Tattoos seem to be everywhere these days. Some say they are socially acceptable. Celebrities have them, but they don’t need to find a job. Truck drivers, mechanics, tattoo artists, plumbers and janitors have tattoos. I suppose there are some accountants, architects, computer executives, stock brokers and bank executives that also have tattoos, but I would hedge to guess the number is less than the previous group. Can’t imagine getting past a PWC interview with THUG LIFE across your knuckles.
I, personally, do not like tattoos. I could never take a girl seriously in a dating scenario, if she had a tattoo. I think it looks cheap.
My personal opinion, please note.
It seems most ex-cons have tattoos.
Starbucks makes their employees who have tattoos cover them. Good for them.
I’ve told my daughter that if she ever has a visible tattoo the best job she will ever get is that of a waitress at Denny’s.
Think about this the next time you read this blog and are pissed off about something I write, porn makes up roughly 37 percent of the total number of web pages. Yes, more than one-third of all the Internet is porn!
My feeling is that anything that doesn’t cost me tax dollars, is not illegal, does not harm anyone physically or emotionally and is done in the privacy of your own home is cool with me. In other words, if there is a single senator from your home state that wants to show his Wiener to some willing partner on Yahoo Chat, knock yourself out.
That said, if you want more non-porn to populate the cloud, read more blogs, comment on said blogs, patronize news sites, join social networks and create pages, upload pictures to Flickr, or stop sneaking a look yourself!
I just came across something pretty cool, an ATM-type machine that allows you to recycle – OK, sell, your old cell phone.
Called EcoATM, the machine scans your old cell phone and calculates how much it’s worth and pays you right then and there. I’ll admit, I haven’t seen one of these machines in person yet, but I do have several old phones that are collecting dust around the house that if Ican get $5.00 or $10.00 for, I’d be pretty stoked!
According to their website, they have locations in Southern California, on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA and for some reason, two locations in Nebraska. Nebraska?!
Politicians have nothing else to do. Never mind the budget overruns, out of whack pensions for public employees or transit systems that are terminally broken. None of these matter as much as stopping me from having my milk put into a bag made from plastic at the grocery store. It started in San Francisco, likely the most dysfunctional city in America, and has filtered south to San Jose, a city where bootleg DVDs and handbags can be found in a dozen ethnic shopping malls around town without a second glance from city hall.
Years ago stores phased out paper bags because they killed trees and plastic was cheaper. Now plastic is evil and paper is coming back, or to some stores, such as Ikea, bags have been eliminated, period. We are supposed to bring a re-usable bags. A bag I am supposed to buy.
Never mind the inconvenience or how I will get 4 gallons of milk upstairs from the garage, plus my groceries. Never mind the cans of green beans rolling around my trunk. Never mind that I now have to buy trash bags – plastic trash bags. Today, I reuse these bags for garbage and recycling, but that is probably evil, too.
grocery-store-plastic-bags-banned
The micro-management of our elected politicians is getting more and more bizarre, and we as a population seem to tolerate this behavior. The silent majority needs to take a stand to the so-called “correct left” and say enough is enough: do something useful like eliminating all government pensions for those who don’t teach our children or risk their life on our behalf so we can stop living in a deficit world.
The State of California is broke. Santa Clara County is broke, and so is the City of San Jose. Most cities and counties in California have nothing in their coffers, and that can be said for most cities and counties regardless of their state. We all know the reason(s) and we all know that next to nothing can be done, since most politicians bow to the unions that get them elected. A few, like San Jose mayor, Chuck Reed, have the guts to say enough is enough, and threaten the unions that fill city hall with pay cuts or layoffs.
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed Fought City Hall Unions
Despite this mess that we all live in, start up companies all around us are thriving. It’s not Google or eBay that I am talking about, but new companies that are making huge splashes, such as Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and FourSquare. These companies, if they were children would be in Elementary School, but are taking the Internet by storm.
Facebook is now the 2nd most trafficked website in the world, according to Alexa.com, and Twitter helped Barack Obama “tweet” his way into the White House.
These companies all hire bunches of really smart engineers and developers to create cool concepts and interfaces. They work crazy hours and get gobs of low-priced stock options that may or may not ever pay off. It’s a gamble, certainly, but with so many companies having hit the proverbial jackpot of an IPO or an acquisition, the chance of becoming stupid-rich is pretty compelling.
Did I mention that none of these jobs are unionized, and none of these people have a pension? There is no shop steward and no hall meetings and dues to pay. Nope. These really smart engineers and developers are paid based on their level of experience and what they produce. If they are no good, they don’t get the job in the first place, and if they suck after they get hired, they will be let go. If the company folds, which so many start-ups do, they lose their job and need to look for the next opportunity. There is no place to hide.
And this is why Silicon Valley has created 95% of the technology we use in our daily life, union-free. If you disagree with this statement, just think what brought you to this page in the first place and read through this list of companies located within a 50-mile radius of where I currently sit: Apple, Adobe, Intel, AMD, HP, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Oracle, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Friendster, HiFive, Cisco, Symantec, Tivo, Netflix, Seagate, NVIDIA, Tesla, and hundreds more.
After the general public started raving about Ike’s on Yelp, the lines started and people who wouldn’t normally venture to that part of town were taking up parking spots and, heaven forbid, spending money. The tenants in the upstairs units complained about the increased traffic, and the local business decided to call their lawyers and sue Ike.
Ike’s lease is supposed to run until 2018, but the landlord wants him out on his ear so he can find a less successful tenant. His neighboring business want him out so they have less foot traffic of people they could potentially monetize. Ike’s neighbors accuse of him of “terrorizing the neighborhood.”
The good part is that it’s nearly impossible to evict anyone in San Francisco, the really stupid part is that his neighbors, instead of opening a lemonade stand and profiting from the traffic, they decide to litigate. I say we begin a boycott on his neighbors; your thoughts?!
Ike's Place Deli in San Francisco Castro District is being evicted
Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay is running for governor of California, we all know this. We also know that eBay grew leaps and bounds under her watch, and made her and many eBay employees and investors phenomenally wealthy.
The fact that people from around the world, from all walks of life and all political slants utilize the eBay platform to earn a living, seems be lost on Democrats who would elect a French poodle over any Republican, regardless of their pedigree.
When opponents cannot come up with any real beef against a candidate they grasp for straws, so let’s toss the racism card at Meg, since after all, she wants to control illegal immigration from Mexico. A perennial candidate for office, Stewart Alexander, makes these “Meg Whitman is a racist” claims for no other reason than because he can. He claims, and I quote, “Whitman’s position is racist and discriminates against Mexican-Americans.”
Immigration Control Benefits Mexican-Americans
Huh? If anything, it helps Mexican-Americans in the view of non Mexican-Americans in that there won’t be a question if they are here “legally” or if they are undocumented.
There is a huge difference between immigrating legally and going through the proper procedures versus hopping a fence and avoiding border patrols.
Would a woman hire a man named Osama if she were a xenophobe? Or did she hire Mr. Bedier because he was the best candidate? That is something few democrats grasp, Silicon Valley and start-up companies work on merit – if you are great, you are greatly rewarded. If you are mediocre or lazy, you’re gone. There are no unions here.
Another jab at Whitman has been that since she is pro-business, she will outsource all jobs to a far-away land, like India, and all the “real” jobs will vanish. Something to chomp on here – ex-eBay and PayPal employees have spawned companies such as YouTube.com. LinkedIn.com, Yelp.com, and Slide.com to name just a portion of the long list. In other words, she hired really smart people who left to start new companies that also hire really smart people and create more jobs.
Meg Whitman will likely become California’s next governor, despite taunts and jabs from democrats that have no muscle behind them.
It’s funny, Democrats want the lower class of our society to believe they are their only friends, and that without government, they are doomed to wallow in their misery for generations.
Democrats want us to believe that without social programs we will all wilt and die. Now some programs are good, don’t get me wrong, but they are a crutch not a solution. Food stamps have helped many many families get through rough patches in their lives, but it is a short-term solution not a lifestyle as some have made it.
When I see a person who has come from nothing and has become something and someone, I am always curious to hear the story. How did they do it? What did they do differently that others could model?
In most cases it comes down to two things: education and hard work. There are no shortcuts. I tell my 7 year-old daughter this every day: “Do what you have to do first, and then you can do what you want to do.” TCB – Take Care of Business.
Stanford grad Damon Dunn for California Secretary of State
Damon, who spent part of his childhood living in a trailer and who’s mother is just 16 years his senior, was an outstanding athlete but also a superior student who was accepted to Stanford, arguably the finest university in the world. Yes, he played football, but unlike so many underprivileged athletes that let their scholarship go to waste, he took full advantage of his surroundings.
Just 34 years-old, Damon Dunn appears to be a rising star within the Republican party with good looks, an athletic build, charming smile and a real speaking style – a complete opposite of the lecturing college professor-style that currently resides in Washington D.C.
I look for my politicians to be well rounded, to have held a real job and not be trust fund babies. I want to be able to relate. If you are looking for the future of the Republican party, it might be the guy who has overcome hardship through the virtues that have made America great – self-reliance, perseverance, not quitting, regrouping when something isn’t working and trying something else and most of all, hard work.
Are you a white guy or maybe you know a white guy who owns a business or company that bids on government business and keeps losing out on work to minority and/or women-owned businesses because they get preference on certain contracts?
Yes, we all know how ridiculous these programs are – where a wealthy kid from let’s say, Singapore, comes to America to get his MBA on daddy’s dime. He then gets a gig at Company X who agrees to sponsor his H-1 Visa so he can get a Green Card.
Packing his Green Card and on his way to citizenship, he ventures out on his own and opens up Singapore Sling, the latest in military weaponry – laser-directional stealth slingshots, and your direct competition.
Now with citizenship paperwork in hand, our newly-minted American is bidding on government contracts, and since he is now a certified MBE, the acronym for a minority-owned business, his operation now gets bidding preference over your true-blue American company on certain set-aside contracts.
Let’s review and get this straight: He comes from a country where he is of the majority, not disadvantaged or poor, but comes to the land of milk and honey and low-and-behold, he’s now a disadvantaged minority! All he has to do is make sure all his family money is off-shore in his family’s name and he’s set.
What to do now, Mr. Non-Person-Of-Color? Guess what…you, too, can own one of these Minority-Owned companies, Mr. White Man!
Teach her the ropes so she understands the business model, print up some cards saying she is the President and CEO, give her 51% of the stock, and you are now in a winning position. Your slingshots are now getting even more of a preference over Singapore Sling’s because your wife is not only a minority; she’s a woman, too! The only thing that would make it better was if she happened to be disabled. Hmmm!
Yes, folks, this is how absurd our government’s programs are – a rich SOB from another country can come here for school and just because he happens to be the correct shade on the color bar, he is now a disadvantaged minority – even though he never experienced discrimination, never heard of Rosa Parks and only is familiar with Martin Luther King because of the holiday.
With all the scams being run on the U.S. government, I am surprised there is not a Dummies Guide to Scamming for U.S. Government for foreigners, and immigrants, legal or otherwise.
If you are born in this country, and middle-class, you are out of luck for most everything – even with the Barack Obama for Middle Class crock pot speech last night. Double down on the child care credit, wow, thanks.
Mr. President, $85,000 in Butte, Montana or Lufkin, Texas is decent money, and clearly middle-class. $85,000 in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, or most large metropolitan areas doesn’t allow you to afford child care. The typical pre-school in San Jose runs between $900 and $1250 per month per child. Of course, I can find some un-licensed home where I can drop the kids, so they can have their mind numbed from 10 consecutive hours of TV, interrupted by a bowl of macaroni and cheese for half that price, but I digress.
Dummies Guide to Scamming the United States Government for Immigrants and Foreigners:
Chapter 1: Secure a tourist visa into the United States and travel with your not-yet visibly pregnant wife. Develop “complications” so she (and you) can stay over for the birth of newly-minted American citizen.
Chapter 2: Foreign countries can populate American universities with graduate engineering students. A large percentage will secure jobs with American technology companies after receiving their degrees, on the path to a Green Card, at which time they can begin sponsoring family members.
Upon garnering citizenship, they are able to work for government agencies and labs. Can we play connect the dots?
Chapter 3: Make your way to Mexico from wherever you are, sneak into the country and wait for Democrats to offer amnesty. It’s faster than applying the old-fashioned way for a visa.
Feel free to chime in with ideas for Chapter 4, 5 and 6.
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Grocery Store Plastic Bag Ban
Saturday, January 8th, 2011Politicians have nothing else to do. Never mind the budget overruns, out of whack pensions for public employees or transit systems that are terminally broken. None of these matter as much as stopping me from having my milk put into a bag made from plastic at the grocery store. It started in San Francisco, likely the most dysfunctional city in America, and has filtered south to San Jose, a city where bootleg DVDs and handbags can be found in a dozen ethnic shopping malls around town without a second glance from city hall.
Years ago stores phased out paper bags because they killed trees and plastic was cheaper. Now plastic is evil and paper is coming back, or to some stores, such as Ikea, bags have been eliminated, period. We are supposed to bring a re-usable bags. A bag I am supposed to buy.
Never mind the inconvenience or how I will get 4 gallons of milk upstairs from the garage, plus my groceries. Never mind the cans of green beans rolling around my trunk. Never mind that I now have to buy trash bags – plastic trash bags. Today, I reuse these bags for garbage and recycling, but that is probably evil, too.
grocery-store-plastic-bags-banned
The micro-management of our elected politicians is getting more and more bizarre, and we as a population seem to tolerate this behavior. The silent majority needs to take a stand to the so-called “correct left” and say enough is enough: do something useful like eliminating all government pensions for those who don’t teach our children or risk their life on our behalf so we can stop living in a deficit world.
Tags: grocery stores, paper bags, plastic bag ban, recycling, san francisco, san jose
Posted in Business, Community, Political Satire, Politics, The Economy, Things That Irritate Me | 4 Comments »