out and eliminate the cause of violent crime. It doesn’t really matter what people use to kill each other with. It matters that they kill each other in the first place. Of course, it’s a much larger undertaking to fix society than it is to take away society’s toys. But it can be done. After all, utopia is a realistic possibility, right? Right? Or am I preaching to the anarchist choir?

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