I keep a notebook with me most of the time. It is full of random thoughts, mad scribblings and general blather. I'm thinking and hoping that what I'm slinging into the notebook might eventually make a diary, but that doesn't always happen. There are dozens of random thoughts on various pages, each interesting but not anywhere near developed enough to merit a diary.
So, it's time to clean out the notebook. Here is a collection of random thoughts, from the past two weeks out of my notebook. Perfect for a Saturday afternoon.
I'll start off with the bruhaha over the New Yorker cartoon. My only question is this: after every other t-shirt and button at the Republican convention has some sort of knock-off of that cartoon, will the New Yorker go after anyone for copyright infringement? Will the New Yorker even still be in business? I'm just askin'. (I won't add a link here, simply because I don't feel like giving the New Yorker any more clicks to their site for such a stupid cartoon.)
Now, there are some places I won't take my son. Car shopping, the grocery store, WalMart and political rallies come to mind. It's simply silly expecting a 5 year old to deal well with the kind of patience such places require and I refuse to take him anyplace that will start the begging for a toy or various brightly-packaged sugary cereals. However, there are parents who bring their children to these places and I really don't raise my eyebrows; it's just a difference in parenting that isn't all that important. But I was having dinner in Hooters the other night and a 6 year old girl is having her birthday dinner there! What kind of lunatic world am I living in? I thought this place was the root of some anti-feminist evil? And the 6 year old girl wasn't the only one there. There were two 10-13 year old girls there as well, brought by their families. Now, yeah, I'm a dirty soon-to-be-divorced early 30s guy. I'm having a good time at Hooters. But I won't be bringing my son there for a long time, and if I had a daughter <shudder in fear> I wouldn't even tell her about the place. What the hell are these parents thinking? Do they want their daughters working there? I'm just askin'.
Last weekend I was driving between Cincinnati and Atlanta. I've got Sirius sat radio in my car, and was listening to the Talk Left channel. Dave Marsh was on, taking calls from around the nation, shrilling about how Obama is dropping in the polls and his "move to the center" would cost him the election. I called him up and informed him that the Newsweek poll he was referring to had been critiqued here on Kos. "DailyKos??" he shrieked. "That's a Democratic Party mouthpiece!" He hung up on me a few seconds later. But that conversation left me with a question: If a "liberal" talk show or tv show or blog is just spouting the usual MSM talking points, then are they still "liberal?" I'm just askin'.
I started a new job this week, working for a BIG corporation. Huge. It's my first time working for such a behemoth, and I came quickly to this realization: Is there some law that states what this training must entail? Is there some company that sold a sexual harassment training system to most of America? Because I've worked for several car dealerships in my life, one local communications company and now this corporation, and every one has inflicted the same sexual harassment training on me. It's two hours long, starts with a quiz (which of these situations could be sexual harassment?), has a terribly-acted video in the middle, a nice long lecture from a dour human resources manager and ends with a test (which of these situations could be sexual harassment?) Who came up with this stuff? I'm just askin'.