From WTHR.com:

“A Muncie man who gave beer to his 1-year-old nephew, then punched his girlfriend in the face when she objected and stormed away in her SUV has been sentenced to time served.”

Since I’m sure you’re less inclined to read the whole article, I’ll go ahead and sum up the rest for you too.  He plead guilty, and is now just on probation.  He asked to have his probation be transferred to Louisiana, as he had been planning on moving there. 

The man’s name is Richard H. Valens Jr.  He is 44 years old.  To clarify the quote from the article, Richie Valens is the one who stormed off in his girlfriend’s SUV.  Here’s another notable quote: “Valens said the child could "handle it" because "he's a champ."

One might be able to write this off as another victory in the riddance of white*trash from what could be considered Northern Indiana, however, I feel that this story is worthy of further discussion.  

Ever since the founding of Ball State University, the “city” of Muncie has had a delicate balance of uber-trendy art students, and white trash meth heads.  They are at a stalemate; for every narcissistic art kid, there is a man huffing paint out of a paper bag behind the BP station.  For every useless and nonsensical piece of “art,” there is a drunken meth head step father sitting in his rusted out old truck outside the local middle school.  You get the idea.

If this balance were to tip to one side or the other, the city would be completely overrun by the majority, snuffing out all differing opinions.  My argument is this:  They should have made the bastard stay in Muncie for the sake of diversity, to keep the balance.  

*I have no idea of the ethnicity of said dickweed, I can only assume he’s white trash due to the abundance of white trash in the town of Muncie.  

He probably looks like this:

This is something I wrote during my first semester at the University of Southern Indiana; way back in 2001.


If you're a guy, you undoubtedly remember the short period in middle school where after lunch, you were allowed a recess to the gymnasium.  It was a disgustingly dusty place, where if you were an asthmatic like me, you hated it.  You'd play basketball or join an arm wrestling tourney on top of the wrestling mats folded in the corner.

1.  The Douchebag with a Weird Looking Shot that Somehow Made it in Most of the Time

Sure, his back leg kicks back like he's a girl swept up in a passionate kiss, but the ball still finds its way to the net.  Of course he jerks his upper back forward and closes his eyes, somehow dodging your clumsily oversized hands, and makes it through the rim.  Why do coaches, gym teachers, and dads always teach form when all that matters is the end result?  Because while they want you to excel, they don't want you to look like a douche.

This guy will later become the frat boy douchebag with the backwards cap, sunglasses, popped collar, and cargo shorts.  Sure, he gets a lot of vagina, but looks like a douche while "closing the deal."  If you are a female reading this post, feel ashamed for having rubbed privates with this pail and skinny shit with a shrill laugh. 

2.  The Guy Who Takes the Half Hour of Exercise Before Home Ec Way Too Seriously

His face becomes beet-red as he heaves his fourth brick towards the general vicinity of the rim.  You know the tantrum is coming; so you request the ball with a "Hey, down low" or something.  He grins at you and thinks that somehow not looking at the basket when he shoots will give him the upper hand over the guy guarding him.  This of course is a flawed logic highlighted by the "pang" sound of his opponent rejecting his shot, and then the thud when the ball bounces behind him.  A few minutes later, you can expect a passive aggressive "accidental" elbow to the face if you're the poor sap guarding him.

This guy will later become the guy who tells his girlfriend he can't hang out tonight because of finals, but then sits in his car outside her place to see if she has any guys over while he's unavailable. 

3.  The Guy Who Made Varsity

He invites asthmatics to play in his pickup game to further masturbate his ego.  Asshole.

Then and now, he's the guy who uses cheat codes in all his video games.  Later, he'll utilize the full potential of the date rape drug. Even later, he'll accept an executive position with a multi-million dollar golden parachute despite the continually falling share value of said company.  He also has an inferior penis and beats up prostitutes to make up for it. 

4. The Asthmatic in Denial

This guy has to continually take breaks due to his inability to take in oxygen at same rate of his peers.  While a good person to have if you have an odd number of players (For subs), a terribly irritating sot as he generally doesn't want to be seen as inferior.  To make up for his inferiority, he constantly demands to be subbed in, and then demanding to be subbed out a short time later.  He's also a chain smoker, because he stupidly believes this helps his condition, and because he thinks it makes him manlier. 

Eventually, he'll masturbate a lot and write about people, places, and things that piss him off.   

5.   The Girl Who You First Associated with the Word "Lesbian"

She's the first openly gay girl you've ever met, and she can play basketball fairly well.  You're not sure how to guard her, due to a reason somewhere between "Am I going to hurt her if I touch her?" and "Is she going to sue me if I touch her?"  While you're pondering the societal consequences of whatever action you may take, you've been "taken to school" by a girl and are the subject of ridicule by your peers. 

Later, she'll have a very best friend/roommate in college who swears she's not gay but obviously is.  Also, she'll be mad at said "friend" for preferring to be done with a strap-on.  She'll also have a Angelina Jolie poster above her dorm room bed. 

From YearBookYourself.com

1952



1964



1968



1974



1976



1980 (Looks eerily like TheCousinJesse)



1988

For all of my left leaning friends, here are rebuttals to most of the Palin smears.

To my right leaning friends, here are rebuttals for the Obama smears.

The folks on the left seem to be less open minded upon encountering ideas and opinions differing from their own than my associates on the right, which seems odd.  I wish more Libertarians existed. 

The latest thing that's pissed me off is that Matt Damon interview.

Here's a few exerpts accompanied by some of my thoughts. 

"I think there's a really good chance that Sarah Palin could be President and I think that's a really scary thing because I don't know anything about her. I don't think in eight weeks I'm going to know anything about her. I know that she was a mayor of a really, really small town and she's governor of Alaska for less than two years. I just don't understand. I think the pick was made for political purposes, but in terms of governance it's a disaster."

Good point, we really don't know much about her.  Honestly though, how many VP candidates do you hear about before they're picked?  I'm sure most of us hadn't heard of Kerry or Edwards before the '04 election, and I sure as hell hadn't heard of Obama until someone asked him his opinion on the Don Imus free speech fiasco.  But now that they're there in the spotlight, I'll take it as my civic duty to learn about them.  

"Mayor of really small town, gov. of AL for less than two years,"

It's more executive experience than Obama has. 

"Political purposes, picked a woman just to pander"

Around the time the media decided to ditch H-Dog, there was a good eight or nine month stretch where all I heard were either retarded urban legends about Obama maybe being a Muslim (Who the fuck cares?) and how important it is that we elect the first black president.  The point is, they picked a black guy to highlight the message of change; meaning they picked a black guy because he's black.  Both sides pull the superficial bullshit, and then call each other out on it, and get you the people to argue so fervently with each other that you can't see your own side is filled with the exact same amount of poop as the other.  

"It's like a really bad Disney movie, you know? The hockey mom, you know, "Oh, I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska," and she's the President and it's like she's facing down Vladimir Putin and, you know, using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It's just, it's absurd."

"You know, the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink, it's just, it's absurd. It's totally absurd and I don't understand why more people aren't talking about how absurd it is. It's a really terrifying possibility. The fact that we've gotten this far and we're that close to this being a reality is crazy. Crazy. I mean, does she really? ?I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. That's an important? ?I want to know that. I really do. Because she's going to have the nuclear codes, you know? I want to know if she thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago or if she banned books or tried to ban books. I mean, you know, we can't have that."

Let's get that book banning thing out of the way here. 

Just because someone's a Christian doesn't mean they think the world was created four thousand years ago.  There are all sorts of Christians out there, just like there are all sorts of Muslims, Shintoists, Buddhists, etc. 

Also, wait.  Obama is a Christian.  He's gone to the same church for twenty some years up in Chicago; why aren't you calling him stupid for having some form of faith?  Why don't you attribute that same Christian = Ignorant logic to your own candidate as well?   

Let the Market Decide

 

After reading Levitt's Freakonomics, along with a variety of the late economist Milton Friedman's works, I've been left with the feeling that the government should keep its grubby hands off the citizenry, as well as the Market.  In Freakonomics, Levitt provides evidence towards the notion that the abortion boom attributed to the '73 Roe v. Wade ruling contributed to the sharp decline in all varieties of crime across the nation in the early 1990's.  He does make a convincing argument, sourcing graphs of the types of families which are more likely to produce criminals, and then overlaying that information with which families are more likely to get an abortion.  The data was sourced, although I've misplaced my copy, and his argument was very compelling. 

Further, I share Friedman's view that the Market, if left to its own devices, would cure itself.  It helps if one views the Market on a whole, as an ecosystem, no different from our own.  Species are forced to adapt to the world around them, or face extinction, in the same way businesses do.  As the Earth's climate changes over time, so must species.  As the market changes, so must businesses.  I've always been under the impression that we humans are a part of this world just as much as the next plant or animal, and that intervening into the survival of another species is uncommon anywhere else in the ecosystem.  Badgers don't try to save whales, and wolves don't hunt deer to extinction.  They do, however, thin the herd, as we should as well.  We ought, in my opinion, recognize our place at the top of the food chain and embrace it, rather than scoffing and feeling guilty over our very nature.  I feel that saving a species (I'm looking at you panda bear) is just as unhealthy for the ecosystem as hunting whales to extinction, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hunt.  It means use moderation.  Our role in the ecosystem as humans, ought to be the same (or similar) role the Government should play in the Market.  (No, Dr. Rivers*, I'm not using "ought" and "should" interchangeably.  Read between the lines.) 

That is to say, we, along with the Government, should utilize a moderate "hands-off" approach when it comes to the ecosystem we share.  When faced with going out of business due to any number of reasons, the agile company should adapt, or be allowed to die.  Take the recent acquisition by the Fed of Freddie Mac and Fannie May for example.  Citing that these companies are too big to die, the Fed comes in and saves them from extinction.  What does this do to the market?  Imagine if someone went back in time and saved the Stegosauras from the Late-Jurrasic period.  With no natural predators alive any more it would undoubtedly overpopulate and consume whatever plant life it could find.  This overpopulation would lead them to starving, much like the deer population in Indiana has done.  Aside from starving, the lack of whatever plant life would affect other species, and the ripple would continue throughout the ecosystem.  The same can be said for a business that can't be killed off.  It grows, it overpopulates, it becomes even bigger because no adaptations other businesses go through can compete with it.  Imagine if badgers had an invincibility cheat code for real life. 

Despite my view that big businesses are widely corrupt and mismanaged, there are advantages to an organization that pulls down billions of dollars each quarter.  That being the amount of aid, the speed at which they can organize relief efforts, the wide range and amount of materials that can be shipped en masse at a moment's notice.  One notable disadvantage however, is as the Fed stated about our earlier example (Freddie Mac and Fannie May), they are just too big to fail.  How did this happen though, if the Market is supposed to solve its own problems?  If I had to guess, I'd say government intervention in some other form years ago aided in their expansion, allowed them to cease their adaptation in some areas, thus allowing them to continue their erroneous business practices, thus allowing them to live on and grow all while making decisions that were contrary to what the Market called for.  Government intervention, in short, led to more Government intervention, which then led to a full-scale takeover by the Fed.  To quote Albert Einstein, "Insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting a different result… We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Pandas Don't Want to Live

To be of the mindset that we humans are outside and above this ecosystem, that we are somehow charged with its continuation and protection is a very egocentric notion.  Whether God, gods, or chance created us, we are an integral part of this world, not some outsider tasked to save species when they fail to adapt.  Take panda bears for example, the cutest animal that wants to eat you.  They were hunted to near extinction some time ago, and when we as humans realized what we had done, how our intervention had changed the ecosystem; we tried to backpedal.  We kept intervening, even after their small numbers caused the ecosystem to adapt to their absence, and the pandas became more "picky" about which of their kind they mate with.  We figured that if we could just try to get them to reproduce more often, we could undo the damage we had caused initially with our over-hunting.  However, the ecosystem (or Market) had already fixed itself; adapting itself to the lack of pandas.  Our initial intervention was incorrect, and our subsequent intervention arguably more so. 

The Market isn't much different.  If there's a need (read: demand), the Market changes as to provide the supply for that demand.  Say for instance forty million people need bags of sand all at once over the course of two weeks.  Supply will decrease proportionally with how much demand increases, and then increase once the market catches onto the trend in growing demand, and the two will move inversely proportional until supply meets demand; at which point they plateau.  It's much more complicated than that of course, but for the purposes of this entry we'll leave it at that.  If there's anything that any given person will spend money on, there's a market for it.  It truly is a fine ecosystem, as long as it's left to its own devices.  This is why it's crucial that the citizen, the consumer, ought and should be free to choose. 

The consumer's role in the Market is the main catalyst for adaptation.  The consumer's needs and wants (demand) are just like any variable in any ecosystem that necessitates change.  Your needs are the next Ice Age, and it's the business world's task to adapt, to meet that demand.  Interfering with either side, the catalyst or the ecosystem, is problematic. 

 Protecting the Consumer

Either through nature or design, the Market mimics the Ecosystem and its food chain.  There are times though, when intelligent thought brings about unnatural changes, which brings into necessity exemption from the "hands-off" approach.  Greed and political bias**, which bring about decisions not only contrary to what the market is calling for, but also supersede the market's normal reaction to unethical business practices.  I would agree that a business ought not have a social conscience other than what the market calls for, but that a private citizen should; so that he/she can make their decision as to which business receives their patronage.  This provides incentives for businesses to have a social conscience of their own accord. 

When a company purposefully sells a misleading product, or a dangerous one, the company should be punished; and those in charge also punished.  This type of intervention provides incentive to companies that behave ethically.  This of course, doesn't always work.  More often than not, the company that sells a misleading product, or gets by with producing toys with lead paint, or builds houses with asbestos insulation; gets away with it long enough such that the profits gained are greater than the punishment.  This is an argument for lots of competing small businesses in all areas of the Market, rather than two or three big companies that hardly compete.  One of the reasons I believe, that any intervention on the part of the Fed directed at the Market be based on increasing competition, rather than manipulating any particular company. 

So, where does the burden of protecting the consumer lay?  Everywhere.  The Market, through competition, is better equipped to protect the consumer than the Government.  The Fed, along with local government, is able to provide information to the consumer at large; enabling consumers to protect themselves.  The consumer, equipped with not only the information that a company is selling a bad*** product, but also the freedom to choose a different company's better product, is most able to protect him/herself. 

In Closing

Let the market decide, let the Fed increase incentives for competition rather than for growth, and let it inform the public.  Lastly, let the people choose.   

 

 

*Dr. Rivers was someone who gave me a C on a final essay for confusing "ought" with "should."  I hadn't confused them, he just saw I used 'ought' more often and decided I was ignorant to their meanings.  I'm convinced he didn't actually read it.  If he had, I would have received an F.     

**Those aren't the only two.           

***Bad as in inferior, misleading, dangerous, morally questionable, etc.

Sidenote:  There was a point to that opener about the abortions and all that, and I was going to tie everything together in the closing, but somehow over the course of an hour of writing I lost my train of thought.  Sorry.  If I can think of why I put that in there I'll edit this entry further. 

After having a dream last night where an ex girlfriend still had my Nintendo and Super Nintendo, used the promise of their return to me as tools to get me to see her (she kept forgetting to bring them whenever we met), I began thinking of all my things that are currently with other people.  Here is a list.  The names have been changed to protect the partially innocent.

 

1.       Favorite shirt: When I was sixteen I let "Naomi" wear it after hearing that girls liked wearing their boyfriends' hooded sweatshirts.   I broke up with her the following week because I got a better offer.

2.       Jeans:  Not sure how they got in "Sarah's" car, we never encountered a circumstance where my pants were needed off.  She broke up with me because evidently she was going through a faze where she didn't like nice, attractive young men. 

3.       Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:  A videogame that I loved, despite that wretched Hudson River Dam level.  "Gertrude" professed to having gotten past that level, even with its immediately terminal seaweed.  I guess she broke up with me because her conscience couldn't take all the lies.  Like "hey, I beat that impossible level in TMNT." Bullshit Gertrude, bullshit.  Nobody beat that level. 

4.       Favorite Shirt II:  "Jess" used it for an unsanitary purpose.  I was disgusted.  I never spoke to her again. 

5.       Gym Shorts and Nikes:  I changed clothes after working out at "Stephanie's" place, assumed I'd be able to pick them up the next day.  I hadn't counted on the circumstance that she might have listened to my voicemail messages while I was out of the room, and then decided to not talk to me ever again.  Come on, I save all my dirty messages from girlfriends past because I get so few.  Not my fault.

6.       Presidents of the United States of America:  It was the third CD I ever bought.  She threw it out my car window at 75mph on I-70 just east of Terre Haute.  She was one of those "If you say I won't do something, I'll do it, because I'm bat shit crazy" type of women.  Weeks after telling her we can still be friends she said she bought another copy of it and mailed it to me.  I never received it. 

7.       Favorite Shirt III:  She's currently in the process of returning it to me.  Thanks.