BrainWyrms

For some reason, after reading this article from the NY Times about an all girl band in Saudi Arabia my attitude changed. Initially, I was thinking that this was great. I was happy for the burgeoning freedoms coming to a long repressed culture. You know, the normal thoughts for an elitist bastard from the Elitist States of America.

By the time I had finished reading through the first page, my attitude was switching. I can’t quote any one thing that Dina or Dareen said, but instead of being about fighting against the man or any other boring but understandable rebellions, it felt to me that these were the same spoiled rich kids who feel entitled to whatever they want and throw a temper tantrum as soon as it is denied to them.

In other words, instead of seeing punk rock… I was seeing Paris Hilton.

Quoting some lyrics from Tilt’s Molly Coddled:

Now you’ve chosen poverty
You did it for the sake of being hip
Begging for a dollar
Never doubting for a moment
Your bohemian indigence
And you wonder why the folks
In your run down neighborhood
Don’t recognize you as a kindred soul
‘Cause they know you gotta a bed
In a sunny sub-division
Anytime you wanna run home

I’m personally of the opinion that it isn’t any of my business what you do in your home.  As long as it doesn’t harm me, why should I care.  That attitude defines why I support Same Sex Marriage.

I’ve seen some interesting conversations about the topic.  Some of the time I have to admit that the person arguing against SSM isn’t a complete moron, that they are at most a close-minded bigot.  (Though I have a real hard time not yelling “IDIOT” everytime they say something intelligent and WRONG WRONG WRONG.) Read the rest of this entry »

To quote myself:

Interesting. When the Dems talk, I zone out. When the Reps talk, I start yelling at the TV.

I started wondering if this was merely my Gemini tendencies to see both sides and disagree with them all.  I don’t trust the corporations to be anything but evil/amoral (at best) money grubbers and I sure am uncomfortable with the idea of trusting a big goverment to look over things.  Then I started getting a little meta on myself and wrote down some thoughts on a bit of cardboard.

It comes down to this
I don’t trust folks
as a group
in groups

That’s my position on
goverment, business, religion.

Cuz if you’re not part of the tribe
my Tribe
you are the enemy.

And somehow just writing it out like this seems to explain it to me better than writing it out fully.

Muxtape was this weird little online analog (digital analog?) of the old mix tapes that we used to make with the dual decks.  But it is gone now.  At least for now.  The mafia side of the music industry is working on making them die now.  ”Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

But from the ashes, something must rise… right?  This time, it is a new opensource software program that enables practically anyone to -be- Muxtape.  It is called Opentape and pretty much all it takes to get running is a web host with PHP5 and an FTP client.  

So instead of everyone hosting their analogous mixtapes at one central location, now anyone so inclined can host their mixtape on their own site.  To see it in action, check out my BrainWyrms mix… Right at this moment, I’ve got Nine Inch Nails from Ghosts I.  I’ll probably add some other “open-source” music as I find it.

I thought that I had a lock on a weekend job, one that sounded like it was going to be absolutely wonderful for me.  I submitted my resume with a cover letter (my first ever) and got a call back in just a few hours.  Of course, then I was off on a cloud, dreaming my eyes out.  So the next morning, bright and early, I returned the call.  Only to find out that the agency was rather concerned with the legality of hiring me to work a job that would have me working a full seven days per week.

I’ve never heard anything about this before.  In fact, I have personally worked a seven day work week before.  So I highly doubt that it can be against the law for them to knowingly engage me.  But I couldn’t say for certain…  so I’ve been doing some research.

How many hours per day or per week can an employee work?

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not limit the number of hours per day or per week that employees aged 16 years and older can be required to work.

http://www.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/013.htm
http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/screen6.asp

A workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, or seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It may begin on any day of the week and at any hour of the day. An employee’s frequency of pay (e.g., bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly) has no impact on this fixed workweek. Each workweek stands alone; averaging hours worked over two or more workweeks is not permitted by the FLSA.

http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/otcalc/i2.asp

So I am can say with pretty good certainty that it is NOT against the law to be employed to work every day of the week.  What is less clear is what happens when my personal work hours per week exceeds 40, while employed by more than one employer.  I would like to think that it is obvious that each employer is only responsible for the hours that I put in for them… but I cannot find that clearly stated anywhere.

Whee.

The other day I ran into an article decrying the myriad of perversions in the video game “Mass Effect.” The author, one Kevin McCullough, is a fear-mongering deluded lier and, it turns out, a supporter of the presidential candidate Huckabee. [ The "Sex-Box" Race for President ]

I’ve been following the Republican primaries with such keen interest that this was my first introduction to Huckabee.

Today, I’m checking out the nifty photos of Mercury on the Bad Astronomy Blog, when I spot a post about Huckabee. [ Huckabee = very very very bad guy ] BAB has a quote from Huckabee via The Raw Story that is worth re-quoting. Again.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.” - Raw Story

Mr. Musclehead, McCullough, makes me angry for being such an idiot. Huckabee just scares me silly. Even worse, Huckabee stands in second with 32 delegates to Romney’s 42, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Now I’m almost wishing that I was registered as a Republican so that I could vote in the primaries against this danger. I never thought that the American people would be stupid enough to vote Bush back into office, so now I know that they might be so dumb as to elect this monster. In fact, the more I think about it, the more scared I get.