Life takes Visa

I'm sure you've all seen these commercials (if you haven't, press play above). They have been getting on my nerves for a long time now. They paint credit cards out to be a faster method of payment (as opposed to cash). Is this really the case?

Hypothetical Payment Scenario: Cash: The cashier rings up the last of my items, bringing the total to $19.32. I reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet. I hand her a $20 bill. She opens the register and counts out $0.68 to return to me while the receipt prints out. When she has the correct amount of change, she takes the receipt from the printer and hands the receipt and change to me at the same time while telling me to "have a nice day" (total elapsed time for this transaction is around 30 seconds).

Hypothetical Payment Scenario: Credit Card: The cashier rings up the last of my items, bringing my total to $19.32. I reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet. I hand her my Visa card. She swipes my card and waits while the system processes my information via an internal modem. After my information has been accepted, the register prints out a credit card slip for me to sign. This is handed to me, along with a pen to write with. I sign the slip and hand it back to her. She keys in a final entry into her register, and it prints my receipt. She hands me the receipt while telling me to "have a nice day" (total elapsed time for this transaction is a little over a minute).

Conclusion: Both forms of payment take very little time out of my day, but it is important to note that VISA IS NOT FASTER. This goes for all credit cards. They will never be faster than cash so long as they rely on a convoluted system with information to process and slips for customers to sign. Furthermore, if they were to do away with said system, they would experience a huge loss of security for their clients; and for what? To save us 30 seconds or so per transaction? I like my credit card just fine, and I use it fairly often; but I've never once thought of it as being more convenient than cash (trendy commercials be damned).

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P.S. Wow, auto-formatting sucks. I spent like an hour making this piece of ascii art; just to have it ripped to shit by blogger as soon as I pressed "publish." However, I'll bet many of you are clever enough to discern what this was a picture of, so I'll leave it for now...

Black History Month

- A cliched statement that I'll bet many of you have heard before: "Q: If february is black history month, when is white history month? A: The other 11 months are white history months." Comments like these have always bothered me, as they insinuate that blacks are purposely excluded from history lessons based on pigment. In reality, if the other months truly are white history months, it's because "white" people (a generalized term applied basically to anyone of european descent) did more notable things.

- History should be taught based on importance of the action, not based on the skintone of the person who performed the action. However, this notion is turned on its head every february as we are told yet again what George Washington Carver did with peanuts. After mister peanut butter, next on the list are figures such as Frederick Douglas or Martin Luther King Jr., whose most notable accomplishments were writings and speeches on the subject of freedom for their people. Outside of a few exceptions such as Carver's peanut butter or Garret Augustus Morgan's streetlight, few black historical figures made a difference in the world that didn't pertain directly to black people. Most of the figures celebrated during black history month are only important to black history, making black history seem to exist within a vacuum.

- I used to dread february when I was still attending public schools for just this reason. I was basically forced to pretend that I thought these figures were important, lest I be branded as a racist. Not to say I don't see the importance of these contributions; but should the inventor of peanut butter really get a whole month? Couldn't these figures be covered as the history lesson progressed to the appropriate point in the lesson? Black history month is nothing more than a token gesture to appease a demographic, and I'm not going to pretend I care ever again.

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." - Barack Obama

- What change are we discussing, here? Could you be more specific about your stance on political issues?

"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress. " - Barack Obama

- That was... pretty. But what kind of progress are we looking to make by continuing down said path? And what do you mean by the right path, anyway?

"It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today. " - Barack Obama

- I get the point, but is this a speech or a sermon? Rhetoric-laden speeches full of hope-inspired prose but devoid of any actual plans for change can't win an election. Can they!?

"Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction." - Barack Obama

- Yeah... moral compass... true direction... refer to above comments from me.

"We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible." - Barack Obama

- And how are you going to do this? Give the people a plan of what you'd do to ensure these promises. Stop relying on your ability to craft cute little sayings and metaphors into your speeches. Most of all, stop assuming that America buys into your pretty words with no policies behind them. Oh, wait. You're ahead in the polls? Perhaps I overestimated your audience... Well, at the very least, I'd still prefer you over Hillary.

Urgent Message For Germophobes

I work with a few of you, and I've seen dozens more in public. I recognize you from your telltale bottles of hand sanitizer you carry in your purses. You think that you can avoid sickness by avoiding germs alltogether. However, you can't avoid manipulating things with your hands, so you're never without your sanitizer to use immediately after touching anything. This sanitizer (much like the anti-bacterial soaps you probably use) kills. 99.99% of all germs on contact. Have you ever thought about the significance of this number? What happens to this .01% of leftover germs? Well, under normal circumstances, this tiny percentage would naturally be kept in check by the other microscopic entities fighting for survival on the surface of your skin. However, you germophobes have leveled the playing field for this bit of leftover germs. You may have killed 99.99% of the germs on your hands just now, but consider what you've left behind. You are left with an extrenely resistant strain of germs, immune to your anti-bacterial strategies. In essence, all you've really done is kill this super-germs's other competition in the germ world. With no other bacteria to fight with over resources, this super-germ will thrive unchallenged. Through repeated use of these same anti-bacterial soaps and sanitizers, you will be ensuring this super-germ's survival, as well as its eventual take-over of your skin or body. Your hand sanitizers are not going to save you, I'm afraid. There's only one real solution; wear oven mitts wherever you go, to keep anything from coming in contact with your hands.

Disclamer: I am not a dermatologist, nor am I an expert on bacterial cell-growth. I didn't even do any research on the above statements. Truth be told, I just really want to see germophobes wearing oven mitts out on the town.

Introduction

As is cliched in first blog entries, here is the part where I introduce myself and you readers pretend you're interested. My name is Taft (named after a river; not a president). I'm in my early (closer to-mid; depressing) 20's, and I've been waiting tables to pay for school for the last seven years (but it feels more like an eternity). I work and live in a very pretentious college town; where people shop at "organic" stores and the boys style their hair to look "messy." Said boys even pop their collars for reasons other than being dracula (unacceptable, I say). I don't really fit into this crowd of complacent, pseudo-intellectual mouth-breathers, but I'm content on my own (at least being alone ensures i'm always in good company). I'm studying journalism in school, but I'm not altogether certain I want to pursue it as a career. Journalism as a field is dominated by dinosaurs who have been writing for these newspapers and magazines for 40+ years in some cases. What is a young journalism major to do? Patiently wait until they retire or die off? I'll give the internship thing a try in the meantime, I suppose; but continuing to wait tables with a bachelor's degree would be the realization of my greatest fear. My interests include basically any manifestation of dissent, like punk rock, anarchy or satanism. Dissenting opinions inspire me, and in this blog you will often see me play the devil's advocate. I suppose that is the underlying theme of this blog; an outlet for me to be as judgmental, sarcastic and sardonic as i'd like to be in real life (if only tactfulness didn't dictate otherwise). If you like what you read, excellent. If you disagree with me, feel free to post comments and initiate a dialogue about it; I would genuinely enjoy the chance to argue the point. We have reached the end of my obligatiory introduction paragraph. BOOBIES ---> ( . )( . )