Guest Post: Stop and Smell the Airplanes

Stop and Smell the Airplanes
By Jason at Poetry of a Madman

People say to stop and smell the flowers. To 'ground' yourself (no pun
intended), I suppose, or to just push your troubles away for a moment
and enjoy the beauty of nature. But I say that's for losers. What I
suggest is to stop and smell the airplanes.

What I mean by this is not to literally smell an airplane, that's just
silly. It's metaphoric, of course. What I mean is to look at one and
really think about it. How often do you marvel at the amazing things
that mankind has been able to accomplish? Rarely? Never?

Picture this: you are flying about 40,000 feet in the air, in a big
metal tube weighing in excess of 600,000lbs, going more than 500 miles
an hour. But wait folks, there's more. You are using a tiny device
(with no wires) made of glass, plastic, metal and the sweat of people
who are literally on the other side of the planet. To send a message
to someone else who is on the ground, about 1,000 miles away,
traveling in a box that is going about 60 miles per hour. Now how much
would you pay?

I mean really, think about this. Not much more than a hundred years
ago we were breaking out the party hats when we got something fairly
light and wooden in the air that looked as if it was made of popsicle
sticks. And it wasn't very long before then that you would be locked
up in a funny farm or burned at the stake for even suggesting such a
thing was even possible.

So, do you think about it? Most of all, do you appreciate the fact
that you can not only fly to the other side of the earth, but also
talk to and SEE your family and friends in real time while you are
there? Not to mention the untold numbers of things we surround
ourselves with on a daily basis. Electric razors. Microwaves.
Computers. Televisions. Water heaters. Digital clocks. Light bulbs.
Sliced fucking bread!

We are, quite literally, walking and driving and flying around in a
world of magic. And we're telling people to smell flowers? Puh-lease.
There's a newer, safer way to do that. It comes in a little bottle.
You can spray it on yourself and you too can smell like a rose,
without risk of sneezing or getting a bee up your nose. You don't even
have to leave your hermetically sealed, climate controlled home to do
it. You wouldn't want to do that, anyway. There are people out there.
Some of them not so desirable. People that could stab you at any
moment, or spray you with their smelly stuff without your permission.

On the other hand, you can look out your window and appreciate the
technological marvel that is an airplane, or even the funny looking
truck that brings the person that brings your mail. No more horses
taking that payload. It's bad for their backs, anyway, and they tend
to drop honking turds everywhere.

Yet, on the other other hand, you can also look out your window and
consider that even as far as human beings have come, we're still on a
ball of rock weighing approximately 13 octillion lbs (that's 24
zeros), spinning at a rate of about 1,000 miles per hour, flying
through space at roughly 67,000 miles per hour around a 44 nonillion
lb (that's 30 zeros) ball of nuclear explosions...

That's right. Good ol' mother nature kinda makes our little airplanes
look quaint and cute, huh?

So maybe you should stop and smell the flowers. After all, they can
turn sunlight into energy more efficiently than we can.

---

A big THANK YOU to Jason for sharing his talent here at Content Unrelated.  Don't forget to follow him on Twitter, click through his site and show him some love.

Prices go up, wages go down?

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take this time to use my purchased space on the Internet not for the typical bullshit/dick jokes/innuendo you're used to seeing, but instead to bring your attention to a new Senate Bill that's being considered in Florida.

The Optional Guaranteed Tipped Employee Wage Bill, or SB 2106, aims to cut wages of tipped employees by more than 50 percent.

SOURCE.

You guys may or may not be aware that servers in Florida make a whopping $4.65 per hour, in addition to money earned in tips.  That $4.65 hourly wage is what a server would see on his/her paycheck at the end of each week -- a paycheck that, more times than not, exists solely for covering taxes based on tips for the week and health insurance costs.

This is a snapshot of roughly one month's worth of paychecks I personally have received after taxes and health insurance costs.

In four weeks, I earned $18.73 from the company -- an amount of money unable to cover a measly half of a tank of gas.

And this is based on a $4.65 hourly wage.

SB 2106 aims to slash that to $2.13 -- a wage not seen since the early 2000's.

Two dollars and thirteen cents.

An hourly rate that would surely wipe any hint of a paycheck from existence.

But who gives a shit, right?  I make tips!  Why am I bitching about losing 18 dollars?

1.  Because it's 2012 and people still don't know how to fucking tip, or are completely unaware that their money puts food on my table.

Or both.

You might be surprised how many times this happens:

"Keep the change."

Oh, yeah?  Keep the change?  That means, from you, I earned $3.16.  But guess what?  I don't get to keep every cent I make from your tip!  See, most restaurants automatically deduct a percentage of a server's sales as a tip-out for bussers, bartenders, hosts or other people in the restaurant who help said restaurant maintain functionality.

In this scenario, on a $96.84 check, I earned less than a dollar for an hour and a half of keeping people happy.

But even if I don't have enough cash for groceries that week, I still have that paycheck from my hourly wage to cover taxes and health insurance costs.

2.  Because whatever I still owe after my check hits zero gets deducted from other sources of income, this means smaller or nonexistent tax returns and yearly bonuses.

You can tell me to get another job if I'm not happy all you want.

That's not the point, here.  Plus, the only times I'm not happy are when grown adults come in and treat me like I'm some kind of subhuman piece of garbage.  But that's a post for another day.

The point is, in this economy, there is absolutely no reason for anyone who lives comfortably to be making decisions on lowering the wages of people who, for the most part, bust their asses every single shift to make rent, keep the electricity going, pay off student loans, etc.

The following is a note posted by one of my good friends on Facebook.  Please read this for more perspective and links for you to click so you can help us say NO to the mass eradication of thousands upon thousands of workers' paychecks.


Friends, the Florida Senate wants to pass a bill proposed by the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association that would cut our hourly wage effective July 1, if it passes. The Federal Minimum wage for tipped employees is currently $2.13, but in Florida it's $4.65. If you work 30 hours a week, you currently gross $139.50. If your hourly wage was to be cut back to Federal minimum (and back to levels it was at in 1991) you would gross only $63.90 a week. Not only will you never see a paycheck, you'll possibly end up with no federal income tax return, possibly owing taxes at the end of the year, on top of owing leftover insurance premiums no longer covered by your wages. 

So here's the deal: 
"Carol Dover, chief executive officer of the restaurant-and-lodging association, said many restaurants she has talked to said they would keep current employees at the higher rate. But in an industry with high turnover, it wouldn't be long before many new employees would be making $2.13 an hour — a rate unchanged since 1991, critics said. "It's basically just more reason for them to try to hire new people, cut the hours [of existing workers] and get somebody to change jobs," Spencer said. "Restaurants don't have to fire people. They just start cutting shifts." (source: http://bit.ly/wO2PLq)

Here's a petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/the-governor-of-fl-stop-bill-spb-7210sb-2106-from-passing

Here's another one: http://sayno7210.com/

Here is all the contact info for everyone in Carol Dover's office. Please call them and let them know how you feel. http://www.frla.org/contact

Senator Jeremy Ring is apparently sponsoring the bill. Here's his contact info. Give him your thoughts. http://www.flsenate.gov/senators/s32

This sucks. Get angry. But don't just bitch, pass it on. Change will happen if we all yell together.  Please share with everyone you think will care.

Thank you!
-Trisha

It's not abuse if he's vegan!

So.

PETA.

Amirite?

These crazy bastards come out with some pretty wild advertisements, you guys.  Chicks rubbing veggies all over their half-naked bodies, raw footage of pre-lunchmeat being mistreated, women in neckbraces being totally okay with the physical harm involved in fucking their newly vegan boyfriends.

Wait.

Yeah.  That just happened.

Apparently this guy is so goddamn stoked he's been eating nothing but rabbit food for the last two weeks that he celebrates by nearly caving his girlfriend's skull in every time they, you know, bang.


PETA? More like PUTA, as in People for the Unethical Treatment of Anatomy.

Also: Whore.

Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom out of Me.


Like.  What?

Knocked the bottom out of you?  As in, your bottom bottom?  Like, you guys bumped uglies and some of your intestines fell out?

Source.

And if you aren't referring to your pooper and instead your other lady bits, I suppose you better get going on those kegels if you guys are going to keep eating twigs and berries and shit, because, you know.

Hotdogs and hallways and all that.

This is why I keep ground beef in the house.  If I don't get any red meat at least every two days I go all Bruce Banner and put holes in the walls and turn all of our personal possessions into fucking mulch and oooohhhh God QUICK SOMEONE GET ME A CHEESEBURGER.  IT'S HAPPENING AGAINNNRRRRAAAAAAAHH.

What's that "L" stand for, again?

TLC.

When you see this acronym, what does it mean to you?

Does it represent the pre-Destiny's-Child musical chick trio that didn't "want no scrubs"?

In this case, the "L"  represents the first letter of Lisa Lopes' nickname in the group, "Left-Eye." With the other members' nicknames "T-Boz" and "Chilli," you get your TLC.

This makes sense.

Does TLC represent the often-used "Tender Loving Care" when referring to something which needs just that?  As in, "Boy! That dirty old car could use some TLC!"

In this case, "loving" fits in the acronym because it's used to describe the care that will be going into whatever needs said TLC.

This makes sense.

Does it represent The Learning Channel?

What do you mean, "What's The Learning Channel?"

You know.

The Learning Channel, you guys.  The "L" in this case, obviously, stands for Learning.

The Learning Channel.

But when was the last time you've actually heard someone refer to this network by its full name?

Can you count that number with your fingers and toes?

Let's just start with one hand and work our way up from there.

Shit, if you can count at all, it wasn't because you learned how by watching the goddamn "Learning" Channel.

Now let's count the number of times you've actually learned something on The Learning Channel.

Even fewer fingers?

Thought so.

This does not make sense.

But TLC wasn't always the mind-numbingly, brain cell mass-murdering ball of shit you've come to know and loathe.

In 1972 until the mid '90s, you were able to turn on The Learning Channel and actually learn shit. Science and math and history and all the boring shit that helped you become more knowledgeable and thus more tolerable to have actual conversations with.

The shift from education-oriented programming happened sometime in the late '90s and into the infancy of the new millennium, when TLC execs (I assume) came to the conclusion that consumers are fucking dumb, and wanted programming that reflected their fucking dumbness. (Source?)

Phasing out anything even remotely educational, The Learning Channel was forever shortened to its acronym in hopes that people would eventually forget they were supposed to be doing any sort of learning in the first place.

But the fact that they  simply stopped referring to themselves as The Learning Channel shouldn't be a green flag for their bullshit lineup.  In the last 12 years, the only thing I've actually learned is that if I want my own TV show, I need to either be under four feet tall, have 37 kids, getting married or be really fucking good at baking.

Source.

And don't even get me started on that glorified child abuse that is Toddlers & Tiaras.  Go-go juice?  You're kidding, right?

If TLC had been doing its original job the whole time, this kid would already know about diabetes and she'd tell her mom to shove that bottle up her ass.

If you're going to keep this crap up, maybe it's time for a name change. I mean, if Outback Steakhouse stopped cooking steaks and did away with the Aussie theme, do you think they'd still call it Outback Steakhouse?

Probably not, TLC. Probably not.

Four things they forget to tell you about owning a new puppy.

As opposed to an old puppy, I guess?

So, as the title might suggest, we've recently taken on the all-consuming (read: patience and time) role of puppy parents.

I'll let that last sentence be my reasoning for disappearing.

Merry Christmas, by the way.  I hope you enjoyed yourselves, because, you know, it was the last one any of us will ever enjoy.

Happy New Year.

Much like free music, porn, anonymous illiterates picking misspelled and grammatically hilarious fights with people on message boards, porn, and midget porn, the Internet is bursting at the series of tubes with information on how to properly raise your new puppy.

While Google might be able to point you in all sorts of directions when it comes to your new puppy getting acclimated to you, its new environment and not shitting on the rug one more fucking time I swear to GOD, slightly less abundant are the resources and information on just exactly how much the first couple months are going to suck.

Listed below are four ways the world as you know it is going to come to a screeching halt during the pupocalypse.

"Stop looking at me like you left my toy box on top of the crate you put me in when you left and I decided to rip out the bottom and bring all my toys in with me while you were gone."

1.  Even though the initial stress will make you want to drink more, you will drink considerably less...

Here's the thing about puppies.  Like babies, they will go through a seemingly endless every-three-hour cycle of eating, peeing, shitting and sleeping.  Unlike babies, a puppy does not wear diapers to hold in all that piss and shit, and if you don't take it out every 17 seconds so it can relieve itself, you're going to lose the hell out of your security deposit.

This every-17-seconds includes the middle of the night and at the ass-crack of dawn.

What does this have to do with alcohol?

The only thing worse than having to wake up in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning to take your new puppy out to do its business, is having to wake up in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning to take your new puppy out while you're piss drunk or hungover.  You will learn painfully quick that a hangover plus picking up your dog's shit equals you having to clean up more than your dog's shit.

And even if you do manage to make yourself a tasty liquid treat or two, your puppy will try everything it can to drink it. Because puppies are tiny closet alcoholics.

2.  ... But mostly because you won't be able to afford beer in the first place.

Unless you're the One Percent or a hoarder extreme couponer, chances are the only stacks of paper you'll have lying around are vet bills.  New puppies are expensive as shit.  Depending on how old it is when you adopt, you'll still need to take it for a couple more rounds of vaccinations to protect them from Alka-seltzer mouth and parasites that'll liquefy their insides.  If it's your first puppy, chances are you'll visit the Vet ER a couple times because Sparky's leg is twitching and you really aren't sure it should be doing that plus you don't think that the half a couch he ate is digesting well at all.

All that shit costs money that, up until now, you weren't used to shelling out.  Not to mention the potential for obedience training unless you adopted a little puppy Einstein, in which case, good-for-fucking-you.

3.  You used to not be able to remember the last time you stepped in a pile of dogshit, now you can't remember the last time you haven't.

Unless you have a fenced in area for your pooch, you'll be waking with it on a leash so it can find a nice, soft grassy place to do the doo -- areas which you're not normally used to walking through.  Areas other people have also thought to walk their dogs.

While walking around, waiting for the drop, poo bag in hand because you're going to be a responsible pet owner and clean up after your dog (or I'll find you), you catch a whiff of something foul.  But wait! You cry out in surprise as your nose-holes go suicidal. My dog hath not defecated yet! To what can I attribute this stench?!

Some other asshole, who is clearly not as responsible of a dog owner as you are, left his dog's ass fertilizer out in the open, ready to invade the nooks and crannies of your favorite pair of shoes upon contact.

I have to wear slip-resistant shoes for work, you guys, and if you're a communications major; you'll probably have to for your post-college job, too.  If any of you already know how they're designed on the bottoms, you'll immediately understand my frustration.

This.

Plus this.

Good luck scraping that off in the grass.

4.  Coitus Interruptus.

While it might sound like a cock-blocking spell from some horny teenage girl's Harry Potter fanfiction, Coitus Interruptus is exactly what it implies.  Not only are puppies tiny closet alcoholics, they also have a sixth sense when you and yours want to bump uglies.

It's been a couple weeks.  You finally feel like you have your puppy on a pretty structured schedule.  You know when it'll want food, when it'll need to go out, and most importantly in this situation, when it's going to nap.  Puppies are generally pretty heavy sleepers, but if you've been letting it sleep in your bed, there are few other places in your house that it'll want to pass out.  If by chance your puppy falls asleep other than your bed, get on it.  You have about four and a half minutes (and, truthfully, that's probably all you'll need, stud) before your puppy's seventh sense (OH MY GOD WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE OHMYGODOHMYGOD) kicks in.  Just one moan or head smacking against the headboard and the jig is up.  See, last night when you were asleep, your puppy microchipped you with a tiny GPS.  So go ahead, sneak away all you want for some alone time.  It.  Will.  Find.  You.

---

All that being said, if you know you can revamp your entire lifestyle for the next nine to 15 years, the pros of owning a dog far outweigh the cons the moment you come home from a shitty day at work to that four-legged bundle of tail-wagging happy.

Best decision we've ever made.

Don't buy.  Adopt.  Check out your local Humane Society if you're ready to make the leap.  And remember, if it doesn't work out between you and your new pet, you can always recycle it.  It's all the rage in England.






See, Sarah McLachlan?  You can do this shit without getting us all depressed.