How's The "End of the World" Treating You?

I knew it was BS the minute I heard about it & I'm sure those of you who read this blog felt the same. My religious upbringing says no one knows when the end of the world will happen. I'm very glad that no one I knew took it seriously. Heck, I'm going to a party this evening & have to start making a cake for it shortly.

In the meantime, as holidays are nearly here & I'll be mega-busy here's something you may find helpful. We all know I don't abide by criminals & nastiness to folk so here's how to keep yourself safe from scammers & other criminals (special thanks to Trisha Wiley):

Created by Selecthomesecurity.com

Also, make sure to watch for the fake charities especially the ones springing up right after some tragedy. I heard a story just yesterday about someone creating a fake charity to exploit the shooting in Connecticut. Verify who you're giving to or better yet, start helping people in your own backyard. I'm sure you have some family member, friend or a member of the community facing hard times who might not even need money but would appreciate you buying a meal or some kind words. The fakes & people who use all the "donation" money to pay for fundraising efforts & Executive VP pay are why I am very selective in my giving efforts (which I've covered elsewhere). To me, why am I paying for your Executive VP or other high ranking exec to get a Mercedes or a mansion while I have six figure student loan debt to pay? Some people are in even worse shape & it's sick to expect them to finance that mess. Frankly, those groups can get bent.

To the charities/non-profits who aren't corrupt: I salute you & hope you keep doing the awesome work you do.

General Musings Part 15

Wow, I've made it to 15 of these. I still have even more rants in me so hang around for more of them.

Today's highlights: Learned the verdict of the desktop PC & it wasn't nearly as pricey as we thought it might be. Legs are a little sore from my first Intro to American Jiu Jitsu class (yes, taking more self defense training since I have been harassed before though thankfully not put in a dire enough situation to get serious psychological scarring).

A tip: don't start problems with people who have unresolved rage issues. I don't care if you weight 5 times as much. Believe it or not, I'm a surprisingly peaceful person & more of a reactionary than an aggressor. I react to situations; I don't start trouble.

So since more links are piling up, on with the musings.

A big thank you to Jesse Ventura for this. I read comments on a law school scam blog where the author thought it was ridiculous to sue over this kind of thing. Seems you can tell who's become a defeated person based on these responses. I also suggested to the blog author that if she indeed has what she claims are "fabulous ta-tas," she could parlay that into a job at a local strip club or even work as a web cam girl & make enough money to pay off her law school loans. For that matter, she could use such a job to find a political figure or some other high profile rich person to extort so the loans get paid off and/or she gets the finer things in life.

If she has no problem with the scanners, I see no reason why she shouldn't just do one of those jobs. You know these images will get misplaced & eventually get posted online. Look at how many shady things the government has done & the leaks.

Me, I'd rather my private parts STAY that way, especially from TSA officials. I don't care what label you want to put on it; it's still a violation of basic civil rights. So if Jesse Ventura is being forced to go through this as well & has had enough, who can blame him for suing??? Not me.

I have a comment about this story. New Yorkers, in my experience, are not the rudest people. Atlanta is much worse. "Southern hospitality" is not present if you're taking MARTA. I had this scumbag (in manner & appearance) stand in front of one of the turnstiles at my local station & claimed the other one was messed up, despite their being no sign on it.

I went into the second one. My thoughts were "Do you think I'm stupid, asshole?" One surefire way to make me hate your guts is to insult my intelligence. Didn't like another scumbag trying to harass me & my husband at Port Authority either. We walked off from this nosy man who thought we going to tell him where we were going.

One of the first rules of city living is NOT telling strangers where you're going. You can also get vibes from people & when I get bad vibes, I move away.

On more events in NYC, there's this planned change to the dress code of cab drivers. Nice to leave so much ambiguity, guys. Someone might define "professional appearance" as wearing a bikini. And let's not get into standards of neatness or cleanliness. I'm sure there'll be lawsuits sometime.

I'm happy to hear about this. Not that I own a gun but I do believe in the 2nd Amendment & that restricting all the guns only makes it easier for criminals to find victims. I see no harm in having ammo to protect yourself if someone tries to hurt you or your loved ones. Granted, if I had my way, spring gun traps would be legal but that's because I don't have sympathy for blatant criminals & think a little personal accountability never hurt anyone.

Oh, and this is total crap. I wanted to have a cat who'd sleep with me at night on the bed & never had one until I met my current kitty, who adamantly will not move. He lives inside, doesn't hang around other animals & is probably cleaner than me and my husband. I don't kiss the cat on the mouth or share food with him because that's just gross but he can lick my arm or my hand. What about the psychological and calming effects of pets??? These researchers must have ignored that.

Finally, you should apparently go to Twitter to rant about companies. See, going on the Internet can be helpful to weed out self-serving BS and get to the truth of bad situations. Can't reach a CEO? Just go to Twitter! Isn't technology grand?

I just wish our Belkin wireless router would have a decent Internet connection instead of claiming not to be able to load Google or Facebook. Their tech support has not been nearly so helpful and I think it's generally a good policy to avoid buying your computer products at Best Buy unless you know a particular brand VERY well & can get it at a good price. It's too late to return the thing & we only got to try it out once before the return period for Best Buy ended due to our PC's problems w/the Ethernet card.

Finding a good computer repair shop is the ultimate challenge but thankfully, I did find that in NYC.

Get Off Your Butt & Take Action

Well, I had a horrible day before my husband came home. I'm still not entirely big on hanging around the general public & tomorrow's my 4 year anniversary. Yes, I got married on October 13th; Friday the 13th, in fact. That was deliberate & as my husband isn't some traditionalist with a perfect love life, he was all for my idea to do it. Even now, Friday the 13th tends to be a great day for me & for him.

So, my horrible day. Here's a list:

* Go to the subway station. My closest station has full body turnstile gates to get in. I scan my card & go in after the person in front of me like a normal person. The gate swings back & hits me in the mouth, causing it to bleed. The gate is apparently defective in having the little swing back after you've paid. My lip has a noticeable spot & swelling where this happened, ruining my plans to kiss my husband good-bye this morning.

You'd better believe I'll be making an issue of it w/the MTA & that if I EVER get injured anywhere I'll be filing a lawsuit immediately. I'm even tempted to find Jay Walder's personal telephone number, call it up to give him a piece of my mind since I bet you a million dollars those pricks won't fix that gate & publish that number for the populace to ream him out for supporting the massive fare increase in December. Will I be mentioning that I'm a lawyer? Do men check me out all the time? The answer to both is a resounding "Hell, yes!"

* When I get on the subway, I realize I forgot my lunch so now I have to spend money to buy some. This after STILL not getting my first paycheck for a temp assignment I've been at for over a month. If that's not fixed, I'm not paying transit costs to do a freebie. I have too many other more useful things I can do at home & I don't need the hassle of finding a parking space or altering my sleep schedule. I also don't take kindly to not getting paid & have no tolerance for waiting around for my paycheck. That's the same song & dance I got from Bennie the Con Man and he had to pay for my travel or I wouldn't show up.

* Then I find out my cell phone battery is dead, meaning I can't call anyone or speak to my husband during this crappy day.

* Work became a few catastrophes with color running out of the printer, the phone not ringing through, etc. but did resolve itself. Thankfully, I was doing something requiring me to be alone; that was great b/c I was definitely in an anti-social mood.

* After work is finished, I go to the subway station to refill my MetroCard. The machine says the MetroCard can't be read. Funny but I used that card this morning to suffer the mouth injury. I go to the agent & apparently, the card is damaged. However, she says that the last time the card was used was on Saturday. It doesn't say a thing about this morning. I know I'd have been more pissed about going to the other side of the station, a number of blocks away from my home, to get a new card & have $ for the trip.

* While trying to get home, my iPod battery dies. Can this day get any better?

* Of course, I arrive home & there's no parking on the side of the street I need to be on for Thursday. What a shocker!

On top of this, we find a mouse in our apartment on Sunday. Rather, the cat does. Apparently the landlord thinks the holes in the wall don't have to be sealed b/c we have a cat; I plan to suggest that he pay some $ toward the cat's upkeep if that's his justification for not taking care of this. I'll also see what the city would have to say about having your renters live in a mouse infestation or their home being a wayward area for them despite your having a cat. The landlord knows I'm a lawyer & lawyers are better known for not taking shit from others.

The fact that we have a cat is irrelevant to this b/c what if we were allergic or were banned by the lease from having one? I would never live someplace that banned cats & I love my killer feline but if he's solely responsible for rodent control, that means a rent deduction until this problem's resolved. Same w/the messed up radiator that hasn't been looked at in our bedroom. If that's not resolved, I don't get full rental value of my home & you don't get full rent until it's fixed.

While on the subway this morning, I come to a realization. It's a very good thing that I am educated & know how to enforce my rights. Being a lawyer also pretty much tells the world that you know this stuff better than the average person or at least can locate the proper resource. If I were not a lawyer and people wouldn't bother listening to what I had to say, I would snap. I couldn't take being some poor person who's trampled upon and ignored. Being oppressed would cause me to snap, form my own army & take down some scumbags.

I was thinking about that classmate of mine who recently robbed a bank & realized I would never rob a bank. That's just stupid. A smart person would get a job, gain the manager's trust & then be an embezzler who doesn't get caught. Maybe that shows you a bit of the intelligence divide as to how you commit theft. I think most people would want me to help them commit a crime since I'm the type who if I do something, I'll do it extremely well.

Also, I don't tend to be a top suspect in a given situation. When I was in high school one day when my teacher had been a chaperon for a senior trip, I didn't have a class or teacher to go to since I was the only non-senior in that class. I walked around the halls, waiting for someone to stop me since I had no idea where to go or what to do & would have loved to hear what one does when (s)he has no class, no teacher + the classroom door is locked.

People around me were being stopped by teachers but no one ever stopped me. I bet I could have gotten away with leaving the campus if I'd had half a mind to do so. Well, and a car but I ended up hanging out w/another teacher in her class since it was her free period & I wasn't interrupting a class.

Oh, and I'm quite certain I could have effected a school shooting situation in high school that would have made Columbine look like nothing and would have been far better at it since I had access to things you average student didn't. No one planned that one b/c I'm pretty sure I've have been asked to participate given my general dislike of being here to start with, being a big mouth rebel + that special access/trust. I'd have certainly heard about it considering I'd have done it myself if I hadn't seen a future for me outside that town. I still think if you really want to do that right, then you have to recruit a "good kid" who's trusted by the man, so to speak.

Take a lesson, power brokers of the world. You don't want smart people to languish & get no opportunities to succeed or you just get master criminals. It's a point I've made before but I'm very committed to it and my first hand experience tends to support it.

On that note, I think smart attorneys who are so downtrodden & unable to find employment would do the same if they had lived in some of my situations or understood the concept of asserting yourself. I also think you're better off doing what you want in life, even if you aren't getting rich than to be miserable but have tons of money.

Spending Life as a Worrywart

My husband just unknowingly triggered a rant. He's watching this program about earthquakes & apparently NYC is the 4th most at risk city in the US for an earthquake.

Basically, I don't think you can live your life worrying about things you can't control. This includes terrorist attacks, weather conditions & unfortunate things that might happen b/c you took the subway, went to a club, went jogging in the park or did anything basically known as living your life. If a terrorist wants to attack something bad enough, it's going to happen. However, it doesn't mean you become a shut-in & let the government take all your rights away.

Let the government & the police worry about terrorism. You're more likely to get molested by a friend or relative or get in a car accident than be in a terrorist attack. Crime happens everywhere. Even little towns where no one thought crime would happen get their share of gruesome events. That doesn't mean don't be aware or do stupid crap like hang around bad neighborhoods but it does mean not to act like Wade Duck.

For those who haven't seen the Garfield cartoon of the '90s, it featured a series called U.S. Acres (Orson's Farm if you live outside the US or watch the Region 1 DVDs). Whatever title you want to call it, the main characters were a bunch of barnyard animals living on a farm. One of them was a duck named Wade who was terrified of everything. Wade always ran screaming from scary situations; he even had a theme song that started "Wade, you're afraid of every little thing..."

The doomsday clique annoys me to no end. If you think you're going to die soon, why bother doing anything? Why go to work? Why obey the law?

Under that rationale, we should all be murdering each other, raping children & strung out on drugs. After all, we'll all be dead soon, won't we? Why shouldn't the pedophiles & everyone else run wild?

I said this years ago & I still believe it now: I'd rather live a short, happy life than a long, miserable one. Seeing what living in misery does to someone has made me rage even harder against living that way myself.

Forfeiting Your Human Rights

This just pisses me off.

Aside from the fact that I've had cats since I was a baby (literally) & have proper respect for animals, I think the laws are way too light for people who abuse & harm animals in any form or fashion.

I also take issue w/people who have children & decide that their pets should be tossed out like an old piece of furniture. Are these people going to do that to their kids when they do something Mom & Dad don't like? What if these kids come out of the closet, date someone the parents don't approve of, take drugs, start drinking, etc.? If you're not willing to toss out a child for that stuff, you can't support tossing out a pet unless you're a hypocrite. And you know, The Angry Redheaded Lawyer HATES hypocrites.

My family would never, in a trillion years, ditch a pet like that. Those pets are family members just like any human being & do not get the short end of the stick in my family. In fact, my mom claims the cats eat better than the humans do.

For all the bleeding heart liberals out there (and if you dare to call ME one, you clearly haven't read this blog or spoken to me in depth), I don't care about people who commit inhuman acts. Once you've tortured an animal, harmed a child, raped someone or done something so disgusting & so appalling that at least 80% of the population wouldn't want to live next door to you, you have forfeited your human rights. As far as I'm concerned, you should be punished in the harshest, cruelest fashion known to man. Take a cue from China, the Middle East & other countries where there are real punishments for disgusting, inhumane acts unlike in America where you get to watch cable TV with all your limbs intact unless some inmate justice occurs.

If I had my way, any act you committed against an animal would be done to you as punishment. Let's put gas on YOU and light YOU on fire. Let's shoot YOU in your own home.

Too harsh, you say? Well, would you do that to an innocent creature if someone did it to YOU? Might deter a few crimes or at least kill some people who no longer get to be members of the human race.

I don't have sympathy for certain mental issues, despite having a BA in Psych because at the end of the day you can fake a mental illness, there are many that psychologists don't know much about & recidivism rates are ungodly high for certain things. Some people CAN'T be rehabilitated, simple as that.

And, yes I'm all for vigilante justice. When the law is being ineffective or dismissive, I think you need people to fill in the cracks or those cracks will never get fixed. It's not my place to tell anyone how to feel or what to do if their loved one is harmed or killed by some random scumbag; I'd personally murder someone for even thinking of harming my cat. If you think I wouldn't, remember the story I shared about my friend bringing home the stray cat, her husband kicking the carrier w/him inside & what I did next. I believe I wrote about this in an earlier entry.

To be perfectly honest, I do have more regard for animal life than most human life, in particular human life that has personally wronged me in some way or done something inhuman. Lucky for most people, I haven't personally witnessed much animal cruelty b/c I'd probably have a viable insanity defense for doing whatever I did after seeing it.

I'm also in favor of the death penalty & think we should have televised hanging/stoning for the worst crimes b/c I feel it would be a viable deterrent. Maybe we use castration as a deterrent as well.

BUT...I do think there should be a more speedy, fair & effective appeals process. No killing anyone unless you're 100% sure or at least 90% sure the person did it. If the technology is faulty, we need to address it since there are quite a few cases where people were falsely incarcerated for a long time & DNA evidence proved their innocence. Law firms & clinics working on those cases should get more funding.

I don't pretend to have all the answers here & it's not an easy issue but I still hold strongly to not giving human rights to people who've proved they aren't human. You can bet if I got to make laws that had to be enforced without question, some people would be trembling in their socks. I may have ranted on this before but it bears repeating.

Now I'll probably go watch some of my Season 4 DVD of The Facts of Life.

So Many Rants, So Little Time

That's how I feel at times b/c I always bookmark interesting articles that I have an opinion on but then times passes, other stuff goes down & I don't have time to address my points.

So maybe I can just post links & mention my general comments before talking about life stuff:

I covered this before on my post detailing my general thoughts on working for anyone other than yourself. Sorry, but any job that doesn't already have a culture of internships can't magically create it in a bad economy. All they can do is increase young people's hatred of those industries.

I hate these ads as well. Love how the pro-lifers want to act like every child is born to a good household & to fit parents, especially the ones who freak out at the idea of gay people adopting kids. We're not stupid & I saw the obvious pro-life bend the first time I saw one of these ads. Don't debate me on this one unless you're ready for a Julia Sugarbaker style tirade.

This is the Milgram experiment. For those who weren't psych majors in college, read up on it. Great stuff.

For this & this, I'll just repeat the basic sentiment I expressed in an earlier post. From my perspective, no employer wants you to be yourself & just wants you to be some robot. I have no clue why some of these people haven't just phased out human employees & replaced them w/robots like in that "Twilight Zone" episode. Believe me, I know people are not being honest or sincere in job interviews & really hate "dog & pony shows" anywhere; they're a waste of time.

Wow, something uplifting. Good luck to this guy & if more people followed his example, perhaps looking to local causes this world would be a far better place.

This pissed me off today & ensured I wouldn't vote for this guy in any future elections. I don't consider gay marriage any kind of threat to my own marriage or my straightness. Nor do I feel any compulsion to push my own religious views onto other people who don't follow suit. If I haven't sufficiently ranted on this topic, I will do so in the future.

Now, onto real life. I finally got the time to start really pursuing things w/this former employer who is still living in a delusion. Apparently, other people are also living in that state; too bad for them when reality hits & they can no longer work in this industry b/c their word means nothing.

Oh yes, and when a lawyer tells you to pay up & states their terms, it doesn't help you to start making things up and telling them what to do. When YOU owe something, you don't call the shots. It especially doesn't help when you KNOW the person is going to do what they want anyway & your word means nothing to him/her.

Apparently this guy has now become MIA & may be trying to skip town since other traces of him have disappeared from the Internet, he's blocked people's e-mail & apparently doesn't pick up the phone. Nor does his so-called "lawyer," who is licensed but a bigger newbie than me. Guess you'd need to be a newbie or horribly stupid to represent someone who's not going to pay you & probably costs you $ to deal with; I won't touch anything from now on w/out a minimum retainer so I can recover unpaid amounts.

Lawyers also have tricks up their sleeves & some of us are downright evil when it comes down to it. I consider myself evil only when I'm provoked in some way. Considering all I've gone through in life, it's a wonder I haven't gone out & done something sinister to these deadbeats who owe me money. Hint: having my career & things go well for me is my saving grace.

My basic philosophy is that when you leave intelligent people w/out any method to rise from their circumstances, you create future serial killers & master criminals. Society needs to use smart people for good things & let them get to that regardless of what family they were born to. Had I not had a way to move up, I'd either be dead or in jail right now since I wouldn't have any reason to care about aspiring to anything. How many people are being abused by employers & wasted in lower-level jobs? How many are taking it out on the company in some way?

Unlike most people, I don't have snobbery about job titles or treat someone like crap b/c of their title. I might be a hard-ass but I'm not a moron & think I know potential in the non-creative realm I deal w/when I see it. Guess it comes from my family members having lower level jobs, my husband doing custodial work & my working w/paralegals at a law firm job back in the day.

If I ever forget my humanity, I've told people to remind me & use force if they have to so I won't be a stereotypical executive.