that other guy’s thoughts

Remember back before reality television, if you wanted to see some crazy crap you actually had to have a crazy friend?

You know the guy, he didn’t have a whole lot going for him, but always seemed to be into the strangest stuff. He always had the cool nickname, like Skeeter, Cockroach, Heavy E, or Pimp Juice. And you always ended up having a lot more fun when he was around.

So now instead of entertaining their friends directly, crazy friends from around the country audition against one another to get on reality shows and entertain their friends through the magical talking picture box.

With fearless group leader away at Six Sigma training all week, Mark and I are battling the tri-headed beasts of negligence, stupidity, and random statistical error all by ourselves. To make matters worse, flight line production support is recovering in the hospital from something of which no one knows. Therefore, what should be the work of five full-fledged engineers in currently being done by Marky Mark and his fantastic funky bunch of 1.

I would say the days are intense had I not just had any rational connection with the outside world’s conception of work utterly severed by the last four years of my life.

Just as a matter of predicition, I would not be surprised if the city of New Orleans was underwater for a great long while after this one.

When I got my new job, I called up Capital One to get the credit line increased from the $500 limit I had during college. I was informed by a pleasant young lady that they could increase the line “all the way to 800 dollars”. My income was increasing 5-fold, and my expenses were more than doubling. An extra 300 dollars would quite cut it. Presumably the reason for imposing this credit limit was that the risk of me defaulting on more than $800 was unacceptable to the company.

While their magical computer assessment of my financial risk is clearly ludicrous, I didn’t feel slighted, disenfranchised, or angry in any way. There are plenty of credit card companies out there; acquiring a new one with a much higher credit line is just a little more work.

I was however, a little miffed when I got an offer last week from capital one detailing that; if I transferred the balance from my other credit cards, they would increase my credit line by the sum total of those balances, up to 10,000 dollars. This chain of events strikes me as incredibly stupid.

First I couldn’t get an limit increase because I didn’t have a positive enough credit history (it’s still positive, no late payments or anything, but I was 21-years old so I don’t have an extensive background of financial responsibility), and couldn’t prove to them that I fiscally responsible. Now however, if I had 10,000 dollars in outstanding credit card debt, proving conclusively that I had no such sense of fiscal responsibility, they would gladly assume the risk.

The ironic part of it all is that their decision to not increase my credit limit is actually in their best interest. Since I always pay my bill completely and entirely every month, they make no money off me, and I, in effect, get zero-interest 30-day loans for all my expenses.

I’m all for sound financial advice about retirement, wise money now is more money later. But why restrict your business to only the academic, research, medical, and cultural communities, like TIAA-CREF?

And why do only academic, research, medical, and cultural communities serve the “greater good”?

There must be some common link between these industries. Medicine and Academics personally and tangibly deal with others to make their immediate situations better. Any gains achieved by the scientific communities will likely take decades before ever impacting many people. And there is little doubt that cultural institutions do anything except drain municipal government coffers and make those involved feel good about themselves.

The only plausible explanation I can come up with is the public perception that these professionals are smarter or more enlightened than everybody else. The two typically assumed smartest people are the brain surgeon and the rocket scientist. And who teaches the smartest people in the world. Ahh, the teachers. So, they obviously must be crazy smart themselves. And we feel bad about thinking so much about the future, so lets play nice with someone who reminds us of how different we all are.

I’m willing to stave off a rant about the non-existence of rocket-scientists and the unrecognized Rocket-engineers.

No…wait, I’m not.

Why is the greater good dominion limited to these three areas?

By elevating them so this level you deem them as more ‘noble’ than they other jobs out there. But what about the construction worker? He builds your house, your place of business, and the infrastructure that you use everyday. Without his blood and sweat, there are no hospitals to save peoples lives, no schools to teach in, no institutes of research to study the natural world.

What about the engineer? He is responsible for the designs and inventions that chart the progress of civilization, and ensures that the logistics of this world are not stopping the human race from prosperity.

How about the farmer? 1 Kansas farmer goes food so that 127 of the rest of us can build building, design airplanes, teach children, cure diseases, and spend our time doing something aside from scavenging for food. Because even Napoleon knew that a civilization can only go as far as it’s food supply.

What about the police officers, firemen, military, and other public officials who ensure safety and security for all citizens? Maintaining order eliminates the fear and frees our minds to continue to press on with life’s other challenges.

The problem isn’t the desire to help those who help others. It’s failing to recognize that living peacefully within a society IS helping others.

I build airplanes, the farmers raises crops, the teacher educates, the construction worker builds houses, the baseball player entertains, the doctor cures, and the military protects us all. That way everybody has a roof over their head, food in their stomach, learns to think the ways of the world, can enjoy a nice walk down to the stadium for a game, and a quick trip home to see their friends and family. It’s the way an orderly society and works, and it’s all for the greater good.

A funny thing, wit. I use to get in all kinds of trouble for back-talking the parents as a child. Up until now I just figured I had trouble dealing with true authority, but in reality I was just too smart for my own good. Providence and natural talent should have led me to something constructive like debate team, but being the fragile little fellow I was, I stuck to math, science, and history, and other reclusive outlets for my overflowing sassafras gland.

By any objective standard, I am both smarter and more intelligent than my parents. But I am admittedly much less wise. Wisdom is a quality that comes with age and experience, neither of which I’ve really got. Looking back however, I wonder at what point in my childhood did I eclipse my parents in intelligence. Sure they stopped being able to help me with my homework in the 7th grade, but they still understood the unseen forces that made the world work much more than my 12-year old self. I don’t know when it happened, but it probably occurred about the time I learned how to trick my parents into logical conundrums and weaseled my way into getting permission to do as I wished using only my words.

There is a hole gang of these ‘apprentice becomes the master’ moments have occurred during my lifetime. I now make more money than my parents individually, and so at some point I’ll have better ’stuff’ than they do. (Not so much in that that is my goal, but in that my financial responsibilities and priorities lie in different areas. I have neither a mortgage payment nor health insurance premiums to pay. I exist on considerable less money, so I naturally have more disposable income)

The hole point being that these moments will continue to occur, and I only wish I actually knew when they were happening so that I could gain some useful perspective on my life.

The entire city of Wichita has a collectively unhealthy obsession with this BTK thing. Sure you’ve seen it on cable news every couple of days, whenever something would happen in court, but here in Wichita, it’s surreal. There has been at least one story with ties to the case on the front two pages of the Wichita Eagle everyday for at least the last 2 months.

As a new resident who wasn’t even alive when bodies were dropping, and up until two months ago was convinced BTK was the same case that the movie ‘in cold blood’ was based on; it is absolutely eerie walking in an entire city’s obsession which you can never fully understand. It’s like living through the tail end of someone else’s nightmare. An intangible perversion just hangs around every time the subject comes up, as if the mere mention of it awakens a horrible scenario in each person’s mind. As an outsider even I feel like I need a shower after being present at any mention of the acronym.

The subject consistently starts out with mentions of the fear and mourning the victims’ families must have felt, but something twisted always arises, as though the angels of solace and comfort get shouted down by the demons of trepidation in their minds, and they turn to grisly details and reality of what actually happened.

I don’t pretend to truly understand their feelings, and I certainly find no fault in their desire to cope. I do, however, wonder if these lines of thought aren’t a bit self-fulfilling, an entire city drowning is their own woe does little to bring long overdue closure to a community in desperate need to get on with the business of living.

Why is the machine that cools the air called and air conditioner, and the machine that heats the air is called a heater? Technically should all machines that change the properties of air be called air conditioners? Heaters, cooler, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, should all be types of ‘air conditioners’ .

I’ve got a big ol’ essay brewing on the perils of the american tax code and the gap between the haves and the have-nots. I’m still refining the text (translation: nowhere near coherent statements right now) but I’ll give you mini-preview of the things to come.

“…he’s probably even happy with a proportionally unfair flat tax system. But at some point asking him to screw himself exponentially becomes patently ridiculous.

Oh, and while you’re at it, insulting HIM as greedy would add some extraordinarily ironic flair into the mix.”

The workload around here is incredibly variable. Last Thursday, Mark and I, combined, dealt with at minimum 22 different problems, we worked non-stop and had to stay a little late to finish it all up. Today, we might have seen eight, and had time to discuss the legal ramifications of a couple of 14 year olds marrying.