Ideas Vol. 1

This is just a list of things that don't need there own entry.

1. A section for people without children at restaurants.

You go into a restaurant to enjoy a meal, your food arrives just a the kid at the next table starts to scream. The parents do nothing about it. So I why not have a a "No Child" section, just as there was once a  "No Smoking" section. Never again will your meal be ruined by some loud little bastard. However, the waiters/waitresses working in the "With Children" section should get some hazard pay.

2. A coffee house that serves beer.

No not just a bar. This is a place for all the people dragged along to coffee horses that don't actually like to drink coffee. So while everyone else has their caffeine fix, you can enjoy your favorite beer.  I imagine there would be some friction at first between the coffee drinkers and beer drinkers, but at the end of the day mutual hate of wine drinkers would lead to peace.

3.  Remove the stigma around being an asshole.

At the very least 19 our of 20 people are assholes. So why is it still an insult? When asshole is  the norm, we either need to redefine the term, or just use it to refer to all people. Seriously, after a moment of honest reflection, can you name one person that isn't an asshole? I didn't think so.

Fixing the Economy.

As you are no doubt aware the US economy is not so great at the moment. It will get better with time, might be a lot of time, but sooner or later it will rebound. I have a few ideas that could and would speed up our fine countries economic recovery. First we need to find some new sources of tax revenue. Perhaps decriminalize a few victimless crimes, and then of course slap some taxes on them. 

It is time for the only tax free business to pay up. Churches have had a free ride for far to long, let start with some low taxes on all religious institutions. Churches try to sway the way their followers vote, if they want a say in the working of this country then they can pay like everyone else. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and any and all other, need to start paying for there "holy men".

Gambling and prostitution, already being legal in some parts of the US, need to be expanded to be legal coast to coast. This would create huge numbers of new jobs, and make all of the illegal gambling that goes on in every city legal, making the men running them legitimate business men. As for prostitution, it need not be on every street, perhaps it could be zoned for only certain areas of a city. Prostitution could also be legal so long as it was sold directly on the street. George Carlin said it best: "Why should prostitution be illegal. Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?".

Now, as cliche as it might be, marijuana being legalized would also ease our problems. Some studies say it would raise billions in tax dollars. I have no experience with it, so I will not speak further about it. 

Just a few thoughts. I welcome yours. politics

Internet Reviewers.

The internet allows anyone to find a place to express their opinions on any topic. Some people use this as a tool to become reviewers and critics of different forms of media. These can come in many forms, a blog (not unlike this one), a talking head video, or something far more complex. However, there is a subset of reviewers and critics that tend to half-ass it a bit.

The subset I refer to are the ones that only talk about things which they know are bad going in. They do he worst movies, the worst games, books, television, and so forth. This is lazy, it is easy to take something that is known to be horrid, and say why. It is much harder on the other hand to take an unknown item and then give us a review. If you always review the bottom 10%, half your work is already done for you.

I know many of these kind of reviewers can be successful in what they do. I bare no ill will toward them. It would just be nice if they would try a little harder, and throw a curve once in a while.

Steam.

I think it is safe to assume most of the people reading this either use or have knowledge of "Steam". That wonderful direct to drive service that sell software cheap. I just formatted my computer and now have to download everything on my Steam account again.

It is a problem to re-download  all your stuff again, you can uninstall and re-download as much as you like. However, there is one problem, that Steam only seems to allow you to go at a little better than 2 megs a second. That might not sound bad, but when you have 200 gigs of stuff to download it becomes more of a problem. I am not talking abut this to brag, I just wish Steam could upload just a little faster.

Don't get me wrong, I love Steam, at it seems to have the fewest problems of any direct to drive service. I can't imagine getting along without it.

An all Commercial Channel.

The name says it all. A channel with no shows, a channel that is 24 hours a day of nothing but commercials. Commercials of all kinds, not all necessarily current.  Never stopping, in one long ever last block.

Oh course some add would buy a time to be shown, as on regular channels. Other older commercials would be played at certain times, tune in at 8pm for an hour of beer commercials, at 6am for Lego, etc. With a premium on buy time during these time for unrelated products, as they would stand out from the crowd.

This leads to how one advertises a channel of all advertisements. We don't call are programing advertisements or commercials, we all them "micro programs". Just think of how the ad will go; "Remember all your favorite Micro Programs of the past, we have them all ACP". ACP meaning "All Commercial Programing".

Insomnia.

Insomnia is something I deal with on a regular basis. There is no good way to deal with it. You can ride it out and feel and look like hell the next morning, or you can take some pills that will ensure you are half dead and slow the next morning. Neither opinion is very good. You might think a exercise will grant you rest, it won't just adds "soreness" to the list of hells of the night after. All of this would be fine, if not for the two other problems that come with insomnia.

The two worst parts of insomnia are: the large amount of useless advice you get that doesn't help, and the lack of anything to blame it on. So the worst parts are well meaning assholes, and that horrid question "why?". These things are not pet peeves, they may just be major psychotic hatreds for me. 

The advice never helps, as it comes from people that have never had a real problem with insomnia. It comes in three basic flavors. There is the "do this before bed", the "do this during the day", and worst of all "can't you just close your eye and be asleep?". Honestly, if I could just close my eye and be asleep, do you think I would have this problem?

The other problem is that there doesn't seem to be a root cause for insomnia. It simple comes on, and the hell begins. It goes away, but it will be back. It is like psychological herpes, doesn't bother you every day, but when it does...

At the Gym.

I try to go the gym on a daily basis. Certain things at the gym are annoying to me, so I try to go at times when they generally speaking won't be an issue. I like to go when the gym is nearly empty, when there is very little noise, not much in the way of overlap in who wants to use what equipment. This means I try to go between 10am and 3pm, after the people that come before work have gone, but before high-schools have gotten out. This has worked well for me up until recently.

Recently  a gentleman that works as a trainer at gym I go to, 24 Hour Fitness if you are interested, has started doing his personal workout around the same time as myself. This wouldn't be a problem for me, however there is the issue of the sheer amount of noise he makes. He yells loud greetings to everyone he sees, he "sings" off key at high volume, and grunts so load each rep can be heard from across the gym. There is no reason for this gentleman to make this amount of noise. I am honestly curious as to what makes him feel this is necessary.

I have a theory about why he does this. I think he wants attention. He makes more noise than the average group of teenage girls.  I don't like to cause conflict, but this is making my time at the gym most unbearable.

The Internet.

The internet is a strange place. You faceless, and the normal rules of civility would seem not to apply. One can go anywhere, and be as racist, sexist, ignorant, and completely unpleasant, without anyone minding one little bit. This seems to get worse everyday, as people seems to try to take further and further. I just wonder where this will end...

On the other hand, if you present a valid opinion you may find that the others on the internet will want you blood. Oddly the more reasonable you try to be, the worse your blood is wants. What causes this? It is the faceless nature of everything? I don't know.

This was just something I have been rolling around in my head for a while. I welcome your thoughts.