First Christmas together

Merry Christmas to all.

Today marks the 1st one I get to spend w/ my wife.  After a Christmas dinner @ the Chinese buffet, T & I got on board a plane @ oh-dark-hundred this morning to fly to visit relatives. We're halfway to our destination, w/ about an hour to go before catching the next leg.

I'm not a huge fan of air travel these days, considering how the knee-jerk attitudes of elected representatives have made it so onerous, but her being here w/ me makes it all worthwhile.

Enough of this already!

It's been a few days since the proverbial excrement hit the air mover, and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly people will jump on the bandwagon of public opinion without having the facts:

“Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong,” he says. “Sin becomes fine.”

What, in your mind, is sinful?

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

And this...

“It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

My God!  The man stated his own viewpoint!  His own preferences.  And sorry to the homosexual community in case you didn't already know this:  Most denominations of Christianity view homosexuality as a sin.  They also view sex outside of marriage as sinful, even heterosexual sex.  Guess what?  Many heterosexual Christians have pre- and extra-marital sex.  Where's the media blitz on a preacher or religiously-conservative family telling them that it's sinful?

Or is it because gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders have armed themselves with pseudo-science, arguing that they were, to quote Lady Gaga, "born this way"?  I've always been amused by that.  If scientists ever identify the gene or genes in our DNA, if they exist, that encourage a preference to deviant behavior (in that it deviates from the mathematical norm), will we see abortions of people if they have that gene or genes, much like we now see sex-selective abortions if couples don't want a boy or girl?

But if no GLBT gene or genes exist, then logic tells us such behavior is learned, not innate.  In which case, the pray-away-the-gay crowd, while personally a bit odd to me, isn't illogical.  If the Christian viewpoint is simply that we needn't give into our basest desires like animals do, that we can be spiritually enlightened by contributing to a stable, nuclear family, where's the counter-argument?  A village is a collection of people, but families help it grow and thrive.  Despite all the advances of science, human life still can only be created by combining sperm and egg, be it in a woman's uterus or in a test tube.  But the creation of human life is not enough, it must be cultivated in an environment of love.  Now there are couples that hit rough patches.  What keeps them together?  For the sake of the children?  Why?  Love.  Is love enough?

Christianity, along with other religions, put a guarantee on this:  Marriages in the Christian faith are covenants made in the presence of God.  Husband and wife promise themselves to the other before God, an oath with more weight to it than a legal document.  Unlike a legal marriage, which provides for divorce (and subsequently leaves any offspring to potentially fend for themselves before they are ready for the world), an oath made to God is intended to keep parents together and in physical, spiritual, and emotional union only with each other.  Men and women would not indulge their animal desires to bed multiple partners, be they of opposite sex or same.  The end result?  Stability, which fosters growth and maturity on an individual scale as well as a societal one.

And Robertson's crime?  Expressing his viewpoint that any other kind of behavior was sinful.  That it wasn't logical.  To Robertson, it isn't.  Homosexual couples can't conceive, one of the primary purposes of Christian marriage.  To be fair, some straight couples can't conceive either, but we're talking about comparing the exception with the immutable rule.

In the eyes of the perpetually-outraged, Robertson managed to offend another group:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

 Notice Robertson said that he never saw the mistreatment of a black person.   He's not saying it didn't happen.  Just that he didn't see it.  Is it possible he's being naive?  Yes, it's possible.  It would help to know the context of the question.

But the attitudes of so many "enlightened" northern liberals (and their southern counterparts) seems like they think that all southern, Christian whites do to this day is oppress blacks.  Yes, there are bigots in the South.  I've come across quite a few in the North too.  The difference?  Northern bigots are quieter about it.  Some  may think they're helping blacks by making special rules for them, by giving them preferential treatment.  The reality is every time they treat blacks differently, they demean them. 

And that's nothing to feel smug or superior about.

They demean the "color-blind" attitudes of conservatives as being blind to the plight of minorities.  I'm sorry, when does the pity party end?  When can we stop reminding those that did not visit atrocities upon others because of their skin color, gender, or sexual preference of how terrible they are for not joining the mob?

Chatty Cathys, part IV

Stock options, pay scale, Outlook

Is it Friday already?

UPDATE:

A colleague of mine just got engaged.  Now the CCs are talking about Life After Marriage, joking about leaving the wife at home alone w/ the milkman, how their firstborn looks like the milkman.  Devolves from there into talking about how they still deliver milk in Australia.

Bands from Australia.  INXS

Chatty Cathys, part III

North Korea?

The Chatty Cathys, part II

They're at it again.

Rather than work at work (novel concept), my neighbors in the adjoining pod are talking about economies of scale and T-shirts.

I notice they get started early on Fridays.

The Chatty Cathys, Part I

Some of my coworkers need more work.

My cube isn't really a cube.  It's a two sided desk that's part of a pod of desks. People in the pod work on the same tasks.  Yes, we are peas in a pod.

My desk's pod neighbors with a pod populated with Chatty Cathys who seem to have an opinion on everything.  That's not what bothers me.  What bothers me is their propensity to share it out loud.  Being their neighbor, I get to hear these opinions all the time.  I consider it very distracting, but I also marvel at how, in times where unemployment is high, these people think it's wise to just run their mouths. Business owners and bosses notice how idle, non-work-related chatter impacts the bottom line by reducing productivity.  A reasonable boss tolerates the deviation from work because the idle chatter helps the employees temporarily forget they're at work, unwind a little bit, vent their frustrations, get something off their chest, etc., before resuming the work they're being paid to do.  It translates to happy employees, whom, studies have shown, are more productive employees.  But there is a line where allowing the employee some latitude starts to impact the bottom line more than the extra productivity that may or may not be garnered.

A very wise and worldly instructor I had for supervisor training once upon a time theorized how the different employed generations viewed work:

The generation that came of age during the Great Depression and World War II tend to treat their job as very valuable.  Their work ethic gets them to regard their occupation as sacrosanct.  They're less likely to expect pay raises on a regular schedule and prefer more to take what they get when applying for a job.  "Humble" is a word I would associate with these folks.

The baby boomers came of age during a time of economic prosperity in post-war America.  Couple this with the counter-culture movement, and this generation by and large feels like they can do anything and subscribes to the "work smarter, not harder" mindset.  Overtime is less common amongst baby boomers, and negotiating for more perks when they join a job is more common.  Additionally, baby boomers tend to display less loyalty towards a business, changing jobs every couple of years.  The job market they grew up in was different than now, favoring the employee over the employer.

Generation-X, my generation, has more in common with the Greatest Generation than the Baby Boomers.  The job market favored the employers somewhat when we came of age.  We were on the cusp of the technological revolution we see today, giving us the experiences of at times doing menial tasks involving paperwork, for instance.  Within our first few years of employment, however, things started to change:  We saw new ways to perform those menial tasks with the aid of technology.  Given reliability issues, however, sometimes the old ways still prevailed.  Gen X-ers are likely to more slowly adopt technology than the next generation, partly because we're a bit cynical about it.  Gen X-ers also were the first generation to grow up by and large with two working parents, giving birth to the term "latch-key kids".  We tasted self-sufficiency and independence at an early age.  This translates into us being self-starters in our jobs, something that bosses love.  Our sometimes-cynicism about technology also makes us an asset because we're more sensitive to cost and less sensitive to the "cool" factor of new technology.

Millenials, the generation entering the workforce now, grew up in an age of instant-gratification.  They cannot recall a time prior to getting information from the Internet.  They grew up with at least one computer in their house, possibly more than one, and possibly at least one laptop.  Cable and satelite television has been more ubiquitous in their time.  Cell phones are more popular than landlines. This generation is always connected.  Asking them to focus on work presents a challenge:  Unplugging themselves from their online presences is difficult.  Millenials and Baby Boomers tend to have more in common.

This morning's mindless conversation topic:  Parking between the lines.  One person, a Millenial, could understand someone parking a nice car across two parking spaces to protect their doors from being dinged by the drivers and/or passengers of cars in adjacent spots.  To him, the fact that parking such a way is inconsiderate to others, especially when parking spaces are scarce.  Factor in inclement weather, and the lack of consideration is more acute because now people are forced to endure more of such weather in their effort to get inside a building, all so some vain person can protect the sides of their car from what might happen.  Don't get me wrong, it sucks to have someone else's car's paint job on yours, but that's life.  Get insurance and trust in the consideration of your fellow man.

Another person in the conversation, a Baby Boomer, chimed in her two cents about how the requirements are parking between the lines can be an undue burden, and a person who expects such discipline has never had to "drop a kid and get to work when they're late".  This woman is a vacuous moron:  By her logic, it's OK to break the traffic laws if you're in a hurry.  Why stop at parking?  In a hurry, go ahead and run that red light.  In a hurry?  Go ahead and drive around the lowered railroad crossing arms.  In a hurry?  Drive over the speed limit.

I'm sure some might point out how violation of moving traffic laws poses a greater danger to people than the parking violation.  Maybe they're just more obvious dangers?  You ever walk across an icy parking lot in January?  Take a spill and you break a bone, mess up your back, etc.  The point is that if every person is inconsiderate, you are greatly inconvenienced at best, potentially injured at worst.

Infandous

Some of my coworkers really need more work.
I've never heard so many people engage in such mindless conversations.