Problems... from the First World
Like, seriously, I'm perfectly aware of just how first-world this problem is. Totally so. But there's a point to be made here, so I'm just gonna power through it. So, I am home again, decided to take a second day, with the express purpose of attempting to get my head a little more right, more on that later. I wanted breakfast, and Panera sounded good, so I ordered it. Bagels just to have around, an a nice egg-on-brioche sandwich. Their brioche is slightly sweet, nice and buttery, and just all-around good. I have it delivered; I don't love that they're doing third-party through Doordash, but I'm in my jim-jams and unshowered, so yeah, not heading up to 14 and John R to obtain foodstuffs at this point. My food arrives, and I find that my egg sandwiches are properly prepared, with the cheese and optional tomato that I'm sure I paid too much for, but they are on ciabatta instead of brioche.
Now, the alleged privilege, the first-world nature of this complaint, again, is palpable. I sat on my ass, on my phone, on my wifi, and ordered expensive breakfast sandwiches to be delivered to me. I gave a generous tip, as I always do. I'm paying far too much for egg sandwiches from a company that is most likely woke as fuck, so the fact that it was on one kind of artisan bread instead of another, yeah, I should probably just STFU. Particularly when there are inner-city people who had cold cereal for breakfast, or if they had an egg sandwich, it was on off-brand Wonder bread. But, you see, that's where I have to differ... I am perfectly aware that, in the grand scheme of things, my complaint is pretty mediocre. Ciabatta instead of brioche, oh, get this man a priest, for his life is surely over! And indeed, the sandwich was very tasty, hell, I would even order it again. But it's not what I ordered. And here's where we start to get into the nitty-gritty... It wasn't enough of an inconvenience for me to call them up and bitch that they got it wrong, it really wasn't. But I am, believe it or not, entitled to be annoyed about it. Because I ordered a certain thing. I was given choices, options, on the menu, and I ordered a certain type of bread over another, because that's what I wanted. And, again, I am paying WAY too much for a freaking egg sandwich, I mean, seriously, scrambled egg patty, a bit of cheese, on bread. With the tomato, a single slice that I probably paid every bit of a dollar extra for. Let's just say that I could order a whole freaking hot-and-ready pizza for what this one little sandwich cost me. Now, again, I wanted it, I was willing to pay the cost, and it was delicious. That's why I ordered it in the first place. But there's this pervasive idea in our society today that because mine is a "first-world" problem, I have no call or right to complain about it. I should just take what I got. And that's not right. I really do have every right to call and complain that I got the wrong item; that would be perfectly acceptable, because I did order something different, and I paid a lot of money for it. And someone is making it who most likely believes that they deserve 15 bucks an hour because, well, just because. What I am experiencing is not some kind of entitlement. Entitlement is expecting a fat salary for doing your job incorrectly. I'm merely asking for the order that I ordered to be prepared correctly, in a very basic, literal sense, to get what I paid for. That's really not a big ask, it's actually a very reasonable request. It's a cliche, but it's still as true as it ever was; get my order right first, and then we'll talk about $15 an hour!
I mean, this is one of the basic functions of capitalism. It's about wanting better, and about driving yourself toward the ability to have better... There's a term in economics, I can't remember what, but it refers to a type of goods. Not "inferior goods", there's another word for it, the concept is that these are goods that you almost always only buy because you have to, and when you have the means, you no longer buy these goods, you buy something better... Bread from a bakery as opposed to store brand white bread. Pasta instead of ramen noodles. Fancy oven-baked mac and cheese with the panko breadcrumbs, instead of the store-brand Kraft dinner... And that's not to say that you never buy these other goods again; I get a hankering for ramen noodles regardless of whether or not I have the ability to head out to Andiamo for some high-quality pasta. But they're no longer what you go for, because you have better choices available to you. If you are on food assistance, for example, I absolutely believe that you should be limited to the essentials. We're talking bread, eggs, milk, cheese, peanut butter, fresh vegetables and fruit... No pizza rolls, for example, no fancy hot-pockets. Staples. "What, you want people on food stamps to just eat like PB&Js?" Umm, yes! Yes, you're in the ballpark. Good, nutritious food, I'm not saying crusts and water, but basic staples. If you want something more than that, well, got news for ya, that's when you go ahead and get a job so you can buy it with your own money! Why, for example, was I able to have Panera instead of store-brand English muffins? Because I work for a living, that's why.
You see, this is a big problem with this "forever pandemic"; people are cheerfully becoming more and more dependent on the government for their day-to-day livelihoods. That's not how this is supposed to work. The government's supposed to work for us, not the other way around. We are supposed to work for ourselves, not for it. I mean, that's the point, that's the very crux of the founding and framing of this country. We've got people in our government making six figures lamenting that they have to start paying back their student loans. I mean, you want to see insanity, look no farther than Schmuck Schumer and facelift Pelosi cheering the fact that "this country pays its debts, THAT'S WHY WE JUST UPPED THE DEBT LIMIT BY 2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS"... Umm, that's not paying debt, that's approving the issuance of more debt. A LOT more debt. A fantastic amount of more debt. This is NOT a good thing. Especially since we keep doing this. We haven't passed a balanced budget in years, we just keep slapping on continuing resolutions, omnibus bills, and upping the debt limit. This is literally the equivalent of a person opening up a new credit card to start paying off the old ones. Oh, and the bank that the card is through has repeatedly attempted to poison you, took your job, and is trying to take your house. Umm... yay? But the student loan thing, I mean, that kills me... We all knew this was coming, and there is just so much blame to go around. I mean, where do we begin. I suppose we start with the education system itself. Get a 4-year degree, you have to get a 4-year degree... It's been 20 years since I graduated high school, and those chickens are finally coming home to roost, because you now have an entire generation of the workforce with utterly useless bachelor degrees, who are tens of thousands of dollars in debt, have zero work ethic, and therefore expect to make like 25 bucks an hour to not have to do all that much. The school system told us that we don't WANT to be garbagemen, plumbers, carpenters, we are BETTER than this... Great fucking message, well done... But it doesn't end there. You've got the colleges and universities, who took these kids hook, line, and sinker. 400 bucks a credit hour for that underwater basket-weaving degree, with a minor in social justice studies... These kids, or parents, or whomever, have paid a small fortune, and to learn what? If you're white, you learn that you're the root of every problem in this world. If you're a minority, you learn that you're a victim, and you can't do a damn thing without some kind of handout, because you're just that much of a victim. And will be forever. So you've graduated, you don't know fuck all except how to go to college, you're in debt up to your eyeballs, and you've had it beaten into your head that America is some kind of racist hellscape. You don't want to work for a living, because you've been taught since elementary school that getting a degree means you don't actually HAVE to work. But, of course, you expect a high salary, because you've also had this sense of entitlement instilled in you that if you went to college, you deserve a big house, a new car, and really just whatever the hell you want. The idea of an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, or if you want something, you should be willing to work hard to get it, yeah, that's been eradicated within a single generation. But regardless of who is to blame (hint: totally the education system), we're still not to the point where someone stood there with a gun to your head and made you sign up for college. That was a conscious decision, and this comes back to the idea of personal responsibility. Were you misled, most likely. False pretenses, almost certainly. But you signed up, you signed the papers, you went to the classes, you chose your degree path, and guess what, you're the one that's responsible for paying back that money. The idea is that, because the government subsidizes nearly all student loans, they have the power to give aid during the pandemic. Student loans have been in forbearance for like what, over a year now?!? Get a fucking job! Unless you've been locked in the basement all this time, if you can go to the grocery store, you can work at a grocery store. If you can go to Starbucks, you can work at Starbucks. There is absolutely no fucking reason to be unemployed at this stage of the game. You borrowed the money, you pay it back! But more and more, this shit seems like there is just such bigger-picture stuff at work behind the scenes... I mean, why student loans? I got an FHA loan when I bought my house, why isn't my mortgage in forbearance? DTE and Consumers are regulated by the State of Michigan, why did I have to keep paying my electric and gas bills? What makes students so damn special (young, uneducated democrat voters, perhaps?) I mean, that's one of the things I've always said, is that the democrats are a hard act to follow... Trump made me pay my student loans, Biden said I didn't have to? Yay, free money! And who is my entitled, uneducated ass going to mail in a vote for? Mmyep.
Speaking of forever pandemic, people are losing their shit over an article in The Atlantic. Now, I don't read this publication, I wouldn't know it if I came across it, but there was this journalist from southwest Michigan of all places, who opined that, for the majority of people, and basically he's talking about his experience which is a microcosm of the nation, the COVID pandemic is, and has been over. Here's the full article: https://www.foxnews.com/media/atlantic-readers-coronavirus-pandemic-twitter . Now, I've been saying this for quite some time now. My allegory is that if you just, in your head, decide that COVID is no longer a thing, then it's no longer a thing. It is LITERALLY that easy. Now yes, I know, people are still getting sick. And some are even ending up in the hospital, and some are even dying. But you know what? My grandma just died, and it wasn't from COVID... My aunt is dying, and it's not from COVID. People do, in fact, get sick. And they do die. That is a fact of life. People get cancer, they have strokes, they have heart attacks, they get hit by cars, impaled by flying debris, blown into a thousand pieces by boiler explosions, I mean, I'm not trying to be morbid here, but people die. And when you look at the actual numbers, the "increase" in deaths by COVID is directly offset by the prominent decrease in death by anything else. Because the numbers are, and have always been skewed. You died of a heart attack, but you happened to test positive for COVID, that's a COVID death. Which is nowhere near any form of being accurate! But getting back to this, people are freaking the fuck out about this article, where again, he basically says that outside of major metropolitan areas, and with the exception of certain talking heads, the majority of people in this country are going about their lives as normally as they can. For them, the pandemic is over. Such talk has been deemed to be DANGEROUS, and MISLEADING... But here's the elephant in the room; this guy is right. He is right on the money. For every person I see walking around in a face-diaper, there are at least two or three without. At this point, at least around here, people are wearing them because they are told that they have to, such as in a medical setting, or they just have that level of fear instilled in them by the media who says that if you walk out of your house without your booster and three masks, YOU WILL SURELY DIE... Why is it that homeless people, with no access to medical care, aren't piling up dead in the streets? Why is it that we're not hearing about hundreds of people who refused to go to the hospital being found dead in their homes? If this thing is just so widespread and deadly, where are the piles of bodies. I don't say this to marginalize the hard work of people in our healthcare systems, or those who have loved ones who have died from COVID, allegedly, at any rate. But these are real questions, and for some reason, you are branded as some sort of heretic if you dare to ask them. We know next to nothing about the newest variant, yet we are jumping on the booster and masking bandwagon, because... ? What we do know is that it appears to be just ridiculously less severe than the previous variants, and how great is that?!? No, I mean it. Everybody catches COVID. It is a mild annoyance. Now everyone has antibodies against COVID. Pandemic: solved. That is how herd immunity works, this is basic virology 101. Virii become more contagious, but less deadly. They want to survive. That is their purpose, to survive, and to reproduce, to make little baby virii, to flourish and multiply. They don't do that when their hosts die. And why is it that we don't hear about herd immunity anymore? Or the idea of natural immunity? You had COVID, you recovered, you should be good, not forever, of course, but when you are exposed, your body says, oh, you again, I remember you, immune system, get to getting! I mean, how many times have I been exposed to someone sick with COVID, and not gotten sick? Perhaps when I had that sore throat the other day, it was me fighting it off. Thing is, if you do the immune system's work for it, it grows weak and atrophies, we have known this for literally decades. Asking me to "trust the science", when you're chucking the science right out the window, yeah, that doesn't make much sense, now does it. You get sick, you get better, why is it that you now also need three shots, to protect against a variant that doesn't make you all that sick? And understand this, I'm no anti-vaxxer. There's a lot of scary stuff out there, especially when you start to open your mind to the stuff just under the flaky crust that is the mainstream legacy media. But there are also people of this ilk who say the earth is flat. There are people who said that all vaccinated people would be dead by November, well, it is now December, and I'm really doing quite well. I am, however, becoming increasingly wary of this desperate push to get a booster, especially after what happened the last time. Because I got the vaccine, so I wouldn't have to wear a mask anymore, among other reasons... And now, there are several places, well, take this upcoming Friday for example. We're going down to the Fox to see Celtic Thunder. Jenny bought the tickets months ago. And we have to show our vaxx records, and we also have to wear masks. So... you know that everyone in here is vaccinated, but we all still have to wear masks that don't work. Are we saying that the vaccine doesn't work? Isn't effective? And you want me to get another one? I am a rational, follow-the science, rule-follower. But there comes a point where I have a question or two, and when the answer is "trust the science", yeah, I'm afraid that's just not quite good enough for me.
I'm going to hop to a couple tasks 'round the house, more later.
Now, the alleged privilege, the first-world nature of this complaint, again, is palpable. I sat on my ass, on my phone, on my wifi, and ordered expensive breakfast sandwiches to be delivered to me. I gave a generous tip, as I always do. I'm paying far too much for egg sandwiches from a company that is most likely woke as fuck, so the fact that it was on one kind of artisan bread instead of another, yeah, I should probably just STFU. Particularly when there are inner-city people who had cold cereal for breakfast, or if they had an egg sandwich, it was on off-brand Wonder bread. But, you see, that's where I have to differ... I am perfectly aware that, in the grand scheme of things, my complaint is pretty mediocre. Ciabatta instead of brioche, oh, get this man a priest, for his life is surely over! And indeed, the sandwich was very tasty, hell, I would even order it again. But it's not what I ordered. And here's where we start to get into the nitty-gritty... It wasn't enough of an inconvenience for me to call them up and bitch that they got it wrong, it really wasn't. But I am, believe it or not, entitled to be annoyed about it. Because I ordered a certain thing. I was given choices, options, on the menu, and I ordered a certain type of bread over another, because that's what I wanted. And, again, I am paying WAY too much for a freaking egg sandwich, I mean, seriously, scrambled egg patty, a bit of cheese, on bread. With the tomato, a single slice that I probably paid every bit of a dollar extra for. Let's just say that I could order a whole freaking hot-and-ready pizza for what this one little sandwich cost me. Now, again, I wanted it, I was willing to pay the cost, and it was delicious. That's why I ordered it in the first place. But there's this pervasive idea in our society today that because mine is a "first-world" problem, I have no call or right to complain about it. I should just take what I got. And that's not right. I really do have every right to call and complain that I got the wrong item; that would be perfectly acceptable, because I did order something different, and I paid a lot of money for it. And someone is making it who most likely believes that they deserve 15 bucks an hour because, well, just because. What I am experiencing is not some kind of entitlement. Entitlement is expecting a fat salary for doing your job incorrectly. I'm merely asking for the order that I ordered to be prepared correctly, in a very basic, literal sense, to get what I paid for. That's really not a big ask, it's actually a very reasonable request. It's a cliche, but it's still as true as it ever was; get my order right first, and then we'll talk about $15 an hour!
I mean, this is one of the basic functions of capitalism. It's about wanting better, and about driving yourself toward the ability to have better... There's a term in economics, I can't remember what, but it refers to a type of goods. Not "inferior goods", there's another word for it, the concept is that these are goods that you almost always only buy because you have to, and when you have the means, you no longer buy these goods, you buy something better... Bread from a bakery as opposed to store brand white bread. Pasta instead of ramen noodles. Fancy oven-baked mac and cheese with the panko breadcrumbs, instead of the store-brand Kraft dinner... And that's not to say that you never buy these other goods again; I get a hankering for ramen noodles regardless of whether or not I have the ability to head out to Andiamo for some high-quality pasta. But they're no longer what you go for, because you have better choices available to you. If you are on food assistance, for example, I absolutely believe that you should be limited to the essentials. We're talking bread, eggs, milk, cheese, peanut butter, fresh vegetables and fruit... No pizza rolls, for example, no fancy hot-pockets. Staples. "What, you want people on food stamps to just eat like PB&Js?" Umm, yes! Yes, you're in the ballpark. Good, nutritious food, I'm not saying crusts and water, but basic staples. If you want something more than that, well, got news for ya, that's when you go ahead and get a job so you can buy it with your own money! Why, for example, was I able to have Panera instead of store-brand English muffins? Because I work for a living, that's why.
You see, this is a big problem with this "forever pandemic"; people are cheerfully becoming more and more dependent on the government for their day-to-day livelihoods. That's not how this is supposed to work. The government's supposed to work for us, not the other way around. We are supposed to work for ourselves, not for it. I mean, that's the point, that's the very crux of the founding and framing of this country. We've got people in our government making six figures lamenting that they have to start paying back their student loans. I mean, you want to see insanity, look no farther than Schmuck Schumer and facelift Pelosi cheering the fact that "this country pays its debts, THAT'S WHY WE JUST UPPED THE DEBT LIMIT BY 2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS"... Umm, that's not paying debt, that's approving the issuance of more debt. A LOT more debt. A fantastic amount of more debt. This is NOT a good thing. Especially since we keep doing this. We haven't passed a balanced budget in years, we just keep slapping on continuing resolutions, omnibus bills, and upping the debt limit. This is literally the equivalent of a person opening up a new credit card to start paying off the old ones. Oh, and the bank that the card is through has repeatedly attempted to poison you, took your job, and is trying to take your house. Umm... yay? But the student loan thing, I mean, that kills me... We all knew this was coming, and there is just so much blame to go around. I mean, where do we begin. I suppose we start with the education system itself. Get a 4-year degree, you have to get a 4-year degree... It's been 20 years since I graduated high school, and those chickens are finally coming home to roost, because you now have an entire generation of the workforce with utterly useless bachelor degrees, who are tens of thousands of dollars in debt, have zero work ethic, and therefore expect to make like 25 bucks an hour to not have to do all that much. The school system told us that we don't WANT to be garbagemen, plumbers, carpenters, we are BETTER than this... Great fucking message, well done... But it doesn't end there. You've got the colleges and universities, who took these kids hook, line, and sinker. 400 bucks a credit hour for that underwater basket-weaving degree, with a minor in social justice studies... These kids, or parents, or whomever, have paid a small fortune, and to learn what? If you're white, you learn that you're the root of every problem in this world. If you're a minority, you learn that you're a victim, and you can't do a damn thing without some kind of handout, because you're just that much of a victim. And will be forever. So you've graduated, you don't know fuck all except how to go to college, you're in debt up to your eyeballs, and you've had it beaten into your head that America is some kind of racist hellscape. You don't want to work for a living, because you've been taught since elementary school that getting a degree means you don't actually HAVE to work. But, of course, you expect a high salary, because you've also had this sense of entitlement instilled in you that if you went to college, you deserve a big house, a new car, and really just whatever the hell you want. The idea of an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, or if you want something, you should be willing to work hard to get it, yeah, that's been eradicated within a single generation. But regardless of who is to blame (hint: totally the education system), we're still not to the point where someone stood there with a gun to your head and made you sign up for college. That was a conscious decision, and this comes back to the idea of personal responsibility. Were you misled, most likely. False pretenses, almost certainly. But you signed up, you signed the papers, you went to the classes, you chose your degree path, and guess what, you're the one that's responsible for paying back that money. The idea is that, because the government subsidizes nearly all student loans, they have the power to give aid during the pandemic. Student loans have been in forbearance for like what, over a year now?!? Get a fucking job! Unless you've been locked in the basement all this time, if you can go to the grocery store, you can work at a grocery store. If you can go to Starbucks, you can work at Starbucks. There is absolutely no fucking reason to be unemployed at this stage of the game. You borrowed the money, you pay it back! But more and more, this shit seems like there is just such bigger-picture stuff at work behind the scenes... I mean, why student loans? I got an FHA loan when I bought my house, why isn't my mortgage in forbearance? DTE and Consumers are regulated by the State of Michigan, why did I have to keep paying my electric and gas bills? What makes students so damn special (young, uneducated democrat voters, perhaps?) I mean, that's one of the things I've always said, is that the democrats are a hard act to follow... Trump made me pay my student loans, Biden said I didn't have to? Yay, free money! And who is my entitled, uneducated ass going to mail in a vote for? Mmyep.
Speaking of forever pandemic, people are losing their shit over an article in The Atlantic. Now, I don't read this publication, I wouldn't know it if I came across it, but there was this journalist from southwest Michigan of all places, who opined that, for the majority of people, and basically he's talking about his experience which is a microcosm of the nation, the COVID pandemic is, and has been over. Here's the full article: https://www.foxnews.com/media/atlantic-readers-coronavirus-pandemic-twitter . Now, I've been saying this for quite some time now. My allegory is that if you just, in your head, decide that COVID is no longer a thing, then it's no longer a thing. It is LITERALLY that easy. Now yes, I know, people are still getting sick. And some are even ending up in the hospital, and some are even dying. But you know what? My grandma just died, and it wasn't from COVID... My aunt is dying, and it's not from COVID. People do, in fact, get sick. And they do die. That is a fact of life. People get cancer, they have strokes, they have heart attacks, they get hit by cars, impaled by flying debris, blown into a thousand pieces by boiler explosions, I mean, I'm not trying to be morbid here, but people die. And when you look at the actual numbers, the "increase" in deaths by COVID is directly offset by the prominent decrease in death by anything else. Because the numbers are, and have always been skewed. You died of a heart attack, but you happened to test positive for COVID, that's a COVID death. Which is nowhere near any form of being accurate! But getting back to this, people are freaking the fuck out about this article, where again, he basically says that outside of major metropolitan areas, and with the exception of certain talking heads, the majority of people in this country are going about their lives as normally as they can. For them, the pandemic is over. Such talk has been deemed to be DANGEROUS, and MISLEADING... But here's the elephant in the room; this guy is right. He is right on the money. For every person I see walking around in a face-diaper, there are at least two or three without. At this point, at least around here, people are wearing them because they are told that they have to, such as in a medical setting, or they just have that level of fear instilled in them by the media who says that if you walk out of your house without your booster and three masks, YOU WILL SURELY DIE... Why is it that homeless people, with no access to medical care, aren't piling up dead in the streets? Why is it that we're not hearing about hundreds of people who refused to go to the hospital being found dead in their homes? If this thing is just so widespread and deadly, where are the piles of bodies. I don't say this to marginalize the hard work of people in our healthcare systems, or those who have loved ones who have died from COVID, allegedly, at any rate. But these are real questions, and for some reason, you are branded as some sort of heretic if you dare to ask them. We know next to nothing about the newest variant, yet we are jumping on the booster and masking bandwagon, because... ? What we do know is that it appears to be just ridiculously less severe than the previous variants, and how great is that?!? No, I mean it. Everybody catches COVID. It is a mild annoyance. Now everyone has antibodies against COVID. Pandemic: solved. That is how herd immunity works, this is basic virology 101. Virii become more contagious, but less deadly. They want to survive. That is their purpose, to survive, and to reproduce, to make little baby virii, to flourish and multiply. They don't do that when their hosts die. And why is it that we don't hear about herd immunity anymore? Or the idea of natural immunity? You had COVID, you recovered, you should be good, not forever, of course, but when you are exposed, your body says, oh, you again, I remember you, immune system, get to getting! I mean, how many times have I been exposed to someone sick with COVID, and not gotten sick? Perhaps when I had that sore throat the other day, it was me fighting it off. Thing is, if you do the immune system's work for it, it grows weak and atrophies, we have known this for literally decades. Asking me to "trust the science", when you're chucking the science right out the window, yeah, that doesn't make much sense, now does it. You get sick, you get better, why is it that you now also need three shots, to protect against a variant that doesn't make you all that sick? And understand this, I'm no anti-vaxxer. There's a lot of scary stuff out there, especially when you start to open your mind to the stuff just under the flaky crust that is the mainstream legacy media. But there are also people of this ilk who say the earth is flat. There are people who said that all vaccinated people would be dead by November, well, it is now December, and I'm really doing quite well. I am, however, becoming increasingly wary of this desperate push to get a booster, especially after what happened the last time. Because I got the vaccine, so I wouldn't have to wear a mask anymore, among other reasons... And now, there are several places, well, take this upcoming Friday for example. We're going down to the Fox to see Celtic Thunder. Jenny bought the tickets months ago. And we have to show our vaxx records, and we also have to wear masks. So... you know that everyone in here is vaccinated, but we all still have to wear masks that don't work. Are we saying that the vaccine doesn't work? Isn't effective? And you want me to get another one? I am a rational, follow-the science, rule-follower. But there comes a point where I have a question or two, and when the answer is "trust the science", yeah, I'm afraid that's just not quite good enough for me.
I'm going to hop to a couple tasks 'round the house, more later.