The Prolem with Caffeine

I love caffeine.  It’s one of my happy things.  But I’ve toned down my consumption of it drastically.  I stopped drinking soda altogether near the end of last year.  I’ve had diet coke twice since then as a intentional cheat/reward.  I map out my intake through the day.  I am a cube rat analyst so I know at roghly 9:10 I’ll have my first cup.  Around 11:00 I’ll have my second.  Later in the day I’ll have some tea.  Decaffeinated if I can find it.  After dinner I’ll have a latte as a pseudo desert and that will be it.  Three cups.  I stick to this number because I’ve read that is the safe amount.  Of course science, as it should, constantly updates, negates or changes the findings.   I’ll go on the current data and just hope for the best.  Caffeine is from what I’ve read, and I figure I ingest it so I might as well be aware of it’s affects, is a pretty awesome wonder drug.  It’s side effects are minimal (if you don’t go taking copious amounts) and it’s beneficial effects are rather surprising.

Cracked, shockingly well researched for a comedy site, did an article about it you can read here:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-scientific-ways-coffee-gives-you-super-powers/

But caffeine has a few pitfalls.  Like the fact that it might be synthetic depending on what your drinking.  Which isn’t terrible except for the fact that it kinda is.  The synthetic version still jumpstarts our brains and bodies  into overdrive.  But because it isn’t paired down by the namby-pamby herbal bullshit it jump kicks your teeth into your throat and puts you into hyper drive even faster than it’s boring all natural tree hugging caffeine you find in things like guarana.  You get the high faster and you crash sooner.  It’s the street version of caffeine some guy in a trench coat offers in a hushed voice.

But let’s say you don’t give a shit about chemicals because dammit you’re an American and American’s don’t read warning labels because fuck that.  Well, that’s pretty stupid.  I have two reason why.  One is a personal experience and one I read on the internet.  I drove from Savannah Georgia to Avon Connecticut in a day, with an extended pit stop in Brooklyn,  so I could have a full day to recover before going back to work.  During this twenty two hours I guzzed untold amounts of coffee and soda.  To make sure I didn’t dehydrate I had water as well.  Every two to four hours I’d pull over and move around.  At the beginning I swapped off with my wife so we had two/four hours spurts each.  At the end when we were entering Maryland it was basically the Ben show and I cranked the radio up put on raunchy comedy from Pandora streaming that would keep me awake and drove until the middle of night.  To put in perspective we left around 8 in the morning and arrived at our house around 4 the next morning.  I was slightly out of it.  The last five hours I was practically trembling from the caffeine in my system I felt sick and twitchy.  I awoke in the middle of the night, after collapsing on the bed and passing out, and had little to no memory of it.  Adi explained this behavior to me and I could just touch the memories through the fogginess of partial sleep.  The next day I felt rather awful and did next to nothing.  I’m sure the fast food at the rest stops did little to help but I blame caffeine for my somnambulism.

Then there is the story of the twenty eight year old moto cross start whose heart stopped due to drinking eight red bulls.  Not a good decision.  The red bulls not the hear stopping, I don’t think that part was a conscious decision.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i5/Caffeine-Jitters.html

Caffeine addiction though seemingly laughable is very real and rather frightening.  I had to totally quite caffeine for a week and the intense headaches were less than spectacular.  Honestly the phrase ‘less than spectacular’ can go stuff itself as it is such a light description in its vagueness, only giving a semblance of sarcasm and no real depth of measure.  The headaches were the midway point between migraines and normal headaches.

But the insidious thing about caffeine is that it is a drug and it isn’t treated as such.  Our children are ingesting it, in copious amounts and no one seems to care.  While caffeine is a super-drug for adults it might not be the best thing for the still developing neural pathways of our future generation.  But why do we view it with such blaze acceptance?  Yeah, on the danger scale it ranks way down there with don’t eat right before you swim but it’s an item that is so pervasive and so widely used you might think some education might be wanted.  But I guess if we treated caffeine as drug we might end up vilifying it and the food and beverage companies wouldn’t appreciate that too much.  Or worse we’d, shudder, tax coffee.  Fuck that, ignore what I was saying.

Ben

http://cenblog.org/terra-sigillata/2010/11/17/four-loko-for-locos/

http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/02/Caffeine-Source-Bean-Leaf-Lab.html

http://www.organicauthority.com/health/need-a-lift-or-a-jolt-the-important-differences-between-natural-and-synthetic-caffeine-natural-caffeine-vs-synthetic-why-the-difference-is-important.html

Never Run a Restaurant

There are things that everybody seems to think they know a whole lot about.    I wouldn’t walk up to a chemist and tell them they are using the incorrect solvents.  First off I have no idea if I am using the correct terminology, second I can’t determine exactly what is and isn’t a solvent, and thirdly it would be incredibly stupid.  I have some vague understanding of chemistry due to my incessant book reading and perusing of the internet, I did pass my high school chemistry lass but that’s about it.  But for some reason everyone thinks they know better when it comes to food.  To an extent I used to think the same thing which was about as stupid as the chemistry example.

One of the first nights the restaurant I was “managing” was open there was a particular incident that stuck in my mind over several others.  I put manage in quotations because it was really like trying to keep order in a tornado.  We were busy are there was a gentleman and his son waiting impatiently at the door.  The person who was supposed to be greeting our customers was off doing god know’s what.  I was running around fixing problems with point of sale system that no one actually understood how to use (only moderately disastrous).  Seeing them wait impatiently I smoothed back my hair, already made slick from exertion and nerves, and tried to bring myself into a semblance of put togetherness.  I informed them there would be a shirt wait.  The teenager, whom I will refer to Asshole junior for this example, jabbed his finger in the air and belched out something to the lines that a table was open.  He was correct but he lacked several points of understanding.  I will list those momentarily after I recount this story.  I politely insisted that I would do the best I could and have a table ready as soon as possible as we were a bit busy.  This was quite obvious to any observer as we had waitresses whirring about busily tending to their tables.  Not getting an answer and having precious few moments I departed.  The father stood there silently.  He loomed, like an attack dog at the ready of this vile little spawn.  I ran about looking for a server not underwater with work.  Then I looked for  one I could actually trust finding one who had a moment I conferred with here and yes she could take another table.  I didn’t run to the back because we were actually fully staffed in the kitchen, our expeditor had shown up on time and was completely sober.  The only issue was the front of the house was all fucked up.  After securing the table making sure the shiftless busser’s had actually done their job, instead of occupying themselves with he usually persiflage, I raced back to the entry and informed the pair of assholes that they could be seated.  I saw a mischievous grin from Asshole junior and I knew they would never step foot back into the restaurant.  He took such glee in saying that it was alright and that they were leaving I stopped listening to the words and only took bits of them.  He parroted some of my earlier words about being busy and they sounded perverse coming from his lips.

They left and I felt defeated, hollow, angry.  This would be a common theme. Sadly there is a great deal of  giant assholes who treat people who work in restaurant’s like shit.  I never could quite understood this fundamental flaw in so many people.  I remember in college an acquaintance would wait for the group to leave and swipe the cash tip off the table.  Had I known at the time I would have slapped the taste out of his mouth or at least dressed him down so thoroughly he might melt into a creature of pure shame and humiliation.  I recall being yelled at angrily by patrons who acted as if I had sodomized their parents for not having their food out in a timely manner.  One lady was crying.  I think it was more at her husband’s explosion anger and the prospect of actually having to live with him for the rest of her life.  Working in the restaurant had people treat me, an educated reasonable adult, like I was pond scum incapable of rubbing out a thought if it might save my life.  I was treated as villain and an idiot.  And this was after a refund.

Back to an earlier point that people often do not understand.  Just because there is an open table does not mean there is an open seat.  Here is a few reasons why.  There are only so many tables each person on wait can handle at once.  Really shitty one’s can only handle three at most.  And sometimes you just need warm bodies so you can’t have a full wait staff of competent people.  Good ones at least five tables.  If you have fifteen tables and three waitresses chances are you can’t have all the tables full at once.  Also there is the back of the house.  Did all your cooks come in today?  Did they just get paid the day before and they spent four fifths of it on coke and booze?  Did they sneak any alcohol in from the bartender?  Are they pissed off at the wait staff enough that they’ll mess with them by either fucking up the food and letting it get cold without notifying them?  Is the host actually prepared?  Is any of your wait staff in the breakdown lane?  Did we run out of something.  Is someone currently crying on staff?

This is just the beginning of the headache faced by someone trying to run a restaurant.  I only wish this stuff wasn’t true.  I normally don’t like to make assumptions on groups of people and label it as true but restaurant people are fucking broken.  Also, sadly, everyone is stealing.  Maybe it’s comping food or drinks when they shouldn’t.  Maybe it’s pouring too much booze into the drink instead of the standard one and half ounces.  Maybe it’s they was people manipulate the point of sales machine.  Or how they forget to tip out bussers or bartenders.  Or maybe it’s simply the cash drawer being light or stock disappearing.

Here is a quick list of why running a restaurant is a bad idea.  It will be missing quite a bit but I don’t feel like dredging up all my bad memories.

If you enjoy being able to trust people and do not like harboring intense paranoia you should be doing this.  I have never felt such rampant paranoia and mistrust ever.  I actually found out people were spying on me.  I was one of the managers.  And one of the owners was spying on me without consent from the other owner.  I was lied to constantly.  Like the time an employee told me about the concert they were going to.  Then the next morning when they had a shift they were mysteriously sick.  I outright confronted them and they denied being hung over.  And that was a person who I considered a friend.

If you are not used to get yelled at and treated like shit by customers turn around.  I had a particular customer who I know came in simple to be a pain in the ass make a complicated order he knew would be fucked up, eat half, complain and expect a comped check.  Obviously the wait staff hated him.  But instead of doing the responsible thing, like making sure this awful human being had what he wanted so he could leave they ended up forgetting about it until it was too late and fucked it up.  The only solution was make sure I or someone else went into the kitchen told the cooks what the special request were, double check the slip and double check with this jerk bag his order.  At this point it was ego stroke about being taken care of so a minor mishap no longer concerned him.  He was happy to be treated so well.  This was beyond the wait staffs comprehension.  I can’t blame them as swallowing our pride and smiling to such awful people is soul crushing but it is your job.

If you don’t like firing people go home, because you’ll need to, a lot.  I had to tell a busser with ablack eye and who had, seemingly, extra muscles that most humans weren’t afforded that he would no longer be working for us without explicitly stating that everyone besides his buddy the cook hated him and he sucked at life.  I was pissed because out head busser put up the schedule to early with some notable cuts.  This large, possible dangerous, human being was looking for questions.  I spun it so thoroughly at the end that he shook my hand and walked out happier than when he came in.  I did not enjoy it.  Not because I thought he might snap and attack me but because I had to tell him I was taking away his livelihood.  This is an ugly, ugly thing.  I had to fire more people and every time I felt ill even when they had been acting in a manner so brazenly stupid after having warnings about said behavior.

If you don’t like fire drills don’t do this.  And I mean constantly.  People will quit in the middle of shifts, call out at the last second without finding a replacement, get into arguments, and alert you to disasters only at the last second.  There is always an issue with ordering food.  It’s never enough, it’s not right, the supplier fucked up, the food went bad because it wasn’t labeled right and it was stored wrong.

If you like a normal schedule and need sleep.  Say goodbye to any weekend.  Say goodbye to sleeping or having a social life.  I had Monday and Tuesday off, kinda.  I got calls almost every day.  The first few weeks I worked all seven days.  I would show up at ten in the morning and leave around one thirty in the next morning.  It was ugly.  My schedule calmed down but I was never truly away.  I got calls on days off.  Emergencies in the middle of the night.  Shifts to be covered.  Fire to put out.  I lost perhaps around ten pounds the first month, maybe more.  I looked like and felt like shit.

If you expect people to be trainable this is not a good job.  This fucking hurts the most.  I know that there are stupid people.  I also know that there are stupid people who can still learn a whole lot things.  But the laziness, the arrogance, and outright intentional ignorance was mind blowing.  I would stand in front of the point of sale machine calmly speaking in plain English trying desperately not to be condescending, while desperately wanting to be, explaining how to push fucking buttons to make shit work so I don’t have to fire your ass.  They stared blankly like cows and shook their heads yes when I asked they understood.  Hours later I would get a frantic call.  I would calmly explain to the poor idiot who got caught in the whirlpool of stupid how to fix the issue for the wait staff I had explained the same problem to earlier.

If you don’t like, drama.  I don’t mean petty high school drama like “Susie’s totally likes Brad but her friend Donna does too, that bitch.”  I mean drugs, extra marital affairs, constant arguments, lying, stealing, violence and felonies.  The back of the house is a special place.  They have their own rules and behavior that isn’t acceptable anywhere else.  Pinching nipples, grab ass, constant harassment and name calling is the light stuff.  Physical violence can and will happen.  I almost knocked someone out and I am not at all quick to go to that route.  I know too many bars where people have been roofied.  I have been shocked to find out who was sleeping with who.  I was especially upset when it involved a customer.  I know too many sob stories that I wish I didn’t.

That’s just a snippet.  I haven’t even begun to talk about menu’s, inventory, sales people, advertizing, or proper process.  There is a reason why some many restaurants go out of business.  Everyone thinks they know best but they have no idea.  So if you have this urge to open up a new vegan place that cater to all the hipsters or a new bistro pub that will be just perfect in this area do yourself a favor and just burn a stack of money instead.  I was only in the business for a year and it threw my whole life into a tail spin.  I’m still a bit angry to this day.  I’ve let go an incredible amount of hate that I harbored.  I used to say if I only I knew what I knew now but I just don’t care anymore.  It isn’t worth it.  I have nothing I need to prove in this arena.

So I give this advice so that others may really give pause as to whether they really want to put their sanity and financial well being at risk.  I won’t say I told you so if you ignore me because I know all too well the sting.  I’ll just wish you well and hope you get lucky.

Ben

The Generation of The Lost

Normally I’m of a mind to say when a person becomes an adult after a certain point in time they are no longer able to lay blame at the feet of the parents.  There is a tendency to hold onto these excuses and clutch to the safety of finding fault elsewhere.  I think one of the true tests of being a fully realized adult is accepting your own failures.  Mine are myriad and I only have myself to blame.  Yes, there were often external forces and, yes, I was often surrounded by assholes intent on ruining things but it doesn’t excuse me from not succeeding.  Everyone has their own unique difficulties.  I’ve stopped trying to weigh out such intangibles.  There a many people who think they suffer the sling and arrows of misfortune when compared to most they suffer no more than stiff breeze and an inconvenience.  It’s not like we are Chinese prisoners who are cruelly forced to play online games to farm gold and so the prison system can profit by selling them to spoiled kids in the States.  (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/06/02/cinhese-prisoners-forced-to-famr-world-of-warcraft-gold).  Meta humor points: Insert obligatory racist Chinese Gold Farmer joke that only gamers can understand.

I continue to mess up but as much as I want to say it’s another person’s fault, and my god is that an attractive excuse, it does me nothing but harm to embrace this false platitude.  So I’ll stick with fully realized self loathing over ignorant narcissistic rage.

However, to an extent my generation is screwed for many reasons.  There actually are forces aligned against us that are wholly unfair and completely out of our control.  Not that we can’t succeed despite this but the deck is stacked against this generation far more than our parents.  I could lead off and simply say, “fuck you baby boomers; you inconsiderate leeches, you arrogant shitheads, you egomaniacal bastards” but that gets me nowhere.  And baby boomers simply have not cornered the market in arrogance.

So what are these forces that are bending us over and violating us, you ask?  The simple answer is economic oppression and the war of the classes.  I’ll let a quote from Bill Hicks’ set this up.

"If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses.  And what can this tell you about American culture?  Well, look at the drugs we use.  Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates:  Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Fridat to to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in."

As a cube rat who swills coffee every day this could be a ugly pill to swallow.  I somewhat like my job.  There are things I’d rather do but I’m not unhappy and I’m living comfortable.  But I don’t have kids and my wife also has a good job.  Now imagine like most everyone else I have high student loan debts.  My spending becomes a wee bit tighter.  Or I get sick.  Even with decent healthcare (without it I’d most likely lose my house trying to pay) I could be in debt for years.  The worst problem is if I really get hurt and can’t work them I might as well hope my friend’s couch is comfortable.  At a time when I need more money I’m making less.  How about the fact that bankruptcy doesn’t work the same anymore.

I like details and specific’s so read this if you’re ready to get riled up.

http://jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-soul-of-student-debt/

The short version is a school teacher, who is a parent, broke her back and had financial difficulties.  She applied for bankruptcy to alleviate her debt and forgive her student loans.  She won.  Which is great.  Then the people who owned her student debt filed and got that part overturned.  This kind of defeats the point of the whole tabula rasa bit of Chapter 11.  Why you might ask?  Because the law is often ugly and cold.  It is slanted because we allow it to be slanted.  There are plenty of bleeding hearts who rally for our rights and live their life for the betterment of the rest of us.  But the counterbalance is heavily funded by companies who don’t give a shit.  Your plight means nothing.  They simply want to keep the board happy and make a profit.  It’s legal and it works.  Companies will rarely take a stance that doesn’t give them funding.  Morality simply doesn’t pay.  Which leads to my other point.

Companies have more power now that ever.  Corporate politics are amazing.  They are slick smart well funded sharks.  I admire them from afar and with just about every inch of me hate them passionately.  These are people who think nothing of trampling my rights.  They give less and charge more.

My generation pays more for less.  Look at the worth of a college degree.  The cost of an education has risen dramatically but the reward has dwindled.  A college degree is only good for entry level position at best.  A masters might weigh you down more than help you.  There are over qualified member os the workforce  everywhere.  I tell anyone who can listen it is worthless to go into law school.  This isn’t true of course but the market is oversaturated.  Old firms have imploded and you see senior level partners competing.  Who luck does a person who graduated from a garbage law school have against those with ten, twenty years of real work have.  None essentially.  And guess what, you have some nice student loans coming due real quick.

Remember when only person from a family of our had to work and the other parents could stay home.  There were two cars and a house.  No?  Neither can I.  Where the fuck did that go?  I’d trade a smart phone for some of that.  I mean we do have the whole living longer thing and cooler technology and my TV has awesome fucking resolution.

I mean it is nothing new the wealthy have their thumbs pressing down hard on the rest.  We couldn’t be allowed to have a fair share.  Wealthy elite are there for a reason.  I can’t blame them.  Why give freely when you don’t have to?  When there is no punishment other than a moral stance.  It’s not like ending corporate tax loopholes and doges could improve our economy that much.  Or maybe not:

http://boldprogressives.org/limiting-corporate-tax-deferrals-would-cut-deficit-by-twice-as-much-as-hiking-medicare-age/?source=reddit-politics#.UQWBUb872Ag

According this article we could actually raise somewhere around $114 Billion this way.  That about $1,000.00 per person living in the United States.  Obviously you should trust everything on the internet implicitly… but there is undoubtedly some truth there whether or not the math proves out.

Our society is built to keep the poor to stay poor.  Education in this country is going to shit.  Guess where the shittiest schools are?  The cities.  Guess where the bulk of poverty is?  The city.  Sweet, so we under-educate those who most need a leg up.  Oh, and guess who gets to control the context of our textbooks?  Texas.  This isn’t necessarily a problem.  Until that is the religious right figured it out and now things like creationism gets shoved into books and treated as fact.

Read more here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

http://www.alternet.org/culture/revisionaries-texas-schoolbook-battle-crazier-you-thought

Yeah, so our education system is in the hands of people who think science is myth and faith is fact.  This should disturb rational human beings.  I know plenty of people who are religious.  They are not ignorant or hateful and they do not push their beliefs.  They wouldn’t push this nonsense.  But these alarmist fringe assholes are pushing the envelope and are hurting the educational system.  Science is under attack by these people.  Science is part of what made this country a leader.

Don’t think the US is alone in this.  Look at the issues Spain is having:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/world/europe/in-spain-having-a-job-no-longer-guarantees-a-paycheck.html?pagewanted=all

So we are screwed by the legal system with less ways to get out of debt, we are held back by educational costs and worsening standards, as well as being oppressed by the mighty corporations (this is only slight exaggeration).

But now I come back to the first point.  If we know the issues we have inherited why has there been no change.  Because it’s hard and it feels like pushing a boulder uphill that threatens to roll back any instant.  Our apathy, our bitter bleak outlook stop us before we start our action.  So yeah, we are a generation of failures.  We are a generation of the lost.  But staying that way we only have ourselves to blame.  So the question is what does it take to create change?

Ben

Martial Awesome

If two English professors argued over the meaning of Xanadu in Kubla Khan by Coleridge they might throw a disparaging remark or they might debate with frenetic energy while they flail their leather patched arms in large, garish  gesticulations.  They would not however throw a spin hook kick at each other’s face.  That would be both preposterous and awesome.  However with martial artists it is quite possible that an argument, even a simple one, could lead to testosterone fueled rage punching or spinning hook kicks.  The martial arts is inherently violent and practicing any of them brings a certain familiarity to violence.  I’m not saying practicing makes you want to punch people all the time (but it might solve an issue or two) but that getting hit or hitting others doesn’t seem as alien once you’ve been in the environment.

A problem with martial arts that leads to the possibility on dangerous entanglements and ego flaring is the often convoluted and obfuscated backgrounds of differing styles.  Just with Kempo alone there are multiple splits and schisms.  This history is muddy and confusing.  Unsurprising for an art that migrated from China to Okinawa to Japan to Hawaii to the West Coast then finally to the East Coast.  Differing version of the art stayed in each of those spots.  You’ll see the Shaolin monks practicing something completely alien techniques with a few very familiar move sets.  Even in the same regions you’ll see differences; even dojo to dojo or instructor to instructor.  Kempo is just one of many arts where there are splits and arguments.  Then there is the whole my style is better arguments.  Or my style is more accurate or this the best way to throw or this the best way to hit.  Everything is up for debate.  And it isn’t something so easily discovered.  You can’t simply say that way’s bullshit mine is better.  You have to know both techniques or movements of principles or what have you.  And not simple know it on the surface but truly grasp it.  There are things I’ve been studying for five years with the art that I’m only now getting a real appreciation for.  Imagine twenty more years.  Then imagine some brat telling me he knows a better way.  It’s a fine line to walk.  Humility should reside within the soul of every martial artist but it isn’t always there as strong as it should be.  Humility is integral.  Growth is stunted  without it, you can’t listen and learn if you think you know everything, and having an understanding of how to inflict copious amounts damage is not something to be taken lightly.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject as I’ve been exposed to quite a few different dojos and several different martial styles thanks to some wonderful friends and martial teachers I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.  My understanding and appreciation for the arts has grown considerably.  I’ve been thrown around by people who do things that seem like witchcraft and appear to the untrained eye preposterous.  Not that there aren’t frauds out but I can guarantee the pain I felt was not fake.  Quick aside, the worst pain in my martial career involve a lock applied that actually made me think my whole arm might simple unravel, give up and never quite work right again – it was fine afterwards, mostly.  One of the things that strike me as interesting is the view set for martial artists varies much more than I’d think.  There really are places like the Cobra Kai from The Karate Kid.  Some dojos take fighting way too seriously and injury at these places isn’t an if it’s a when.  This seems unnecessary to me.  But the reason these people are studying is different from mine.  I’m quite content to hit softer or to intentionally miss my partner during application of technique.  Both are in wrong in a sense for training how to deal with a situation in the street but both let me remain working with my partner.  This is part of the root of the problem or at least one of them.

The dojo is a constructed environment.  You have a person attack in a prescribed way you both agree on some technique can be done.  This is of course totally unrealistic.  The guy in street can’t be predicted.  They might punch in a big ugly haymaker, which is likely and preferable (preferable in that I takes a long time to swing those and it gives me a whole bunch of time to react, of course that’s if I see it) or they might be high school athletes and try to wrestle or tackle me to the ground (much less preferable, their buddy might be around who could kick me for one, two ground is dangerous period).  But this prescribed way lets you understand the technique and it’s principles.  Once you get it you can deconstruct it.  Figure out why it works.  Then apply it to other situations.  That is often missing from some of the classical martial training.  Its often twenty different move set to be remembered per type of attack.  The bloating of material can be a bad thing as your plan only works before you get hit or if the arm bar is slightly more to the left.

But each dojo is its own little culture.  I’m reminded of this every time I enter someone else’s place of study.  I often remind myself as I tend to have mouth that spurts out thought before it passes through a filter.  This is bad when you are a guest and worse when you are surrounded by people who train to fight.  Fortunately I’ve been polite and humble even when I’ve been weirded out or uncomfortable at places.  It might be normal at one places to train hard and focus on fitness.  Another place is obsessed with realistic street training but not the spiritual or historical significance.  Another still might be a McDojo.  Those are universally reviled within the community.  Quite a few sprang up after The Karate Kid as every parent decided maybe their little guy might need some wizened sensei to straighten out their kid.  Meanwhile the kids haze dreams of tournaments and jumping side kicks.  The teachers simple have a desire to cash checks.  They pass on just enough knowledge to be slightly credible and produce belt factories.  The kids keep getting to next level and they show some progress but mostly its ego stroking.  They don’t produce legitimate black belts.  The legitimacy of black belts is a big point of controversy.  Some styles mandate set amounts of years beside having material before achieving rank, regardless of talent.  I don’t disagree with the practice I simply don’t prescribe.

There are whole articles on what constitutes a McDojo and what constitutes real martial arts.  I find some of it laughable.  Simply because these people often come from a very specific mindset.  They need a set of knowledge for grappling, striking and ground work.  But they slop varying style together haphazardly.  There is a reason boxers fight the way they do.  Boxers are great gifted fighters.  I wouldn’t want to fight one.  But if I did I would kick the shit out of their shins and knees.  Why?  Because they don’t train to the handle that.  Plus getting punch from a boxer sound very unappetizing.  You keep throwing up these what if and the style has to morph and change and be muddied.  You don’t just take a kick from one style and punch from another.  Picking and choosing doesn’t work.  There is a foundation of knowledge and understanding the leads somewhere.  That style moves a certain way and that’s why they kick like that.  You take the kick but not the movement you lose the reasoning behind it.

There tends to be this idea that the best fighting style is the best style.  I don’t believe that.  I’m not learning simply to be able to defend myself.  I’m learning to kick ass in tournaments.  I’m not learning to show off or make money.  I’m learning because I enjoy it and it has made me be a better person.  My martial journey has been about improvement.  In part it’s about crafting technique but it’s a also about bettering me.  That is the reason why martial arguments seem petty to me.  That’s why I simply listen when people argue about legitimacy.  Yes, I’ll sometimes get swept away and say people are not where they need to be for rank or that I think certain techniques are useless.  But I try not to do that.  I’ve only been studying for five years and every day I learn that I really have only scratched the surface of understanding.  The better I get the more I see that I can’t do.  Every time I think I perfect a stance or a punch or a movement something new pops up.

So I’ll try to stay out of argument about which style is better and what attitude is correct because the reason I chose to study might not the right one for others.  All I know is that I know only a fraction and that I’ll never be done learning.  So who am I to say one style is better or that one kind of punch is best?

Ben

The Future of Gaming

It is entirely possible that I have spent more time playing video games than any other activity.  This may, or may not, be a bad thing.  However this does give me a wee bit of experience and knowledge into world of gaming.  What gives me more knowledge is having studied and read about the subject.  Many years ago when I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life I took online classes for breaking into the video game industry.  I didn’t stay with it but I picked up some interesting knowledge.  So I feel that I have a decent wealth of experience to post about where the industry is going as well as where it could be going.

Before I delve into the future I want to talk about the past, as I find it important to know where things were so we can see where they are going.  I want to talk about the industry but also about my history with gaming.  So I’ll give a short biased view of gaming history tinted with personal experience.

Video gaming for me started in the mid eighties when I was introduced to the NES (the Nintendo entertainment system or Famicon in Japan).  This did not immediately overtake my life as it has done for so many children.  I was still very active and relied on imagination for entertainment.  The older I became the more and more time I spent with a controller in hand.  Video games were developed with slightly different intentions then.  Some of you may be familiar with the term Nintendo hard.  The reason for this term was there were simply awful soul crushingly hard games out there that just took great pleasure in destroying any and all ego you might have.  Battletoads is a great example of this.  I intend on getting past that speeder bike level one day.  But for young Ben that was the bane of my existence.  It was fun double dragon like game with cartoony violence almost in the vein of Tex Avery slapstick.  Then the third level came around and the speeder bike ruined everything.  I still think about that level every once and a while.  The worst however was Rygar.   Hours and hours learning the pattern and levels.  Slowly crawling through the level maps and defeating the bosses.  Then the last level you had to defeat all the bosses again one after another.  Then the final boss.  Who would hit me five time for every one hit I dished out.  It was infuriating.  Yet I came back for more.  Not all Nintendo games were this hard but enough were.  Part of the reason for this was padding.  They wanted the game to last more than five minutes.  They amped up the difficulty not just to make it challenging but to lengthen game time.  This was done through grinding in RPG’s.  You had to fight monsters over and over to level up enough to get to the next area and not be squashed.  I remember playing Dragon Warrrior (really Dragon Quest) and grinding with Chimeras and slimes for hours.  Also that’s the first time I ever read the word herb and because I didn’t know any better thought it actually pronounced the British way with the ‘h’ not silent.

A quick list of some of the exceeding evil games that gave more suffering than enjoyment:

• Battletoads (this game has ruined childhoods)
• Rygar
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (fuck you underwater electric level)
• Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
• Castlevania (I picked it up not long ago and got passed the medusa head area that always killed me but I still keep getting mercilessly slaughtered time and again)
• Ghost’s n’ goblins
• I would include Contra, it appeared on numerous hardest lists but I knew the code so it wasn’t so bad
• Any Mega Man game
• Out of This World (you are immediately chased by a monster you can’t kill)

I’d include more but I can’t remember all of them and thinking back on these games I remember truly how much time was spent on them.  And I replayed games quite often finding out all the little eccentricities and easter eggs.  This was substantially harder before the proliferation of the internet.

I’m glad that the ‘Nintendo hard’ practice is mostly over (save for a few games like Demon’s Souls).  I like some challenge in my games.  I loved the last console Castlevania.  It was hard, often frustrating but not unfair.  I go back to some of older these games however and I want to rip my hair out.  They taught me patience and persistence but did nothing for my blood pressure or temper.  Now we’ve gone in the whole other direction.  There’s barely any penalty for death in many video games.  RPG’s still hold onto the grinding a bit too much (see Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy) but they have evolved a bit.  I always loved RPG’s.  Looking back at some of the games I played I wondered how I thought the story lines so engaging.  They were pretty awful but I was glued to the set.  There is a primal connection to you avatar.  It’s strong connection.  You act out through them.  Your button push is translated through them.  So their actions are yours.  The story affecting them in turn affects you.  It’s a deeper relationship than you might have empathy wise with a character in a book or film.

This deep connection is part of the reason why video games are so addicting.  Another reason is they are intentionally built that way.  Stat progression is built in, item management, constant gathering and fetch quests.  Loot, loot and more loot.  Look at Borderlands 2, the whole game is predicated on constantly upgrading equipment.

Once the console wars started 'Nintendo hard' began to peel away.  It started a wee bit before this as Nintendo had such dominance in the market they were as afraid of keeping kids hooked anymore.  They had years of constant consumer behavior and addictive behaviors stored up.  The first console wars were pretty awesome.  My cousins had Sega Genesis which then seemed amazing compared to my 8 bit console.  Thinking in bits seems absolutely ridiculous now.  The thing about having two consoles is this gave developers a bit of room.  You had these strict guidelines and approval necessary to be a Nintendo game.  The Nintendo Seal of Approval was a big deal.  There were a few cartridges made without them but that didn’t happen much and not with permission.  SO the Super Nintendo came out and it was awesome.  Things like Mortal Kombat were now possible.  Or Donkey Kong Country.  These were serious graphical upgrades.  The face of gaming was changing.  Mario was being challenged, legitimately by a cooler mascot in Sonic with a bunch more attitude.  Sonic embodied the nineties considerably more.  He was, in a sense, a foreboding of the extreme era in some ways.  By extreme era I mean the bullshit marketers latched onto.  The X games being a good example and every television commercial in the nineties that was way too loud being a bad example.  Video games were growing up with the audience.  We weren’t kids anymore.  We were teenagers or getting closer to being teenagers.  I am part of the generation that first fully embraced video games.  Most of the things right and most of the things wrong with video games can be laid at the feet of my generation.  Now I think games while still appealing to us are primarily aimed at the younger generation but I’ll get to that later.

So games and systems started getting more adult.  Gamers started growing savvier.  Computer games at the time were only getting bigger with the expanding influence of the internet.  Without the net MMO’s or RTS games wouldn’t be around.  I never got into computer gaming that much having been so attached to console gaming.  I did play a few classic adventure games (like Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island series) but I never jumped on the warcraft, starcraft, unreal bandwagon.  I would however when I was older get a bit sucked into a few MMO’s.

Before I move on I figure I met explain why gaming is important to me.  Besides the fact that I’ve been doing it so long and I rather do love it gaming has been rather important for a number of reasons.  Everyone, at one point, has been picked on as a child.  It’s what happens.  I was picked on quite a bit being a shy person with learning disabilities.  I was unable to understand why I was made fun as I always thought of myself as normal.  I just went around after awhile as thinking myself unlucky or, even worse, not worth being liked.  This changed obviously.  Mostly through hard work and growing up.  I don’t think I truly felt comfortable with myself until part way through high school.  I didn’t like being me.  This was awful.  Now I love being me and I’m happy for all the things I’ve experienced.  It keeps me humble and reminds of all the things I should and shouldn’t do.  Video games brought me great entertainment and companionship during this hard time.  I found games that brought me to fantastic places, letting me forget the chaos and unhappiness of school.  But gaming was insular and alone.  It was a solitary habit.  I think that’s part for the reason I never got that into computer gaming until much later.  I had no want to relate to other people.  I did want to have friends but my social anxiety held me away from working at it.  It was safe behind the controller.  There was always another life, another continue.  You could always restart fresh if you wanted.  There was comfort in that.

After Super Nintendo was Nintendo 64.  I remember knowing a guy who had s mall game store that dealt with imports. I was able to borrow the system and play Mario64 in Japanese a while before it the states.  It was jarring and unreal.  I stared in wonder.  I really could not believe that they did it.  Now they make games for portable devices that look far better than anything from that generation.  Nintendo 64 was also a wee bit of a disappointment in some senses.  There was nothing to play at launch beside Mario and Pilotwings.  I refused to buy Pilotwings.  Eventually Shadow of the Empire came out (in the days before Star Wars was still cool for me) and I had at least two games to play.  Having been used to Nintendo Hard I beat Mario so thoroughly there were no easter eggs or spoilers left.  Then there was the Gamecube.

Nintendo finally moved away from the cartridge.  They were going to make cd drive gaming system but flaked out on the deal.  This was great for industry as Nintendo backed out on Sony.  Sony reacted by making the Playstation.  The Playstation made history with games like Final Fantasy Seven and Silent Hill.  This competition was great.  Sadly the Dreamcast from Sega didn’t fair that well even though it was years ahead of its time.  Don’t believe me?  It had internet connectivity and screens inside the controllers over  decade ago.  Plus it had one of the best JRPG’s Skies of Arcadia before the genre started getting out of hand.  The game still holds up and it had an air of fun unseen in manner other games especially in RPG department where games take themselves a bit too seriously and spending more time dealing with convoluted storylines, emo characters not fitting or twenty minute long cut scenes that look nice but happen more often than combat than actually being fun.

Not only did Nintendo move away from the cartridge they went to mini cd’s.  I actually thought it was cool.  The system wasn’t bad but the tide’s had shifted.  With the xbox and playstation 2 a lot of games didn’t hit the system or hit much later.  Exclusive games were the bane of any diehard console fanboy or girl.  For me it was bit more uncommon to see people with multiple systems.  Now I see it quite regularly.  But then again I have a job now, I’m sure that has a quite a bit to do with it.  Gone were the days of Nintendominance.  Yes, I am proud of making up that word and no you can’t use it.  Okay, you can use but only with a credit to me.

But let me back track and talk about the evolution of multiplayer.  Multiplayer used to suck.  It was wait your turn for the other guy to die and then play.  That’s why people hated Luigi.  Not because he was green but because he was consolation, he was less than, he was always second.  It’s hard to get rid of that stigma.  But eventually there was more multiplayer that didn’t suck.  Contra for one.  Double Dragon for another.  But it was always just two people.  Unless you were at the arcade then it could be four and that was fucking awesome at the time.  I do think arcades have a chance to make a comeback if they do it right.  Dave and Buster’s was awful the last time I went.  No game interested me even remotely.  But perhaps having been to awesome arcades in part of the heyday it’s hard to compare.  Multiplayer’s first big change after co-op was the fighting game.  With a demographic of mostly young boys competition is natural.  Fighting game gave the opportunity for any kid to annihilate others.  This smirking vengeance is very attractive to a young man.  The biggest change to multiplayer was Goldeneye.  This game changed everything.  This revolutionized first person shooters on the console.  It’s affects can still be measured today.  Now multiplayer has gone in very different directions.  There are games now sold exclusively as multiplayer only or engineered mostly for multiplayer use.  All the modern shooty kill various enemy soldier games are based on the simple premise that twelve year old boys enjoy shooting other people and shouting racial epithets.  This is why I don’t play online much.  I played Halo 3 online for about two days.  That was enough.  I don’t play too much online.  I do however love co-op online.  It frees up my screen and I get to play with people I don’t get to see as often.  I bought a game specifically so I could play with someone out of state.  But as online gaming becomes more prevalent local multiplayer is often fading which saddens me.  I spent countless hours playing Conker’s Bad Fur Day multiplayer on the 64 with my college roommates.  Or the various Smash Brothers tournaments.  I played so much of that game I got overexposed and had to stop playing for months.

As I grew older my wants from video game shifted.   I moved away from Nintendo fanboyism.  I remember saving up for month to buy and xbox360 over six years ago.  The graphics the first time I saw them were amazing.  It boggled my mind how much the industry improved.  I looked up on wiki the changes made to computing power.  It rather impressive.  The NES (which wiki list as third generation) was 8 bits and had 2kb of ram and a processor of 1.79 Mhz.  The Super Nintendo doubled those stats – 16 bits, 125 Kib ram and 3.58 Mhz processor.  There were some expansions next and various in between consoles but the next big system was the 64.  It had 64 bits, 4 megs of memory and a processor of 93.75 Mhz (that’s 52 times as much as the original NES).  The Gamecube again stepped up the exponentional growth. It had 24 megs memory and a processor at 485 Mhz.  The Wii, Nintendo’s next console was far belwo average for specs for it’s generation with 729 Mhz processor.  Its successor the Wii U is roughly on par with the previous generation.  Xbox 360 and PS3 were both around 3.2 Ghz for processing and 512 mb or memory.  The power and performance of the hardware has increased dramatically.  Handhelds are almost as good as previous generations.

After I was done with college and moved back home for a time while I figured out what the hell to do with my life I started dabbling in online gaming.  I played MMO’s.  This was not my best decision.  MMO’s are known to be soul sucking time wasters.  I am known at times to get over invested in new shiny things.  This coupled for a shooting star effect.  I burned myself out on these things.  I haven’t looked back.  Except for the little bit I played with the last Star Wars MMO by BioWare.  It wasn’t terrible but it was fast and sparsely populated.  It was shiny, pretty, reasonably polished but easy and repetitive.

Now that I have my big boy job and I spend anywhere between four to ten hours at the dojo plus time working out my gaming time is cut down significantly.  I’m ok with that. For really good games I’ll make time.  Otherwise I’m ok with not gaming for months at a time.  I do miss it during those times but I’ve got things to do.  It’s way adult gamers are, or at least the moderately mature ones.

So what next?  My money is on a few things.  Indy developers will undoubtedly take on a bigger role, casual gaming will continue to grow, how we interact with systems will change entirely and the computer may rise like a phoenix.  Indy games had the fortune of things like steam and then later Xbox Live to let them get the word out.  The internet made this happen.  Small teams, by small I mean two people perhaps, can make great games that hundreds of thousands of people play (examples being Castle Crashers, Braid, and Super Meat Boy).  These games can be unique and really push the envelope.  They can fixate on the vision of the lead designer.  Games in this venue have so much room to explore and go new places.

And there are a lot new places being explored.  For every military shooter game that explores the same premise, the same plot, and the same game play another five games come out that at least try to be different.  Some are god awful miserable piles of code that seem to be created for only the malevolent purpose of fooling people intp thinking that games really are be awful and you shouldn’t enjoy them.  What’s exciting is there innovation in AAA titles.  Yes, uncharted is essentially the male version of tomb raider (or the reinvention of Indiana Jones in modern day) but the game series was phenomenal and pushed boundaries.  It had a good story, solid game play but most importantly it was fun.  It may of at time be frustrating but it was always fun.  It had the right formula.  Often time developers will crank up difficulty as the game progresses and bad games will have this incline be very noticeable instead of climbing bit by bit; going from light softball pitch easy to ‘holy fuck, why did I die seventeen times?’.  But it’s been proven you don’t need to make big expensive shiny games to be a success.  They just have to be fun.  So all manner of genres are going to be flushed out.  The line between big games and small game sis going to blur, soon it will just be price point, you’ll have the $60, $50, $40, $30 $20, and under games all selling and doing well.

The way we play is already changing.  Nintendo took a big gamble with the Wii that paid off.  Now they are gambling again with the Wii U.  With the tablet like controller there is the ability to do quite a bit.  Although it does remind me of linking my game boy to the Gamecube to play Crystal Chronicles mutliplayer.  Controllers I think will be around for a long time but full motion capture is only going to get better.  Expect to see the company push even more.  Hopefully the games will get better.  I will admit I do enjoy some of the dance games.  Which may be headed for the same fad status as rhythm games.  Rhythm games screwed themselves by flooding the market.  People got aggravated and voted with their wallets.  Plus there are only so many peripherals we can take.

I do think computer gaming will come back.  I do think developers are going to come back to the platform.  It’s foolish not the program for the computer first.  You can always port from there.  It’s much harder to work the other way around and give the computer gamers what they want.  Look at Skyrim on one of the console and then on the computer and tell me which is a better choices.  Crabs with monocles and top hats should eb enough of a reason.  The modding communities are fantastic and graphical improvement, and run speed always tend s be better on a decent PC.

Casual gaming, which I avoid, is catching on big time.  Tablets and Smart Phone will outsell traditional PC’s.  It happening.  It’s the new dynamic.  Computer glasses are next with onscreen overlays. They may interact with the environment or they may not.  But gaming will be important on all the platforms.  While the games won’t be the next important step they will be where a shit ton of money will be made and more developers will have jobs.  Look at Angry Birds; simple concept, truckloads of players.  I generally dislike freemium, Facebook games and most mobile games but millions of other don’t hold that opinion.

All I know is that gaming is only going to get better and I’ll be there, controller in hand, waiting for the next great game.

Ben

Thanksgiving, So American it Hurts

Thanksgiving is a holiday that could only exist in America.  This is patently obvious because, well, it does only exist in the united states.  The concept and celebration of the holiday could only exist here.  The holiday is a remembrance of when the fresh of the boat Europeans were graciously helped by the native peoples who lived here already.  They feasted together in show of communal spirit and brotherhood.  Then the Europeans repaid this debt by stealing and decimated those that helped them.  They showed no mercy for the people who altruistically made sure they survived.  No good deed goes unpunished evidently.  Woo!  America!

Currently we celebrate the feasting meal held by the natives and the Europeans as a day to recognize that which we are thankful for as well as the unity of men and women.  Nothing wrong with that.  We do this in the most American way possible.  We indulge and overindulge like only we can.  We put as many unhealthy things in front of us and shove it down our faces numb to the aching hole we are filling with food.  We cram this down ignoring our aching, blocked  arteries and scream for more pecan rolls.  Then we have the brilliant idea with spread butter on the pecan rolls because fuck it, it’s the Holidays and we convince ourselves we’ll start that diet next week.  The diet doesn’t come and we cry into the pumpkin pie tomorrow.

Ok, forgive the bleakness.  Maybe that was an exaggeration.  Except for the butter on pecan rolls.  My brother totally did that.  I encouraged him.  Also pecan rolls are my one weakness.  They best my self-control.  Well, okay it’s one of my multitude of weaknesses.  I love pecan rolls but we can’t be seen together my waist gave me the ultimatum. My pants size won.  I wish you a joyous journey with another person.  Hopefully they appreciate your gooey bounty as much as I.  I’ll never forget you…

This thanksgiving there wasn’t enough table to fit the massive amounts of food heaped in front of us.  We had an appetizer round that took up some of the table but the main course took up so much room we had to constantly shuffle things around.  Also when there are small children around and you’re the adult the things being said are totally different.  For instance, “can you fit this all your mouth,” kinda different.  Being a reasonably intelligent man I said nothing and held back my smirk and chuckles.  This was no small task.  I giggle like an idiot every time I hear a fart, simulated or otherwise.  Yes, I am a grown man with a big boy job but fart noise are funny and don’t you dare take it away from me.

Another reason why Thanksgiving is super American is the whole family dynamic.  Adi and myself split thanksgivings.  One year with my family the other with hers.  Totally different atmospheres.    Both Jewish, well educated suburbanites with a gay male in the family but still very different.  It reminds me of the constant culture clash and turnover in this country.  The traditional versus the non-traditional.  The generation issues become readily apparent.  It terrifies me that my generation will be running things soon.  I don’t think any of us quite expect to be adult anytime soon.  But time is looming.  I’m very  much at the adult table talking about politics and jobs and hiding my own in the conversation.  I don’t feel like an interloper and want to wander back to video games and frivolity.  But I digress on that point.  This is a time for family but it points out fractured and unified families at the same time.  Many people I know are making multiple trips.  Dinner with mom then sandwiches with dad.  And that’s just one side of the family.  The effects of divorce really become apparent now.

I don’t know if Thanksgiving is as much of a drinking holiday as other but we’re in America and we are good at turning most holidays into excuses for drinking, eating and shopping.  Thanksgiving is very much about food and shopping.  I’ve been getting emails non-stop from various stores enticing me with early pre black friday deals, online specials, extended deals and all manner of consumer enticement.  I like buying stuff.  It’s part of being American.  We have a need to buy things we don’t need.  It’s part of the reason why I think we say we are thankful for certain things like family and friends but we’re really thankful for the 50 inch LCD hanging on the wall.  We worship at the altar of the shiny new iWhatever (patent pending).  I can only complain so much on this as my wife is out shopping while I mind dump these thoughts onto the page.  I know she enjoys this family bonding time so I encouraged her to buy herself something frivolous with my credit card.  I don’t entirely regret this decision.

So we have multiple version of consumption (food, alcohol, buying stuff) but we also have perhaps now the most American of sports playing prominently: football.  You could argue that baseball is more American but fuck you.  Baseball is all about patience and statistics.  Football is all trench warfare.  It’s more violent than baseball (‘Murika), it has dancing half naked women (‘MURIKA) and the biggest event for football, it’s raging culmination, is half about the stupid commercials selling you crap (MERIKAH!!!).

The only way thanksgiving could be any more American is if it stole the explosions from the fourth of July and got into a bar fight afterwards.  I would call it Thanksplosions.  That’s my word so don’t go using it without permission.

Ben

Greed isn't Good

One of the many problems from the 80’s is, sadly, that people did not really understand that Gordon Gecko was living breathing reflection of that is wrong with corporate greed.  Greed is good became a lifestyle.  People actually started acting like that fictional character more and that it acceptable.  It sometimes astounds me how farce and ridicule can be taken seriously.  There are people who think Colbert’s buffoonery is reality and that he isn’t mocking the far right.  This saddens me.  It’s not that I think people are growing less intelligent or are gradually becoming numb to subtlety and nuance because that isn’t true.  Perhaps the best literary example of satire – A modest Proposal – was not immediately regarding as harsh criticism.  That’s even more depressing to think that someone could believe eating poor children to stave off starvation and create population control within Ireland was anything but jaded humor pointed directly at the cold hearts of the England elite who oppressed the country and also those who didn’t have power but stood around and let the monstrosity of Irish oppression continue.

This greed is good mentality very much exist today.  America as a country, above all else, worships wealth.  Those who have money are deemed better than those who don’t regardless of merit or any other versions of worth.  I know I am not above criticism in this regard.  While I do enjoy money I know it isn’t as important as quite a few other things.  Of course, there is exceptions.  Money isn’t important after a certain point but before that point its real goddamn important.  Where I’m at money is occasionally tight but I’m comfortable.  I have a house, a car – albeit one held together by duct tape and prayer – and enough left over to be able to pursue a decent amount of leisure activity without worrying.  Make things tighter and put me behind the eight ball then money isn’t so superfluous or less important than being happy.  Yeah, happiness is important but eating is more important than that.

I am close enough to various lifestyle that I can understand them.  I think however there are those who are so removed from normal society, either morally or simply socially, that they have little to no understanding of how most people live.  This brings me to the rage and backlash hitting CEO’s recently.  I am rather amused that these wealthy individuals think their stances and claims are backed up by anything other than greed.  Yes, a CEO has a responsibility to his or her company in keeping it profitable.  This does not, however, mean it is acceptable behavior to throw a bitch fit when government regulations are set in place to protect lower wage workers from economic tyranny.

Many years before I was born it was normal to get  a job at a company and work there until retirement.  You’d start at the mail room and work your way up over the course of forty years to a respectable position and retire on a nice pension.  It was understood that with patience, hard work, luck and at least some quantity of brain power anyone could achieve this.  Well, any man that is.  Women’s roles have changed considerably and there are more women in places of power but the balance has yet to shift.  We still need a bit more of racial equality among the top echelons of business structure but with boy’s club politics and who you know being as important or more than important than what you know it’ll take awhile before that is righted as well.  But those times are gone.  In the seventies companies started firing people before pension was up so they wouldn’t have to pay it all out.  With companies growing disregard for the well being of employees growing it soon became apparent to employees they had options and the best method for promotion was getting a new job not fighting upstream like a salmon avoiding the bears.  I’ve changed companies multiple time.  Within the past eight or so years I’ve worked at five different companies.  I’m reasonably happy where I am and I constantly fight to keep recognition and move up.  I know if I didn’t I’d be overlooked and ignored.  I’d rather not jump ship just to get a higher payroll.

With Obama winning the election several CEO’s have outed themselves as nothing more than giant gaping assholes.  Look at Papa John’s CEO or Applebees’, or Aetna’s or even Hostess.  After the election some of these drains on society had the nerve to say that the additional cost for helping employees should immediate be baked into the product price.  Yeah, fuck that.  Maybe I don’t know slash something else in the budget.  I didn’t hear this level of bitching during the oil price hikes which surely affect every business.  Gas price increases which affect food delivery trucks and everything within the food business.  Suddenly food order for local restaurant are more expensive.  This is a legitimate reason to increase price that shouldn’t be met with scorn.  Also no one bitched publicly about it.  But paying more money to provide for your employees?  They act like this is raping the constitution.  Hint, it’s not.  America was founded on several principles none of which were hey let’s fuck over the poor.  We rebelled because of taxation without representation, among other things.  Yet these entitled individuals think it acceptable to rage out when we remind them hey pay you’re goddamn people and provide a real service and not price gouge.

Here’s a few articles to look at if you don’t mind your blood pressure raising a few points (I had more links but I can’t find all of them):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/applebees-backlash_n_2118231.html?utm_hp_ref=small-business

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/15/1161877/-My-twitter-message-to-Aetna-s-CEO-or-suffering-can-be-a-2-way-street-Mr-Bertolini?detail=hide

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Corporate-Greed/BCTGM-President-Frank-Hurt-Hostess-Demise-a-Decade-in-the-Making

It just upsets me that these privileged few either just don’t care about the vast majority of people, which essentially makes them evil, or that they are so insulated that they really don’t understand what it’s like to be anything but wealthy, which essentially makes them pathetic.  I’m unsure where I heard this quote but it sums up these corporate abominations rather well, “Born with a silver foot in their mouth.”  I may be butchering the quote but the premise is solid.  There are people out there who have no concept of struggling for money.  No understanding of being nervous about paying the bills, about seeing halfway through the month you need to stop spending already but you’re not sure how you’ll eat the rest of the month.  I just hope the dam has broken and this kind of behavior is punished.  Thre has been quite a bit of internet rage with companies, or specifically elite individuals associated with companies making disparaging remarks and then two camps forming.  Looks at what happened with Chik-Fila.  Good food for a fast food places but owned by absolute fanatics who are filled with hate and vitriol.  Yet there are a ton of people working there who would be affected by the boycott.  A company is not a reflection of just that one person up at the top.  It’s a group.  While I always applaud voting with your wallet and supporting good business it isn’t always the best decision.

So what can be done besides public outcry and boycotts.  Well, you can support politicians who actually stand up to bullshit.  I’m super excited that Elizabeth Warren won the election in Massachusetts  She looks to be Ralph Nader without all the smugness or douchebaggery.  Or you could instead of boycotting try to support businesses that don’t act like dickheads.  I bet if Aetna saw people flocking away in droves they’d do something about it.  With the exception of cable companies it’s reasonably effective to do this tactic.  These people would rather pay out the money just to keep customers.  It’s not such a firm believe they’d torpedo the company.  But seriously, fuck that Papa John’s guy.  He can kiss my ass.  I can get better pizza at a local place.

Ben